"This book is a sorely needed corrective. Animal Spirits is an important--maybe even a decisive--contribution at a difficult juncture in macroeconomic theory.

A Dialogue on Consciousness introduces readers to the debate about consciousness and physicalism, starting with its origins in Descartes, through a lively and entertaining dialogue between unemployed graduate students, who, secretly living in a university library, discuss major theories and quote passages from classic and contemporary texts in search of an answer.

William James' lecture on "The Will to Believe" has kindled spirited controversy. In this reappraisal of that controversy, Father O'Connell contributes some : that James' argument should be viewed against his indebtedness to Pascal and Renouvier; that it works primarily to validate our "over-beliefs" ; and most surprising perhaps, that James envisages our "passional nature" as intervening, not after, but before and throughout, our intellectual weighing of the evidence for belief. --From publisher's description.

This work, first published in 1985, offers a general interpretation of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. Most Hume scholarship has either neglected or downplayed an important aspect of Hume's position - his scepticism. This book puts that right, examining in close detail the sceptical arguments in Hume's philosophy.

In the last thirty years systematics has transformed itself from a discipline concerned with classification into a discipline concerned with reconstructing the evolutionary history of life. This transformation has been driven by cladistic analysis, a set of techniques for reconstructing evolutionary trees. Long interested in the large-scale structure of evolutionary history, cladistically oriented systematists have recently begun to apply "tree thinking" to problems near the species level. ¶ In any local ("non-dimensional") situation species are usually well-defined, but across space and (...) time the grouping of populations into species is often problematic. Three views of species are in common use today, the biological species concept, the evolutionary species concept, and the phylogenetic species concept. Each of these has strengths and weaknesses, but no matter which is applied, exact counts of the number of species in any extended area will always be ambiguous no matter how much factual information is available. This ambiguity arises because evolution is an historical process, and the grouping of organisms into species always depends to some extent upon expectations of the future behavior of those organisms and their descendants, expectations that cannot be evaluated in the present. The existence and special character of the species problem is itself one of the central pieces of evidence for evolution. (shrink)

Along with national data, this book uses two detailed questionnaires which were administered to older Americans in Allegany County, New York in 1983 and 1987 as the basis for exploring the public lives of rural older Americans. The authors discuss the factors that shape the political views and behavior of the rural elderly, consulting social, economic, health and nutritional variables.

138 titles across a wide range of scholarly publications illustrate the conceptual affinities that connect the palaetiological sciences of biological systematics, historical linguistics, and stemmatics. These three fields all have as their central objective the reconstruction of evolutionary "trees of history" that depict phylogenetic patterns of descent with modification among species, languages, and manuscripts. All three fields flourished in the nineteenth century, underwent parallel periods of quiescence in the early twentieth century, and in recent decades have seen widespread parallel revivals. (...) "Tree thinking" (O'Hara, 1988) is now standard within evolutionary biology, and the unity of what William Whewell called palaetiology is being once again appreciated by scholars and scientists in many fields. (shrink)

David Lewis has argued that there must be a difference between indicative and counterfactual conditionals beyond an indication of truth-value commitments. He cites the following contrast to show this: If Oswald did not shoot Kennedy, then someone else did. If Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have. In response, it is shown that this difference is better explained by shifts in context. Keep context fixed, the contrast disappears. EG: If Oswald was not the one who shot Kennedy, (...) then someone else was. If Oswald had not been the one who shot Kennedy, then someone else would have been. (shrink)

Niels H. Gregersen seeks to illuminate the nature of continuing divine action in the world and to show that the classical theistic doctrine of continuous creation is consonant with some recent scientific theories of self‐productive (“autopoietic”) systems. Central to these theories is the concept of co‐operation; central to Gregersen's theological appropriation of these theories is also the notion of structuring causality developed by philosopher Fred Dretske. While supportive of Gregersen's overall aims and emphases, we find significant disanalogies between co‐operation as (...) a theological construct and as an evolutionary strategy. We also doubt the utility of Dretske's notion for his project. (shrink)

The modern engineer, because of his tendency to express himself in language which, even in reference to very simple things, systematically retreats into mathematical symbolism—strictly incomprehensible to the average man—enrols himself, unconsciously or deliberately, in a jealously closed caste in which those we call “technocrats” shut themselves up. This is the caste which seeks to be the sole elite and necessary heir of the former nobility in the new social “pattern.”.

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This chapter examines Gettier's objections to defining knowledge as justified true belief – the so‐called Gettier problems. In response to these objections, a distinction is drawn between two kinds of justification. A person can be justified in coming to believe that p if he has been epistemically responsible in doing so. This is how Gettier understands justification. A person can also be justified in the sense that he commands grounds or reasons that establish the truth of p. Knowledge claims are, (...) however, sensitive to levels of scrutiny. What counts as adequate grounds in one context may not in another because of its nonstandard features. Gettier problems in all their forms arise when a person, S, responsibly judges that p, but in a context where we, who are privy to information S lacks, see that his grounds do not meet the standards appropriate for the situation he in fact is in. (shrink)

Coherentists attempt to solve the problem of infinite regress by rejecting what they sometimes call “the linear conception of knowledge.” Coherentists adopt, instead, a holistic conception of justification. This chapter examines BonJour's efforts to develop a coherentist account of empirical knowledge. BonJour faces two tasks: the first is to specify the conditions for a system of beliefs to be coherent, the second is to provide an argument showing that a system possessing these features provides justification for the beliefs it contains. (...) To be coherent, according to BonJour, a system must be both logically and probabilistically consistent, be rich in inferential connections, not be divided into isolated subsystems, and be free of anomalies. Finally, to be justified in believing something, a person must be able recognize that his belief has this status in his system of beliefs. This position is criticized on a number of grounds. It seems to have the consequence that no human being has ever been justified in any of his empirical beliefs. Nothing seems to rule out the multiple‐choice problem of there being two equally coherent but incompatible systems of belief. (shrink)

This essay attempts to elucidate and restate in modern terms richard price's reduction of our obligation to keep promises to our obligation to veracity. It next defends this reduction against standard criticisms. This defence is, However, Limited, Since the voluntarists (descartes) and the utility theorists (hume), Whom price is most anxious to refute, Could accept this reduction and reassert their theories with respect to our obligation to veracity itself.

The basic thesis ofMichaelWilliams'book Unnatural Doubts is that sceptical doubts, at least of a Cartesian variety, are neither natural nor intuitive, but are, instead, the product of 'contentious and possibly dispensable theoretical preconceptions'. In particular, for Williams, scepticism arises because of a commitment to what he calls 'epistemic realism'. A fundamental thesis of my book Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification is that scepticism (in its most challenging forms) is not based upon such prior theoretical commitments, but rather is the (...) natural outcome of unrestricted exploitation of a feature already present in our everyday concept of knowledge. Specifically, our everyday epistemic practices contain a useful mechanism that raises the level of evidential scrutiny in problematic settings. However, in the absence of psychological constraints (as in Hume) or pragmatic constraints (as in Peirce), this mechanism can generate an ever-widening range of undefeated possible defeaters- and with this, radical forms of scepticism emerge.Scepticism is not the result ofmounting the wronghorse (as Williams thinks),but the result of riding a serviceable horse too hard. With respect to Williams'own contextualist response, it is not clear whether, in the end, he avoids or embraces a strong version of scepticism. He claims that Cartesian doubts arise in a particular context, namely, the context of pursuing an epistemically realistic programme. In that context, according to Williams, Cartesian scepticism is unanswerable. His central claim, I take it, is that nothing compels us to do philosophy under these contextual constraints. In arguingthisway,however,Williamsseemsto have adopted a strongversion of relativism of just the sort traditionally exploited for sceptical purposes. To the claim 'It is all a matter of context', the correct response is, 'It had better not be- at least if you are trying to refute scepticism.'Perhaps Williams can produce a strongly contextualist position that does not slide into scepticism, and perhaps his appeal- rather late his book- to externalist consideration is intended to do this.But just as it is unclear whether contextualism can avoid scepticism, it is also unclear whether externalism has force against sensibly stated (even very strong) versions of scepticism. (shrink)

The following rather unexpected passage occurs toward the end of Barry Stroud’s The Quest for Reality: Once the metaphysical project’s failure to reveal the unreality or subjectivity of color is admitted, I think there is a temptation to conclude that objects really are colored after all. If the austere conception of an objectively colorless world cannot be reached, and the colors of things cannot be shown to be unreal or subjective, we are inclined to think that they must be real (...) and objective. (shrink)

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of J STOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. J STOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non—commercial use.

There is a contradiction in our ideas about moral responsibility. In one strand of our thinking, we believe that a person can become more blameworthy by luck. Consider some examples in order to make that idea concrete. Two reckless drivers manage their vehicles in the same way, and one but not the other kills a pedestrian. Two corrupt judges would each freely take a bribe if one were offered. By luck of the courthouse draw, only one judge is offered a (...) bribe, and so only one takes a bribe. Luck is the salient difference between the agents in each case. After all, the spatial location of the pedestrian is outside of each driver’s control, and being offered a bribe is outside of each judge’s control. But we blame the killer driver more than the merely reckless driver, and we blame the bribe-taker more than the mere would-be bribe-taker. This is because we believe that the killer driver and the bribe-taker are more blameworthy than each of their counterparts. Nevertheless, the idea that luck affects moral responsibility contradicts another feature of our thinking captured in this moral principle: A person’s blameworthiness cannot be affected by that which is not within her control. This moral principle yields the verdict that the drivers are equally blameworthy and that the judges are equally blameworthy. So, to put the contradiction in concrete terms, our thinking about moral responsibility implies that the drivers are and are not equally blameworthy, and the same is true for the judges. -/- I argue that only the first strand of our thinking is correct. Certain kinds of luck in results, circumstances, and character can partially determine a person’s praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. In terms of the examples, I argue that the killer driver and the bribe-taker are more blameworthy than each of their counterparts. But if I am to make genuine progress in the moral luck debate, my arguments cannot appeal to case intuitions such as ‘the killer driver is more blameworthy,’ because the problem of moral luck is fundamentally a clash of intuitions. So, I offer arguments from diverse areas in philosophy in order to ensure that they do not bottom out in standard pro-moral luck intuitions. (shrink)