Empiricism, the philosophical theory that all our ideas and knowledge are derived from experience, has in recent years been the target of radical and persuasive objections. In the seventeenth century, and for long after, rationalism seemed the only alternative to empiricism, but, like Kant, many contemporary philosophers have been convinced that empiricism and rationalism are equally unacceptable, and that both positions, and the conflict between them, are the result of trying to answer confused, misleading, and perhaps senseless questions. Of all (...) the traditional theories in particular, none, I suppose, has looked to modern philosophers less capable of being revived than the rationalist doctrine of innate ideas: the doctrine that some at least of our ideas and knowledge of things are not derived from outside the mind, through experience, but are present from birth in the mind itself and thus represent the mind's own contribution to our understanding of reality. What Strawson has called ‘those old and picturesque debates regarding the origin of our ideas’ seemed to have become museum pieces, charming, as antiques can be, but with little relevance to current issues. These complacent attitudes, if that is what they are, have been rudely disturbed by Chomsky and his colleagues. Chomsky has suggested ‘that contemporary research supports a theory of psychological a priori principles that bears a striking resemblance to the classical doctrine of innate ideas’. In the prevailing situation, the novelty of this suggestion is twofold. It is not only that the theory of innate ideas may be true after all, but also that the support alleged for the ancient doctrine has a distinctively modern look. The research that Chomsky claims supports the doctrine is research in the empirical science of linguistics. The implication is that empiricism is refutable empirically, and more generally that a philosophical dispute such as the dispute between empiricism and rationalism, once it is made clear, can be settled by science. (shrink)

Although social scientists have identified diverse behavioral patterns among children from dissimilarly structured families, marketing scholars have progressed little in relating family structure to consumption-related decisions. In particular, the roles played by members of single-mother families—which may include live-in grandparents, mother’s unmarried partner, and step-father with or without step-sibling(s)—may affect children’s influence on consumption-related decisions. For example, to offset a parental authority dynamic introduced by a new stepfather, the work-related constraints imposed on a breadwinning mother, or the imposition of adult-level (...) household responsibilities on children, single-mother families may attend more to their children’s product preferences. -/- Without a profile that includes socio-economic, behavioral, and psychological aspects, efficient and socially responsible marketing to single-mother households is compromised. Relative to dual-parent families, single-mother families tend to have fewer resources and less buying power, children who consume more materialistic and compulsively, and children who more strongly influence decision making for both own-use and family-use products. Timely research would ensure that these and other tendencies now differentiate single-mother from dual-parent families in ways that marketers should address. Hence, our threefold goal is (1) to consolidate and highlight gaps in existing theory applied to studying children’s influence on consumption-related decision making in single-mother families, and (2) to propose a hybrid framework that merges two theories conducive to such research, and (3) to identify promising research propositions for future research. (shrink)

I appreciate Benson Mates's generous review of my book, and also the editor's willingness to allow me to comment on it. There is one point where Professor Mates attributes to me a view I did not intend to assert, although what I did say is so compressed that even I have had some difficulty divining my intentions. And it may well be that Professor Mates will find the view that I did intend to assert even less satisfactory than the (...) view that he attributes to me, which I did not intend to assert. (shrink)

_The Social and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky_ questions Chomsky's claim not to have a theory about the relationship between human beings and their society other than that which 'can be written on the back of postage stamp'. Edgley compares Chomsky's vision of the good society with liberal communitarian perspectives, and establishes that it is grounded in a hopeful belief about human nature. She argues that sympathy with this vision of the good society is essential for understanding the nature (...) of Chomsky's critique of state capitalism, its inherent nationalism and the media. The author concludes that Chomsky's analysis is coherent and systematic when one acknowledges that he is not just a critic but a theorist. (shrink)

We clarify aspects of our Dynamic Functional Model of Jealousy in response to D’Arms and Stets. Our model proposes that jealousy is an evolved motivational state that arises over threat by a rival to one’s relationship or some aspect of one’s relationship. The formation or loss of relationships rarely occurs instantaneously. Therefore, we argue that jealousy, whose goal is to remove or reduce the rival threat, can occur over a longer time course than is often assumed in theories of specific (...) emotions. We further suggest that other emotions such as grief and fear also can occur over extended periods. This raises challenges for emotion theories that assume that emotions must be short-lived. (shrink)

This complex and subtle book is difficult to summarize. The author intends it as a supplement to existing commentaries on Plato’s Meno, rather than as a straightforward commentary of his own. His approach to Plato builds upon that of Leo Strauss, Jacob Klein, and the Tübingen School, but is not reducible to any of these and contains other influences as well, such as Heidegger. In addition to taking with minute seriousness the dramatic composition of the dialogue, Brague combines precise and (...) sensitive philological tools with a marked ontological interest. He reads the Platonic dialogue in a bipolar perspective. Dialogues are tests of friendship but at the same time, as "works" or literary texts rather than objects, they may have a sense in themselves. Brague cites Proust in this context, but one thinks also of Derrida. Consequently the dialogue has both an intrinsic order, corresponding to the rhythmic development of its theme, and also an allusive dimension or a lacuna suggested by the text, to be filled in by the reader. In a similar sense one may say that the theme of the Meno is bipolar. The first pole is the theme of the nature of the soul, hence of virtue, and more specifically, of Meno’s soul. Meno’s defective nature is the basis for a continuous "degradation" in the stages of the dialogue. Alternatively, it is the basis for Meno’s "anthropological" approach to virtue. The key to the Meno is that the Good is missing from the dialogue. This observation provides a transition to the second thematic pole. The structure of the dialogue reflects the stages of Plato’s esoteric teaching as presented by K. Gaiser : dialectic, geometry, politics. This raises a question for Brague, which he does not seem to me to answer : if this is the order of Plato’s secret system, how is the degraded presentation of the system, relative to Meno’s defective soul, isomorphic to the hierarchical structure of the system? Granting that politics is lower than dialectic, there must be a better and a worse presentation of politics. Brague’s approach entails that the degraded image of the structure nevertheless reveals the structure itself. But if the Good is absent from the image, how are we to infer that it is present in the structure? A similar problem suggests itself with respect to what Brague calls the key to the movement of the dialogue: the distinction between the limiting and the limited and correspondingly, "the powerlessness of the limit" in Meno’s case. In the last and longest section of the book, there are many fine analyses and illuminating insights, too many to do justice to here. One may call special attention to the connection between the episode of recollection and geometry on the one hand, and the duality of principles in Plato’s system. I also found unusually helpful Brague’s exposition of the "feminine" nature of Plato’s teaching of genesis, of the link between Plato’s use of anakineisthai and the dramatic device of a prologue, and the significance of katasëmainesthai in conjunction with the theme of "growing" and preserving virtuous youths. In sum: this is a book to be read carefully and slowly by every serious student of Plato. It is almost as difficult, and hence as controversial, as a Platonic dialogue. It is marked throughout, even when influenced by contemporary schools of thought, by a genuine interest in Plato’s manner of thinking and writing. This is not exactly a common property of contemporary books on Plato.—S.R. (shrink)

This long, diffuse, and intermittently quite interesting work is an attempt to explain and justify the process by which the concept of truth has been transformed in modern and contemporary philosophy from a doctrine of adequation via one of the true vision of things to that of the activity of the free subject. The main figures in this process are Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel, although considerable space is devoted to Fichte, Schelling, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and even K. O. (...) Apel and Hans Wagner. Despite the discussion of Wittgenstein and an odd comment or so about Frege, modern philosophy means primarily modern German philosophy; there is, however, some peripheral treatment of contemporary analytical thought. One may perhaps point to three main aspects of the author’s program. The first is his acceptance of the currently fashionable view that semantics is the orientating branch of philosophy. This thesis follows from the author’s acceptance of the historical rejection of Cartesian and Leibnizian intuition in favor of Kantian and Hegelian emphasis upon rationality as categoricity or conceptualism. The second aspect is Simon’s regular attempt to assimilate semantics into the doctrine of reflection. Hence the emphasis upon concepts shifts from that of objects to a second-order reflection upon the nature of conceptual thinking. The third aspect is in many ways the most comprehensive; at least Simon’s book culminates in its articulation. This is the attempt to assimilate the doctrine of reflection into a conception of freedom as a doctrine of both Recht and communication. I found especially valuable the emphasis upon the contribution of the subject to "objective" conceptions of meaning and truth. There are very good pages on the modern doctrine of intuition and the changing role assigned to imagination. The regular emphasis placed by Simon on negation as determination, and hence upon negation of negation as a crucial element even within non-dialectical logic, is also valuable. I was less persuaded by the treatment of intersubjectivity as an expression of a hermeneutics of communication within the context of a doctrine of individual rights. This Fichtean revision of Habermas and Apel may be the latest chapter in German academic philosophy of the traditional stream, but it does not follow even on Simon’s quasi-Hegelian principles that the text is sound. The deepest problem facing the author is to prevent the concept of truth from dissolving altogether into subjective reflection upon the limitations of objective definitions of truth. Stated somewhat differently, the author fails to persuade this reader that truth is actually the consensus of the community. Whatever the "positivist" deficiencies of Descartes and Leibniz, they do provide us with a concept of truth that is not easily mistaken for ideology.—S.R. (shrink)

In response to my critics, I highlight areas of agreement and disagreement. I also argue that my view is better suited than narrativism to account for the difficulties that we encounter in trying to understand other agents. Moreover, the points brought up by Gallagher and Hutto do not succeed in showing that our understanding of an agent’s reasons for acting proceeds independently from reenactive empathy.

A careful discussion of the major logical and epistemological issues raised and solutions suggested by the original members and followers of the "Vienna Circle." The author shows the progressive elaboration of the positions of this school by its major figures and shows where opinions diverge within the movement. The discussion is amply documented with references to the standard literature. The book aims at reviving interest in the "scientific method of philosophising" in the German speaking world.--R. G. S.

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)

This is the most interesting contemporary study of Aristotle’s syllogistic I have seen. The author combines a genuine insight into Aristotle’s way of thinking with a useful grasp of contemporary logical theory. He uses contemporary notions like compactness, completeness, consistency, and the like in such a way as genuinely to illuminate Aristotle’s thought, rather than to obfuscate it or to reduce classical patterns of reasoning to those of our day. In other words, he shows how Aristotle’s central doctrines are in (...) many cases anticipations of contemporary concepts, thereby establishing a continuity in logical theory which goes at least some steps toward mitigating the effects of historicism in the domain of the history of logic. His style is as lucid as the subject-matter permits. The book is accessible to anyone with a minimum knowledge of syllogistic and some of the central notions of present-day metamathematics. Not the least helpful feature of the book is its quiet correction of errors made by the author’s predecessors in the analytical tradition’s attempt to assimilate Aristotle into current technical procedures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to PorphyryR. M. DancyGeorge E. Karamanolis. Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. Pp. x + 419. Cloth, $125.00.Coleridge wrote: “Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that anyone born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am sure that (...) no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are two classes of man, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third.”Ancient Platonists could not be counted on to accept this kind of dichotomy, and that is what Karamanolis’s book is about. (It may be usefully compared with Lloyd P. Gerson’s 2005 book, Aristotle and Other Platonists.) It covers Antiochus (second century BC), Plutarch [End Page 634] of Chaeronea, Numenius, Atticus, Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, and Porphyry (third century AD). And it does so with incredible thoroughness, making it a tough read. The book began as a dissertation; it still has something of the air of one.The longest chapter is devoted to Porphyry, whom Karamanolis claims to be the first Platonist to write commentaries on books of Aristotle, and the first to adopt the view that Aristotle simply was in agreement with Plato—the founder of a tradition in scholarship to the effect that “Plato is named as the authority in metaphysics, and Aristotle in logic” (330). His concluding paragraph is this:It is this understanding of philosophizing which lies behind the formation of the Pla-tonist syllabus I described in the beginning of this book. This remains the situation until the Renaissance. When Renaissance humanists revive ancient philosophy, especially Platonism, as happened in Renaissance Florence, they re-establish this very model. Few other shifts in the history of Western philosophy are of such significance as the one which we, quite rightly, attribute to Porphyry.(330)The “Platonist syllabus” to which Karamanolis here adverts is perhaps summed up when he says that “from the third to the sixth century AD... Aristotle was appropriated by Platonists because they found his philosophy, if properly studied, a prerequisite for, and conducive to, an understanding of Plato’s thought” (4). More precisely, Karamanolis’s book is about Porphyry’s view and the background of its formation.Answering Karamanolis’s title question is not what is at stake; rather, he is concerned with how the Platonists listed above answered it. So we are not getting a history of the reading of Plato and Aristotle as agreeing or disagreeing from the very beginning. The early Academy and the skeptical Academy before Antiochus, for example, do not figure, except incidentally, in Karamanolis’s story (although there is a useful appendix on the early peripatetics). There is enough here to keep us busy without this.Dealing with any of Karamanolis’s Platonists is made more difficult by the nature of the material that remains: except for Plutarch and Plotinus, it is almost entirely fragmentary. So it is a question of interpreting not just the target authors, whose works we do not possess, but the sources we have for them, who have their own hobby-horses to ride, and hence are not always reliable. Karamanolis pays suitable attention to such details. But the back-and-forth discussion required can make it difficult to keep the larger picture in view.Karamanolis’s Platonists do not uniformly go for the agreement of Plato and Aristotle. As Karamanolis has it, Porphyry is the only one to swallow it whole: “... nowhere does Porphyry criticize Aristotle,” he concludes (322). This requires him to explain away what he regards as misunderstandings of the evidence (243–45 records some disagreements, and the Porphyry chapter throughout is dedicated to rebuttal). Karamanolis is at least prima facie convincing. At the opposite end of the spectrum are Atticus and Numenius, whose antipathy toward Aristotle is universal.For the rest, whether we are to say that Plato and Aristotle were in agreement obviously depends on what the agreement is to be about. There is, among Karamanolis’s Platonists, a good deal of interesting variation over that. Most of those who... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:88 Reviews EPISTEMOLOGY OFMODERNISM WILLIAM R. EVERDELL History/ St. Ann'sSchool Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA [email protected] Ann Banfield. The Phantom Table:Woolf,Fry,Russelland the Epistemology of Modernism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge U.P., 2000. £35.00; US$49.95. In Virginia Woolf's difficult masterpiece, The Waves(1931),each of several separate interior monologues-"streams of consciousness" in the American critical idiom-is separated from the next by an interpolated "Interlude". The interior monologues are assigned co different characters, bur (...) the Interludes are rendered from no perspectiveat all, verymuch like the "Time Passes"chapter of Woolf's earlier and better known novel, Tothe Lighthouse (1927).The passive voice and the demonstrative and indefinite pronotms are essential, removing from the scene not only the characters' points of view, but the author's as well. Numbered among the consequences of the new twentieth-century technique of interior monologue, the Interludes can be accepted today as one more trick of literary "Modernism", but for Woolf it was new, and the task of preventing any of her Interludes from becoming just another report from the rypical "omniscient narrator" of Victorian fiction was one of the most demanding she ever set herself as a writer. Like her friend the Post-Impressionist critic Roger Fry, she wanted to analyze the world outside the self into its smallest sensible elements, then show human selvesasthey formed by accumulating the experience of these myriad, random, discontinuous components, and finally to recombine these components in their two kinds, selvesand sense-able things, into a meaningful whole-a work of art. Rejecting both the idealism of Bradley and the British philosophical generation of the 1890sand the naive positivist materialism coming out of the 1850s, Bertrand Russell eventually settled on an ontology most philosophers call "realist " in that it rejected the view that the world accessible to the senses was no more than a mental construct and considered it naive to assign the origin of subjectivity to matter. The material world was, Russell thought, actually external -"out there". He did think, however,that all we knew of the external world was what wassensed by the sensesand pictured by the mind. He alsoconcluded (in essayslike "The Relation of Sense-data to Physics"written in 1910-17)d1at both that world and what we knew of it was presented in very small parts, and Reviews 89 analyzable down to them, or, in other words, that both ontology and epistemology were atomized. Each mind, with its senses, occupied, he thought, one of an infinite number of occupied and unoccupied "perspectives", each of which Lmiquely focused che "sensibilia"-whatever was perceived in che external world-like a Leibnizian monad. Machemacicallogic, on which Russell set che highest store, would be able, he thought, to bring together perspectives by providing a minimal secof cruchswhich, though abscracc,were objective in che sense chaccheywere noc private and could be agreed to by all. Something similar though rougher mighc be done for chesensibilia in cheworld "ouc chere" by che science of physics. Did Virginia Woolflearn from Bertrand Russell?To a latcer-dayacademic ic sounds too urrerly improbable, for che simple reason (obvious to academics) chat anyone who has made icto the upper levelsof English literature must have chosen cheseparticular heights to scale because the trail was so blessedlyfreeof chosenasry mathematical burrs and logical reazles,and the air so filledwith che pure chatter of French phenomenologisrs, that no hiker would ever have to struggle with analytical philosophy again. Lessmetaphorically, the separation of departments of literature from those of philosophy has come so close to divorce chat few in U.S. English Departments can make head or cail of che graduate thesis that one of Russell's philosophy students wrote on F.H. Bradley, and fewer still can trace the term "objective correlative" used by thac student (who was in fact T. S. Eliot) back to an early work of Husserl. Meanwhile, ic is taken for granted by those in Philosophy that there are no ideas worth discussing in Woolf, or, indeed, in any other novelise,greacthough she may be, Lmlessone is to descend from ontology and epistemology to the foothills of ethics and politics, or worse, aesthetics. (Among... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Philosophies of America Reader: From the Popol Vuh to the Present ed. by Kim Díaz and Mathew A. FoustBernardo R. Vargas (bio)The Philosophies of America Reader: From the Popol Vuh to the Present. Edited by Kim Díaz and Mathew A. Foust. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021. Pp. 480. Paperback $46.75, isbn 978-1-4742-9626-7.Philosophy in the United States continues to be among the least diverse disciplines in the humanities, dominated (...) statistically by white males, with the next largest group being white female philosophers.1 This lack of diversity affects how we define philosophy and who counts as a philosopher. As the editors of The Philosophies of America Reader, Kim Díaz and Mathew A. Foust, put it, "Just as history has fashioned and popularized distorted accounts of the 'discovery' of America, it has done the same in its presentation of American Philosophy" (p. xv). This exemplary collection of essays from across the Americas allows the readers and instructors to reimagine what we construe as philosophy and who we imagine an American philosopher to be.The editors offer diverse essays covering an impressive timeframe, ranging from the Popol Vuh, whose oral tradition from Guatemala predates Spanish colonization and was recorded in the mid-1500s, to contemporary philosophers such as Gregory Pappas. The collection excels in offering texts that typical philosophy anthologies are unlikely to include, which the editors call "unusual suspects" that have been historically marginalized, while also maintaining more familiar or "classical" figures (pp. xv–xvi). These "unusual suspects" include women, Latinx, American Indigenous, Black, and Caribbean thinkers.The Philosophies of America Reader offers various resources to enhance the student and instructor's experience. The book is structured into four themes: (1) Selfhood and Identity, (2) Knowing and Learning, (3) Aesthetics and Spirituality, and (5) Violence and Peace. The editors design these themes to fit the traditionally understood areas of philosophy of metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. Even if the instructor's course description does not specifically target American Philosophy, these thematic categories are valuable for th ose who wish to incorporate a more diverse reading list. For example, these essays could easily apply to courses such as Critical Philosophy of Race, Introduction to Philosophy, or Introduction to Ethics. Each thematic section also features a "For Further Reading" segment, which includes selected secondary sources to broaden research or substitute texts. In addition, the editors provide a detailed [End Page 1] syllabus example, including a Course Description and Outline of the Course for a bi-weekly class, which is neatly divided into a 16-week reading schedule. They also include instructive sections such as a Note to the Teacher to aid in thinking through how to interact with the unfamiliar texts and a Note to the Student to guide their disposition and readings.Moreover, the text presents introductory essays for each thematic section. These essays provide an overview of the content and delve into the author's positionality, such as their geography, context, motivations for writing, race, ethnicity, and native tongue. The introductions are philosophically robust yet accessible to new philosophy students and are not filled with unnecessary philosophical jargon.Due to its large scope of thinkers, this text offers a vibrant opportunity to dialogue with philosophers who share or differ in their perspectives across the major thematic categories. The editors emphasize that although this is not a history of thought, the texts present lineages of progression, elaboration, and disagreement intended to guide instructors in connecting the texts with their students (p. xx). Furthermore, this allows the reader and the instructor to avoid isolating their discourse to a particular time, geography, gender, or race and ethnicity. In addition to the biographical and contextual information given in the introductions, a small yet helpful detail is a timeline of the selections that further contextualizes the readings.I wish to underscore two key clusters of essays amidst the vast array of 50 readings related to Asian-American and Mexican-American discourse for the instructor's consideration, particularly those teaching in the United States. These two large population groups deserve consideration as enrollment rates for Asian Americans and Hispanics (of whom Mexicans are the largest population... (shrink)

Although medical centres have established boards, special committees, and offices for the review and redress of breaches in ethical behaviour, these mechanisms repeatedly prove themselves ineffective in addressing research misconduct within the institutions of academic medicine. As the authors see it, institutional design: systematically ignores serious ethical problems, makes whistleblowers into institutional enemies and punishes them, and thereby fails to provide an ethical environment.The authors present and discuss cases of academic medicine failing to address unethical behaviour in academic science (...) and, thereby, illustrate the scope and seriousness of the problem. The Olivieri/Apotex affair is just another instance of academic medicine’s dereliction in a case of scientific fraud and misconduct. Instead of vigorously supporting their faculty member in her efforts to honestly communicate her findings and to protect patients from the risks associated with the use of the study drug, the University of Toronto collaborated with the Apotex company’s “stalling tactics,” closed down Dr Olivieri’s laboratory, harassed her, and ultimately dismissed her.The authors argue that the incentives for addressing problematic behaviour have to be revised in order to effect a change in the current pattern of response that occurs in academic medicine. An externally imposed realignment of incentives could convert the perception of the whistleblower, from their present caste as the enemy within, into a new position, as valued friend of the institution. The authors explain how such a correction could encourage appropriate reactions to scientific misconduct from academic medicine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cartographic Memory: Social Movement Activism and the Production of Space by Juan HerreraAída R. GuhlincozziCartographic Memory: Social Movement Activism and the Production of Spaceby juan herrera Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2022Juan Herrera’s historical recounting of Latino activism in Fruitvale, California, in Cartographic Memory: Social Movement Activism and the Production of Space is stellar. In fact, the case focused on by Herrera as an example of activism producing (...) space and creating change in the name of social justice is not the only top-quality contribution to Latinx geographies to be found in this book. Herrera’s conceptualization of “cartographic memory” builds on the intertwining of Latinx writers and historians with traditional spatial thought from the history of geography. His definition of “cartographic memory” as a “political remaking of urban geography and therefore a selective mapping” adds to the broader oeuvre of activism and space coming out in recent years (14).The geographic location for Cartographic Memory comes from the author’s long history of working in and around Fruitvale as both a volunteer and community member. As a new resident of the Oakland area, Herrera mistakenly navigated himself to Fruitvale, where he found the elements of the place clearly speaking to a cultural aesthetic of Latin-idad. Intrigued, Herrera began volunteering in the area, and learned more of the long activist history of the space. That activist history, Herrera argues, has long been under-studied, or even forgotten, in Chicano activist history, and merits recognition. Herrera’s efforts with [End Page 139] this book go a long way to gathering together that spatial history and reconstructing it for the reader through interviews and oral histories with numerous activists, extensive archival research, and ethnography focusing on the 1960s and 1970s Mexican-American activist mobilization in support of the Chicano movement.The power of the focus on Fruitvale must be recognized, as Herrera also makes space for intently peeling apart the layers of nonprofit funding, social movements, and community-building and support. The chapter, “Revolution Interrupted,” is about the funding situation of the Unity Council in Fruitvale and how the funding structure was constructed over time in the context of the political and economic opportunities of the 1960s. It speaks to how this had a profound effect on the organizers and community given the shift from grassroots to institutional funding. This chapter opens the book with a focus on the national scope of funding opportunities for organizations in the 1960s that focused on race and ethnicity. Through this lens are explored the effects of local political actions—such as the 1969 speech by San Antonio-based Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) leader Jose Angel Gutierrez—on funding at the federal level. Because of the perceived militancy of these remarks, the U.S. Congress became concerned, and eventually passed the 1969 Tax Reform bill, limiting the types of projects that could be funded philanthropically. This type of multi-scale understanding of Fruitvale activism is threaded throughout the entire book, from chapter 1, “Making Place,” in which Herrera summarizes activist perspectives on Fruitvale as emphasizing “not only how the neighborhood itself [produced] a geography of activism but also how it was interconnected to other places of struggle throughout the United States” (emphasis in original; 33).Herrera also navigates the interactions of race, ethnicity, and space, tracing how coalitions, influences on political efforts, and collaboration took place throughout Fruitvale and Oakland during this period. His second chapter, “The Other Minority,” identifies where Black Panther Party-related work occurred; the marketization that began to occur of a non-threatening, non-Black “Latino” identity; the effect that this had on activist efforts; and more. Importantly, in this chapter Herrera’s interviews reveal that part of the interest in these coalitions came from the clear organizational success Black activists had achieved in their [End Page 140] work, leading Mexican American activists in Oakland to pursue similar efforts. One interviewee, Herman Gallegos, a prominent activist at the time, spoke of recalling an event where Black men would gather monthly to focus on leadership. Thinking highly of them, he says that he recognized them as future “mayors, judges... [but] kept thinking... (shrink)

This is a relatively short but important book. Boys-Stones argues for the following : Both Platonists and Christians from the end of the first century A.D. onwards grounded the authority of a doctrine in its antiquity. Christian writers claimed that Christianity is the expression of an ancient wisdom from which both Judaism and pagan philosophy are deviations. Platonists claimed that Plato gave the fullest expression to an ancient wisdom also preserved, though less perfectly, in the supposed writings of Orpheus and (...) Pythagoras. This approach is itself a development from the attempts of Platonists to resist skeptical arguments from the disagreements between different schools by claiming that the philosophical schools that developed after Plato changed his doctrines for the worse, this explaining their disagreements, combined with the appeal, developed by the Stoics and more widely influential in the early Imperial period, to a supposed wisdom of earlier mankind preserved in imperfect form in mythological doctrines. Boys-Stones draws careful distinctions: while the early Stoics distinguished between the pre-philosophical, natural understanding of the earliest humans, and the subsequent development of a conscious inquiry into nature, Posidonius argued for the presence of philosophers even in the Golden Age, resisting an innate human tendency towards evil. Boys-Stones describes how the first-century A.D. Stoic Cornutus took the further step of arguing that the early philosophers themselves expressed their doctrines in allegorical form, whereas for the early Stoics the contributions of poets had obscured the truth rather than expressing it. A new emphasis on antiquity is also apparent, Boys-Stones argues, in Josephus’s responses to Hellenistic anti-Semitic arguments, and in Philo of Alexandria’s readiness to interpret Greek myths as allegorical expressions of the truth. Thus, for Boys-Stones, and together gave rise to the view that Plato gave the fullest expression to truths which derived their authority from their antiquity. (shrink)

Mole's (2008 [this issue]) argument that consciousness is a necessary concomitant of attention rests on the question of what is being attended in spatial attention. His answer is space. Some authors, including ourselves, claim that the fact that the processing of unseen objects can be modulated by spatial attention (e.g. Kentridge et al., 1999; 2004; 2008; Marzouki et al., 2007; Sumner et al., 2006) demonstrates that visual attention is not a sufficient precondition for visual awareness. Mole, however, contends that as (...) space, rather than any object that might occupy that space, is what is being attended, these experiments do not constitute evidence for a dissociation between attention and consciousness. We disagree. To understand the source of this disagreement we need to understand the various processes encompassed by the term 'attention' and to consider experimental evidence illustrating how these processes operate. We review evidence that spatial attention can be deployed with the specific goal of determining the properties of objects occupying the attended region of space. One might, for example, attend to a location with the goal of determining the colour of objects occupying that space as efficiently as possible. Mole's assumption that all that is attended in spatial attention is space is not consistent with this evidence. We conclude that attention can be directed at objects by mechanisms of so- called 'spatial attention' without those objects necessarily eliciting conscious visual experience and hence that attention is not a sufficient precondition for visual awareness. (shrink)

The main thesis of this book is that Wittgenstein’s early philosophy is an exemplification of Newtonian physics, whereas the later philosophy exemplifies contemporary, relativistic physics. The reader may recall Wittgenstein’s insistence, during both major periods of his thought, upon the separation of philosophy from science. However, Bolton’s unstated premise is that Wittgenstein’s thought was unconsciously determined by two different conceptions of physics. Whatever one may think of this, it leaves a question unanswered. Since both periods of Wittgenstein’s thought follow the (...) development of relativistic physics, why was he initially influenced by Newtonian physics or its expression in modern philosophy? Was this a contingent error of the youthful Wittgenstein, or an expression of historical inevitability? We find no discussion of this difficult problem in Bolton’s book. Instead, he claims, and to some extent shows, that Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, crystallizes the axioms of modern philosophy, which is essentially Newtonian. At the historical level, this thesis is either wrong or uninformative. It is wrong because not all of modern philosophy can be explained on the basis of the peculiarities of modern or Newtonian physics. It is uninformative because to the extent that all modern philosophers took Newtonian physics for granted, the latter cannot account for the sharp differences between, say, John Locke and Hegel. Nevertheless, Bolton provides interesting and plausible reasons for regarding the Tractatus as an expression of that aspect of modern philosophy which may profitably be called "Newtonian." He fails to convince at least one reader that the repudiation of the Tractatus is a repudiation of modern philosophy for anyone other than Wittgenstein and his followers. On the other hand, once we discount, or even disregard, Bolton’s historical thesis, the more traditional virtues of his book come sharply into focus. Having recently reviewed the 686 page commentary by Baker and Hacker on the first third of the Investigations, as well as Wright’s 481 page essay on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, the author of this note is in a good position to appreciate the economy and lucidity of Bolton’s summary analysis of the main points in the Tractatus. As an example of my disagreement with Bolton’s interpretation, I begin with a brief citation from p. 86. (shrink)

The author's own translation of the original Dutch edition published in 1950. His general standpoint is that of a phenomenologist, but he makes good use of the whole philosophical tradition as well as of recent work in psychology.--D. R.

The author's approach to philosophy is strongly influenced by contemporary axiomatics. His central thesis is that each of us should try to clarify the postulates which are implicit in our thinking. In this way philosophic communication can be facilitated, and differences resolved.--R. B.

Psychiatry is rapidly changing. The authors review the history of psychiatry in the United States, its gradual integration into medicine and society, and the dialectic between its “biologic” and “mentalist” outlooks. After describing the current state of the profession and its knowledge base, they discuss the likely future of the field: psychiatry's projected mode of practice and economics; its future as a science for understanding human behavior; its expected boundaries with other treatment disciplines; its anticipated relationship with academia and (...) with the community at large; and internal issues for the profession. Unprecedented internal and external pressures on the field are likely to require important reconceptualizations of psychiatry both by its members and by the rest of the American public. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Principles and PragmatismR. Alta Charo (bio)Openly, privately, or implicitly, every public ethics committee struggles with its mandate. Is its job to identify a moral ideal?; a morally acceptable minimum that, realistically, could be adopted as policy?; or an optimal political compromise that can arguably meet ethical analysis? The answer appears to be different for each committee, depending upon its subject matter, its sponsoring political body, and the details of (...) its legal mandate. What is universal, however, is that even the most well-intentioned committee is likely to experience dissension over the interpretation of its task and that this dissension will often be played out in debates over particular policy recommendations.Ruth Macklin’s description of disagreement and moral integrity in the context of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments demonstrates this phenomenon quite clearly (Macklin 1996). The epistemological debates concerning the evidence of past practices illuminate differing visions of the Committee’s mandate. For some it was to render moral judgment on past acts, without necessarily concluding that, if the acts were immoral, the individuals involved were themselves immoral. For others it was to use moral judgments to determine appropriate forms of restitution, thus balancing the reputational risks to past actors against the need for and feasibility of restitution to the victims. Still others appeared to focus on crafting specific political responses, and the historical data needed only be sufficient to bolster the policy recommendations.In this respect, the composition of any advisory committee becomes crucial. As fact-finders, committee members must determine the kind of evidence they will find persuasive. This determination, in turn, depends upon whether the committee sees itself primarily as (1) informational, in which case the standards employed by professional historians are probably the most appropriate, or (2) judgmental, in which case something closer to legal standards of proof might be better. The dilemma is not limited to committees looking at history; those rendering advice on science policy need to determine if they will use standards of proof prevalent in the scientific community (consensus following peer review) or the public (scientific consensus coupled with credibility of the scientific community as a whole). [End Page 319]When a committee is asked to base its judgments on ethical analysis, the conflicts only deepen. The “ethics” of policy recommendations are invariably balanced against the desire to see one’s work yield a concrete political response, the perception of political constraints on implementing an ethically “ideal” solution, and the subtle pressures exerted by the sponsoring political body to respond to the specific committee mandate, which was written with the needs of the sponsoring body in mind, not the needs of a wide-ranging ethics discussion.Another complication arises because ethics committees derive their credibility from the perception that moral truth is discoverable and unassailable. To horse trade among these moral truths undermines the credibility of their entire endeavor and can render bioethics advisory committees not only ineffective but even offensive. After all, if a moral truth exists, how ethical is it for “ethicists” to abandon it in the name of strategic concerns? If, on the other hand, no moral truth exists, then by what right do these “ethics” committees claim persuasive authority beyond that of any citizen advisory committee?This is a deep dilemma that relates to the discipline of bioethics itself. Lacking a core methodology or doctrine, bioethics has yet to justify itself to either its proponents or to the public. Bioethics scholars acknowledge that there are a variety of theories drawn from moral philosophy that could be used to guide the resolution of dilemmas that arise in the context of medical care and biomedical research. Such theories include utilitarianism, deontology, teleology, virtue theory, and justice theory, with no one theory being universally adopted by bioethics scholars and no one methodology being available to resolve conflicts among their respective conclusions. While deductivism is the predominant analytical style in the field, “[t]he central difficulty with deductivism is that there is no single comprehensive moral theory, nor even theories or principles of more limited scope, which is agreed to be true or correct” from which defensible conclusions will flow (Brock 1995).But if public ethics bodies cannot... (shrink)

This book of fifteen essays is presented in honor of one of the premier historians of medieval philosophy, Armand Maurer of the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies and the University of Toronto. The authors, internationally recognized scholars in the field of medieval philosophy and theology, are friends, colleagues, and students of Fr. Maurer. They are united in a common love of medieval thought and a common appreciation of philosophizing through the study of the history of philosophy. Their interests and methodologies, (...) however, are diverse, and cover a range from Justin Marytr, who died during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, to Bartholomew Mastrius, a contemporary of Descartes. “This is a volume that honors the memory of Armand Maurer not only by reviewing his own scholarly achievements but by advancing the state of scholarship on the subject that he loved, the philosophy of the middle ages. The range of topics covered here richly reflect the pluralism of medieval thought. Some of the essays gathered for this collection give a fresh look at important perennial themes like the nature of Christian philosophy and the real distinction between essence and existence. Others turn—as Maurer loved to do—to figures who are studied less often that help fill out our knowledge of this period and add to our sense of the contributions that study of medieval authors can make for contemporary philosophizing.” —Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., Fordham University “This lovely Festschrift for Armand Maurer contains fourteen essays by distinguished scholars on the tradition of medieval philosophy, from its ancient origins to seventeenth-century inheritors. Since many essays treat large-scale movements or fundamental issues, the volume will be useful to serious undergraduates and graduate students, as well as to scholars._ Laudemus_ indeed: from the editor’s moving tribute to Armand Maurer, through discussions of Avicenna and Thomas and Ockham, to Maurer’s closing recollections of his teachers, this volume is full of well-earned praise.” —Donald Morrison, Rice University. (shrink)

Originally published in 1955. The Madhyamika philosophy is, in the author's view, the philosophy which created a revolution in Buddhism and through that in the whole range of Indian philosophy. This volume is a study of the Madhyamika philosophy in all its important aspects and is divided into three parts: Historical: this traces the origin and development of the Madhyamika philosophy. The second part concentrates on a full and critical exposition of the Madhyamika philosophy, the structure of its dialectic, its (...) conception of the Absolute and its ethics and religion. The last part of the book compares the Madhyamika with some of the well-known dialectical systems of the West (Kant, Hegel and Bradley) and undertakes a short study of the different absolutisms (Madhyamika, Vijnanavada and the Vedanta). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Insurrectionist Ethics: Radical Perspectives on Social Justice ed. by Jacoby Adeshei Carter and Daryl ScrivenDuncan R. CordryEdited by Jacoby Adeshei Carter and Daryl Scriven Insurrectionist Ethics: Radical Perspectives on Social Justice Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, 295 pp.In the collected volume Insurrectionist Ethics, edited by Jacoby Adeshei Carter and Daryl Scriven, contributors engage in discussion over the ethics of revolt. Faced with the systemic persistence of immiseration, and given normative (...) morality's complicity in sustaining such systems of domination, what ethical and practical recourse do the oppressed have to liberate themselves? This is a question which runs throughout the book and motivates the problem of an 'insurrectionist ethics,' as coined by Leonard Harris: a field of ethics which takes up a position, as he writes in the foreword, "that is in, starts from, and sojourns to a different place" (p. xiii). It is a re-imagining of the ethical which departs from romanticized notions of agency and reason, often in ways that favor descriptions over normative or explanatory principles. This shift gives it a high degree of flexibility with respect to its approach, which nevertheless remains guided by a common "insurrectionist sentiment" that lends consistency to the works of the text's contributors: they all "favor the abolition of what creates non-being, living death and necro-being" (p. xi). The book is split into a total of five topical sections, each of which discusses a different facet of insurrectionist ethics: its conceptions and context, its ties to liberation theory throughout the Americas, applications and correctives for its theory, its relation to pragmatism, and its future. Bookending contributions from the editors unpack the meaning and definition of an insurrectionist ethics.In this review, I survey several chapters of the volume by discussing Scriven's and Carter's definitions and examining a few ways in which these definitions produce tensions in a few selected contributions. Doing so will highlight some important differences between [End Page 110] the authors' approaches to insurrectionist ethics while underscoring the consistency which commits them to abolition; ultimately, Insurrectionist Ethics is as much an invitation as it is an introduction to the tradition it espouses.Scriven's introductory chapter, "The Very Idea of Insurrectionist Ethics," exposes an insurrectionist ethic within the thought of David Walker, while Carter's conclusive essay, "Death by a Thousand Cuts: Insurrectionist Ethics in a Present less Oppressive than the Past," attempts to pin down a definition by analyzing its essential elements. Their difference in approach is not insignificant. What is revealed through Scriven's angle, for example, is that insurrectionist ethics is indeed a tradition—to work through the meaning of such an ethics is to lend historical weight to the lives of past and present insurrectionists and to declare solidarity with their actions at the level of valuation. A number of such figures circulate throughout the volume, including David Walker, Maria W. Stewart, Alain L. Locke, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Tommy Curry, and Leonard Harris. With the exception of the latter-most, none of these figures make direct contributions to the collection (although their spirits animate it). Its status as a tradition means that insurrectionist ethics is not limited to the confines of this volume, itself more knot than archive: such a tradition reaches well beyond the text and invites its readers to extend its concepts and debates in all directions. It has not one past but several, and not one future but many.Furthermore, Scriven's essay points out that insurrectionist ethics is not simply an indictment of corrupt institutions on the basis of some moral framework or other—it is foremost an outright rejection of the alliance between customary morality and systems of oppression; it searches for an ethos that condones direct action against such systems, operating at a philosophical level to produce conceptual and theoretical weaponry that "incite resistance and demands action" (p. xiv). Yet, as the form of the volume itself demonstrates, the arguments and methods of reasoning deployed by insurrectionists (past and present) to condone such actions has tended to vary, sometimes drastically. Nonetheless, the multiplicity which properly belongs to this tradition—a point explored further in... (shrink)

A quick look at what is happening in the corporate world makes it clear that the stakeholder idea is alive, well, and flourishing; and the question now is not “if ” but “how” stakeholder theory will meet the challenges of its success. Does stakeholder theory’s “arrival” mean continued dynamism, refinement, and relevance, or stasis? How will superior stakeholder theory continue to develop? In light of these and related questions, the authors of these essays conducted an ongoing dialogue on the current (...) state and future of stakeholder thinking. Beginning with a review of research and theory that has developed since the major stakeholder theorizing efforts of the 1990s, the authors individually offer their perspectives on the key issues relevant today to stakeholder thinking, and to suggest possible approaches that might lead toward and enable the continuing development of superior stakeholder theory. (shrink)

THE MAIN THESIS OF THIS STUDY may be summarized as follows: In Schopenhauer's earliest work, The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, two different lines of philosophical thought can be identified, each arising from a different source. The first of these is the a priori Kantianism and idealism heavily emphasizing the function of the a priori principle of causality, and the forms of time and space. This line comes from Schopenhauer's study of Kantianism. The second line of thought (...) consists of an implicitly realistic analysis of perception which seems to arise from Schopenhauer's personal reflection on perceptual experience. This experiential analysis seems to be partially due to his medical studies, as his use of medical rather than philosophical authorities indicates. This realistically oriented element can be extricated from the totality of Schopenhauer's philosophy with the result that it can furnish new insights valuable for the understanding and confirmation of philosophical direct realism. (shrink)

This paper examines the problem of vituperative feedback from peer reviewers. We argue that such feedback is morally unacceptable, insofar as it humiliates authors and damages their dignity. We draw from social-psychological research to explore those aspects of the peer-review process in general and the anonymity of blind reviewing in particular that contribute to reviewers’ humiliating comments. We then apply Iris Murdoch's ideas about a virtuous consciousness and humility to make the case that peer referees have a moral obligation (...) not to humiliate the authors whose work they review. (shrink)

Charles R. Kesler, an eminent scholar and prodigious editor, has exerted a profound influence on the study of American politics and the practice of American conservatism. A precocious high-school student, he impressed a visiting William F. Buckley Jr. who, before becoming a life-long friend, wrote him a recommendation letter to Yale. Kesler asked for another--to Harvard, where he completed his undergraduate degree and earned a PhD under the legendary professor Harvey C. Mansfield. An early passion for political journalism, played out (...) largely on the pages of National Review, led Kesler to author an NR cover story on his third great influence, Harry V. Jaffa. Kesler became a faculty colleague of Jaffa's at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University and is perhaps best known as the editorial helmsman of the Claremont Review of Books. The author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism and Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness, Kesler also co-edited (with William F. Buckley Jr.) Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought. His edited volume of The Federalist Papers is the best-selling edition version in the country. In this volume, Kesler's students, friends, and colleagues commemorate his four-decade career as a teacher, mentor, and scholar. (shrink)

This monograph continues the author's investigations into connections between symbolic logic and modern algebraic structures. The results presented support the thesis that contemporary studies in symbolic logic have a direct and immediate relevance for many topics in mathematics.--A. R. A.

The first systematic study printed in the recently inaugurated "Sovietica" series, edited by J. M. Bochenski. In this volume, the author examines the basic theses of dialectical materialism and reviews the efforts of Soviet philosophers and physicists to accomodate their official philosophical framework to the challenge of Einstein's special relativity theory. The excellent handling of this subject owes much to the author's masterly grasp of physics, philosophy, and Russian.--K. R. D.

This volume of the author's Studies in Dogmatics presents an up-to-date study of the Reformed doctrine of perseverance, showing that it is an expression of the mystery of preservation and has an unbreakable connection with the assurance of faith.--R. D. G.

Developed from the author's own explorations as a poet and novelist, from the classics of European existential philosophy, and from the "positive existentialism" of Nicola Abbagnano, this work presents a creative and careful integration of divergent strands in contemporary philosophy. Invrea contributes an original discussion of the complementary characteristics of subjective existence--"situationality" and temporality. This study displays the vigor and seriousness of the Italian existentialists.--R. C. D.

In this book the author develops his own systems of and semantics for presupposition free logic. He calls his systems logics without existence assumptions, by which he means logical systems which are sound and complete with respect to a semantic theory in which a universe of discourse can be empty but any term which denotes must denote something in the universe, all predicates including identity represent relations holding among members of the universe and the quantifiers range over just all the (...) members of the universe. In a brief introductory chapter the author reviews the motivations for constructing non-standard logics of this kind and briefly discusses what he takes to be the limitations of previous work done in the field. Persons interested in the philosophical problems and uses of such logics are likely to find this chapter interesting though disappointingly brief. Four of the eight chapters are devoted to the development of a natural deduction system N which is a logic without existence assumptions in the author's sense. The system N is shown to be sound and complete with respect to the author's semantics. An axiomatic system L is later developed and shown to be equivalent to N. The final chapter is devoted to discussing the relation of his work to many-valued logics, modal logics, intuitionistic logic and the theory of classes among other topics. The author believes that logics without existence assumptions "will in the long run displace the less natural and more narrow standard logics."--R. H. K. (shrink)