Cheng Man-ch’ing (1901–1975) is as responsible as anyone for the wide popularity of taijiquan in the West. While his stature as a master and teacher of taijiquan is legendary, he is less well-known as a philosopher. Yet Cheng wrote a number of philosophical commentaries on Chinese classics that shed light on his understanding of taijiquan. In this paper I propose that a consideration of Cheng’s philosophical reflections shows him to be a twentieth century Neo-Confucian who saw taijiquan as a key (...) component of the overall aim of moral self-cultivation. In transmitting taijiquan to his fellow Chinese and to the West, Cheng was attempting to convey traditional Chinese thought and action as expressed in Neo-Confucian moral ideals. For Cheng, taijiquan was more than a martial art or physical exercise; it was a way of life. (shrink)

As the perfect companion to introduction to ethics courses, Dell'Olio and Simon's reader includes the most influential ethical theories without overwhelming the beginning student. It contains a variety of readings encompassing contemporary and classic philosophers, male and female perspectives of both western and non-western ethical traditions, and readings in both theoretical and applied ethics as well as a section on 'living the good life.' Useful introduction with thought provoking study questions and suggestions for further readings accompany each chapter which (...) make it easier for students to understand and appreciate their reading. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that near-death experiences (NDEs) provide a rational basis for belief in life after death. My argument is a simple one and is modeled on the argument from religious experience for the existence of God. But unlike the proponents of the argument from religious experience, I stop short of claiming that NDEs prove the existence of life after death. Like the argument from religious experience, however, my argument turns on whether or not there is good reason (...) to believe that NDEs are authentic or veridical. I argue that there is good reason to believe that NDEs are veridical and that therefore it is reasonable to believe in the existence of what they seem to be experiences of, namely, a continued state of consciousness after the death of the body. I will then offer some comments on the philosophical import of NDEs, as well as reflections on the current state of contemporary philosophy in light of the neglect of this phenomenon. (shrink)

One motivation for the recent interest in virtue ethics in contemporary moral thought is the view that deontological or duty-based ethics requires the notion of God as absolute law giver. It has been claimed by Elizabeth Anscombe, for example, that there could be no coherent moral obligation, no moral ought, independent of divine command, and that, in the absence of belief in God, moral philosophy best pursue an ethic of character or virtue over an ethic of obligation or duty. The (...) underlying assumption here is that an ethics of virtue, unlike an ethics of duty, is best developed independently of a conception of God. In this paper I argue that this view is misleading and obscures the need of virtue ethics for the concept of God. In making my philosophical point, I look to the work of Charles Taylor and suggest that any contemporary ethics of virtue, in order to meet its own desired aim of retrieving a viable moral self, requires a “deep” conception of the good, and that the most viable source for this conception is the theistic notion of God. On this account, the ethics of virtue turns out to be no more independent of the concept of God than an ethics of duty or obligation. (shrink)

This essay considers recent criticism of the use of inclusive language within Christian discourse, particularly the reference to God as “Mother.” The author argues that these criticisms fail to establish that the supplemental usage of “God the Mother,” in addition to the traditional usage of “God the Father,” is inappropriate for Christian God-talk. Some positive reasons for referring to God as “Mother” are also offered, not the least of which is its helpfulness in overcoming overly restrictive conceptions of God.

The twelfth-century Neo-Confucian philosopher, Zhu Xi, has often been compared to the thirteenth-century Christian philosopher, Thomas Aquinas. In this essay, I explore the similarities between these two thinkers, focusing on their respective accounts of the metaphysical foundations of moral self-cultivation. I suggestthat both philosophers play similar roles within their respective traditions and share similar aims. In general, both philosophers seek to appropriate ideas of rivalintellectual traditions in order to extend the moral vision of their home traditions, and both hope to (...) achieve their goals without denying the primary orientationsof those traditions. Zhu Xi and Aquinas are shown to employ similar strategies, and to make use of similar metaphysical principles, to unite the humanistic andspiritual dimensions of moral self-cultivation into one synthetic vision. I will conclude by offering some reflections on the following questions: (1) what can the Neo-Confucian and the Thomist ethical traditions learn from one another? And (2) what can those of us engaged in inter-cultural philosophical and religiousdialogue learn from the masters of these traditions? (shrink)

This is a response to Wesley J. Wildman’s “Behind, Between, and Beyond Anthropomorphic Models of Ultimate Reality.” While I agree with much of what Wildman writes, I raise questions concerning standards for evaluating models of ultimate reality and the plausibility of ranking such models. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.

Deflationists hold that it does not seem to us, in experience, as though time robustly passes. There is some recent empirical evidence that appears to support this contention. Equally, empirical evidence suggests that we naïvely represent time as dynamical. Thus deflationists are faced with an explanatory burden. If, as they maintain, the world seems to us in experience as though it is non-dynamical, then why do we represent time as dynamical? This paper takes up the challenge of investigating, on the (...) part of the deflationist, one candidate explanation. We hypothesise that people’s belief that the future is what we call deliberatively open partly explains why they represent time as dynamical. In a series of two experiments we test this hypothesis. We find no evidence that beliefs about deliberative openness explain why people represent time as dynamical. Hence there remains an explanatory burden for the deflationist to discharge. (shrink)

Heidegger's later thought is a thinking of things, so argues Andrew J. Mitchell in The Fourfold. Heidegger understands these things in terms of what he names "the fourfold"--a convergence of relationships bringing together the earth, the sky, divinities, and mortals--and Mitchell's book is the first detailed exegesis of this neglected aspect of Heidegger's later thought. As such it provides entré to the full landscape of Heidegger's postwar thinking, offering striking new interpretations of the atomic bomb, technology, plants, animals, weather, (...) time, language, the holy, mortality, dwelling, and more. What results is a conception of things as ecstatic, relational, singular, and, most provocatively, as intrinsically tied to their own technological commodification. A major new work that resonates beyond the confines of Heidegger scholarship, The Fourfold proposes nothing less than a new phenomenological thinking of relationality and mediation for understanding the things around us. (shrink)

Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as (...) belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality. Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts—like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy—have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy. (shrink)

One proposed explanation for a particular kind of temporal preference lies in a disparity between the emotional intensity of memory compared to anticipation. According to the memory/anticipation disparity explanation, the utility of anticipation of a particular event if that event is future, whether positive or negative, is greater than the utility of retrospection of that same event if it is past, whether positive or negative, and consequently, overall utility is maximised when we prefer negative events to be located in the (...) past rather than the future, and positive ones in the future rather than the past. To have this preference is to be (at least apparently) future biased. If this explanation is correct, it would tend to confer rational justification upon these preferences. This paper empirically investigates this explanation. Our results suggest that, at most, this explanation might be a partial one of some people’s preferences some of the time, rather than a general explanation of future bias. In turn, this lends some indirect support to a competing explanation that appeals to temporal asymmetries in emotion and attention. Since that explanation would arguably tend not to confer rational justification upon (apparently) future-biased preferences, we argue that our findings provide some reason to be sceptical that these preferences are, in general, rationally justified. (shrink)

This book brings together an international group of scholars to discuss the ramifications of Heidegger's Black Notebooks for philosophy and the humanities. In contrast to both those who seek to exonerate Heidegger and those who simply condemn him, they urge careful reading and rereading of his work to turn Heideggerian thought against itself.

Empirical investigation of the conditions under which people prefer, or disprefer, causal explanation, has suggested to many that our judgements about what causally explains what are context-sensitive in a number of ways. This has led many to suppose that whether or not a causal explanation obtains depends on contextual factors: that causal explanation is context-sensitive. Surprisingly, most accounts of metaphysical explanation, by contrast, suppose it to be context insensitive. Only recently have accounts been developed of metaphysical explanation on which it (...) is context-sensitive. To date, however, there is no empirical evidence about the context sensitivity of metaphysical explanation. In what follows we test the judgements of non-philosophers, and find that amongst non-philosophers, at least, metaphysical explanations are context-sensitive. We then consider the implications of this finding for theorising about metaphysical explanation. (shrink)

There are two kinds of time bias: near bias and future bias. While philosophers typically hold that near bias is rationally impermissible, many hold that future bias is rationally permissible. Call this normative hybridism. According to arbitrariness objections, certain patterns of preference are rationally impermissible because they are arbitrary. While arbitrariness objections have been leveled against both near bias and future bias, the kind of arbitrariness in question has been different. In this article we investigate whether there are forms of (...) arbitrariness that are common to both kinds of preferences and, hence, whether there are versions of the arbitrariness objection that are objections to both near bias and future bias. If there are, then this might go some way toward undermining normative hybridism and to defending thoroughgoing time-neutralism. (shrink)

This paper offers a composite portrait of the concept of magnanimity in nineteenth-century America, focusing on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. A composite portrait, as a method in the history of philosophy, is designed to bring out characteristic features of a group's philosophizing in order to illuminate characteristic features that may still resonate in today's philosophy. Compared to more standard methods in the historiography of philosophy, the construction of a composite portrait de-privileges the views of individual (...) authors. These philosophers saw the virtue of magnanimity as a remedy for a number of modern ills. American philosophers suggest that the best sort of magnanimity is acquired by adopting the correct relation to the natural world, including new forms of inquiry, or by adopting a life of voluntary poverty. Magnanimous individuals are critics of capitalism and offer themselves as exemplars of a better, experimental life. (shrink)

Ushenko presented his philosophy of logic in vehement opposition to "the postulationist theory." In the endeavor to amputate logic from philosophy and absorb it within mathematics, the postulationists viewed logic as an isolated object-logic to be discussed in meta-logic and construed its symbolic formulas as a game played according to arbitrarily established rules. The objections Ushenko raised are no longer novel, but twenty years ago the entire controversy was new. Above all, he stressed the numerous difficulties entangling the meta-logic. He (...) scored the menace of an infinite regress of meta-logics, and insisted that the consequences of Gödel's work necessarily frustrate the initial great expectations of the postulationists. No purely formal system can be internally proved to be self-consistent and certainly no formal language can ever become as comprehensive as English, though the price of such comprehensiveness is the inevitable occurrence of contradictory sentences. Moreover, he argued that, despite the postulationists' pretense that rules like the principle of non-contradiction were mere conventions for playing the game of logic, these rules proved ubiquitous by trespassing from the object-logic and intruding into the ultimate reaches of the meta-logic. (shrink)

The purpose of this multi-study article was to investigate the roles of adaptability and social support in predicting a variety of psychological outcomes. Data were collected from Year 12 college students, university students, and non-studying members of the general public. Findings showed that, beyond variance attributable to social support, adaptability made a significant independent contribution to psychological wellbeing and psychological distress across all studies. Beyond the effects of adaptability, social support was found to make a significant independent contribution to most (...) wellbeing outcomes. In a multi-group analysis comparing predictors of psychological wellbeing in university students and non-studying adults, where the same outcome measures were used, it was found that adaptability played a stronger role for university students, whereas social support played a stronger role for non-studying adults. Finally, there was no evidence of an interaction between adaptability and social support predicting psychological outcomes—adaptability and social support operated as independent main effects. These findings demonstrate the importance of adaptability and social support in uniquely predicting psychological wellbeing in different sample groups. It is argued here that these two factors, should be given greater consideration in discussions of psychological wellbeing, and are relevant to psychological wellbeing at different major developmental life stages. (shrink)

Boarding school is a major educational option for many students (e.g., students living in remote areas, or whose parents are working interstate or overseas, etc.). This study explored the motivation, engagement, and achievement of boarding and day students who are educated in the same classrooms and receive the same syllabus and instruction from the same teachers (thus a powerful research design to enable unique comparisons). Among 2,803 students (boardingn= 481; dayn= 2,322) from 6 Australian high schools and controlling for background (...) attributes and personality, we found predominant parity between boarding and day students in their motivation, engagement, and achievement. We also found that classroom-average motivation, engagement, and achievement was not significantly affected by the number of boarders (relative to day students) in the classroom. In addition, the effects of boarding were generally not moderated by students’ background or personality attributes. We conclude that boarders have academic opportunities and outcomes that are comparable to their day student counterparts. Implications for students, teachers, and parents are discussed. (shrink)

I read Henry David Thoreau as an environmental virtue theorist. In this paper, I use Thoreau’s work as a tool to explore the relation between the virtue of greatness of soul and environmental virtues. Reflecting on connections between Thoreau’s texts and historical discussions of greatness of soul, or magnanimity, I offer a novel conception of magnanimity. I argue that (1) to become magnanimous, most individuals need to acquire the environmental virtue of simplicity; and (2) magnanimous individuals must possess the environmental (...) virtue of benevolence in order to achieve their goals. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis according to (...) which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

. The current literature in the Artificial Intelligence and Law field reveals uncertainty concerning the potential role of deontic logic in legal knowledge representation. For instance, the Logic Programming Group at Imperial College has shown that a good deal can be achieved in this area in the absence of explicit representation of the deontic notions. This paper argues that some rather ordinary parts of the law contain structures which, if they are to be represented in logic, will call for use (...) of a reasonably sophisticated deontic logic. (shrink)

Board composition, insider participation on compensation committees, and director compensation practices can potentially cause conflicts of interest between directors and shareholders. If these corporate governance structures result in situations where actions beneficial to directors do not also benefit shareholders, then shareholders may suffer.Corporate ethics programs usually address conflicts of interest that may arise in the firm''s activities. Some boards of directors take active roles in their firms'' ethics programs by actively overseeing the programs. This paper empirically examines the relationship between (...) ethics programs and potential conflicts of interest and the relationship between board involvement in a firm''s ethics program and potential conflicts of interest. (shrink)

Empirical evidence shows that people have multiple time-biases. One is near-bias; another is future-bias. Philosophical theorising about these biases often proceeds on two assumptions. First, that the two biases are _independent_: that they are explained by different factors (the independence assumption). Second, that there is a normative asymmetry between the two biases: one is rationally impermissible (near-bias) and the other rationally permissible (future-bias). The former assumption at least partly feeds into the latter: if the two biases were not explained by (...) different factors, then it would be less plausible that their normative statuses differ. This paper investigates the independence assumption and finds it unwarranted. In light of this, we argue, there is reason to question the normative asymmetry assumption. (shrink)

In this paper I will introduce a new compatibilist account of free action: indirect conscious control compatibilism, or just indirect compatibilism for short. On this account, actions are free either when they are caused by compatibilist‐friendly conscious psychological processes, or else by sub‐personal level processes influenced in particular ways by compatibilist‐friendly conscious psychological processes. This view is motivated by a problem faced by a certain family of compatibilist views, which I call conscious control views. These views hold that we act (...) freely when we act in a way that is caused by certain conscious psychological processes. One problem for such views is that current neuroscience suggests that most of our actions are not caused by such processes. Instead, many of the actions we typically suppose are free are caused by sub‐personal level processes and hence would count as not free according to contemporary conscious control views. I argue, contra these views, that many actions caused by these sub‐personal level processes are indirectly free. Further, most of the actions we ordinarily judge to be free are free in this indirect manner. (shrink)

There are two kinds of time-bias: near-bias and future-bias. While philosophers typically hold that near-bias is rationally impermissible, many hold that future-bias is rationally permissible. Call this normative hybridism. According to arbitrariness objections, certain patterns of preference are rationally impermissible because they are arbitrary. While arbitrariness objections have been levelled against both near-bias and future-bias, the kind of arbitrariness in question has been different. In this paper we investigate whether there are forms of arbitrariness that are common to both kinds (...) of preferences, and hence whether there are versions of the arbitrariness objection that are objections both to near-bias and future-bias. If there are, then this might go some way towards undermining normative hybridism and to defending a thorough-going time-neutralism. (shrink)

We investigated, experimentally, the contention that the folk view, or naïve theory, of time, amongst the population we investigated is dynamical. We found that amongst that population, ~ 70% have an extant theory of time that is more similar to a dynamical than a non-dynamical theory, and ~ 70% of those who deploy a naïve theory of time deploy a naïve theory that is more similar to a dynamical than a non-dynamical theory. Interestingly, while we found stable results across our (...) two experiments regarding the percentage of participants that have a dynamical or non-dynamical extant theory of time, we did not find such stability regarding which particular dynamical or non-dynamical theory of time they take to be most similar to our world. This suggests that there might be two extant theories in the population—a broadly dynamical one and a broadly non-dynamical one—but that those theories are sufficiently incomplete that participants do not stably choose the same dynamical theory as being most similar to our world. This suggests that while appeals to the ordinary view of time may do some work in the context of adjudicating disputes between dynamists and non-dynamists, they likely cannot do any such work adjudicating disputes between particular brands of dynamism. (shrink)

People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been suggested for this pattern of preferences. Adjudicating among these explanations can, among other things, shed light on the rationality of future-bias: For instance, if our preferences are explained by unjustified beliefs or an illusory phenomenology, we might conclude that they are irrational. This paper investigates one hypothesis, according to which future-bias (...) is explained by our having a phenomenology that we describe, or conceive of, as being as of time robustly passing. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found no evidence in its favour. Our results present a puzzle, however, when compared with the results of an earlier study. We conclude that although robust passage phenomenology on its own probably does not explain future-bias, having this phenomenology and taking it to be veridical may contribute to future-bias. (shrink)

This essay argues, drawing from both philosophical and scientific work on disgust, that since disgust is a universal human emotion with roots in evolutionary adaptation, and since capitalism inevitably produces disgusting food, a critique of capitalism based upon the category of disgust and centered on the food system may be more practically effective than traditional critiques of capitalism. This critique forms the basis of what I call a critical theory of food.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Pyrrhus Perplex: A Superficial View of Mimesis Andrew J. McKenna Loyola University Chicago In the interest of knowledge conveyed as experience, a teacher of literature likes to begin with a story: A man sets out to discover a treasure he believes is hidden under a stone; he turns over stone after stone but finds nothing. He grows tired of such futile undertaking but the treasure is too (...) precious for him to give up. So he begins to look for a stone which is too heavy to lift—he places all his hopes in that stone and he will waste all his remaining strength on it. This exquisite little parable from René Girard's Deceit, Desire and the Novel (176) awaits correlation with Kafka ("Before the Law"), but it can also remind us ofthe passionate imbroglio we find in Racine's Andromaque. I will dwell on the stage play on the assumption that we are even more confused about love than about legal affairs. The play embodies an essential paradox by dramatizing relations in a way that is contrary to our normal expectations of order and conduct: Mais parmi ces périls où je cours pour vous plaire, Me refuseriez-vous un regard moins sévère? (I.iv) (But among the perils I risk to please you, Would you refuse me a gaze less severe?) This is not a vassal or a servant appealing to his master, but a sovereign, Pyrrhus, appealing to his captive female slave, Andromache. Our routine categories are turned upside down. 32Andrew J. McKenna Pyrrhus has everything going for him: he is the son ofAchilles, known to his world (and ours) as the world's greatest warrior, and after his conquest of Troy he is betrothed to Hermione, daughter of Helen, the world's most beautiful woman. There is no matter for tragedy in this, a happy conclusion to the Trojan war. But Pyrrhus spurns Hermione in amorous pursuit of Andromache, whom he counts among plunder of the city he has destroyed. She is the widow of Hector whom his father has slain, which makes her the last person in the world disposed to favor his suit. Andromache is very like the stone which is too heavy to lift, for all the leverage Pyrrhus exercises by threatening to deliver her son Astyanax for slaughter by the still vengeful Greeks. And Racine makes us understand that it is not in spite of Andromache 's resistance to his appeals butjust because ofthem that Pyrrhus wastes his life trying to move her. The treasure that Pyrrhus pursues, which as the son of Achilles he has no choice but to pursue, is "la gloire," the recognized and incommensurate superiority over other mortals. Yet he describes himself plaintively to Andromache as "Vaincu, chargé de fers, de regrets consumé" (vanquished, in chains, tormented by regret). For four acts of the play Pyrrhus mostly cultivates "enslavement, failure, and shame," which is how Girard describes the masochist in the parable he invented to depict him, and in the fifth act he is slain by his Greek allies at the jealous instigation of Hermione, who then stabs herself over his body. Orestes, who lead the Greeks to the assault in amorous obedience to Hermione, goes insane. The quest for glory is a recipe for disaster. A masochist is someone whom we may describe as preferring pain to pleasure, failure to success, and when I review Pyrrhus's conduct with students, they never fail to arrive at this diagnosis. Then the task is to unpack this reductive term, which since Freud has served to label a clinical perversion. In my experience, this task is more successfully accomplished with undergraduate students, who are likely to seek an explanation in terms of the information at hand, if only because they are too distracted, too harried to do otherwise. Graduate students, on the other hand, are committed to advanced professional research, which in literature departments typically sends them in quest of the mythological roots of such a story, and no less often favors the kinds of explanations we find in Freudian psychoanalysis. I take it as a measure of the intellectual confusion of our times that we encourage... (shrink)

Philosophers have proposed many accounts of biological function. A coarse-grained distinction can be made between backward-looking views, which emphasise historical contributions to fitness, and forward-looking views, which emphasise the current contribution to fitness or role of a biological component within some larger system. These two views are often framed as being incompatible and conflicting with one another. The emerging field of synthetic biology, which involves applying engineering principles to the design and construction of biological systems, complicates things further by adding (...) intentional design as a source of function. In the current study we explored how biology experts and novices think about function in the context of single-celled, multi-celled, and synthetic organisms. We also explored the extent to which each group were function pluralists, and if they were function pluralists, which accounts of function tended to be endorsed together. The results showed a surprising degree of similarity between experts and novices in most contexts, although certain differences were apparent. Most surprisingly, we found evidence not only of function pluralism in both groups, but pluralism between backward-looking and forward-looking accounts. We discuss these findings in the context of the philosophical debate on function and consider the practical implications for public acceptance of synthetic biology. First, we argue that philosophers of biology should re-examine the purported incompatibility between accounts of function. Second, we argue that due to the introduction of an intentional aetiology in synthetic biology, there may be an inherent conflict between the views of experts and novices when thinking about synthetic biology. (shrink)

This paper empirically investigates one aspect of the folk concept of time by testing how the presence or absence of directedness impacts judgements about whether there is time in a world. Experiment 1 found that dynamists, showed significantly higher levels of agreement that there is time in dynamically directed worlds than in non-dynamical non-directed worlds. Comparing our results to those we describe in Latham et al., we report that while ~ 70% of dynamists say there is time in B-theory worlds, (...) only ~ 45% say there is time in C-theory worlds. Thus, while the presence of directedness makes dynamists more inclined to say there is time in a world, a substantial subpopulation of dynamists judge that there is time in non-directed worlds. By contrast, a majority of non-dynamists judged that there was time in both growing block worlds and C-theory worlds, with no significant differences between the means. Experiment 2 found that when participants are only presented with non-dynamical worlds—namely, a directed world and a non-directed world—they report significantly higher levels of agreement that there is time in B-theory worlds. However, the majority of participants still judge that there is time in C-theory worlds. We conclude that while the presence of directedness bolsters judgements that there is time, most people do not judge it to be necessary for time. (shrink)

Hackforth and Menn make a strong case for the identity of nous and the demiurge in Plato, but I argue that it does not hold in the case of the Philebus, where the demiurge is kept in the background, and the world-soul is in fact the referent in the passage assigning nous to the class of cause as governor of the universe. In the Statesman, the world-soul had had to own the problem of natural catastrophe, and I suggest that in (...) the Philebus the role and functions of the world-soul are enhanced in an attempt to make it the basis for a solution to that problem. (shrink)

Aristotle argued that particular statements about the future were neither true nor false. Turner rejects this claim, arguing that implicit to such a theory is an untenable theory of time. Whilst developing a theory of time was not Aristotle’s intent, Turner believes his view does entail an ontology that is questionable at best. Once we have sorted out an acceptable theory of time, the only reasonable conclusions about all statements is that they are true or false. That we do not (...) know whether our statements about the future are true or false is an epistemological problem. This claim is aimed at those who wish to adopt Aristotle’s view today. (shrink)

This volume consists of two lecture series given by Heidegger in the 1940s and 1950s. The lectures given in Bremen constitute the first public lectures Heidegger delivered after World War II, when he was officially banned from teaching. Here, Heidegger openly resumes thinking that deeply engaged him with Hölderlin's poetry and themes developed in his earlier works. In the Freiburg lectures Heidegger ponders thought itself and freely engages with the German idealists and Greek thinkers who had provoked him in the (...) past. Andrew J. Mitchell's translation allows English-speaking readers to explore important connections with Heidegger's earlier works on language, logic, and reality. (shrink)