In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art, Mind, and IntentionNoël CarrollArt and Intention: A Philosophical Study, by Paisley Livingston ; 266 pp. oxford: oxford University Press, 2005, $74.00, $35.00 paper.The relevance of intention to the philosophy of art was perhaps first made explicit by G.W.F. Hegel who, in his monumental The Philosophy of Fine Art, narrowed the domain of aesthetics to art on the grounds that the beauty that pertains to art is the product (...) of mind. Though Hegel does not single out intention as the aspect of mind that impresses him, his definition of fine art in terms of that which possesses an aim that imbues the pertinent art with content makes it probable that what he is talking about is intention. Since Hegel's day, but maybe most especially in the last three decades, philosophers of art have relied upon the notion of intention to attempt to solve many of the recurring problems of their field, including not only issues involving art status, but those involving authorship, interpretation, and fictional truth, among others. In Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study, Paisley Livingston has performed the very valuable service of corralling a substantial number of topics regarding the intersection of art and intention between the covers of one book.Although there are books devoted to exploring the relation of art and intention with respect to specific topics, most notably interpretation, there is, to my knowledge, no other book like Livingston's that surveys such a diversity of issues concerning the nexus of intention and the [End Page 394] philosophy of art. Thus, Art and Intention should be a welcome addition to the library of any aesthetician.Art and Intention comprises seven chapters. The first chapter, reasonably enough, involves a discussion of what it is to be an intention. For Livingston, who follows the action theorist Alfred Mele quite closely, an intention standardly consists of a propositional attitude in addition to a propositional content toward which said attitude is directed. The propositional attitude is executive in nature—that is, where x is the content, the intender is firmly settled upon or committed to perform x, or, at least, to try to perform x. The propositional content of an intention, in turn, is what Livingston calls a plan. An intention then is an executive attitude towards plans.I am a bit unhappy with this formulation, since I worry that it may be somewhat misleading. To my ear, the word plan insinuates the idea of a formulated method, whereas many intentional actions, including those of artists, are scarcely worked out beforehand but emerge instead in the heat of doing things. Livingston is aware of this and appears to require no more of plans in his sense than that they involve at least a rudimentary grasp of the means for carrying off the purposes at hand. This seems right to me, but it still strikes me as strained to call this sort of procedural knowledge a plan.When Jasper Johns denies that he plans to make a picture in a certain way, but rather only follows a thought that pulls in a certain direction, he does not mean to disagree with Livingston, though his choice of words seems at odds with Livingston's.1 For Johns's, like many others, plan means a precise formulation, whereas for the action theorist it is a technical term of art with broader signification. Nevertheless, since the word still retains its ordinary meaning, the possibility for confusion here is rife. So, perhaps another word can be found or, maybe, coined.Chapter 2 concerns intention and the creation of art. Livingston spends the first part of the chapter fending off counterexamples, like automatic writing, that might be adduced to challenge the claim that artworks require intentions. I am very sympathetic with his treatment of the examples he canvasses. However, I would be curious to hear what he would say about a case that I've heard described of a show at MOMA several decades back where images culled from surveillance cameras, operating automatically, were exhibited.2 These specific images were not produced intentionally by anyone. But aren't they art? Perhaps the curators will be assigned the... (shrink)

The relationship between Bentham's ‘enunciative principle’ and his ‘censorial principle’ is famously problematic. The problem's solution is that each person has an overwhelming interest in living in a community in which they, like others, are liable to punishment for behaviour condemned by the censorial principle either by the institutions of the state or by the tribunal of public opinion. The senses in which Bentham did and did not think everyone selfish are examined, and a less problematic form of psychological hedonism (...) than Bentham's is proposed. (shrink)

My purpose in what follows is not so much to defend the basic principle of utilitarianism as to indicate the form of it which seems most promising as a basic moral and political position. I shall take the principle of utility as offering a criterion for two different sorts of evaluation: first, the merits of acts of government, social policies, and social institutions, and secondly, the ultimate moral evaluation of the actions of individuals. I do not take it as implying (...) that the individual should live his life on the basis of constant evaluations of this sort. For there are different levels of decision making each with its appropriate criteria. For example, we each inevitably make many of our decisions from the point of view of our own personal self-fulfilment and this cannot regularly take a directly utilitarian form, nor should the utilitarian want it to do so. His claim is at most that we should sometimes review our life from the point of view of a kind of impersonal moral truth of a universalistic utilitarian character. (shrink)

This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information, and data-processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and computer science. While primary emphasis will (...) be placed upon theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental, and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. While most philosophers and psychologists tend to believe that the rise of cognitive psychology has occurred concomitant with the decline of operant psychology, Terry L. Smith contends that nothing could be further from the truth. He maintains that operant psychology has discovered (and continues to discover) reasonably well-confirmed causal principles of intentional behavior, which go beyond what cognitive psychology can provide, while cognitive psychology, in tum, has the potential to supply analyses (and explanations) that account for them. Smith thus advances a surprising but nonetheless illuminating perspective for appreciating the place of operant conditioning within the discipline of psychology in this rich and fascinating work. J. H. F. (shrink)

Two aspects of Peirce’s mature philosophy seem to me not to have been sufficiently appreciated. They are its empiricist method and its continuity with his scientific research. The research led to and justified the method.1Ground must be cleared before we can proceed. Simplistic ideas of the empirical must be swept aside and Peirce’s empiricism accurately identified. We must also distinguish two theories of meaning that have been associated with empiricist philosophies and show that Peirce combined them ; this will be (...) essential to Section 6. Only then can we get down to work. Peirce’s experimental and other studies of observation showed that a science of.. (shrink)

As the editor noted in the last number Freddie Ayer, or Professor Sir Alfred Ayer, played a considerable part in launching the vast enterprise of the Bentham edition. It is fitting, therefore, that something be said in Utilitas about his achievement as a philosopher and the extent to which he falls within the same broad empiricist and utilitarian tradition to which Bentham and J. S. Mill belonged.

A theory of punishment should tell us not only when punishment is permissible but also when it is a duty. It is not clear whether McCloskey's retributivism is supposed to do this. His arguments against utilitarianism consist largely in examples of punishments unacceptable to the common moral consciousness but supposedly approved of by the consistent utilitarian. We remain unpersuaded to abandon our utilitarianism. The examples are often fanciful in character, a point which (pace McCloskey) does rob them of much of (...) their force. If there was no tension between utilitarian precepts and those which come naturally to plain men, utilitarianism could have no claim to provide a critique of moralities. The utilitarian's attitude to such tensions is somewhat complicated, but what is certain is that there is more room in his system for the sentiments to which McCloskey appeals against him than McCloskey realizes. We agree with McCloskey, however, on the absurdity of substituting rule?utilitarianism for act?utilitarianism as an answer to his attacks. The distinction itself may represent a conceptual confusion. In our view, indeed, unmodified act?utilitarianism provides the best moral basis for thought about punishment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Some think we should look at aspects of what is commonly thought of as non‐sentient nature as having a value in themselves apart from the use or recreation they provide for humans or even animals. But to what extent does nature, in the character it presents to us, exist apart from presence to consciousness such as ours? Surely at least many of its aspects cannot. However, that does not stop them having a genuinely intrinsic value, just as works of (...) art do, whose existence also is impossible apart from their display to a consciousness such as ours. But can nature, as it exists quite apart from human or animal consciousness, have any intrinsic value? It is suggested that only a panpsychic, and perhaps pantheist, view of nature (a view for which there are excellent metaphysical grounds) can give a positive answer, and even that must be a very vague one [1]. (shrink)

This paper examines a model of income and quality of life that controls the love of money, job satisfaction, gender, and marital status and treats employment status (full-time versus part-time), income level, and gender as moderators. For the whole sample, income was not significantly related to quality of life when this path was examined alone. When all variables were controlled, income was negatively related to quality of life. When (1) the love of money was negatively correlated to job satisfaction and (...) (2) job satisfaction was positively related to both income and quality of life, income was negatively related to quality of life for full-time, high-income, and male employees. When these two conditions failed to exist, income was not related to quality of life for part-time, median- or low-income, and female employees. This model provides new insights regarding the impact of the love of money and job satisfaction on the income–quality of life relationship. (shrink)

T.L.S. Sprigge; VIII*—Intrinsic Connectedness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 129–146, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

Lawrence Johnson advocates a major change in our attitude toward the nonhuman world. He argues that nonhuman animals, and ecosystems themselves, are morally significant beings with interests and rights. The author considers recent work in environmental ethics in the introduction and then presents his case with the utmost precision and clarity. Written in an attractive, nontechnical style, the book will be of particular interest to philosophers, environmentalists and ecologists.

T.L.S. Sprigge; VIII*—Intrinsic Connectedness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 129–146, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

Empiricism in philosophy is either a method or a theory. The two are separable: one might hold that all knowledge is empirical but that philosophy does something other than add to our knowledge, e.g., that it clarifies concepts; or one might hold that philosophy’s method is empirical and that one of the things known in that way is that not all knowledge is empirical, e.g., mathematics. And what is the empirical? If it is knowledge based on observation, then what is (...) it that can be observed? If philosophy is in method empirical, the range of the observable must be broad, perhaps including mental processes, human history, social institutions such as language, and even the difference between good and evil.In Peirce’s... (shrink)

W. B. Gallie's words about Peirce's cosmology—"the black sheep or white elephant of his philosophical progeny" (1952, p. 216)—have often been quoted, usually as a preface to giving a better account of the animal. That he attributed the view to 'contemporary philosophers' and did not assert it himself has usually been ignored. True, Gallie did argue that the "cosmology is a failure, and an inevitable failure" (p. 236), but he also said that Peirce himself "recognized … that his work in (...) this field was imperfect and sketchy" (p. 215), and he concluded the chapter, and his book, with an extremely sympathetic account of all that is nevertheless of enduring value in that failure. After studying Peirce's writings of his.. (shrink)

Over many decades, Richard Bernstein has interpreted contemporary philosophy’s three traditions, roughly distinguished as analytic, pragmatic, and Continental, emphasizing their mutual affinities. Despite this reference to the continent of Europe, it would be wrong to identify any of these traditions geographically or linguistically; even to call them ‘traditions’ is stretching a point. Pragmatism originated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but it has spread from there, transmogrifying in the process and claiming surprising allies, such as Heidegger; the label ‘pragmatist’ has even been affixed (...) to Hegel! That its day has come is the theme of this, Bernstein’s latest book. Its title is a play on Richard Rorty’s famous.. (shrink)

As ethical attitudinists say, ethical statements cannot be strictly true or false, since they express wishes or attitudes, not beliefs. However, the wishes expressed by basic moral judgments about human rights are such that it is a necessary truth that those who know what human beings are have them, and those who do not acknowledge these rights show their lack of a living sense of human reality. The same goes for basic judgments about the rights of animals, and it is (...) blindness about the ontology of animal reality which lies behind the cruelty to animals inherent in vivisection and factory farming. One current source of this blindness may be the physicalist metaphysics which is typical of our day, and which should be sharply distinguished from metaphysical naturalism. (shrink)

Darwin'suse of final cause accords with the Aristotelian idea of finalcauses as explanatory types – as opposed to mechanical causes, which arealways particulars. In Wright's consequence etiology, anadaptation is explained by particular events, namely, its past consequences;hence, that etiology is mechanistic at bottom. This justifies Ghiselin'scharge that such versions of teleology trivialize the subject, But a purelymechanistic explanation of an adaptation allows it to appear coincidental.Patterns of outcome, whether biological or thermodynamic, cannot be explainedbytracing causal chains, even were that possible. (...) They are explicanda of aspecialkind. The form of their explanation, in statistical mechanics or by naturalselection, is not captured by statistical variants of the covering-law model orrelated models of explanation. In them as in classical teleology, types ofoutcome are cited to explain why there are outcomes of those types. But onlywhen types are explanatory by being selected for, as inexplanations of animal and human behavior as well as in Darwin's theory ofnatural selection, but not in statistical mechanics, is the explanationteleological. Darwin's theory is nontrivially teleological. (shrink)

This essay argues that Newman’s theology of justification is a true via media between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism because of its Trinitarian character. While conceding that Newman misunderstood Luther’s theology of justification, this essay explores Newman’s theology of justification through Christ’s divine indwelling in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the formal cause of the soul’s justice, because through the Spirit, both Christ’s alien righteousness and an actual inherent righteousness are brought to the soul.Accordingly, justification is a Trinitarian action (...) of “the two hands of God.”. (shrink)

: This response to my seven critics is organized under five topics: 1. The book's scope and approach; 2. Physicalism, idealism, anthropomorphism; 3. Final causation; 4. Peirce's development; 5. Signs, objects, interpretants. No ground is ceded, but I have found the interchange clarifying and hope that the reader will find it so, too.

In this book, T. L. Short corrects widespread misconceptions of Peirce's theory of signs and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary analytic philosophy of language, mind and science. Peirce's theory of mind, naturalistic but nonreductive, bears on debates of Fodor and Millikan, among others. His theory of inquiry avoids foundationalism and subjectivism, while his account of reference anticipated views of Kripke and Putnam. Peirce's realism falls between 'internal' and 'metaphysical' realism and is more satisfactory than either. His pragmatism is not verificationism; (...) rather, it identifies meaning with potential growth of knowledge. Short distinguishes Peirce's mature theory of signs from his better-known but paradoxical early theory. He develops the mature theory systematically on the basis of Peirce's phenomenological categories and concept of final causation. The latter is distinguished from recent and similar views, such as Brandon's, and is shown to be grounded in forms of explanation adopted in modern science. (shrink)

The question whether an entity has rights is identified with that as to whether an intrinsic value resides in it which imposes obligations to foster it on those who can appreciate this value. There should be no difficulty in granting that animals have rights in this sense, but what of other natural objects and artifacts? It seems that various inanimate things, such as fine buildings and forests, often possess such intrinsic value, yet since they can only be fully actual in (...) an observing consciousness the most basic such right is that of being observed from time to time. That, at least, is true of them as phenomenal objects. There must, however, be a thing in itself behind the phenomenal object and sometimes this may possess an intrinsic value which gives rise to rights, not a matter of the need to be actualized in an observing consciousness, though it is extremely difficult to reach reliable conclusions here. (shrink)

If there is such a thing as a genuine property appropriately called "intrinsic value" this property must be such that recognition that something does, or would, possess it, has a necessary tendency to motivate towards sustaining that thing in existence or producing it (if possible). There is just one thing which possesses that property and that is the property of being pleasurable (properly conceived) which, therefore, is the same as intrinsic value. (The same, mutatis mutandis, applies to intrinsic disvalue and (...) painfulness.) Why this seems not to be so is explained. (shrink)