At a key moment in the 1988 presidential debates, Michael Dukakis claimed that the issue in the campaign was not ideology but competency. A major reason for Bush’s victory was that Dukakis was most competent at creating the illusion that even George Bush was competent. Even so, a useful way to begin some reflections on the law and literature revival is to note that even a hardened political pragmatist like Bush felt that it was in his political interest to declare (...) that the issue was indeed ideology. Bush’s insistence on the importance of ideology is noteworthy for those interested in the humanities because it seems to much at odds with the conservative position in current cultural politics. Ideology might be the issue in political campaigns, but for the conservatives it has no role in the humanities, which properly understood are the repository of essential human values. As contradictory as this position might seem, it is actually quite consistent. The ideological function of government is to impart to its citizens the proper values, values that find expression in great humanistic documents. To turn the role of the humanities from that of guarding and defending these sacred documents to that of demystifying them as ideological products is to undermine the possibility of government performing its proper ideological function. Radicals in the current wars over culture thus stand accused of subverting the fundamental values that the country represents. Brook Thomas is professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature; Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville and The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics. (shrink)

This paper is about the semantic analysis of referentially opaque verbs like seek and owe that give rise to nonspecific readings. It is argued that Montague's categorization (based on earlier work by Quine) of opaque verbs as properties of quantifiers runs into two serious difficulties: the first problem is that it does not work with opaque verbs like resemble that resist any lexical decomposition of the seek ap try to find kind; the second one is that it wrongly predicts de (...) dicto (i.e. narrow scope) readings due to quantified noun phrases in the object positions of such verbs. It is shown that both difficulties can be overcome by an analysis of opaque verbs as operating on properties. This is a strongly modified version of a paper entitled lsquoDo We Bear Attitudes towards Quantifiers?rsquo that I have presented at conferences in Gosen (Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft), Ithaca (SALT I), and Konstanz (Lexikon). I owe a special debt to Hans Kamp and Arnim von Stechow for shaping my views on the subject of this paper during the past ten years or so. Comments from and discussions with the following friends and colleagues have also led to considerable improvements: Heinrich Beck, Steve Berman, David Dowty, Veerle van Geenhoven, Fritz Hamm, Irene Heim, Wolfgang Klein, Angelika Kratzer, Michael Morreau, Barbara Partee, Mats Rooth, Roger Schwarzschild, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Emil Weydert, Henk Zeevat, and three referees. (shrink)

On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible. Edited by Y. T. Radday and A. Brenner.The Trouble With Kings: The Composition of rhe Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History. By Steven L. McKenzie.Sacred Space: An Approach to the Zheology of the Epistle to the Hebrews. By Marie E. Isaacs.Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra. By Michael Edward StonePaul the Convert: iShe Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. By Alan F. Segal.Creative Biblical Exegesis: Christian (...) and Jewish Hermeneutics through the Centuries. Edited by Benjamin Uffenheimer and Henning Graf Reventlow.The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Escharology. By Brian E. Daley.The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church. By Alexandre Faivre, translated by David Smith.Pastoral Life and Practice in the Early Church. By Carl A. Volz.The Making of the Creeds. By Frances Young.La correzione fratenia in s. Agosrino. By Agostino Clerici.Beaup and Revelation in the Thought of St Augustine. By Carol Harrison.Grace, Politics and Desire. Edited by Hugo Meynell.Boerhius and Aquinas. By Ralph McInerny.The Weight of Glory. A Vision and Practice for Christian Faith: The Future of Liberal Theology. Edited by D. W. Hardy and P. H. Sedgwick.Atonenrent and Incarnation. By Vernon White.Tragic Method and Tragic Theology: Evil in Contemporary Drama and Religious Thought. By L. D. Bouchard.Parmenides of Elea, Fragments: A Text and Translation, with an Introduction. By David Gallop.Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy. By Nicholas Denyer.Weakness of the Will. By Justin Gosling.Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy. Vol. I, edited by Monica Asztalos, John E. Murdoch and Ilkka Niiniluoto.Episcopal Power and Norenrine Sociev. 1000–1320. By George W. Dameron.Matins, Lauds and Vespers for St David's Day. By Owain Tudor Edwards.More's ‘Utopia’. By Dominic Baker‐Smith.Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisitionfrom the Basque Lands to Sicily. By William Monter.Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834, By Stephen Haliczer.The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe. By Piero Camporesi, translated by Lucinda Byatt.Lucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth‐Centun Spain. By Richard L. Kagan.Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth‐Century Spain: The Alumbrados. By Alastair Hamilton.Japan's Encounter with Christianiry: The Catholic Mission in Pre‐Modern Japan. By Neil S. Fujita.Galileo, Bellannine and the Bible. By Richard J.Augustine Baker's Inner Light: A Study in English Recusant Spirituality. By James Gaffney.The Prorestarit Evaqelical Awakening. By W. R. Ward.The Study of Anglicanism. Edited by Stephen Sykes and John Booty.The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources. Edited by G. R. Evans and J. Robert Wright.The Restoration Church of England, 1646‐1689. By John Spurr.Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. By Jon Butler.A Woman Styled Bold: The Life of Cornelia Connelly, 1809–1879. By Radegunde Flaxman.Cane Ridge: America's Pentecost. By Paul K. Conkin.Revivalism and Social Change: Christianio, Nation Building and the Market in the Nineteenth‐Century United States. By George M. Thomas.Church and State: The English Experience. By Adrian Hastings.Evelyn Underhill: Artist of the Infinite Life. By Dana Greene.Northern Ireland: Fairh and Faction. By Maurice Irvine.The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics, arid Religion in Ireland. By John Fulton.Shattered Vows: Exodus from the Priesthood. By David Rice.Making Saints: Inside the Vatican: Who Become Saints, Who Do Not, and Why. By Kenneth L. Woodward.Ecclesiae Memoria: Miscellanea in onorr del R. P. Josef Metzler, O. M. I. Edited by Willi Henkel. (shrink)

Discusses the fundamental question of how life can continue to evolve on Earth.

Archaeology can provide two bodies of information relevant to the understanding of the evolution of human cognition – the timing of developments, and the evolutionary context of these developments. The challenge is methodological. Archaeology must document attributes that have direct implications for underlying cognitive mechanisms. One example of such a cognitive archaeology is found in spatial cognition. The archaeological record documents an evolutionary sequence that begins with ape-equivalent spatial abilities 2.5 million years ago and ends with the appearance of modern (...) abilities in the still remote past of 400,000 years ago. The timing of these developments reveals two major episodes in the evolution in spatial ability, one, 1.5 million years ago and the other, one million years later. The two episodes of development in spatial cognition had very different evolutionary contexts. The first was associated with the shift to an open country adaptive niche that occurred early in the time range of Homo erectus. The second was associated with no clear adaptive shift, though it does appear to have coincided with the invasion of more hostile environments and the appearance of systematic hunting of large mammals. Neither, however, occurred in a context of modern hunting and gathering. Key Words: Archaeology; evolution; Homo erectus; spatial cognition; symmetry. (shrink)

This essay explores the nature and neurological basis of creativity in technical production. After presenting a model of expert technical cognition based in cognitive anthropology and cognitive psychology, the authors propose that craft production has three inherent sources of novelty — procedural drift, serendipitous error and fiddling. However, these are quite limited in their creative potential, which may help explain the virtual absence of innovation over the long millennia of the Palaeolithic. Innovation can be far more rapid and effective via (...) invention, which requires folk theories of causation and adequate working memory capacity, all fairly recent evolutionary developments. The neurological basis of expert technical cognition lies in well-known cortical and sub-cortical structures, but recent research has established a provocative role for the cerebellum in the formulation of novel arrangements. (shrink)

Does the viability of the discovery program depend on showing either (1) that methods of generating new problem solutions, per se, have special probative weight (the per se thesis); or, (2) that the original conception of an idea is logically continuous with its justification (anti-divorce thesis)? Many writers have identified these as the key issues of the discovery debate. McLaughlin, Pera, and others recently have defended the discovery program by attacking the divorce thesis, while Laudan has attacked the discovery program (...) by rejecting the per se thesis. This disagreement over the central issue has led to communication breakdown. I contend that both friends and foes of discovery mistake the central issues. Recognizing a form of divorce helps rather than hurts the discovery program. However, the per se thesis is not essential to the program (nor is the related debate over novel prediction); hence, the status of the per se thesis is a side issue. With these clarifications in hand, we can proceed to the next stage of the discovery debate--the development (or revival) of a generative conception of justification which goes beyond consequentialism to forge a strong linkage of generation (or rather, generatability) with justification. (shrink)

The paper aims to put certain basic mathematical elements and operations into an empirical perspective, evaluate the empirical status of various analytic operations widely used within psychology and suggest alternatives to procedures criticized as inadequate. Experimentation shows the "manyness" of items to be a perceptual quality for both young children and animals and that natural operations are performed by naive children analogous to those performed by persons tutored in arithmetic. Number, counting, arithmetic operations therefore can make distinctions that are not (...) inevitably arbitrary, and conceptual operations can obviously have a status as natural events with psychology. If the elements and conceptual operations involved in mathematical systems were not inherent in physiological process, various primitive discriminations could not be possible. Also, since some calculi have a natural status in a given empirical circumstance, the axioms of others can not be satisfied. Therefore the psychologist when acting as an empirical scientist seeks a calculus having a structure whose elements are isomorphic with natural units of stimulus and response and whose operations are isomorphic with whatever natural processes are involved. Measurement poses a special problem for the empirical scientist. It concerns but a single class of natural qualities and this only in a limited way. The concept of quantity has a natural counterpart but quantity and measurement are not wholly analogous. Measurement is defined, as H. S. Leonard suggests, as a theoretical activity. Measurement theory has a formal structure but empirical end. Measurement hypothesizes about the position of a particular quality within a definite range of qualities. It therefore is beholden to definite empirical restrictions. Some hypotheses-making systems use terms and relations per se as the context and starting point for dealing with discriminable events. Such procedures are 'transcendent." In empirical science, questions are part of problem-solving activity and their reference is naturally restricted. In providing description and explanation, psychological researchers frequently use calculi in a transcendent way. This results in theories that are only quasi-empirical and "half" true. The roles measurement plays in psychology are discussed. Of particular concern are those cases in which the results of measuring or a theory of measurement are used to define the "real" units, or the "real" relations involved in problematic psychological events, and thence to describe and explain behaviors of interest. Metaphysical or ontological usages of measurement sometimes occur. The implication of these arguments with regard to a view of empirical science is discussed. (shrink)

This paper draws a parallel between two contemporary French conceptions of sociology. Each is first considered in terms of the principles and strategies of its sociological method. Through an analogy with Marx's philosophy of social science, critical sociology is shown to make an heuristic use for the analysis of cultures and social structures of the resistance to sociology that the sociologist encounters in the social objects, whereas pragmatic sociology adopts a pluralistic and descriptive strategy towards actions, actors and things. The (...) paper then tries to show how common interests or trading zones could allow both critical and pragmatic sociology to profit from their competitive relation by taking each other as objects of sociological analysis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand RussellPeter H. DentonNicholas Griffin, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 550. Cloth, $75.00. Paper, $26.00.It is a daunting task to conceive of a single companion to Bertrand Russell, who in life as in thought was never content with a single anything. Nicholas Griffin has brought his customary expertise to the project, and in (...) snaring fourteen other contributors to this volume, has produced a welcome addition to an academic's library of Russell materials.The shape of the volume, its contents and its presentation, however, unfortunately reflect the lopsided nature of current Russell studies. One hopes for a companion volume that has the breadth of the earlier volume edited fifty years ago by Paul Schilpp, but in vain. This book is overwhelmingly about Russell before 1918, almost entirely about philosophy of mathematics, epistemology and logic, and several of the pieces easily could have been included in a festschrift for Frege instead.What is included is well done, but to call it "the most convenient and accessible guide to Russell available" is to speak in comparative terms. To be fair, it sets out to focus on a narrow definition of Russell's contributions to modern philosophy, and the contributors accomplish this task. Ian Grattan-Guinness writes on "Mathematics in and behind Russell's Logicism, and its Reception," a subject that continues into "Bertrand Russell's Logicism" by Martin Godwyn and Andrew D. Irvine. The roots of analytic philosophy are of primary concern in this volume, so Richard L. Cartwright explores "Russell and Moore, 1898-1905" and Michael Beaney relates "Russell and Frege." "The Theory of Descriptions" by Peter Hylton sets up two pieces on "Russell's Substitutional Theory" (Gregory Landini) and "The Theory of Types" (Alasdair Urquhart), while Paul Hager's "Russell's Method of Analysis" leads into "Russell's Neutral Monism" (R.E.Tully) and "The Metaphysics of Logical Atomism" (Bernard Linsky).The next portion of the book expands the intellectual focus somewhat, with "Russell's Structuralism and the Absolute Description of the World" by William Demopoulos—perhaps [End Page 349] the best in a series of good papers—and "From Knowledge by Acquaintance to Knowledge by Causation" by Thomas Baldwin. Approaching the end of the book, Anthony Grayling's essay on "Russell, Experience, and the Roots of Science" remains firmly planted in the pre-1918 milieu, though his tentative commentary on Human Knowledge at least glimmers the extension of Russell's intellectual life into the post-Great War period.Effectively the entire second half of Russell's life is left to the final contributor, Charles Pidgen, for commentary. Author of Russell on Ethics, much of Pigden's short essay here ("Bertrand Russell: Moral Philosopher or Unphilosophical Moralist?") somewhat plaintively directs the reader to his book for an elaboration of why Russell is worth reading after 1918, at least on the subject of ethics. Of the other authors, only Hager (317) observes the extent to which Russell's post-War work mistakenly has been ignored.The book concludes with a selective bibliography. The audience, for the most part, is a specialist one, with only some essays accessible to the general reader. On that score, Griffin's introduction and his own essay, "Russell's Philosophical Background," are easily the most readable. At the risk of quibbling, I was disturbed by the uneven production of the book, as each author set his own standard for footnotes, endnotes and bibliography (creating a jumble of styles). Even within individual contributions, there are a number of inconsistencies in notation as well as typographical errors.By the end, I was left hoping there might be a second companion volume for Bertrand Russell, one that reflects what he spent the last fifty years of his life thinking, writing, and doing. In the absence of such material (which is of far greater popular interest today just as it was in Russell's lifetime), this book by itself is more of a companion to current Russell studies than to Bertrand Russell himself.Peter H. DentonThe University of WinnipegCopyright © 2004 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

The public interest statement contained in the PRSA Code of Professional Standards is unduly vague and provides neither a working definition of public interest nor any guidance for the performance of what most professions consider to be a primary value. This paper addresses the question of what might constitute public relations service in the public interest, and calls for more stringent guidelines to be developed whereby the profession may advance its service goals more clearly.

One important aspect of globalization is the increasingly dense and influential regime of global rules that govern and shape interactions everywhere. Covering trade, investment, loans, patents, copyrights, trademarks, labor standards, environmental protection, use of seabed resources, production and marketing of weapons, maintenance of public security, and much else, these rules—structuring and enabling, permitting and constraining—have a profound impact on the lives of human beings and on the ecology of our planet. It is therefore important to think carefully, in moral terms, (...) about their design. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II Bibliography.

This special issue on general proof theory collects papers resulting from the conference on general proof theory held in November 2015 in Tübingen.

This volume contains selected essays in moral and political philosophy by Thomas Hurka. The essays address a wide variety of topics, from the well-rounded life and the value of playing games to proportionality in war and the ethics of nationalism. They also share a common aim: to illuminate the surprising richness and subtlety of our everyday moral thought by revealing its underlying structure, which they often do by representing that structure on graphs. More specifically, the essays all give what (...) the first in the volume calls "structural" as against "foundational" analyses of moral views. Eschewing the grander ambition of grounding our ideas about, say, virtue or desert in claims that use different concepts and concern some other, allegedly more fundamental topic, they examine these ideas in their own right and with close attention to their details. As well as illuminating their individual topics, the essays illustrate the insights this structural method can yield. (shrink)

This article is a study of the role and use of evidence in the evaluation of claims in the historical sciences. In order to do this, I develop a “snapshot” approach to Toulmin schemas. This framework is applied to the case of Archezoa, an initially supported then eventually rejected hypothesis in evolutionary biology. From this case study, I criticize Cleland’s “smoking gun” account of the methodology of the historical sciences. I argue that Toulmin schemas are conceptually precise tools that allow (...) for the building of enriched reconstructions of evidential reasoning. From the application of this framework, I discuss three ways in which the construction and use of facts in the historical sciences are theory-laden. Despite its inherent limits, TS are heuristically useful tools to identify epistemic moves that could be further investigated. It also sheds light on the positive roles of speculation in the historical sciences. Finally, I argue that it provides a context-specific and individuated understanding of hypothesis evaluation in the historical sciences. Overall, I think the application of Toulmin schemas to cases of evidential reasoning in the historical sciences is a promising descriptive and heuristic tool for philosophers of science. (shrink)

Intelligent agents are often faced with the problem of trying to combine possibly conflicting pieces of information obtained from different sources into a coherent view of the world. We propose a framework for the modelling of such combination operations with roots in the work of Spohn [Spo88, Spo91]. We construct a number of combination operations and we measure them against various properties that such operations ought to satisfy. We conclude by discussing the connection between combination operations and the use of (...) infobases [Mey99, MLH00]. (shrink)

Una violación de los derechos humanos implica un no cumplimiento de los derechos humanos y una relación causal activa entre agentes humanos y tal incumplimiento. Esta relación causal puede ser de interacción, pero también puede ser institucional, como cuando los agentes colaboran en el diseño y la imposición de arreglos institucionales que de manera previsible y evitable causan el no cumplimiento de los derechos humanos. Cierta evidencia de fácil acceso sugiere que (a) derechos humanos sociales y económicos básicos siguen siendo (...) incumplidos en casi la mitad de la población del mundo y (b) que el diseño de arreglos institucionales supranacionales juega un papel decisivo en la explicación de por qué la mitad más pobre de la humanidad está sufriendo un rápido descenso en su participación (ahora por debajo de tres por ciento) en el ingreso doméstico global. Se puede, entonces, argumentar con plausibilidad que ciudadanos como yo –ciudadanos pudientes de estados influyentes– violan colaborativamente los derechos humanos de los pobres del mundo a una escala masiva. (shrink)

We inhabit this world with large numbers of people who are very badly off through no fault of their own. The statistics are overwhelming: “Two out of five children in the developing world are stunted, one in three is underweight and one in ten is wasted.”1 Some 250 million children between 5 and 14 do wage work outside their family — often under harsh or cruel conditions: as soldiers, prostitutes, or domestic servants, or in agriculture, construction, textile or carpet production.2 (...) In 1998, out of a total of 5900 million human beings,3 some 2800 million lived below $2/day, and nearly 1200 million of these below the $1/day international poverty line.4 Some 799 million are undernourished, 1000 million lack access to safe water, 2400 million lack access to basic sanitation, and 876 million adults are illiterate.5 More than 880 million lack access to basic health services.6 Approximately 1000 million have no adequate shelter and 2000 million no electricity.7 Roughly one third of all human deaths, some 50,000 daily, are due to poverty-related causes, easily preventable through better nutrition, safe drinking water, vaccines, cheap re-hydration packs and antibiotics.8 “Worldwide 34,000 children under age five die daily from hunger and preventable diseases.”9.. (shrink)

"This is the only free-standing English translation of the entire Treatise on human nature, which includes St. Thomas's account of the metaphysical status of the human soul and its relation to the human organism ; the powers of the soul, especially the higher intellective powers that distinguish humans from other animals ; and, those questions on human origins, the creation of the first man and first woman, and their status as being created in the image of God."--Cover, p. 1.

The claim that the citizen's duty is to “persuade or obey” the laws, expressed by the personified Laws of Athens in Plato's Crito, continues to receive intense scholarly attention. In this article, we provide a general review of the debates over this doctrine, and how the various positions taken may or may not fit with the rest of what we know about Socratic philosophy. We ultimately argue that the problems scholars have found in attributing the doctrine to Socrates derive from (...) an anachronistic and erroneous understanding of Socrates as a kind of libertarian. (shrink)

This book seeks to salvage liberalism, as a form of political association and as a unique culture, from the wreck of the Enlightenment.

This selection deals with St Thomas Aquinas' philosophy, his view of God, creation, the material world, the human intellect, ethics, and aesthetics.

The use of computers to support learning at work has for long been propagated. Although a large bulk of experience exists in this field, it is still an open question what role computer applications play and can play in the process of learning. It can even be questioned if the learning processes themselves are sufficiently well understood to enable designers and others to provide relevant support. In this article these questions are addressed with reference to experience gained with two projects (...) on computer support for shop floor learning. The projects involved the future users actively in the design process and it is argued that this involvement reached far beyond the mere shaping of the learning artefacts. (shrink)

The logical theory of branching space-times, which is intended to provide a framework for studying objective indeterminism, remains at a certain distance from the discussion of space-time theories in the philosophy of physics. In a welcome attempt to clarify the connection, Earman has recently found fault with the branching approach and suggested ``pruning some branches from branching space-time''. The present note identifies the different---order theoretic vs. topological---points of view of both discussion as a reason for certain misunderstandings, and tries to (...) remove them. Most importantly, we give a novel, topological criterion of modal consistency that usefully generalizes the order-theoretic criterion of directedness, and we introduce a differential-geometrical version of BST based on the theory of non-Hausdorff manifolds. (shrink)

An assessment of a protocol devised to guide practitioners thinking of using covert video surveillance. Such surveillance is particularly used to help identify cases of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. The protocol in question has been written by staff at the Academic Department of Paediatrics, North Staffordshire Hospital, Stoke-on-Trent in association with their local Area Child Protection Committee and has been commended by the Department of Health to others wishing to implement covert video surveillance.

Independent on Sunday October 2nd One of the country's lead­ing philosophical counsellers, and chairman of the Society for Philosophy in Practice (SPP), Tim LeBon, said it typically took around six 50 ­minute sessions for a client to move from confusion to resolution. Mr LeBon, who has 'published a book on the subject, Wise Therapy, said philoso­phy was perfectly suited to this type of therapy, dealing as it does with timeless human issues such as love, purpose, happiness and emo­tional challenges. `Wise (...) Therapy, is part of a series aimed at promoting an integrative attitude as its ethos. Among all the many perspectives of psychotherapists and counselors, philosophy needs to take its place and needs to find its voice. Tim LeBon has provided an effective means by which counselors can bring philosophy into their work with clients' - APPA journal `Tim Le Bon's Wise Therapy is a comprehensible and well argued book dealing with the practical therapeutic applications of philosophical research that may well be of interest to philosophers but -- as the author himself intends -- will be of most obvious benefit to therapists and counselors, both by informing their dialogue with clients in new ways and by helping them become more informed about ways to resolve the ethical dilemmas arising within the context of their own work' - Metapsychology `A fascinating workshop for therapists and clients, backed up a thorough degree if philosophical acuity' - Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis `I strongly recommend the book for philosophers as well as practitioners, teachers, students and supervisors in counselling and psychotherapy' - Self and Society `Provides some additional and valuable arrows for the therapist's quiver' - Irvin Yalom, author of Love's Executioner `Like Aristotle, Tim LeBon examines what is said and extracts what is best from it…. There are many fascinating exercises designed to bring out and enlighten the client's values, conception of the good life, well-being, happiness, pleasure, and the proper place of reason in life…. Wise Therapy is well written and engaging. The case histories are illuminating examples of therapeutic techniques at work, the thought experiments are well designed, and the philosophical position adapted from the internal debates of the philosophers is level headed…. I recommend it highly to philosophers with an interest in counselling, and psychological counsellors with an interest in philosophy' - Jeff Mason, The Philosophers' Magazine `Tim LeBon has… authored a text which should become a staple on the philosophical counsellor's bookshelf…. Wise Therapy is a concise, well-written book…. His ability to relate philosophical concepts to counselling concerns is admirable and attests to the skill and knowledge he possesses as a working counsellor. But, by far the most important part of Tim LeBon's book to PC is the last chapter, "The Counsellor's Philosophical Toolbox"' - Craig Munns in The Examined Life ` Tim LeBon has done a good job of offering practical approaches to some of the most important and vexing issues that arise in counselling…. Tim LeBon's book contains helpful suggestions, practical information, and useful examples, and would make a good addition to the library of any counsellors willing to allow philosophy to turn mere client sessions into wise therapy' - Peter Raabe, Practical Philosophy Wise Therapy is an original and practical guide to how philosophy can benefit counselling and psychotherapy. Tim LeBon argues that therapy, informed by philosophy, can help clients make better decision and achieve emotional wisdom. He uses philosophical approaches to explore issues of right and wrong, the emotions and reasons, well-being and the meaning of life, and develops a 'counsellor's toolbox' of techniques that can help practitioners apply the wisdom of philosophy to good therapeutic practice. For counsellors who may find philosophical approaches to therapy useful, this work addresses key philosophical topics - the emotions, free will, the meaning of life and ethics. It is jargon-free where possible and assumes no previous philosophical training. From The Independent, 16th November 2004 Plato is my agony aunt It was the end of a love affair that broke her heart. Could the wisdom of the great philosophers show her how to be happy again? Claire Smith tries a novel form of therapy "The unexamined life is not worth living," Socrates said. Nor is the life you're left with after your boyfriend has left you for another woman - at least, that's how it felt in October last year when mine broke rank and went off with an art student from Cleveland, Ohio. We were over there for the opening of his new art exhibition. He'd flown over four days before me and had met her at a party. Supposedly, they "connected". The five months that followed were a roller-coaster of confusion, vitriol and despair. I knew there'd been problems in our relationship. We saw the world very differently; he delighted in the charm of the ordinary, I wanted maximum divinity. He walked; I galloped. He drank tea; I loathed the stuff. But, along the banks of the Thames, we'd made a promise to always stick together. Our love was something unique: "transcendental", I called it. And besides, we recycled. Surely a commitment to save the world would save our relationship? Alas, no. So there I was, a woman scorned. Hell truly hath no greater fury. And what made it worse was that I still believed in our transcendental love. If I wanted to change the way I was feeling, I needed to alter the way I was thinking. But how? A few bottles of wine and a sharp blow to the head might have done the trick. Fortunately, there's an older, more trusted way of turning your head on its head that counsellors are starting to use: philosophy. The idea of employing Plato as an agony aunt was begun in 1981 by the German philosopher Gerd Achenbach. Although philosophy spends a lot of its time asking real-life questions that affect real-life people - What is happiness? And is it always wrong to lie? - most of the debate goes on in ivory towers. What Achenbach and subsequent philosophers including Tim LeBon, the chairman of the UK's Society for Philosophy in Practice, wanted to do was "give practical application" to this gigantic library of great thoughts. So how does it work? Like most types of therapy, you sign up for a set of sessions. "Two would give you a new perspective on one issue; six would help you to make a major life-decision, like a career change; with 12 you can start to rethink your entire life philosophy," explains LeBon. Each session lasts 50 minutes and costs £50 - and, no, you don't have to have any previous knowledge of philosophy. "If you think of Friends, it would suit Ross and Chandler more than Joey," LeBon says. "It's for anyone who wants to make their emotions more intelligent. Or for those who have tried other kinds of therapy, and want something more cerebral." The first session begins with the patient venting off about whatever's troubling them. The rant over, the counsellor then picks out some key concepts that are crucial to the problem - in the case of heartbreak, it is love and happiness that come hurtling to the fore - and then gets the patient to define what they mean. So, what is love? What is happiness? To kick-start the patient's thinking, LeBon describes what a great philosopher had to say about it. In my case, he tells me what Plato wrote about love in his Symposium: that to stop man fighting the gods, Zeus decided to cut each human in two, so they would lose their strength. "This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other," Plato said. "Each of us is a 'matching half' of a human whole, because each was sliced like a flatfish, two out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him." This method of probing what we might think are "obvious" ideas, such as love and happiness, was devised by Socrates in the squares of Athens. "The only I thing I know is that I know nothing at all," he boasted. What Socrates showed was that although many of the thinkers of his time thought they knew what justice, happiness and goodness meant, their understanding was tied in to their personal agenda and world view, and, what's more, when pushed, their ideas often contradicted themselves. A bit like me on love. Whereas part of my understanding of love was something that gave life meaning, made it worth living and bound us together, I also believed that true love was "transcendental": that it was out of this world, and it didn't matter if the two people who loved each other couldn't get along in the day-to-day. Love was bigger than the mundane. But when it came to the next stage of the therapy, critical thinking - "to check out whether your assumptions stand up to examination" - I walked head first into a contradiction. If I think love's purpose is to make life worth living, but then say it's irrelevant to daily life, surely my two ideas of love are not compatible? As the cogs in my brain start to creak into motion, I feel myself taking a step back from my predicament: thinking about how I've been thinking. This idea I had of transcendental love might have started off as a romantic dream. But when the relationship stopped working, and I found myself feeling trapped and frustrated, I used it to justify the mechanics of a relationship that just didn't work in the daily grind. I used it to lie to myself. In the final stage, LeBon gets me to start thinking about how to go forward. "You can't change what has happened," he says. "You can't change that he's left you, or how you behaved in the relationship. So, as the Stoics did, let's work on controlling the controllables: the things that you can change." To work out what can be changed, he gets me to try out a thought experiment, a method often used in philosophy to imagine other worlds where people can have different codes of behaviour. Thought experiments shatter your preconceived ideas of how the world should be and let your imagination run wild to how the world could be. "I find Viktor Frankl very useful here, the Austrian psychiatrist and concentration-camp survivor who actually believed that everything in life happens for a purpose," LeBon says. "Suppose this break-up did happen for a reason that will work to your benefit," he suggests. "What might that be? The answer might be that you can now focus on something important that was denied in the relationship. Or - the Hollywood version - so you'll meet someone who is really right for you." Temporarily freed of any sense of responsibility for the relationship that was, and its sorry demise, the list came fast. I could now travel more; he didn't like me travelling on my own, but too often he didn't want to go anywhere, preferring to stay in his studio and make art. I'd love to meet someone with a similar sense of adventure to mine. For the first time in two years, I was being honest with myself about what I really wanted - listening to those voices that we all have inside our heads, and too often try to muzzle. So did philosophy save me? Well, I'm now dating a travel writer I have to run to keep up with. I still haven't got over the fact that my replacement came from Cleveland, Ohio. But I guess I never will. Tim LeBon can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] A FEW WORDS FROM THE WISE Compiled by Ed Caesar · "At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet" - Plato · "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness" - Friedrich Nietzsche · "That man shall live as his own master and in happiness who can say each day 'I have lived'" - Horace · "The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue... Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy" - Aristotle · "There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than friendship" - Thomas Aquinas · "Whatever you do... love those who love you" - Voltaire · "Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination" - Immanuel Kant · "Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy" - Jiddu Krishnamurti · "Love is an ideal thing. Marriage is a real thing" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I shrink, therefore I am Therapy has many answers, but some questions require the help of a philosopher, says Clint Witchalls Sunday November 21, 2004 The Observer Danny had worked in the City of London for 10 years. As a research analyst, stockbroker and fund manager, he'd made a lot of valuable contacts, earnt a lot of cash, and learnt some important business skills. However, as he approached his mid-thirties, he no longer felt good about himself or what he did for a living, and he found his colleagues cold and unfriendly. A chronic illness made him realise his mortality, and he began to reassess his priorities. Danny had been struggling with his career conundrum for nearly five years when he met David Arnaud, a philosophical counsellor. After a few soul-searching sessions, Danny arrived at a decision. Today, he teaches economics to sixth-formers, and he loves it. 'It's a much better lifestyle,' he says. Many people are turning to philosophical counsellors to get answers to questions such as: 'How do I make sense of myself?' 'What is important to me?' 'Where am I going?' These are perhaps not the sort of questions that require psychiatric intervention, but Arnaud, who recently completed the first empirical study of philosophical counselling in the UK, has found that within just five sessions the majority of clients, with important decisions to make, tend to move from a state of concern and confusion to a resolution. Modern philosophical counselling can be traced back to 1981, when the philosopher Gerd Achenbach opened the first practice near Cologne. Achenbach referred to the new discipline as 'therapy for the sane.' Today, there are hundreds of philosophical counsellors around the world, with the movement particularly strong in the US, Britain and the Netherlands. 'The dilemmas people face aren't always primarily psychological,' says Alex Howard, a philosophical counsellor from Newcastle. 'If people face problems that are social or economic, it doesn't make sense to define their problems in purely psychological terms.' Tim LeBon, a founder member of the Society for Philosophy in Practice (SPP) and author of Wise Therapy, adds: 'We are faced with far more life choices than our grandparents, yet have far fewer resources to deal with them. Our grandparents may have gone to a priest or to other family members for advice; most people don't trust these solutions any more and so want to make their own well-informed, well thought-out choices. Philosophical counselling can help these people - people in mid-life crises who are wondering how to make the most of the rest of their life. People who want to take stock of their values.' Where stressed executives might once have been prescribed a course of tranquillisers or antidepressants, they can now get a dose of Bertrand Russell instead: 'Success is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it.' While some philosophical counsellors do recommend books for their clients to read, most sessions are about helping the client identify faulty thoughts. For example, a briefing in Aristotelian logic might show a client why their beliefs are erroneous. The person might infer that they're a screw-up because they've screwed up. The counsellor could point out that they're making an error called 'fallacy of composition' - that is, what's true of the part isn't necessarily true of the whole. In philosophical counselling, problems aren't pathologised as they are by the psychiatric profession, and the dialogue between client and counsellor is more like a meeting of equals, compared to many therapies where the client is treated like a patient and seen as someone who is, in some way, inadequate. 'Anybody can benefit from philosophical counselling,' says Howard. 'But it does require someone who is willing to take stock.' Lou Marinoff, author of international bestseller Plato Not Prozac! has done much to promote philosophical counselling. 'Some people who have stabilised their neurochemistry and validated their emotions now wish to examine or re-examine the criteria of their beliefs, the principles of their conduct, or the meaning of their lives,' he says. 'With whom shall they do this? Psychologists and psychiatrists can shed light on such issues - as can rabbis, priests, imams and gurus. Philosophers are now rejoining the ranks of helpers.' LeBon believes certain therapies (such as cognitive behavioural therapy) don't go far enough in helping their clients. 'For instance, if you are anxious about your relationship, a cognitive therapist would try to dispute your catastrophising and jump to conclusions to make you feel less anxious,' says LeBon. 'A philosophical counsellor would do this, but would also look for existential meaning in your anxiety - perhaps you really don't want to be in the relationship and that is what your anxiety is telling you.' LeBon also gives short shrift to psychoanalysts. 'There's very little evidence for the Freudian unconscious, and it's time to move on to more intellectually satisfying and helpful therapies,' he says. However, Alain de Botton, the man who popularised philosophy as self-help, isn't ready to bury psychologists and their ilk just yet. 'The truth is that psychoanalysis grew out of philosophy - it's not some completely new idea, and in fact, done properly, psychoanalysis is philosophical anyway. It may even be dangerous to the mental health of some people to suggest a philosopher rather than a properly trained analyst. The knowledge of analysts when it comes to many emotional problems is now much greater than that of most philosophers.' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004. (shrink)

This is the introductory installment in a projected series of articles in which I shall be advancing the positive case for the "intrinsic" kind of explanatory account of "consciousness4." "Consciousness4" has reference to a property of individual mental-occurrence instances wherein there takes place an immediate awareness of them either upon their occurrence or as part of their very occurrence. The immediacy or directness of such inner awareness amounts to the absence of mental mediation by any other occurrent awareness. An account (...) of consciousness4 that properly comes under the heading of "intrinsic theory" is distinguished by the thesis that a mental-occurrence instance’s being conscious4 is an intrinsic property, rather than an external-relational property of that mental-occurrence instance. My hope for the present series of articles is that, by the end, the case for intrinsic theory will he so evidently strong, or at least so vivid, that all psychologists of consciousness will have to address intrinsic theory and its explanandum of consciousness4. In this article, I set the stage by rendering some of the relevant meanings explicit, spelling out my purpose and approach to making the case for intrinsic theory, providing some context for the discussions to follow, and mentioning important objections to intrinsic theory that have been voiced in the literature. (shrink)

In der neueren Erkenntnistheorie wird der Bayesianismus immer populärer. In diesem Ansatz werden Überzeugungen mit Glaubensgraden versehen. Dazu möchte ich der Frage nachgehen, ob wir den klassischen Ansatz in der Erkennnistheorie mit seinen kategorischen Überzeugungen komplett durch einen bayesianischen mit einem probabilistischen Überzeugungssystem ersetzen könnten. Um das zu klären, rekonstruiere ich zunächst beide Modelle unserer Überzeugungssysteme und vergleiche sie dann im Hinblick darauf, wie leistungsfähig sie jeweils dafür sind, erkenntnistheoretische Probleme zu lösen und als Grundlage für Entscheidungen zu dienen. Dabei (...) zeigt sich eine gewisse Inkommensurabilität der beiden Ansätze und außerdem erweist sich keine der Konzeptionen als eindeutig überlegen. Deshalb argumentiere ich schließlich für eine bestimmte Hybridkonzeption aus beiden Ansätzen, die die Vorteile beider Konzeptionen vereinen kann. (shrink)

The idea that it is acceptable to ‘nudge’ people to opt for the ‘healthy choice’ is gaining currency in health care policy circles. This article investigates whether researchers evaluating Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Screening Programmes (AAASP) attempt to influence decision makers in ways that are similar to popular ‘nudging’ techniques. Comparing two papers on the health economics of AAASP both published in the BMJ within the last 3 years, it is shown that the values chosen for the health economics modelling are (...) not representative of the literature and consistently favour the conclusions of the articles. It is argued (1) that this and other features of these articles may be justified within a Libertarian Paternalist framework as ‘nudging’ like ways of influencing decision makers, but also (2) that these ways of influencing decision makers raise significant ethical issues in the context of democratic decision making. (shrink)

The fine editions of the Aristotelian Commentary Series make available long out-of-print commentaries of St. Thomas on Aristotle. Each volume has the full text of Aristotle with Bekker numbers, followed by the commentary of St. Thomas, cross-referenced using an easily accessible mode of referring to Aristotle in the Commentary. Each volume is beautifully printed and bound using the finest materials. All copies are printed on acid-free paper and Smyth sewn. They will last.