Papers collected in this volume were originally presented at a symposium held at the University of Pennsylvania in December, 1968 and revised in the light of discussion at the symposium for publication. The contributors hold different views about the role played by induction in theories of knowledge and rational belief but many of the papers are conciliatory, reflecting no doubt a good deal of helpful communication at the symposium. For example, Frederic Schick's clearly written and informative lead article considers subjectivist, (...) empiricist, and pragmatist theories of rational belief, arguing that they are compatible theories relevant to different types of issues. Marshall Swain follows with an article which presents a general framework within which rules of rational acceptance can be constructed. An exchange between Isaac Levi and Richard Jeffrey shows that advocates of theories of acceptance and theories of partial belief may be defending complementary and not mutually exclusive theories. In the remaining three essays Henry Kyburg Jr., Gilbert Harman, and Keith Lehrer defend their own distinctive views about the nature of inductive inference and rational belief. Kyburg traces difficulties in some theories to the acceptance of the principle of conjunction which he rejects. Harman and Lehrer both see the relation of inductive inference to explanation as crucial to understanding the former and they develop theories along different lines which make use of this relation. A long and useful bibliography was prepared for the symposium by Ralph L. Slaght and revised for publication in the volume.--R. H. K. (shrink)

Neuroscientific scanning of meditators is taken as providing data on mystical experiences. However, problems concerning how the brain and consciousness are related cast doubts on whether any understanding of the content of meditative experiences is gained through the study of the brain. Whether neuroscience can study the subjective aspects of meditative experiences in general is also discussed. So too, whether current neuroscience can establish that there are “pure consciousness events” in mysticism is open to question. The discussion points to limitations (...) on neuroscience's capability to add to our understanding of the phenomenological content of mystical experiences. (shrink)

Scientific interest in drug-induced mystical experiences reemerged in the 1990s. This warrants reexamining the philosophical issues surrounding such studies: Do psychedelic drugs cause mystical experiences? Are drug-induced experiences the same in nature as other mystical experiences? Does the fact that mystical experiences can be induced by drugs invalidate or validate mystical cognitive claims? Those questions will be examined here. An overview of the scientific examination of drug-induced mystical experiences is included, as is a brief overview of the history of the (...) use of psychedelic drugs in religion. (shrink)

My interest here is in the way Leo Strauss and his followers, the Straussians, have dealt with race and rights, race and slavery in the history of the United States. I want, first, to assess Leo Strauss's rather ambivalent attitude toward America and explore the various ways that his followers have in turn analyzed the Lockean underpinnings of the American “regime,” sometimes in contradistinction to Strauss's views on the topic. With that established, I turn to the account, particularly that offered (...) by Harry Jaffa, of how slavery and race comported—or did not—with the Straussian account of the political foundations of the new nation and how latter-day followers of Strauss have dealt with the persisting topic of race and racism in America. Overall, I want to make two large points. First, the Straussian commitment to superhistorical standards provides the Straussians with a moral perspective on slavery, race, and racism. Second, though race and slavery have been less than central among the concerns of most followers of Strauss, the contributions of Jaffa and others have significantly shaped the present American conservative position on race, including the idea of color-blindness. (shrink)

This is the third edition of a classic book first published in 1960, which has sold thousands of copies in two paperback edition and has been translated into several foreign languages. Popkin's work ha generated innumerable citations, and remains a valuable stimulus to current historical research. In this updated version, he has revised and expanded throughout, and has added three new chapters, one on Savonarola, one on Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, and one on Pascal. This authoritative treatment of the (...) theme of scepticism and its historical impact will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history now as much as ever. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that we have heard just about all we want or need to know about race. As the above quotes indicate, modern notions of race have always revolved around the faculty of vision, with supplementary contributions from other senses such as hearing, as Arendt notes in a tacit allusion to one mark of Jewish difference—the way they sounded when concentrated in urban settings. Yet two very recent works—Mark M. Smith's How Race Is Made and Anne C. (...) Rose's Psychology and Selfhood in the Segregated South —have much to teach us about how race has “worked”, particularly in the twentieth-century South but also, by implication, in the United States in general. Both works assume that, historically, race is no mere add-on to the self, a kind of externality that, once detected, can be relatively easily excised. Rather, it stands right at the heart of personal and group identity in a nation where race and ethnicity continue to assume surprising new shapes and forms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Religious Background of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy RICHARD H. POPKIN IT IS AN EXCEEDINGLY GREAT PLEASURE tO participate in the twenty-fifth anniversary issue of the Journal of the Historyof Philosophy.The editor, Professor Makkreel, offered me the opportunity to discuss the rationale for my present research, which I hope has some relevance for future research in the history of philosophy. At a symposium at the American Philosophical Association meeting in (...) Washington in December x985, I argued for taking the historyof philosophy seriously, that is, understanding thinkers and ideas in their actual historical contexts, instead of detaching them into some ahistorical ethereal realm. I argued that one could not make sense of a philosopher's thought detached from his time and circumstances. His ideas could not be understood unless one took account of the language, the usages, the issues and the concerns of the thinker and his time. The all too frequent "reconstruction" of philosophers ' thoughts sees them instead as logical machines, simply moving from clearly stated premises to their logical consequences. As many of us have sought to show, this often grossly distorts what Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz and others might have actually thought, and misses much of what they were probably thinking about. I should like to carry this theme further by examining the need to take seriously the religious aspect of philosophizing. I will center on the intellectual scene of the seventeenth century, which I am currently working on though I believe many of the same points could be made about any period in the history of philosophy. Among historians of science there is an ongoing debate about whether the history of the subject should be studied internally or externally. The [:35] 36 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY internalists examine a set of ideas presented by scientist A, and trace their use or development by scientist B. The study that results is primarily the tracing of the course of a set of ideas through a time period. Background data about the scientists, their problems, and their place in society are regarded as of little relevance. The externalists insist that one cannot understand why various questions became important, why various individuals tried to solve them, why they used certain kinds of possible solutions instead of others, etc., unless one knows the external conditions of the time. This has spawned a lot of interesting research into the way scientific studies went on, who supported them, who did them, how they got accepted, and so on. The sociology and even anthropology of science is now a thriving research area, yielding many amazing studies about the scientific world and how it functioned. In so doing, scholars have not just examined the great successful scientists, the Keplers, Galileos, Harveys, and Newtons, but also the small fry, the mediocre, the poor scientists, and even the incompetent ones. They have examined why wrong-headed theories were supported, and accepted, while evidence supporting other theories was readily available. Their concern with the actual course of scientific development as an ongoing part of intellectual history is vital to understanding the scientific world of today, which plays such an overwhelming role in our society. So, some people study the education of the good, the mediocre, the bad scientists; their relative social statuses, incomes, and so on. The religious concerns are, of course, an obvious part of the story from Copernicus to Kepler to Newton to Darwin to Freud to Einstein. The scientists were involved in an ongoing religious world that influenced the role of science. The above named scientists had their religious or irreligious views that were involved with their scientific concerns. And, as we know too well, the impact of their work on religion has been of great importance to the broader intellectual world, and the impact of religion on the acceptance of their science has been and is part of the ongoing intellectual world. This interest amongst historians of science in the sociology, psychology, and anthropology of science has hardly rubbed off on the historians of philosophy. Most of the leading scholars of the last few decades in this work are hardly known and rarely cited in studies in the history of philosophy. We... (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

It has become popular to portray the Buddhist Nāgārjuna as an ontological nihilist, i.e., that he denies the reality of entities and does not postulate any further reality. A reading of his works does show that he rejects the self-existent reality of entities, but it also shows that he accepts a "that-ness" to phenomenal reality that survives the denial of any distinct, self-contained entities. Thus, he is not a nihilist concerning what is real in the final analysis of things. How (...) Nāgārjuna’s positions impact contemporary discussions of ontological nihilism and deflationism in Western philosophy is also discussed. (shrink)

Few people will easily admit to taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others. But who doesn't enjoy it when an arrogant but untalented contestant is humiliated on American Idol, or when the embarrassing vice of a self-righteous politician is exposed, or even when an envied friend suffers a small setback? The truth is that joy in someone else's pain--known by the German word schadenfreude--permeates our society. In The Joy of Pain, psychologist Richard Smith, one of the world's foremost authorities (...) on envy and shame, sheds much light on a feeling we dare not admit. Smith argues that schadenfreude is a natural human emotion, one worth taking a closer look at, as it reveals much about who we are as human beings. We have a passion for justice. Sometimes, schadenfreude can feel like getting one's revenge, when the suffering person has previously harmed us. But most of us are also motivated to feel good about ourselves, Smith notes, and look for ways to maintain a positive sense of self. One common way to do this is to compare ourselves to others and find areas where we are better. Similarly, the downfall of others--especially when they have seemed superior to us--can lead to a boost in our self-esteem, a lessening of feelings of inferiority. This is often at the root of schadenfreude. As the author points out, most instances of schadenfreude are harmless, on par with the pleasures of light gossip. Yet we must also be mindful that envy can motivate, without full awareness, the engineering of the misfortune we delight in. And envy-induced aggression can take us into dark territory indeed, as Smith shows as he examines the role of envy and schadenfreude in the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Filled with engaging examples of schadenfreude, from popular reality shows to the Duke-Kentucky basketball rivalry, The Joy of Pain provides an intriguing glimpse into a hidden corner of the human psyche. (shrink)

Introduction: Hannah Arendt's world -- Guilt and responsibility -- The origins of totalitarianism in America -- Rediscovering the world -- Arendt, Tocqueville, and Cold War America -- Arendt, Riesman, and America as mass society -- Arendt and postwar American thought -- Reflections/refractions of race, 1945-1955 -- Arendt, the schools, and civil rights -- The Eichmann case -- Against the liberal grain -- The revolutionary traditions -- The crises of Arendt's republic -- Conclusion: once more: the film, Eichmann, and evil.

A review, with reflections, of Michael S. Gazzaniga's (2011) book, Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Gazzaniga, a distinguished neuroscientist, wishes to connect contemporary understandings of the functioning of the human brain to the proper functioning of the American courtroom. What effect, if any, should these current understandings (and current technologies) have on legal conceptions of personal responsibility, guilt, and punishment? If, as many neuroscientists hold, the functioning of the brain wholly determines the functioning of (...) the mind, can people rightly be held responsible for their actions? Gazzaniga argues that they can. (shrink)

Toleration would seem to be the most rational response to deep conflicts. However, by examining the conditions under which trust can develop between warring parties, it becomes clear that a fundamental shift in values - a conversion - is required before toleration makes sense. This book argues that maintaining trust is the key to stable practices of toleration.

The complete title of the Principles is A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Wherein the chief causes of error and difficulty in the Sciences, with the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, are Inquired into. The complete title of the Dialogues is Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. The design of which is plainly to demonstrate the reality and perfection of human knowledge, the incorporeal nature of the soul, and the immediate providence of a Deity: in opposition to (...) Sceptics and Atheists. Also to open a method for rendering the Sciences more easy, useful, and compendious. The introductions to each work, as well as various remarks in the Philosophical Commentaries, explain at greater length the author's intention of refuting the sceptics and atheists. In the initial section of the introduction to the Principles, Berkeley had said that the attempt to understand the nature of things had led men into all sorts of "uncouth paradoxes, difficulties, and inconsistencies,... till at length, having wander'd through many intricate mazes, we find ourselves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a forlorn scepticism." And a few sections later, Berkeley stated that his intention was to discover the sources of the absurdities and contradictions that have entered philosophy, and to eliminate them. (shrink)

Richard H. Bell analyzes the social and political thought of Simone Weil, paying particular attention to Weil's concept of justice as compassion. Bell describes the ways in which Weil's concept of justice stands in contrast with liberal 'rights-based' views of justice, and focuses upon central aspects of her thought, including 'attention,' human suffering and 'affliction,' and the importance of 'a spiritual way of life' in reshaping the individual's role in civic life.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Philosophy of Bishop Stillingfleet RICHARD H. POPKIN EDWARD STILLINGFLEET(1635-1699), the Bishop of Worcester, is known only as Locke's opponent. Although he was a leading figure in seventeenth century intellectual history, he is now almost completely forgotten.1 He is only mentioned once in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the first person to write against Deism. 2 His texts have been ditlicult to locate, and have hardly been studied. (...) Although Locke's answers to him comprise a large volume in Locke's Works, little interest has been shown in Stillingfleet's side of the story. His letters to Locke were last printed in the 1710 edition of his works. (I am now publishing a photoreproduction edition of the attacks on Locke, and a photoreproduction of the six volumes of his works is due soon.) In spite of this neglect, Stillingfleet was a quite interesting figure. He was not a simple moss-back, a religious reactionary, fighting progressive theories like Locke's. Rather, he was trying to maintain some basis for religious belief in the face of the intellectual upheavals in the seventeenth century. For over forty years he struggled against a wide range of philosophical and theological developments of the time that he saw as leading to scepticism and infidelity. Stillingfleet attempted to defend the reasonableness of Christianity in an intellectual world dominated by the new science, the new philosophy, the religious wars, the rise of irreligion, Bible criticism, and Spinozism. In the new scientific, philosophical and theological context he sought to show how an intelligent, reasonable man could maintain his religious views as more probable than their denials. And, he tried to show the perils involved in various new lines of thought. As he wrote to Locke, "in an age wherein the Mysteries of Faith are so much exposed by the Promoters of Scepticism and Infidelity, it is a thing of dangerous consequence to start such new methods of Certainty as are apt to leave men's minds more doubtJull than before." 3 Stillingfleet criticized various new views of thinkers like Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza and Locke, and tried to show that they were unreasonable and x No section is devoted to Stillingfleet in Charles de R~musat's Histoire de la Philosophie en Angleterre depuis Bacon jusqu'gt Locke, 2 vols. (Paris, 1875). He is of course briefly treated by Locke scholars, but only in relation to Locke. 2 Ernest C. Mossner, "Deism," Encyclopedia of Philosophy ('New York, 1967), II, 328. 3 Edward StiUingfleet,The Bishop o~ Worcester's Answer to Mr. Locke's Letter (London, 1697), pp. 37-38. [303] 304 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY destructive. Instead he advocated a commonsense philosophy incorporating Aristotelian and Stoic elements, as an adequate basis for a reasonable view of the world. Stillingflect's critique of empiricism, in its Epicurean and Lockean forms, revealed some of the basic difficulties in this emerging philosophy. His own views in some ways foreshadowed the counter-philosophy that Thomas Reid was to offer a century later against the full-blown empirical scepticism of Hume. And Hume's essay "Of Miracles" can, I believe, be seen as the reductio ad absurdum of Stillingfleet's commonsense philosophy. In this paper I shall try to sketch out Bishop Stilhngfleet's philosophy, and to indicate the role it played in the history of British empirical thought. The Bishop's attack on Locke only occurred at the very end of his long and fruitful intellectual career. (He died during the debate in 1699.) To appreciate why he was so concerned with exposing the sceptical and irreligious tendencies in Locke's thought, and the potential conflicts between empiricism and the tenets of Judeo-Christianity, one has to look at his entire theological and philosophical career. Stillingfleet was one of the most erudite divines of the seventeenth century, a leading member of the brilliant group of Anglican theologians, including, besides himself, William Chillingworth, Bishop John Wilkins (the founder of the Royal Society), and Archbishop John Tillotson.4 Stillingfleet was extremely sensitive to the fundamental issues being raised in the religious, scientific and philosophical debates of the time, and tried, like his fellow Anglican divines, to develop a commonsense semirational, semiempirical defense... (shrink)

Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of emptiness, his ideas on “two truths” and language, and his general method of arguing are presented clearly by him and can be stated without paradox. That the dialetheists today can restate his beliefs in paradoxical ways does not mean that Nāgārjuna argued that way; in fact, their restatements misrepresent and undercut his arguments.

The author suggests that law is best represented, understood, and taught in the form of open‐ended, defeasible, normative, conditional propositions. The meaning, role, and significance of defeasibility is explained by presenting three ‘canonical forms’ and by distinguishing exceptions and overrides. The role of equity in the law of contract, as understood by the author, is taken as an exemplar of override and parallels are drawn with policy in the English law of tort and with mercy in the criminal law of (...) England and Wales. The third and preferred canonical form is sequenced and internally differentiated and seeks a satisfactory middle way between all‐or‐nothing rules and wild‐card discretion and a reconciliation of the surface demands of legal rules and the deeper values embedded in law. The suggested approach therefore resists closure and seeks a conceptual restructuring of law which opens it up to the influence of notions such as justice and equity and locates them as open‐ended conditions of defeasance inhabiting the express or implied ‘unless…’ clause which is taken to be an element in every fully‐formed statement of law. This approach accommodates law as a locus not only of traditional rule‐based reasoning, but also of open‐ended internal moral reasoning invoking deeper values inherent in law and only imperfectly captured and implemented by formal legal rules. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore certain parallels and divergencies between contemporary philosophy of science and the comparative study of mysticism. Two types of mystical experiences, “depth‐mystical” and “nature‐mystical,” are first differentiated. Next, the role of both experience and doctrine in the development and justification of mystical knowledge is defended. Finally, the issue of whether one mystical system can be established as superior to others is discussed.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:?;5. HUME AND SPINOZA It is strange that there has been so little interest in comparing two great philosophers, Hume and -Spinoza, who were both so important and influential in bringing about the decline of traditional religion. Jessop's bibliography indicates no interest in Hume and Spinoza up to the 1930 's. The Hume conferences of 1976, as far as I have been able to 2 determine, avoided the topic. (...) In one of the better new Hume volumes, Livingston and King, Hume, A Re-evaluation, 3 Spinoza is cited twice, and once incorrectly at that. On the other hand, in the massive new Spinoza volume edited by Siegfried Hessing, Speculum Spinozanun 1677-1977, Hume is mentioned four times, but only one of these has any real relevance to Hume's views vis-a-vis Spinoza's. Some discussion of Hume's comments, usually brief, occurs in the commentators. B. M. Laing, in David Hume, (London 1932), has just three short references to Spinoza. John Laird, in Hume's Philosophy of Human Nature, (London 1932) has a couple of cursory references to Spinoza, plus a bit more extended statement of Pierre Bay le" s critique of him. In H. H. Price, Hume's Theory of the External World, (Oxford 1940), there is one paragraph on Hume and Spinoza. In Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (London 1941), there are three references to Spinoza. Rachel Kydd, Reason and Conduct in Hume's Treatise (Oxford 194 6), has the greatest number of references to Spinoza. She was concerned to compare him with Hume on other matters than are dealt with in this paper, namely Spinoza's theory of reason and 9 the passions. In contrast, André Leroy, David Hume, (Paris 1953), has just one paragraph on Spinoza dealing with the immateriality of the soul; and Ernest C. Mossner, in his monumental Life of David Hume, (Austin 1954), has only one reference to Spinoza - James Beattie's denunciation of Hume, Hobbes, Malebranche, Leibniz and Spinoza. Lastly, in a fairly recent commentary by James Noxon, Spinoza is mentioned 66. three times, but not for anything in Hume's text. Noxon does point out (p. 75) that Spinoza is not mentioned in ] 2 Hume's correspondence. John H. Randall has offered an explanation for this neglect of Spinoza by Hume scholars, namely that "Hume stands for all time as the antithesis of Spinoza in his thought". In the England of Hume's day, Spinoza was little known, but still better known at the time than he was in France or England. Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 14 had been twice translated into English anonymously. He had been attacked by Bishop Stillingfleet, by John Evelyn, by Berkeley and several others. But Spinoza was not a major figure, except to the English Deists, and to Hume's early patron, the Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay. Most of the information known about Spinoza came from Pierre Bayle' s Historical and Critical Dictionary, where the article "Spinoza" is the longest in the Dictionary, about three hundred pages in length. My suspicion, or hypothesis, is that Hume first became interested in Spinoza through Ramsay, and then learned what he knew about Spinoza from Bayle' s article. When the young David Hume went to France to write his A Treatise of Human Nature in 1734, he went first to see the Chevalier Ramsay, who entertained Hume for about two weeks. Ramsay was a leading Scottish Catholic, was the teacher of Bonnie Prince Charlie, a leading Scottish revolutionary, 18 as well as the Grand Master of the Free Masons. With Ramsay's eclectic views it is not odd that he had a serious interest in Spinoza's theory, and that he was composing answers to it. Ramsay advised Hume about his own book, and Hume felt he had to show Ramsay the Treatise before he 19 brought it back to England. In the Treatise there is a not too well studied section on Spinoza, Of the immateriality of the soul 20 (T240-45). In introducing Spinoza into the discussion of 67. the immateriality of the soul, Hume follows what was common practice in his day, namely to insult Spinoza and his theory... (shrink)