Nature Network Groups hosted an invited workshop on 'Theories of Consciousness' during the second semester of 2009. There were presentations by each of 15 authors active in the field, followed by debate with other presenters and invitees. A week was allocated to each of the theories proposed; general discussion threads were also opened from time to time, as seemed appropriate. We offer here an account of the principal outcomes. It can be regarded as a contemporary, 'state of the art' snapshot (...) of thinking in this field. (shrink)

In order to study early human development while avoiding the burdens associated with human embryo research, scientists are redirecting their efforts towards so-called human embryo-like structures (hELS). hELS are created from clusters of human pluripotent stem cells and seem capable of mimicking early human development with increasing accuracy. Notwithstanding, hELS research finds itself at the intersection of historically controversial fields, and the expectation that it might be received as similarly sensitive is prompting proactive law reform in many jurisdictions, including the (...) Netherlands. However, studies on the public perception of hELS research remain scarce. To help guide policymakers and fill this gap in the literature, we conducted an explorative qualitative study aimed at mapping the range of perspectives in the Netherlands on the creation and research use of hELS. This article reports on a subset of our findings, namely those pertaining to (the degrees of and requirements for) confidence in research with hELS and its regulation. Despite commonly found disparities in confidence on emerging biotechnologies, we also found wide consensus regarding the requirements for having (more) confidence in hELS research. We conclude by reflecting on how these findings could be relevant to researchers and (Dutch) policymakers when interpreted within the context of their limitations. (shrink)

Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level and micro-level. We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay satisfaction and (...) quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness. Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index. In low GDP entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics. (shrink)

Recent advancements in developmental biology enable the creation of embryo-like structures from human stem cells, which we refer to as human embryo-like structures (hELS). These structures provide promising tools to complement—and perhaps ultimately replace—the use of human embryos in clinical and fundamental research. But what if these hELS—when further improved—also have a claim to moral status? What would that imply for their research use? In this paper, we explore these questions in relation to the traditional answer as to why human (...) embryos should be given greater protection than other (non-)human cells: the so-called Argument from Potential (AfP). According to the AfP, human embryos deserve special moral status because they have the unique potential to develop into persons. While some take the development of hELS to challenge the very foundations of the AfP, the ongoing debate suggests that its dismissal would be premature. Since the AfP is a spectrum of views with different moral implications, it does not need to imply that research with human embryos or hELS that (may) have ‘active’ potential should be completely off-limits. However, the problem with determining active potential in hELS is that this depends on development passing through ‘potentiality switches’ about the precise coordinates of which we are still in the dark. As long as this epistemic uncertainty persists, extending embryo research regulations to research with specific types of hELS would amount to a form of regulative precaution that as such would require further justification. (shrink)

For the epic journey of autumn migration, long-distance migratory birds use innate and learned information and follow strict schedules imposed by genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, the details of which remain largely unknown. In addition, bird migration requires integrated action of different multisensory systems for learning and memory, and the hippocampus appears to be the integration center for this task. In previous studies we found that contrasting long-distance migratory flights differentially affected the morphological complexity of two types of hippocampus astrocytes. Recently, (...) a significant association was found between the latitude of the reproductive site and the size of the ADCYAP1 allele in long distance migratory birds. We tested for correlations between astrocyte morphological complexity, migratory distances, and size of the ADCYAP1 allele in three long-distance migrant species of shorebird and one non-migrant. Significant differences among species were found in the number and morphological complexity of the astrocytes, as well as in the size of the microsatellites of the ADCYAP1 gene. We found significant associations between the size of the ADCYAP1 microsatellites, the migratory distances, and the degree of morphological complexity of the astrocytes. We suggest that associations between astrocyte number and morphological complexity, ADCYAP1 microsatellite size, and migratory behavior may be part of the adaptive response to the migratory process of shorebirds. (shrink)

Predatory journals and conferences are an emerging problem in scientific literature as they have financial motives, without guaranteeing scientific quality and exposure. The main objective of the ASGLOS project is to investigate the predatory e‐email characteristics, management, and possible consequences and to analyse the extent of the current problem at each academic level. To collect the personal experiences of physicians’ mailboxes on predatory publishing, a Google Form® survey was designed and disseminated from September 2021 to April 2022. A total of (...) 978 responses were analysed from 58 countries around the world. A total of 64.8% of participants indicated the need for 3 or fewer emails to acquire a criticality view in distinguishing a real invitation from a spam, while 11.5% still have doubt regardless of how many emails they get. The AGLOS Study clearly highlights the problem of academic e‐mail spam by predatory journals and conferences. Our findings signify the importance of providing academic career‐oriented advice and organising training sessions to increase awareness of predatory publishing for those conducting scientific research. (shrink)

Corruption involves greed, money, and risky decision-making. We explore the love of money, pay satisfaction, probability of risk, and dishonesty across cultures. Avaricious monetary aspiration breeds unethicality. Prospect theory frames decisions in the gains-losses domain and high-low probability. Pay dissatisfaction (in the losses domain) incites dishonesty in the name of justice at the individual level. The Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI, signals a high-low probability of getting caught for dishonesty at the country level. We theorize that decision-makers adopt avaricious love-of-money aspiration (...) as a lens and frame dishonesty in the gains-losses domain (pay satisfaction-dissatisfaction, Level 1) and high-low probability (CPI, Level 2) to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity. We challenge the myth: Pay satisfaction mitigates dishonesty across nations consistently. Based on 6500 managers in 32 countries, our cross-level three-dimensional visualization offers the following discoveries. Under high aspiration conditions, pay dissatisfaction excites the highest- (third-highest) avaricious justice-seeking dishonesty in high (medium) CPI nations, supporting the certainty effect. However, pay satisfaction provokes the second-highest avaricious opportunity-seizing dishonesty in low CPI entities, sustaining the possibility effect—maximizing expected utility. Under low aspiration conditions, high pay satisfaction consistently leads to low dishonesty, demonstrating risk aversion—achieving ultimate serenity. We expand prospect theory from a micro and individual-level theory to a cross-level theory of monetary wisdom across 32 nations. We enhance the S-shaped Curve to three 3-D corruption surfaces across three levels of the global economic pyramid, providing novel insights into behavioral economics, business ethics, the environment, and responsibility. (shrink)

Participation in collective action is known to be driven by two appraisals of a social situation: Beliefs that the situation is unfair and beliefs that a group can change the situation. Anger has been repeatedly found to mediate the relationship between injustice appraisals and collective action. Recent work suggests that the emotion of being moved mediates the relationship between efficacy appraisals and collective action. Building on this prior work, the present research applies kama muta theory to further investigate the relationship (...) between efficacy appraisals and collective action. Kama muta is a positive emotion that is evoked by a sudden intensification of communal sharing, and largely overlaps with the English concept being moved. We investigated its relationship with collective action in both advantaged and disadvantaged racial groups in the context of the Black Lives Matter Movement in Spring of 2020. In one pilot study and one main study, we confirmed that anger toward the system of racial inequalities mediated between injustice and collective action intentions, and that kama muta toward the movement mediated between collective efficacy and collective action intentions. Both mediations were found for both Black and White participants. We also observed additional unpredicted paths from anger to kama muta and from efficacy to anger. Together, this provides evidence for the pivotal role of emotions in collective action intentions, but also points out that appraisals need to be better understood. (shrink)

Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)

Recent judicial reforms after democratic transition have been substantial and relatively successful in Chile, but much less so in Argentina and Brazil. This article traces this variation in outcomes to the legal strategies of the prior authoritarian regimes. The Brazilian military regime of 1964–1985 was gradualist in its approach to the law, and had a high degree of civilian-military consensus in the legal sphere. It was not highly repressive in its deployment of lethal violence, and this combination of factors contributed (...) to a gradualist and consensual transition in which judicial reform was not placed high on the political agenda. The Argentine case of military rule between 1976 and 1983 was almost the opposite. The military sidestepped and even attacked the judiciary, engaging in almost entirely extrajudicial violence. This generated a “backlash” reform movement after the transition to democracy that was mostly retrospective and only partially successful. In Chile, in contrast, the military engineered a radical break with previous legality, engaged in violent repression, but made considerable efforts to reconstruct a judicial order. It was in the aftermath of this situation that reformers were able to push through a prospective and relatively successful judicial reform. This article's findings suggest that judicial reform may be more likely to succeed where the prior authoritarian regime was both repressive and legalistic, as in Chile, Poland, and South Africa, than where high degrees of repression were applied largely extrajudicially, as in Argentina, Cambodia, and Guatemala, or where the authoritarian regime was legalistic but not highly repressive, as in Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines. (shrink)

Recent works about ecumenical systems, where connectives from classical and intuitionistic logics can co-exist in peace, warmed the discussion on proof systems for combining logics. This discussion has been extended to alethic modalities using Simpson’s meta-logical characterization: necessity is independent of the viewer, while possibility can be either intuitionistic or classical. In this work, we propose a pure, label free calculus for ecumenical modalities, nEK\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf {nEK}$$\end{document}, where exactly one logical operator figures (...) in introduction rules and every basic object of the calculus can be read as a formula in the language of the ecumenical modal logic EK\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf {EK}$$\end{document}. We prove that nEK\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf {nEK}$$\end{document} is sound and complete w.r.t. the ecumenical birelational semantics and discuss fragments and extensions. (shrink)

Belnap–Dunn’s relevance logic, $\textsf{BD}$, was designed seeking a suitable logical device for dealing with multiple information sources which sometimes may provide inconsistent and/or incomplete pieces of information. $\textsf{BD}$ is a four-valued logic which is both paraconsistent and paracomplete. On the other hand, De and Omori, while investigating what classical negation amounts to in a paracomplete and paraconsistent four-valued setting, proposed the expansion $\textsf{BD2}$ of the four valued Belnap–Dunn logic by a classical negation. In this paper, we introduce a four-valued expansion (...) of BD called ${\textsf{BD}^\copyright }$, obtained by adding an unary connective ${\copyright }\,\$ which is a consistency operator (in the sense of the Logics of Formal Inconsistency, _LFI_s). In addition, this operator is the unique one with the following features: it extends to $\textsf{BD}$ the consistency operator of LFI1, a well-known three-valued _LFI_, still satisfying axiom _ciw_ (which states that any sentence is either consistent or contradictory), and allowing to define an undeterminedness operator (in the sense of Logic of Formal Undeterminedness, _LFU_s). Moreover, ${\textsf{BD}^\copyright }$ is maximal w.r.t. LFI1, and it is proved to be equivalent to BD2, up to signature. After presenting a natural Hilbert-style characterization of ${\textsf{BD}^\copyright }$ obtained by means of twist-structures semantics, we propose a first-order version of ${\textsf{BD}^\copyright }$ called ${\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }$, with semantics based on an appropriate notion of four-valued Tarskian-like structures called $\textbf{4}$ -structures. We show that in ${\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }$, the existential and universal quantifiers are interdefinable in terms of the paracomplete and paraconsistent negation, and not by means of the classical negation. Finally, a Hilbert-style calculus for ${\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }$ is presented, proving the corresponding soundness and completeness theorems. (shrink)

Se presentan y discuten las teorías de las emociones de William James y de Antonio Damasio haciendo énfasis en la intencionalidad de las emociones y en su entretejimiento con la racionalidad práctica. Se argumenta que la propuesta de James enfrenta varias dificultades para dar cuenta de ambos aspectos de las emociones y se muestra cómo la teoría neo-jamesiana de Damasio supera en parte algunas de esas dificultades, pero también da pie a otras objeciones. Al final se expone en forma breve (...) la propuesta de Jesse Prinz sobre las emociones como “evaluaciones corporalizadas”, la cual procura incluir al mismo tiempo el aspecto cognitivo de las emociones y su naturaleza corporal. (shrink)

Belnap–Dunn’s relevance logic, $\textsf{BD}$, was designed seeking a suitable logical device for dealing with multiple information sources which sometimes may provide inconsistent and/or incomplete pieces of information. $\textsf{BD}$ is a four-valued logic which is both paraconsistent and paracomplete. On the other hand, De and Omori, while investigating what classical negation amounts to in a paracomplete and paraconsistent four-valued setting, proposed the expansion $\textsf{BD2}$ of the four valued Belnap–Dunn logic by a classical negation. In this paper, we introduce a four-valued expansion (...) of BD called ${\textsf{BD}^\copyright }$, obtained by adding an unary connective ${\copyright }\,\$ which is a consistency operator (in the sense of the Logics of Formal Inconsistency, _LFI_s). In addition, this operator is the unique one with the following features: it extends to $\textsf{BD}$ the consistency operator of LFI1, a well-known three-valued _LFI_, still satisfying axiom _ciw_ (which states that any sentence is either consistent or contradictory), and allowing to define an undeterminedness operator (in the sense of Logic of Formal Undeterminedness, _LFU_s). Moreover, ${\textsf{BD}^\copyright }$ is maximal w.r.t. LFI1, and it is proved to be equivalent to BD2, up to signature. After presenting a natural Hilbert-style characterization of ${\textsf{BD}^\copyright }$ obtained by means of twist-structures semantics, we propose a first-order version of ${\textsf{BD}^\copyright }$ called ${\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }$, with semantics based on an appropriate notion of four-valued Tarskian-like structures called $\textbf{4}$ -structures. We show that in ${\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }$, the existential and universal quantifiers are interdefinable in terms of the paracomplete and paraconsistent negation, and not by means of the classical negation. Finally, a Hilbert-style calculus for ${\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }$ is presented, proving the corresponding soundness and completeness theorems. (shrink)

Analyzing the position of two philosophers whose views are recognizably divergent, W. O. Quine and M. Dummett, we intend to support a striking point of agreement between them: the idea that our logical principles constitute our principles about what there is, and therefore, that logic is metaphysics.

Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) has undergone dramatic transformations since its emergence as a distinct discipline. This paper aims to highlight the scope, power, and future promise of evo-devo to transform and unify diverse aspects of biology. We articulate key questions at the core of eleven biological disciplines—from Evolution, Development, Paleontology, and Neurobiology to Cellular and Molecular Biology, Quantitative Genetics, Human Diseases, Ecology, Agriculture and Science Education, and lastly, Evolutionary Developmental Biology itself—and discuss why evo-devo is uniquely situated to substantially improve (...) our ability to find meaningful answers to these fundamental questions. We posit that the tools, concepts, and ways of thinking developed by evo-devo have profound potential to advance, integrate, and unify biological sciences as well as inform policy decisions and illuminate science education. We look to the next generation of evolutionary developmental biologists to help shape this process as we confront the scientific challenges of the 21st century. (shrink)

The National Anti-Vivisection Hospital opened to patients in 1903, the only district hospital in London not financed by state-controlled funds, which refused it support because of its principles. For three decades the hospital treated the local poor and conscientious objectors to vivisection, who were assured that staff pledged not to experiment on animals or patients. After an overambitious building program, the hospital ran into financial difficulties, and the King’s Fund refused to help unless all references to antivivisection were removed from (...) its statutes. Thus it reopened as Battersea General in 1935, continuing to serve the borough until 1972. (shrink)

The paper builds on the postulate of “myths we live by,” which shape our imaginative life (and hence our social expectations), but which are also open to reflective study and reinvention. It applies this principle, in particular, to the concepts of love and vulnerability. We are accustomed to think of the condition of vulnerability in an objectifying and distancing way, as something that affects the bearers of specific (disadvantaged) social identities. Against this picture, which can serve as a pretext for (...) paternalist and controlling attitudes to the groups in question – notably to women – Anderson urges us to reimagine our vulnerability as a condition not merely of exposure to violence but of openness to mutual affection, love, and friendship. Hegel’s celebrated image of the owl of Minerva, which takes wing only with the coming of dusk, suggests an association of (philosophical) wisdom with negativity – with the experience of death or loss. Anderson, by contrast, proposes an alternative and more hopeful image of the dawn of enlightenment, in the guise of new ethical dispositions shaped by an emancipatory (and so, no longer an oppressive or sexist) conception of our capacity for love. Her main interlocutors or influences in this piece are Judith Butler (who contributes the idea of a “relational ontology”), Michèle Le Doeuff, and Mary Midgley. (shrink)

This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that (...) a saying/showing distinction arises there too. In particular, in the final sub-section of the essay, it is suggested that we can see in Wittgenstein’s later work an inducement to say what we are shown. (shrink)

This book is concerned with the history of metaphysics since Descartes. Taking as its definition of metaphysics 'the most general attempt to make sense of things', it charts the evolution of this enterprise through various competing conceptions of its possibility, scope, and limits. The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the early modern period, the late modern period in the analytic tradition, and the late modern period in non-analytic traditions. In its unusually wide range, A. W. Moore's (...) study refutes the tired old cliché that there is some unbridgeable gulf between analytic philosophy and philosophy of other kinds. It also advances its own distinctive and compelling conception of what metaphysics is and why it matters. Moore explores how metaphysics can help us to cope with continually changing demands on our humanity by making sense of things in ways that are radically new. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in Germany and later a US citizen, he was a founder of the philosophical movement known as Logical Empiricism. He was strongly influenced by a number of different philosophical traditions, and also by the German Youth Movement, the First World War, and radical socialism. This book places his central ideas in a broad cultural, political and intellectual context, showing how he synthesised many different (...) currents of thought to achieve a philosophical perspective that remains strikingly relevant in the twenty-first century. Its rich account of a philosopher's response to his times will appeal to all who are interested in the development of philosophy in the twentieth century. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of (...) the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

A.W. Price explores the views of Plato and Aristotle on how virtue of character and practical reasoning enable agents to achieve eudaimonia--the state of living or acting well. He provides a full philosophical analysis and argues that the perennial question of action within human life is central to the reflections of these ancient philosophers.

A lógica não contém teoremas puramente existenciais: as únicas sentenças existenciaisválidas são aquelas com análogas universais válidas. Aqui, mostramos que istorealmente é assim quando corretamente interpretado: toda validade ex- istencial possuiuma análoga universal simples, que também é válida. Também caracterizamos validadesuniversais e existenciais em termos de tautologias.

As earthquakes expose geological faults, so mental conflict reveals tendencies to rupture within the mind. Dissension is rife not only between people but also within them, for each of us is subject to a contrariety of desires, beliefs, motivations, aspirations. What image are we to form of ourselves that might best enable us to accept the reality of discord, or achieve the ideal of harmony? Greek philosophers offer us a variety of pictures and structures intended to capture the actual and (...) the possible either within a reason that fails to be resolute, or within a split soul that houses a play of forces. Reflection upon them alerts us to the elusiveness at once of mental reality, and of the understanding by which we hope to capture and transform it. Studying in turn the treatments of _Mental Conflict_ in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today. (shrink)

I am enormously grateful to everyone who has contributed to this double issue of Philosophical Topics, to Manuel Dries and Joseph Schear for conceiving the issue and initiating the process of inviting contributions, and to Ed Minar and Jack Lyons, former editor and current editor of the journal respectively, for their excellent work in bringing the issue into existence. Each contribution displays a level of engagement with my book1 that would have been gratifying even if the contribution had been confined (...) exclusively to the chapter that is its immediate focus. What I have found most gratifying, however, is the sensitivity that the contributors have shown to the broader project of the book and to the various connections and patterns that I try to trace across chapters. I thank them warmly for this.In the preface to my book I comment on the fact that I am a philosophical generalist, and I go on to apologize to “all those whose expertise I may have propagated without acknowledgement, or mangled, or worst of all ignored” (MST, xix). That certainly includes the present contributors. I take this opportunity to repeat the apology to them, an apology whose need I feel all the more keenly having read their contributions. (shrink)

In Thucydides' account of Melesander's expedition with six ships to Caria and Lycia there appears to me to be a difficulty which is universally ignored by commentators and fudged by translators. Thucydides describes the purpose of the expedition.

A. W. Moore argues in this bold and unusual book that it is possible to think about the world from no point of view. His argument involves discussion of a very wide range of fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of persons, the subject-matter of mathematics, realism and anti-realism, value, the inexpressible, and God. The result is a powerful critique of our own finitude. 'imaginative, original, and ambitious' Robert Brandom, Times Literary Supplement.

Talking Politics is a philosophical examination of some of the basic concepts of political discourse. Its primary focus is on the ordinary ; on what is said by politicians, in newspapers and by people in pubs, rather than on the works of political theorists. This is a work of , but not on political theory. Talking Politics is: * Invaluable as a source of reference for students, and contains a detailed index * Arranged thematically, around topics such as `Nation'. Each (...) entry has copious cross-references and suggestions for further reading A. W. Sparkes is uniquely qualified to write such a book, combining some thirty years' teaching as a philosopher with wide experience of, and a life-long fascination with, politics. His attitude is that of a critical, but uncynical, observer. (shrink)

DISCOURSE; EXPRESSION (i) 'Discourse' is a word with a variety of meanings. One of the more useful is as an omnibus word covering both thought and talk. ...

In this bold and innovative new work, A.W. Moore poses the question of whether it is possible for ethical thinking to be grounded in pure reason. In order to understand and answer this question, he takes a refreshing and challenging look at Kant’s moral and religious philosophy. Identifying three Kantian Themes – morality, freedom and religion – and presenting variations on each of these themes in turn, Moore concedes that there are difficulties with the Kantian view that morality can be (...) governed by ‘pure’ reason. He does however defend a closely related view involving a notion of reason as socially and culturally conditioned. In the course of doing this, Moore considers in detail, ideas at the heart of Kant’s thought, such as the categorical imperative, free will, evil, hope, eternal life and God. He also makes creative use of the ideas in contemporary philosophy, both within the analytic tradition and outside it, such as ‘thick’ ethical concepts, forms of life and ‘becoming those that we are’. Throughout the book, a guiding precept is that to be rational is to make sense, and that nothing is of greater value to use than making sense. (shrink)

Functional words are of substantial interest in moral philosophy because they appear to lie at the juncture of description and evaluation. This is no doubt the reason that they have played a significant part in much recent discussion of the relation between facts and values. Yet, in spite of the many discussions in which functional words have made an appearance, their significance for an understanding of the relation between facts and values remains unclear. A thorough-going examination of the nature of (...) functional words would appear to be in order. And while such a study is beyond the scope of a single article it should nevertheless be possible to make a beginning. That, at any rate, is my objective in what follows. (shrink)