Background: Patient autonomy has been promoted as the most important principle to guide difficult clinical decisions. To examine whether practising physicians indeed value patient autonomy above other considerations, physicians were asked to weight patient autonomy against three other criteria that often influence doctors’ decisions. Associations between physicians’ religious characteristics and their weighting of the criteria were also examined. Methods: Mailed survey in 2007 of a stratified random sample of 1000 US primary care physicians, selected from the American Medical Association masterfile. (...) Physicians were asked how much weight should be given to the following: (1) the patient’s expressed wishes and values, (2) the physician’s own judgment about what is in the patient’s best interest, (3) standards and recommendations from professional medical bodies and (4) moral guidelines from religious traditions. Results: Response rate 51% (446/879). Half of physicians (55%) gave the patient’s expressed wishes and values “the highest possible weight”. In comparative analysis, 40% gave patient wishes more weight than the other three factors, and 13% ranked patient wishes behind some other factor. Religious doctors tended to give less weight to the patient’s expressed wishes. For example, 47% of doctors with high intrinsic religious motivation gave patient wishes the “highest possible weight”, versus 67% of those with low (OR 0.5; 95% CI 0.3 to 0.8). Conclusions: Doctors believe patient wishes and values are important, but other considerations are often equally or more important. This suggests that patient autonomy does not guide physicians’ decisions as much as is often recommended in the ethics literature. (shrink)

Hume's is/ought distinction has long limited the role of empirical research in ethics, saying that data about what something is cannot yield conclusions about the way things ought to be. However, interest in empirical research in ethics has been growing despite this countervailing principle. We attribute some of this increased interest to a conceptual breakdown of the is/ought distinction. MacIntyre, in reviewing the history of the is/ought distinction, argues that is and ought are not strictly separate realms but exist in (...) a close relationship that is clarified by adopting a teleological orientation. We propose that, instead of recovering a teleological orientation, society tends to generate its own goals via democratic methods like those described by Rousseau or adopt agnosticism about teleology such as described by Richard Rorty. In both latter scenarios, the distinction between is and ought is obscured, and the role for empirical research grows, but for controversial reasons. MacIntyre warns that the is/ought distinction should remain, but reminds ethicists to make careful arguments about when and why it is legitimate to move from is to ought. (shrink)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was introduced in 2018 to harmonize data privacy and security laws across the European Union (EU). It applies to any organization collecting personal data in the EU. To date, service-level consent has been used as a proportionate approach for clinical trials, which implement low-risk, routine, service-wide interventions for which individual consent is considered inappropriate. In the context of public health research, GDPR now requires that individuals have the option to choose whether their data may (...) be used for research, which presents a challenge when consent has been given by the clinical service and not by individual service users. We report here on development of a pragmatic opt-out solution to this consent paradox in the context of a partner notification intervention trial in sexual health clinics in the UK. Our approach supports the individual’s right to withhold their data from trial analysis while routinely offering the same care to all patients. (shrink)

After setting up the classic Platonic doctrine of universals, Zabeeh reviews the Aristotelian and British empiricist attacks on this doctrine, and the doctrine of general ideas. Zabeeh's own "new" look consists in a reworking of many currently familiar ideas to come up with the position that universals are the meanings of general terms and the meanings of general terms are the way in which they are used. While this may do as the start of a semantical theory of universals, it (...) hardly touches the problem of their ontological status. The same basic semantical theory is compatible with realism, conceptualism, or nominalism, as Carnap has shown. Page 33 belongs in place of page 34, page 34 in place of page 32.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A popular, ecumenical effort that avoids theologizing, this book offers a short summary of each of the books of the Bible according to content, purpose, style, author and date.—E. A. R.

Twenty-five selections have been added to this introductory anthology, at least one in each of the eight sections. Most of these additions are from recent sources, and, in particular, the sections on "Body, Mind, and Death" and "Moral Judgments" have been beefed up through these additions. Edwards' section introductions have been revised over the original edition, but Pap's were left as is. The value of the previously excellent, annotated bibliographies has been enhanced by bringing them up to date. In all, (...) A Modern Introduction remains a first-rate text for topic-centered, introductory, philosophy courses.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Elsasser outlines in an informal but meticulous fashion an organismic biology which promises, in his opinion, to combine the best features of epigenetic vitalism and preformationist mechanism. Mechanistic reductionism is for Elsasser an unverifiable metaphysical hypothesis; i.e., if the postulate of infinite homogenous classes is dropped from the axiomatics of Van Neumann's proof that the state of any system is, in principle, Quantum Mechanically determinable, it becomes combinatorically obvious that biological systems and classes are radically inhomogenous [[sic]], a fact which (...) operationally bars the way to any complete reductionism. The door is thus opened to an open-ended theoretical biology in which all questions do not have a truth-functional equivalent answer according to the axioms and laws of the science, and prediction in the science becomes statistical in a nonabsolute way. Elsasser is a physicist with more than a casual acquaintance with biology and his argument benefits by his obvious expertise in both of these areas. Philosophically, however, he is a lightweight and relies, in particular, too much on the ontological ice that might be cut by operationalism. Theories are not verified in the stringent operational sense; they are confirmed in a way which is not logically tied to the requirement that all laws be inductively established. Elsasser, however, has so much to say on the problem of reductionism in biology that is of obvious value that the book is easily recommended over these caveats.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A good anthology of articles drawn mainly from the British and American journals over the past twenty-five years. Some of the names appearing are Ziff, Margolis, Weitz, Black, Hospers, Mothersill, Hofstadter, Aiken, Aldrich, Urmson, and Passmore. The editor has contributed an introduction and an additional article of his own. The book is divided into five sections, the titles of which indicate fairly enough their thematic contents. The sections are concerned with the problems of defining, appreciating, and evaluating works of art, (...) "Problems concerning Fiction, Metaphor, Belief, and Artistic Truth," the epistemological tangles surrounding Aesthetic Experience, and "The Nature of Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theories." The price is a bit steep for a paper cover book.--E. A. R. (shrink)

Fourteen essays ranging over issues in political philosophy, philosophy of language, theory of reference, aesthetics, philosophy of history, philosophical psychology, metaethics, "Foundations of Knowledge", "Wittgenstein and Austin". The final essay, "The Possibility of a Dialogue," by I. Mézáros, is a rather pessimistic post mortem on the "Cahiers de Royaumont", the proceedings of a 1959 conference on analytical philosophy held between the men of Oxford and some continental philosophers. From the perspective of continental philosophy, Mézáros is denying the possibility of a (...) meaningful dialogue until analytical philosophers extensively broaden their horizons and methods. A reading of the essays in this volume painfully bears out Mézáros judgment, though the issue of whether or how analytical philosophers ought to mend their ways is not as easily decided as Mézáros seems to indicate.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The editors of this book of readings have packed in a wealth of material in a way which evinces an imaginative conception of, as well as an ambitious program for a course in the philosophy of education. There are forty-three selections of varying completeness from thirty-six different authors; among the philosophers included are Kierkegaard, Schlick, Kant, Ayer, Blanshard, Scheffler, Stace, Moore, Feigl, Russell, Lewis, Dewey, James, Royce, and Peirce. Plato is the only pre-Kantian philosopher to make an appearance. Half of (...) the selections do not concern education or the philosophy of education directly. Rather, they consider one or more of the four main problem areas of philosophy which the editors have decided gear into problems in the philosophy of education most directly. These areas are the nature of philosophy, metaphysics or the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge, and the nature of value. The section on metaphysics is epistemologically slanted, as might be expected where the concern is for the relation of teaching and learning to the nature of reality. The statements of the philosophers on the general philosophical problems are given at the beginning of each of the sections and then followed by applications of the philosophical position by philosophers, once again, and educational theorists to the field of education. Since too often the philosophy of education is taught in the education rather than the philosophy department, the liberal dose of straight philosophy should prove extremely helpful to the student of education who is accustomed to receiving the philosophy appropriate to the philosophy of education in a highly diluted form.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Eighteen of Straus' papers, published in various journals and anthologies between 1930 and 1962, are included in this volume. They are divided into three sections: Phenomenological Studies, Anthropological Studies, and Clinical Studies. But cutting across these divisions is the recurring philosophical theme of the inadequacy of the behavioristic ideal in psychology and the similar inadequacy of the reductionistic mentality of that strain of contemporary philosophy which nurtures this ideal. Straus' critical moments are often more whimsical and polemical than philosophical. But (...) the real strength of the organic approach he defends are his specific analyses of such phenomena as memory, wakefulness, hallucinations, and human action. His phenomenological methods join up with rather than defer to the more rigorously philosophical versions thereof, and "make sense" out of the phenomena in a way that a logically, or ontologically, straightjacketed method might find impossible. This is not to make the trivial point that, in the end, Straus is a scientist, not a philosopher; he is a scientist, but one who has something philosophical to say. Among other important papers are included "The Upright Posture," "Lived Movement," and "Descartes' Significance for Modern Psychology."—E. A. R. (shrink)

Selections from "twentieth century sources" which include Moore, Broad, Price, Paul, Lewis, Chisholm, and Warnock. Sense data and phenomenalism are the most heavily represented topics. The choice is substantial, and the editor has skillfully arranged selections in pairs which take up opposite sides of the same problem. This appears to be the best buy in paper on this subject.—E. A. R.

The 1964 Congress of the Australasian Association of Philosophy was the occasion for the delivery of the five major papers in this volume. Comments by J. J. C. Smart on four of the papers are included, since, not surprisingly, discussion of the identity theory was centered almost exclusively around Smart's formulation of it. Of the four papers upon which Smart commented, three are very critical of the identity theory while the fourth is sympathetic but uncommitted. The fifth paper, "Ryle and (...) the Mechanical Hypothesis," is a greatly expanded version of the paper Brian Medlin read to the Congress. Medlin's paper is largely an ad hoc defense of central state materialism against objections which might be raised by a Rylean. Rollins and Herbst have added replies to Medlin's paper; Herbst's comments are, in particular, quite acute in the way in which they bring out the ideological undersurface of the identity theory. In the critical papers, Gunner argues that Smart has not sufficiently clarified the notion of identity so as to make the thesis meaningful; Rollins argues that Smart has failed to notice the context-dependency of an explanation, i.e., an explanation is an explanation for some--but not necessarily all--purposes; Herbst suggests that Smart has given no intelligible account of how the identity theory could be verified without begging the question. In his "Comments" Smart reaffirms his faith in physicalism and announces his recent conversion to a Feyerabendian contextual account of a truth. This conversion solves all the difficulties of the theory. The effects are inconclusive, when not evasive.--E. A. R. (shrink)

A translation of Rahner's Schriften zur Theologie, II, which leaves only Vol. III untranslated; one presumes that it will be forthcoming from Helicon soon. Together with B. J. F. Lonergan, Rahner, of course, bestrides the Catholic theological world like a Colossus, and the more people like Kruger have the courage to tackle his German, the more his stature will increase in this country. There are eleven essays in this volume covering such issues as "Freedom in the Church," "The Dignity and (...) Freedom of Man," "The Lay Apostolate," and "The Resurrection of the Body." The theme of "Personal and Sacramental Piety" is worked out in general and then applied in a striking fashion in the essay "Forgotten Truths Concerning the Sacrament of Penance." While Rahner is undoubtedly a dogmatic theologian, in the technical sense of that adjective, even the philosopher will find plenty to cut his teeth on in these essays. Doubters are invited to digest the chapter, "On the Question of a Formal Existential Ethics."—E. A. R. (shrink)

In this, the Aquinas Lecture for 1966, Johann has set for himself the formidable task of showing how belief in God makes a difference within the humanistic climate of contemporary philosophy. Johann draws heavily on the philosophy of experience of Dewey, but concludes with an attempt to show that the wholeness and integrity of experience which Dewey said it is the task of philosophy to advance cannot be conceived even in intention without acknowledging God as the Transcendental Initiative which grounds (...) the possibility of the humanistic ideal. As Johann presents his argument it smacks of a pragmatic transcription of the Ontological argument: as such, it shares the fascinating persuasiveness of the latter argument, but also its logical shortcomings. Of course, it is open to Johann to stigmatize entire frameworks of "logical considerations" as disguised congealings of atrophied metaphysics: the more senescent forms of the latter for Johann would be those which have not yet grasped that thought, hence philosophy, only has meaning insofar as it is related to action. The Lecture is systematically insightful but cries out for a more highly articulated metaphysics upon which to base its conclusions: Johann hints that this metaphysics is to be found in Blondel and John Macmurray. But something even more radical seems required. If this be Hegel, then one hopes Johann will make the most of it in future work.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The volume includes representative and self-contained selections from fifteen authors covering various aspects of the problem of free will. Included are readings from Jonathan Edwards, Calvin, Schlick, Peirce, James, Mill, F. S. C. Schiller, Hospers, Swedenborg, Hume, Stace, Bertocci, Ledger Wood, and Douglas Browning. Enteman has added an elementary introduction and an appendix on "Microphysics and Free Will." Noticeably absent are selections from existential and phenomenological sources. There is a good bibliography, one which makes the reader envious that it was (...) not invaded more extensively for the purposes of the present volume.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Eleven previously published essays presenting a moderately unified argument in favor of the general conception of what Jonas calls the "Philosophy of Life," as well as detailed arguments pointing in the direction of a non-dualistic, realistic, and non-naturalistic philosophy of mind. The "nons" are deliberately placed, as Jonas spends the better part of the book questioning the tenability of dualistic and, especially, materialistic and mechanistically oriented theories of mind. With extraordinary historical sensitivity—at times threatening to dissolve a problem by laying (...) bare the conceptual confusions which surrounded its origins—and with a better than working knowledge of biology and physiology, not to mention anthropology, Jonas argues, on the one hand, that the clues to the dynamism and structure of mind are to be found in such organic features as sentience, motility, and emotion: e.g., the conceptual strands that unite in the notions of causality and truth are rooted in the respective experiences of force and resistance, and vision. On the other hand, Jonas argues for the irreducibility of the subject-object structure of man's relation to nature on the grounds that this is the necessary burden of subjectivity. In all, the book is an impressive performance.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is an excellent addition to Bobbs-Merrill's "Text and Commentary Series." In addition to the text of the Principles, there are eleven critical essays, three of which are original with this volume. Turbayne has arranged the essays to parallel the unfolding of the major themes in the Principles. Thus, he himself opens with "Berkeley's Metaphysical Grammar," which picks up and develops the theme of the centrality of the study of language to the philosophical enterprise, a point Berkeley makes in his (...) "Preface." Next, W. H. Hay and Richard Van Iten are paired together with different perspectives on Berkeley's nominalism. By way of comment on esse is percipi, G. E. Moore and W. T. Stace present their respective refutations of idealism and realism. Richard Popkin discusses skepticism and Berkeley. Popper examines the ways in which Berkeley anticipated Mach and Einstein, as well as significant features of contemporary philosophy of science. Turbayne and Cornman offer differing appraisals of the philosophy of mind that is sketched in the Principles. Paul Olscamp attempts to systematize the elements of Berkeley's critical theory. Finally, J. D. Mabbott treats of "The Place of God in Berkeley's Philosophy" and argues for a radical voluntarism in Berkeley--a not surprising analysis, but one which often gets buried under the epistemological issues raised in the Principles. Turbayne has also supplied an excellent introduction, a chronology of Berkeley's life, a working bibliography, and an analytical index. This enhances the usefulness of an already first-rate book.--E. A. R. (shrink)

This addition to Herder's "Quaestiones Disputatae" Series is a portion of Rahner's and Overhage's Das Problem der Hominisation; it is very nicely self-contained. After a rapid review of what the ecclesiastical and scriptural sources have to say about the problem of human origins and evolution as a possible explanation of these origins, Rahner launches into a metaphysical analysis of the concepts of "spirit" and "matter," on the one hand, and "causality" and "becoming," on the other. The method is transcendental and (...) the epistemology is that of a critical realism like that of Maréchal and Lonergan. The major innovation comes in Rahner's interpretation of Aristotelian efficient causality. Taking noetic transcendence, i.e., intentional becoming, as the paradigm for all becoming—anything less being a deficient form of the activity of being as spirit—Rahner argues in favor of a cause transcending itself in the production of an effect, whether immanent or transitive. Thus Rahner sees no essential contradiction between the traditional notion of causality, so interpreted, and a theory of biological and human emergence. The going is always rough through Rahner, but the speculative asides he scatters throughout this book on such questions as the unity of the biosphere and sub-organic telism are enough in themselves to justify the trip.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This slim volume can best be characterized as a condensed reworking of the theme of The Phenomenon of Man. Of course, as more and more of Teilhard's work becomes available, it becomes clear that everything he wrote is an earlier transcription or later reworking of the themes of "corpusculization," "biogenesis," "noogenesis," in short, Teilhard's dominantly stated theme of "anthropogenesis." To these teleologically generated levels of emergence of the primordial unity of spirit and matter-categoreally expressed in terms of the internal relatedness (...) of "inner" and "outer"—the theologian, and indeed Teilhard, would want to add Christogenesis—what St. Paul terms "the filling out of Christ's body." It seems hopeless to expect that Teilhard's sweeping synthesis will ever be able to meet the logical tests required by even the broad consensus in contemporary philosophy of science. Perhaps this consensus will have to be adjusted. But insofar as Teilhard claims to have presented a scientific theory, some criteria of meaning and truth will have to be met. But this is a challenge, not a rebuttal.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Six papers by theoretical and clinical psychologists, a psychiatrist, and a neurologist, including, in addition to the editors, Seymour Fisher, Herman Witkin, Macdonald Critchley, J. de Ajuriaguerra, and Sidney E. Cleveland. The four middle papers present various findings of clinical psychology on the way in which the individual perceives and identifies with his body. Werner's introduction sets the discussion—albeit sketchily—within the context of recent work in phenomenology on the "body schema" or "body image." Merleau-Ponty is the prime example. In the (...) final paper de Ajuriaguerra returns to the philosophical conclusions which might receive explication and support on the basis of the four middle papers: egological unity is manifested in and mediated through corporeal unity, but in such a way that corporeal unity is not a logically sufficient guarantee of itself and requires an ontological account to ground its characteristic unity—though not necessarily another entity, substantialistic or otherwise. epistemologically, the bogey of psychologism must be rejected in the face of the facts that emerge from the studies in this book and elsewhere: namely, that the perceived world is grasped primordially in relation to the self as necessarily mediated through the body. The implications of this analysis are obviously far-reaching, and the only regret is that they could not be carried out more systematically and extensively in this book.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Adherence to a few basic principles of textbook reading compilation have made this one of the more worthwhile introductory philosophy texts. In the first place, the editors have given lengthy and frequently complete texts. Anselm's Proslogium, Descartes' Meditations, Plato's Phaedo, and Kant's Prolegomena are given complete or nearly complete; there is a ninety-one page extract from Locke's Essay, over fifty pages of James and nearly forty pages from Whitehead. This still leaves room for ample primary material by Leibniz, Hume, and (...) Schopenhauer. The plan of the book is to frame the important primary text with intellectually contemporaneous discussion of the problems treated in the primary text, and then to bracket each section with a prologue and epilogue drawn—except in the final section where Plato has the last word—from twentieth-century literature relevant to the issues under discussion in each section. The authors are thus able to provide an historical and thematic introduction to philosophy, which together cannot help but impress the beginning student with the unity of philosophical experience. Obviously no single textbook will ever escape the need for supplementation; this one in particular will require those who would like their students to be exposed to more phenomenology and existentialism, and, to a lesser degree, analytical philosophy, to introduce additional reading. But Epstein and Kennedy have provided the basic skeleton to which may be added as much flesh as the instructor desires.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The merits of this sourcebook are too innumerable to list in entirety but it must be said that it has achieved an almost perfect balance among the requirements of representativeness, comprehensiveness, and structured presentation. The only traditions in religion which are not represented are Christianity and Judaism, and Eliade has made the right decision to presuppose a familiarity with this material on the part of the student so that he might present more material, within a manageable compass, on religions which (...) are less familiar to the occidental mind. There are 360 separate but moderately cross-referenced entries, and in choosing these Eliade has drawn on the primary documents, of course, most heavily. Where these are lacking, however, as is particularly the case with primitive religions, he has provided deftly selected accounts taken from anthropological studies. The selections are grouped around six main themes: I. Gods, Goddesses, and Supernatural Beings; II. Myths of Creation and Origin; III. Man and the Sacred; IV. Death, Afterlife, Eschatology; V. Specialists of the Sacred: From Medicine Men to Mystics and Founders of Religions; VI. Speculations on Man and God. Each of these sections is then subdivided into between five and ten parts, with occasional further structuration going on in some of the subparts. The book would complement any systematic study in comparative religion, and, as might be suspected, meshes beautifully with Eliade's own Patterns in Comparative Religion.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A very readable and for the most part nontechnical explanation of the logic, structure, and operation of computers. Fink sketches approaches to the questions of computer-brain analogies, computer creativity, and artificial intelligence but these are not his main concern. The book is designed for those who have more than a casual interest but less than a professional competence, and is successful within these limits.—E. A. R.

A non-technical review of the state of various of the life sciences—biology, genetics, ethology-as they provide data upon which to erect a philosophy of life. The philosophical problems taken up include emergence, the mind-body relation, and the relevance of evolutionary theory to questions in ethics. Thorpe is at his best when he is operating within the field of scientific biology, not so much as one reporting the results of specific research, but as one making an attempt to see some unity (...) in the total enterprise and results of the life sciences. From this perspective Thorpe finds organicism an hypothesis that is supported much more heavily than any form of reductivism, even at the level of molecular biology where Thorpe questions the mechanistic model that has been imposed, via information theory, on such elemental biological phenomena as gene structure and the working of DNA. Thorpe's philosophizing, however, though often suggestive, never takes the form of sustained argument, and one is sometimes hard put to draw the line between it and bits of biological speculation. Provocative and summative rather than definitive or original, but still quite worthwhile.—E. A. R. (shrink)

James Collins has turned his talent for painstaking and definitive scholarship to the philosophy of religion, and nobody with an interest in this particular area of philosophy, or in the general development of modern philosophy in the hands of Hume, Kant, and Hegel, can afford to miss consulting this book. The philosophy of religion, as distinct from the older style natural theology, theodicy, and straight theological treatments of religion, is a discipline whose need was first felt when the scientific picture (...) of the universe began to declare its independence from, and possible ascendency over, the theistically ordered anthropological and cosmological harmony of the universe. As Collins details in a balanced manner, it was Hume who first formulated a program to meet this need. He did it in such a way, however, that he made religion a legitimate object of, but wholly external and even inimical in content to, philosophy, particularly epistemology and ethics. Building upon Hume, Kant defined the epistemological issue more precisely—"I have denied knowledge to save belief"—and reinterpreted the relation between morality and religion as one of complementarity rather than contradictoriness. It remained for Hegel to internalize the relation between the content of religion and the content of philosophy and thus to reduce the former to an anticipation of the latter. Collins' exposition is interpenetrated by a critical concern supplied by the dialectical development of the idea of the philosophy of religion from Hume through Kant to Hegel, and by his own proposal for integrating the genuine and irreducible insights of each of these three classical philosophies within a realistic philosophy of religion that remains basically theistic. The book is an expanded form of Collins' St. Thomas More Lectures at Yale University; it would be an impressive addition to any series of lectures.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Arguing against Jaeger's contention that in his Academy days Aristotle was content to defer to the ontology of Plato, in particular the Theory of Forms, while at the same time developing the logic of the Categories which is at odds with the Theory, Owen shows that the formulation of the logical doctrine presupposed a criticism and rejection of the Platonic ontology; the more general point Owen makes is that logic and ontology were never distinct in Aristotle's mind, and his development (...) in both areas can be understood only through an appreciation of their interdependence in his intellectual Odyssey. Platonism there is in Aristotle, but it is most fruitfully traced in Aristotle's thought as a function of Aristotle's early rejection of another distinctive Platonic theme, i.e., Plato's conviction that Dialectic was a master science, and subsequent return to this theme in his later work where he installs metaphysics in the chair of first philosophy. That this return to Platonism represents an advance over Plato is due to the fact that it is conversion mediated through Aristotle's doctrine of equivocals.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Al Kindi was, according to Rescher, one of the first of the Medieval Arabian philosophers who took science rather than theology as the locus for his philosophical efforts. Rescher's well-ordered bibliography is meant to provide the most essential part of the research apparatus for the as-yet-unwritten comprehensive study of Al-Kindi and the place of his work in the history of philosophy.—E. A. R.

This volume, the latest in the project of publishing the complete works of Teilhard in English, exhibits Teilhard's cosmic vision breaking into cosmic prayer and the near-mystical desire "to proclaim... the innumerable prolongations of your [Christ's] incarnate Being in the world of matter". Along with "The Mass on the World," "Christ in the World of Matter," and "The Spiritual Power of Matter" are a collection of "Pensées" drawn from both published and as yet unpublished sources. Most akin to The Divine (...) Milieu, these essays and selections raise acutely, once again, the question of what is traditional and developmental, and what is revolutionary in Teilhard's conception of Christian spirituality—E. A. R. (shrink)

Volume VI in Doubleday's Modern Studies in Philosophy series. Martin is responsible for the ten Locke essays, Armstrong for the twelve on Berkeley. The essays on Locke are by Ryle, Yolton, Jackson, Barnes, Bennett, Flew, Monson, Macpherson, and Ryan. The last three cover Locke's political philosophy while the others inevitably concern themselves with Locke's psychology and epistemology. The Berkeley essays are by Broad, Luce, Grave, Marc-Wogau, Cummins, Mabbott, Bennett, Furlong, Beardsley, Thomson, and Popper. Popper's essay is on "Berkeley as Precursor (...) of Mach and Einstein." As with Locke, the other topics are predictable, though a total of three essays are devoted to the role of "God" in Berkeley's philosophy. An index and a short bibliography are appended.--E. A. R. (shrink)

In terms of the details of Plato's life, the composition and order of the Dialogues and Epistles, and the political and scholastic climate of Plato's Athens and the broader Hellenic culture, this is a daringly imaginative book; critics may find it too imaginative. Ryle argues against the authenticity of all the Epistles, basing his conclusion on a bit of close detective work involving the date of Dionysius I's death and the date of Plato's invitation to Syracuse: Epistle VII is all (...) a bit of baseless Dionist propaganda. Ryle's conjecture that the majority of the Dialogues were designed for public dramatization and open competition, on the model of the Greek tragedies, at local and Olympic games is a distinct possibility. But will we be convinced by the many "straws" that support the hypothesis that the Apology-Crito-Phaedo sequence of Dialogues was written by Plato, not to justify Socrates, but to defend himself against a contemporary charge of defamation? that the Academy was founded in 371, not 387? that the Phaedrus was composed in 361-360, after the Laws? that the Republic was never published in Plato's lifetime? While Ryle vigorously supports all these contentions, inconsistencies or more plausible hypothesis remain. The book is unfortunately completely silent about any of the substantive issues in Plato's philosophy; but perhaps enough has been gained if Plato scholars are sent scurrying back to the ancillary Greek philosophies and histories, not to mention the stylometrists.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Thirty-one essays by thirty psychologists and philosophers, treating, roughly, methodological, systematic, and miscellaneous "issues." Some of the psychologists and—alas—too many of the philosophers simply put in an appearance; but there is some excellent material. Piaget's "Psychology and Philosophy" points out the priority of the symbolic abstraction from action rather than language in the learning process of the child, a fact which should have consequences for certain philosophical theories of meaning. Bertocci ably defends a "Personalistic Psychology," while, in the best of (...) the philosophers' contributions, R. S. Peters distinguishes between active and passive emotions—between wanting and wishing—using Freud as both a source and exemplum. Pribram argues philosophically and neurophysiologically for what he terms a "Structural Pragmatism"; a similar view is developed very suggestively by Razran in his essay, "Evolutionary Psychology: Levels of Learning—and Perception and Thinking." The holistic as opposed to the atomistic approach in psychology gets in the final word in Wolman's "Principles of Monistic Transitionism." The editor provides an excellent, annotated bibliography of books on philosophical psychology.—E. A. R. (shrink)

An attempt on the part of one of the pioneer neurophysiologists to summarize and relate the evidence for a correlation between psychic processes and the functional organization of the brain as expressed in neural processes. The thesis of the book is that the subjective contents of consciousness are both correlated with and dependent upon cerebral structure and processes, a relatively uncontroversial thesis these days. From a philosophical point of view, it is interesting that Hess never speaks of the possible reduction, (...) logical or otherwise, of psychic contents to brain processes, but, in fact, implies that such a thesis is meaningless given the present methodology of neurophysiology. An extensive bibliography has been included along with an index.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is a translation of the fourth of the original seven fascicles of Bréhier's standard Histoire de la philosophie. The three prior fascicles have already appeared from the University of Chicago Press. The virtues of Bréhier's history are its extraordinary readability and unpretentious scholarship. The philosophers covered in depth by Bréhier are Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Locke, with lighter treatment being given to the Cambridge Platonists, Bayle, and Fontenelle. The bibliographies are neatly accessible at the end (...) of each chapter, more than adequate, and have been brought up to date through 1965.—E. A. R. (shrink)