Includes contributions from an international team of leading Locke experts, covering all the key themes and topics, Locke's life, context, reception and ...

This volume traces the evolution of Whig and Tory, Puritan and Anglican ideas across a tumultuous period of British history, from the mid-seventeenth century through to the Age of Enlightenment. This volume, a tribute to Mark Goldie, traces the evolution of Whig and Tory, Puritan and Anglican ideas across a tumultuous period of British history, from the mid-seventeenth century through to the Age of Enlightenment. Mark Goldie, Fellow of Churchill College and Professor of Intellectual History at Cambridge University, is one (...) of the most distinguished historians of later Stuart Britain of his generation and has written extensively about politics, religion and ideas in Britain from the Restoration through to the Hanoverian succession. Based on original research, the chapters collected here reflect the range of his scholarly interests: in Locke, Tory and Whig political thought, and Puritan, Anglican and Catholic political engagement, as well as the transformative impact of the Glorious Revolution. They examine events as well as ideas and deal not only with England but also with Scotland, France and the Atlantic world. Politics, Religion and Ideas in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain will be of interest to later Stuart political and religious historians, Locke scholars and intellectual historians more generally. JUSTIN CHAMPION is Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. JOHN COFFEY is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leicester. TIM HARRIS is Professor of History at Brown University. JOHN MARSHALL is Professor of History at John Hopkins University. CONTRIBUTORS: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Conal Condren, Gabriel Glickman, Tim Harris, Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, Clare Jackson, Warren Johnston, Geoff Kemp, Dmitri Levitin, John Marshall, Jacqueline Rose, S.-J. Savonius-Wroth, Hannah Smith, Delphine Soulard. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume and authored by Sami Pihlström emphasize that our relation to the world we live in and seek to represent and get to know better through our practices of conceptualization and inquiry is irreducibly valuational. There is no way of even approaching, let alone resolving, the philosophical issue of realism without drawing due attention to the ways in which human values are inextricably entangled with even the most purely “factual” projects of inquiry we engage (...) in. This entanglement of the factual and the normative is, as explicitly argued in Chapter 7 but implicitly suggested in all the other chapters as well, both pragmatic (practice-embedded and practice-involving) and transcendental (operating at the level of the necessary conditions for the possibility of our representing and cognizing the world in general). The author claims we need to carefully examine the complex relations of realism, value, and transcendental arguments at the intersection of pragmatism and analytic philosophy. This book does so by offering case-studies of various important neopragmatists and philosophers close to the pragmatist tradition, including Hilary Putnam, Nicholas Rescher, Joseph Margolis, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It appeals to scholars and advanced graduate students focusing on pragmatism and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction -- Image in contemporary culture -- Language, thought and image -- The many faces of the image -- The anatomy of the poetic image -- The architectural image.

In this article, the role of abductive reasoning within Peirce's diagrammatic reasoning is discussed. Both abduction and diagrammatic reasoning bring in elements of discovery but it is not clear if abduction should be a part of a fully developed diagrammatic system or not for Peirce. This relates to Peirce's way of interpreting abduction in his later writings. Iconicity and perceptual elements as a basis for discoveries are analyzed, both in deductive and abductive reasoning. At the end, the role of modern (...) ideas of distributed cognition applied to the Peircean scheme is shortly delineated. (shrink)

Sergius of Reshaina’s Syriac exposition of Aristotle’s _Categories_, with its discussion on substance, quantity, quality, relatives and the other categories, but also the teaching on space from the _Physics_, is presented here in a critical edition with an English translation.

In our culture, intelligence, emotions and embodied intuitions continue to be seen as separate categories. The body is regarded as a medium of identity as well as social and sexual appeal, but neglected as the ground of embodied existence and silent knowledge, or the full understanding of the human condition. Prevailing educational and pedagogic practices also still separate the mental and intellectual capacities from emotions and the senses, and the multifarious dimensions of human embodiment.

Pragmatist Metaphysics proposes a pragmatist re-articulation of the nature, aims and methods of metaphysics. Rather than regarding metaphysics as a ‘first philosophy’, an inquiry into the world independent of human perspectives, the pragmatist views metaphysics as an inquiry into categorizations of reality laden with human practices. Insofar as our categorizations of reality are practice-laden, they are also, inevitably, value-laden. Sami Pihlström argues that metaphysics does not, then, study the world’s ‘own’ categorial structure, but a structure we, through our conceptual (...) and practical activities, impose on the reality we experience and interact with. Engaging with the classical American pragmatists, in particular William James, and neopragmatists, including Hilary Putnam, the author seeks to correct long-held misconceptions regarding the nature of the relationship between metaphysics and pragmatism. He argues that a coherent metaphysical alternative to the currently fashionable realist metaphysics emerges from pragmatism and that pragmatism itself should be reinterpreted in a metaphysically serious manner. Moreover, the book argues that, from a pragmatist perspective, metaphysics must be inextricably linked with ethics. (shrink)

The turbulent 1960s in America testifies to the artistic and intellectual need and move beyond the liberal cult of fantasy and inaction. Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) views the social and political reality in its dynamism, and not in its immutability or stasis. Black art, within a repressive society, must be perceived as an arm, a weapon and not a means of banter or fun. Werner Sollors considers him as the engagé artist par excellence. The political art that Baraka espouses (...) is drastic and functional, an art that exposes common predicaments and plights. Entailed in Baraka’s dramatic art is the diatribe against art for art’s sake, thefusion of art and activism, and the finality of human action. Baraka considers theatrical playwriting as didactic, telic, and constructive. In this light, art, playwriting, and engagement constitute one monolithic unity that could stand in the face of liberal reactionary politics and arrangements. (shrink)

This article argues that Georg Simmel's ideas on secrecy can shed new light on current debates around the relevance or otherwise of privacy as a protection against surveillance interventions. It suggests an interactional approach to privacy, and considers it as a dynamic process which redefines the boundary between what information should be disclosed and what information should be concealed in every social interaction. Simmel argues that this "natural" process relies on the identification of the interlocutor: her psychological/emotional involvement in the (...) relationship, her social position in society and the representation of her expectations. Recent empirical examples show that this interactional perspective may have the potential to reconcile differing privacy accounts, by linking theoretically different levels that are factually distinct: privacy as a collective fact, as a contextual integrity, and as an individual fact. (shrink)

Magna Carta is one of the most important illustrations of the exceptionalism of English common law. Within a completely feudal framework it gave the clearest possible articulation to the concept of the rule of law and at the same time it also showed that there were certain basic rights which every freeman enjoyed without any specific conferment by the king. From English perspective, continental European law after the process of the reception of Roman law was commonly regarded to be apart (...) and different from the English legal tradition, as well as being perceived to pose a continual threat. The English Parliament constantly turned down royal attempts to emulate the continental reception of Roman law by characterizing it as something entirely foreign to English law. Roman law was supposed to promote an authoritarian and absolutist vision of the relationship between rule and subjection and this was expressed in the famous phrases 'princeps legibus solutus' and 'quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem'. Roman law was also anti-feudal, because one of its main principles that all power originated from one central source was the antithesis of the distribution of power over multiple centers, which was a crucial element of the feudal society. Many English historians have held the view that the English law is democratic, whereas the continental tradition is undemocratic and authoritarian, and this is why the Roman law succeeded on the Continent and failed in England. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show that the turn toward local scientific practices in the philosophy of science is not a turn away from transcendental investigations. On the contrary, a pragmatist approach can very well be (re)connected with Kantian transcendental examination of the necessary conditions for the possibility of scientific representation and cognition, insofar as the a priori conditions that transcendental philosophy of science examines are understood as historically relative and thus potentially changing. The issue of scientific realism will be considered (...) from this perspective, with special emphasis on Thomas Kuhn's conception of paradigms as frameworks making truth-valued scientific statements possible and on Charles S. Peirce's realism about "real generals". (shrink)

Firearm violence has soared in American cities, but most states statutorily preempt municipal firearm regulation. This article describes a unique collaboration in Philadelphia among elected officials, public health researchers, and attorneys that has led to litigation based on original quantitative analyses and grounded in innovative constitutional theories and statutory interpretation.

This paper discusses William James’s pragmatism in relation to nominalism. James’s views are often contrasted with Peirce’s realism. There are differences between Jamesian and Peircean pragmatisms, but several scholars argue that it is misleading to simply classify James as a nominalist. Moreover, the nominalism vs. realism issue in these early pragmatists is not purely metaphysical but also ethical, illustrating the pragmatists’ tendency to view metaphysics and ethics as deeply entangled. This challenging theme should be further developed today in attempts to (...) rethink the nature and mutual relations of philosophical disciplines. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay offers a critical comparison of William James's pragmatism with Hans Jonas's ethics and philosophy of religion. Nine important similarities between James and Jonas are identified, ranging from pragmatic naturalism to the doctrine of a finite God, which Jonas defends as a necessary revision of our understanding of the divinity based on the experiences of the Holocaust. The deep connection between morality and mortality is also addressed. The main differences between Jonas and James are found in their accounts (...) of the relation between ethics and metaphysics. (shrink)

Richard Bernstein has, for several decades, been one of the most prominent thinkers in the tradition of American pragmatism, but he has never narrowly confined his work to pragmatism or American philosophy. His intellectual profile manifests a remarkable pluralism—which, of course, is something that is inherent in the pragmatist tradition itself. The collection of essays honoring Bernstein's legacy edited by Megan Craig and Marcia Morgan is aptly subtitled: "Thinking the Plural". In their various ways, the contributors to this anthology—all of (...) whom have at some point been Bernstein's students in a number of "generations"—not only examine but also exemplify their mentor's deep commitment to... (shrink)

It is thought that just as hunger itself, the expectancy to eat impacts attention and cognitive control toward food stimuli, but this theory has not been extensively explored at a behavioral level. In order to study the effect of expectancy to eat on attentional and cognitive control mechanisms, 63 healthy fasting participants were presented with an affective priming spatial compatibility Simon task that included both food and object distracters. The participants were randomly assigned to two groups: an “immediate expectancy” group (...) made up of participants who expected to eat immediately after the task and a “delayed expectancy” cohort made up of individuals who expected to eat a few hours later. Slower reaction times toward the food and non-food distracters and a more pronounced effect on the RTs in the incompatible condition [i.e., the Simon effect ] were noted in both groups. The effect of the food and non-food distracters on the RTs was more pronounced in the immediate with respect to the delayed expectancy group. The magnitude of the SE for the food and the non-food distracters was also greater in the immediate with respect to the delayed expectancy group. These results seem to indicate that when the expectancy to eat is short, the RTs are delayed, and the SE is more pronounced when food and non-food distracters are presented. Instead, when the expectancy to eat is more distant, the distracters have less of an effect on the RTs and the correspondence effect is smaller. Our results suggest that the expectancy to eat can modulate both attention orienting and cognitive control mechanisms in healthy fasting individuals when distracting details are competing with information processing during goal directed behavior. (shrink)

This book examines the issue of moral realism from a pragmatist point of view, drawing attention to our human practices of ethical evaluation and deliberation. It defends the essentially ungrounded and humanly fundamental place of ethics in our thought and action. Ethics must remain beyond justification and ubiquitous in our human form(s) of life.

Abstract Timothy Williamson has recently proposed to undermine modal skepticism by appealing to the reducibility of modal to counterfactual logic ( Reducibility ). Central to Williamson’s strategy is the claim that use of the same non-deductive mode of inference ( counterfactual development , or CD ) whereby we typically arrive at knowledge of counterfactuals suffices for arriving at knowledge of metaphysical necessity via Reducibility. Granting Reducibility, I ask whether the use of CD plays any essential role in a Reducibility-based reply (...) to two kinds of modal skepticism. I argue that its use is entirely dispensable, and that Reducibility makes available replies to modal skeptics which show certain propositions to be metaphysically necessary by deductive arguments from premises the modal skeptic accepts can be known. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9784-4 Authors Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, Wolfson College, Oxford University, Oxford, OX2 6UD UK Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Abstract: This article defends a controversial metaphilosophical thesis: it is not immediately obvious that "the best argument wins" in philosophy. Certain philosophical views, for example, extremely controversial ethical positions, may be intolerable and impossible to take seriously as contributions to ethical discussion, irrespective of their argumentative merits. As a case study of this metaphilosophical issue, the article discusses David Benatar's recent thesis that it is, for everyone, harmful to exist. It is argued that ethical and cultural "unthinkabilities" set limits to (...) philosophical reasoning that even the most insightful arguments cannot transcend. (shrink)

This collection of essays discusses a central feature of European philosophy: the idea of a universal active power as the ultimate world-explanation.

Perspective taking is a critical yet tangled construct that is used to describe a range of psychological processes and that is applied interchangeably with related constructs. The resulting ambiguity is particularly vexing in science education, where although perspective taking is recognized as critical to informed citizens’ ability to negotiate scientifically related societal issues, or socioscientific issues via socioscientific reasoning, the precise nature of perspective taking remains elusive. To operationalize perspective taking, a theoretical conceptual analysis was employed and used to position (...) perspective taking within the context of SSR. The resulting, more precise construct identified as socioscientific perspective taking requires engagement with others or their circumstances, an etic/emic shift in one’s viewpoint, and a moral context guided by conscience. (shrink)