Sometimes it seems like you need a PhD just to open a book of philosophy. We leave philosophical matters to the philosophers in the same way that we leave science to scientists. Scott Samuelson thinks this is tragic, for our lives as well as for philosophy. In _The Deepest Human Life_ he takes philosophy back from the specialists and restores it to its proper place at the center of our humanity, rediscovering it as our most profound effort toward (...) understanding, as a way of life that anyone can live. Exploring the works of some of history’s most important thinkers in the context of the everyday struggles of his students, he guides us through the most vexing quandaries of our existence—and shows just how enriching the examined life can be. Samuelson begins at the beginning: with Socrates, working his most famous assertion—that wisdom is knowing that one knows nothing—into a method, a way of approaching our greatest mysteries. From there he springboards into a rich history of philosophy and the ways its journey is encoded in our own quests for meaning. He ruminates on Epicurus against the sonic backdrop of crickets and restaurant goers in Iowa City. He follows the Stoics into the cell where James Stockdale spent seven years as a prisoner of war. He spins with al-Ghazali first in doubt, then in the ecstasy of the divine. And he gets the philosophy education of his life when one of his students, who authorized a risky surgery for her son that inadvertently led to his death, asks with tears in her eyes if Kant was right, if it really is the motive that matters and not the consequences. Through heartbreaking stories, humanizing biographies, accessible theory, and evocative interludes like “On Wine and Bicycles” or “On Zombies and Superheroes,” he invests philosophy with the personal and vice versa. The result is a book that is at once a primer and a reassurance—that many have trod the earth before us, and they have insights into our very souls. (shrink)

"The Eternal City, Rome offers endless insights through its millennia of history, its centrality to European art and religion, and the generations of travelers that have sought it out. This book from philosopher Scott Samuelson offers readers a thinker's tour of Rome. Samuelson shows how people have made sense of Rome as a scene of human nature and then envisioned the good life-philosophers such as Lucretius and Seneca, but also poets and artists such as Horace and Caravaggio, (...) filmmakers like Fellini, and adventurers like Rosa Bathurst. He roots these explorations and visions in the city of Rome itself: Samuelson introduces us to some of the most famous sites in Rome by sharing illuminating moments in their histories; and he discusses great works of art to be found in Rome by getting to the heart of the knotty ethical and emotional questions they pose. And, practicing philosophy in place, he tackles head-on the profound questions that most tours of Rome only bracket: What does it mean to see the Forum through the eyes of Cicero? Does all this art about God really signify anything? Should visitors really be impressed by these incredible sites built on the slaughter and domination of others? What does all this history tell us about who we are? And, most important, how can an afternoon Negroni help us find the good life? Samuelson's aim is to provide an eclectic guide to Rome and happiness-a portable approach, blending history and philosophy, for tourists and dreaming readers alike"--. (shrink)

The study of anarchism as a philosophical, political, and social movement has burgeoned both in the academy and in the global activist community in recent years. Taking advantage of this boom in anarchist scholarship, Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl have compiled twenty-six cutting-edge essays on this timely topic in New Perspectives on Anarchism.

Norbert M. Samuelson is Harold and Jean Grossman Chair of Jewish Studies at Arizona State University. Trained in analytic philosophy, he has contributed to the professionalization of Jewish philosophy in America and to the field of religion and science.

In this international and interdisciplinary collection of critical essays, distinguished contributors examine a crucial premise of traditional readings of Plato's dialogues: that Plato's own doctrines and arguments can be read off the statements made in the dialogues by Socrates and other leading characters. The authors argue in general and with reference to specific dialogues, that no character should be taken to be Plato's mouthpiece. This is essential reading for students and scholars of Plato.

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

This article proposes "equality" as a topic for interactionist research. By drawing on the perspectives of Herbert Blumer, Alfred Schutz, and Harold Garfinkel, an attempt is made to lay the theoretical groundwork for studying the interpretive and experiential aspects of equality. Blumer's fundamental premises of symbolic interactionism, Schutz's analysis of relevance and typification, and Garfinkel's treatment of reflexivity and indexicality are explicated and applied to the subject of equality. I then draw upon the moral theory of John Dewey to (...) suggest the positive role that interactionist theory and research might play in the resolution of problematic situations that are framed in terms of equality. Collectively, the complementary aspects of Blumer's, Schutz's, Garfinkel's, and Dewey's thought are used to justify and launch a program of research on a neglected yet important topic: the social construction of equality in everyday life. (shrink)

Against Transmission introduces the technical history and phenomenology of media, a field of study that explains the characteristics of contemporary life by looking to the technical properties of machines. By studying the engineering of signal processing, the book interrogates how the understanding of media-as-machine exposes us to a particular phenomenological relationship to the world, asking: what can the hardware of machines that segment information into very small elements tell us about experiences of time, memory and history? This book offers both (...) a detailed and radical investigation of the technical architecture of media such as television, computers, cameras, and cinematography. It achieves this through in-depth archive research into the history of the development of media technology, combined with innovative readings of key concepts from philosophers of media such as Harold A. Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler, Siegfried Zielinski and Wolfgang Ernst. Teaming philosophical inquiry with thorough technical and historical analysis, in a broad range of international case studies, from early experimental cinema and television to contemporary media art and innovative hardware developments, Barker shows how the technical discoveries made in these contexts have engineered the experiences of time in contemporary media culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Shaping Public Theology: Selections from the Writings of Max L. Stackhouse ed. by Scott R. Paeth, E. Harold Breitenberg Jr., and Hak Joon LeeKara N. SladeShaping Public Theology: Selections from the Writings of Max L. Stackhouse Edited by Scott R. Paeth, E. Harold Breitenberg Jr., and Hak Joon Lee grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2014. 392 pp. $40.00Shaping Public Theology is the second major collection (...) of essays focused on the work of Max Stackhouse to appear since his retirement from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he served as the Rimmer and Ruth de Vries Professor of Reformed Theology and Public Life. The first, Public Theology for a Global Society, was a Festschrift composed of short pieces by his former students and colleagues, edited by Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott R. Paeth. Shaping Public Theology, which is also edited by Paeth along with E. Harold Breitenberg Jr. and Hak Joon Lee, is a helpfully representative compilation of Stack-house’s own writing across the span of his long and prolific career. As such, it demonstrates both the generous aspirations and the significant limitations of “public theology” as Stackhouse envisioned it, as a theologically informed discourse that should be equally accessible to Christians, people of other faiths, and people of no faith or religious background. [End Page 213]The first of the book’s three sections, “Interpreting the Tradition of Public Theology,” places Stackhouse in conversation with other figures in Christian theology and ethics, both past and present. These essays locate him firmly within the strand of Christian thought inhabited by Ernst Troeltsch, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Paul Tillich, and they also reflect his significant and ongoing disagreements with some of his contemporaries, including Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas. The second section, “Developing a Method for Public Theology,” provides a useful summary of Stackhouse’s distinctive theological method, defining public theology and its relationship to individuals, communities, institutions, and states. The third and final section, “Constructing a Global Public Theology,” turns to one of the major focal points of Stackhouse’s work, examining the role of public theology in the context of globalization. The text concludes with a brief summary contributed by the editors, a response from Stackhouse describing both how his thought has changed over the years and the gaps that he perceives in his work, and a comprehensive bibliography.As a collection, Shaping Public Theology provides the reader with a broad overview of the predominant themes in Stackhouse’s work. The essays demonstrate his abiding concern for an apologetic and universal framework for Christian ethics as well as his emphasis on the covenantal basis for that framework. Stackhouse’s affinity for both the Reformed tradition and the ideals of the Social Gospel movement are also evident throughout the text. In addition many of the essays reflect his ongoing engagement with the theme of “the global” and with globalization not only as a locus of critique but also as the vehicle for “the prospect of a world-comprehending culture, with a new recognition of certain common moral standards” (162).Whether these ideas are theologically helpful, however, is a matter of long-standing disagreement that will not be resolved in the limited space of this review. By treating the covenant between the Triune God and Israel as merely one instance of a “universal moral law,” and by moving from that particular to the universal through the doctrine of the Trinity, Stackhouse participates in a significant—and significantly problematic—strain of thought within the Christian imaginary (67). While he may reject the particularity espoused by George Lindbeck, Hauerwas, et al., he remains grounded within his own particularity with its own decidedly fraught history: that of the modern, progressive, Western civilizing project. As a work of moral theology, this text does have significant limitations. However, as a document of the history of Christian ethics of the twentieth century, Shaping Public Theology is a useful addition to the literature, both for research and for teaching purposes. [End Page 214]Kara N. SladeDuke UniversityCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theology and Trinitarian Theology ed. by William Storrar, Peter Casarella, and Paul Louis Metzger, and: Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max L. Stackhouse ed. by Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott PaethJonathan RothchildA World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theology and Trinitarian Theology Edited by William Storrar, Peter Casarella, and Paul Louis (...) Metzger Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 346 pp. $35.00Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max L. Stackhouse Edited by Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott Paeth Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 264 pp. $45.00The intersections of globalization, civil society, and public theological reflection remain fluid, contested, and complicated. Two edited volumes that have shared connections to Princeton’s Center of Theological Inquiry celebrate the contributions of Max Stackhouse (Public Theology for Global Society as a festschrift and A World for All? as a dedication) toward these intersections. Public Theology for a Global Society attends to neo-Calvinist debates about public theology and its applicability to family, finance, and technology, while A World For All? explores religious beliefs and practices in their contexts, the meanings of the Trinity, and the prospects for cultural, political, and religious dialogue within civil society.In Public Theology for a Global Society, the contributors engage Stackhouse’s work in terms of its “global reach and its ecclesial concern” (ix). The essays consider five overarching themes: covenant, natural law, and human rights; social pluralism and social justice; Christian responsibility for society; economic and political realism; and Christian ethics in a global era. One of the book’s strengths is that it ambitiously probes—as Stackhouse’s own work does—the substantive interrelationships of these themes. Harold Breitenberg’s opening essay clarifies the meanings of public theology, but it does not account for recent developments, including comparative interventions that reconstruct modes of public theology.In the second section on key issues in public theology, John Witte speculates on whether Stackhouse would accept sixteenth-century Calvinist thinker Johannes Althusius’s “‘different and ‘even dangerous’” (36) theory of natural law. [End Page 205] Witte’s query, which begs comparisons vis-à-vis Catholic models of public theology frequently neglected in the book, is critically addressed by Don Browning’s essay. Browning’s theology of covenant includes a subordinate theory of natural law because “the concept of covenant cannot stand alone” (49). Other essays include reflections on covenant by Hak Joon Lee (which reconstructs Abraham Kuyper’s theory of sphere sovereignty) and Richard Mouw (which analyzes neo-Calvinist conceptions of law, covenant, and common morality). Similar to Browning’s caution to Stackhouse, Mouw censures a complete rejection of natural law (104); pace Browning’s critique, Mouw applauds Stackhouse’s insistence on the prominence of covenant in neo-Calvinist ethical and social theory. Interrogation of these disagreements by either the editors or the contributors would have strengthened the book.The book’s third section examines public theology in a global context. Differing from Stackhouse, William Schweiker charts the basic anthropological and existential components of a cosmopolitan conscience to overcome the universalist and particularist difficulties within public theology (134–38). Other thinkers appropriate interreligious dialogue as constructive models. Mark Heim contends that, in the face of massive global suffering, interreligious dialogue must promote human flourishing. Scott Paeth similarly sees dialogue as a mechanism for overcoming religiously motivated violence (166). Peter Paris, Shirley Roels, and Deirdre King Hainsworth all point to various features of technology as pathways to new articulations of public theology. In the concluding section, the contributors fittingly focus on the legacy of Stackhouse, namely, his long-standing interests in justification, justice, congregational life, and a “sobered version of Reformed theology vis-à-vis institutional responsibility and the retrieval of its theological substance” (Gabriel Fackre, 247).A World for All?, borne out of a 2005 conference in Edinburgh, approaches globalization within the modern ecumenical movement as illustrated by the affiliations of its three editors: William Storrar (ecumenical Protestant), Peter Casarella (Catholic), and Paul Metzger (Evangelical). The book examines the broader trajectories of globalization in conversation with “examples of churches around the world... playing a vital part... (shrink)

Academic dishonesty is a persistent problem in the American educational system. The present investigation examined how reports of academic cheating related to students' emphasis on their moral identities and their sensitivity to social evaluation. Seventy college students at a large southeastern university completed a battery of surveys. Symptoms of social anxiety were positively correlated with recall of academic cheating. Additionally, relative to students who placed less importance on their moral identities, students who placed more importance on their moral identities recalled (...) significantly fewer instances of cheating. In summary, these findings suggest that students are less likely to cheat on their school work when they place greater emphasis on their moral identity and are less sensitive to social evaluation. Practical interventions to rampant cheating in American schools are discussed. (shrink)

This is an elegant and clear tour through many of the issues in philosophy of mind that have occupied philosophers of this century. The topics covered include the problem of other minds, arguments for and against the existence of the soul, a discussion of the bundle theory of the mind, behaviorism, functionalism, mind/brain identity, the argument against the possibility of private language, personal identity and the possibility of after-life, and the question of whether animals and computers can have minds. Carruthers (...) emphasizes arguments for and against the various theories considered, and encourages readers to actively evaluate these approaches as well. Written with clarity and directness, Introducing Persons will prove a useful text for the beginner while simultaneously providing original material of interest to the advanced student and professional philosopher. (shrink)

In line with their vast expansion over the last few decades, the brain sciences — including neurobiology, psychopharmacology, biological psychiatry, and brain imaging — are becoming increasingly prominent in a variety of cultural formations, from self-help guides and the arts to advertising and public health programmes. This article, which introduces the special issue of History of the Human Science on ‘Neuroscience, Power and Culture’, considers the ways that social and historical research can, through empirical investigations grounded in the observation of (...) what is actually happening and has already happened in the sciences of mind and brain, complement speculative discussions of the possible social implications of neuroscience that now appear regularly in the media and in philosophical bioethics. It suggests that the neurosciences are best understood in terms of their lineage within the ‘psy’-disciplines, and that, accordingly, our analyses of them will be strengthened by drawing on existing literatures on the history and politics of psychology — particularly those that analyze formations of knowledge, power and subjectivity associated with the discipline and its practical applications. Additionally, it argues against taking today’s neuroscientific facts and brain-targetting technologies as starting points for analysis, and for greater recognition of the ways that these are shaped by historical, cultural and political-economic forces. (shrink)

The American University Publications In From its inception Philosophy has continued the direction stated in the sub-title of the initial volume that of probing new directions in philosophy. As the series has developed these probings of new directions have taken the two fold direction of exploring the relationships between the disparate traditions of twentieth century philosophy and with developing new insights into the foundations of some enduring philosophic problems. This present volume continues both of these directions. The interaction between twentieth-century (...) Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy which was an implicit theme of our first and third volumes and the explicit subject of our second volume is here continued in a series of studies on major figures and topics in each tradition. In the context of these interpretative studies, Professor Durfee returns again and again to the question of the relationships between the will and the reason, and explores the conflicting goals of creativity and objectivity in formulating a philosophic position. In so doing he raises the issue as his title suggests - of the foundations of philosophy itself. He seriously challenges the belief common to both pheomenology and analytic philosophy that philosophizing can be a presuppositionless activity, objectively persued independent of the personal (and, perhaps, arbitrary) commitments of the philosopher. This issue, critical as it is to all forms of philosophy, is surely a worthy one for a series such as ours. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 3-7.

In this paper I shall argue that if the Parfitian psychological criterion or theory of personal identity is true, then a good case can be made out to show that the psychological theorist should accept the view I call “psychological sequentialism”. This is the view that a causal connection is not necessary for what matters in survival, as long as certain other conditions are met. I argue this by way of Parfit’s own principle that what matters in survival cannot depend (...) upon a trivial fact. (shrink)

The data in this special issue are both encouraging and discouraging. On the positive side, researchers are making theoretical breakthroughs into the psychology of the academic cheater, which may result in practical interventions. Yet the studies illustrate the sheer magnitude of the problem and the resources needed to address unethical behavior among the younger members of the American academe. In short, this special issue shows that the "Internet revolution" facilitates new types of academic dishonesty (Sisti, this issue; Stephens, Young, & (...) Calabrese, this issue); that academic cheating is often an intentional, planned act that results from a Machiavellian tendency to neutralize moral sanctions against cheating (Harding, Mayhew, Finelli, & Carpenter, this issue); that motivations to cheat differ across students (Davy, Kincaid, Smith, & Trawick, this issue; Wowra, this issue); and that academic cheating is a symptom of a larger problem (Lovett-Hooper, Komarraju, Weston, & Dollinger, this issue; Wowra, this issue). (shrink)

Research programmes are sets of problems preferred on epistemic grounds and including preferred heuristics for inquiry. Charles Lyell's research programme for biogeograpy includes the problem of explaining the distribution of species constrained by laws governing locomotion and containment of species. Included in the programme are laws governing the supernatural introduction of replacement species. Wallace and Darwin derected arguments against the putative intelligibility of this aspect of Lyell's programme before discovering natural selection, and their defence, at this time of natural laws (...) governing the introduction of new species is interesting as a defence of a noval programme of research, not a defence of a proposed theroy. These arguments are presented and an epistemological foundation is offered for them. 1 The author is indebted to a referee for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. (shrink)

According to a well-known objection to consequentialism, the answer to the preceding question is alarmingly straightforward: your consequentialist friend will abandon you the minute that she can more efficiently promote goodness via options that do not include her maintaining a relationship with you. The most prominent response to this objection is to emphasize the profound value of friendship for human agents and to remind critics of the distinction between the theory’s criterion of rightness and an effective decision-making procedure. Whether or (...) not this response is viable remains a contentious issue within the now considerable literature generated on the topic, yet it is a curious fact that the debate has unfolded in such a way that the question of when a consequentialist agent ought to break from her indirect methods of promoting the good and revert back to a direct form of consequentialist decision-making has not been decisively settled. In this paper, I claim that the empirical considerations at stake for resolving this question are more complicated than is normally acknowledged; however, I argue that this should not deter sophisticated consequentialists from endorsing flexible psychological dispositions in order to monitor these empirical considerations as best as can be expected for agents with our distinctly human faculties and limitations. (shrink)

In his Meditations Descartes advances an argument that contains the essentials of the so-called “hard problem” of explaining consciousness. I show how this Cartesian argument was taken up in the twentieth century by C. A. Campbell, the moral libertarian and student of idealist Henry Jones. Campbell can be regarded as the model of what John Passmore and Simon Glendinning have respectively dubbed a “recalcitrant metaphysician” or “honorary Continental” philosopher—labels that attach largely to metaphysically-minded, mainly British thinkers who, with varying degrees (...) of affiliation to idealism, resisted the twentieth-century trends of logical behaviorism and the “revolutionary” linguistic method. In the course of this paper, I situate Campbell’s version of Descartes’ argument within the broader history of the development of the hard problem. (shrink)