This book discusses and aims to clarify the issue of describing conduct and character as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. The book states that one of the main factors that have made this issue obscure is the illusion of some anti-naturalists that purely logical considerations can settle it. It clearly defines the limitations of the discussions: it is not concerned with the ‘other things’ people use to define conduct and character. The book attempts to consider the issue (...) from the purely logician point of view and suggests to the naturalists and anti-naturalists how their positions may be freed from logical faults. The book also introduces the ‘logic of ethics’, which is not a special kind or branch of logic, but rather an application of it. (shrink)

This is a revised and expanded edition of a seminal work in the logic and philosophy of time, originally published in 1968. Arthur N. Prior was the founding father of temporal logic, and his book offers an excellent introduction to the fundamental questions in the field. Several important papers have been added to the original selection, as well as a comprehensive bibliography of Prior's work and an illuminating interview with his widow, Mary Prior. In addition, the Polish logic which (...) made Prior's writings difficult for many readers has been replaced by standard logical notation. This new edition will secure the classic status of the book. (shrink)

Divided into two parts, the first concentrates on the logical properties of propositions, their relation to facts and sentences, and the parallel objects of commands and questions. The second part examines theories of intentionality and discusses the relationship between different theories of naming and different accounts of belief.

“Arthur Prior’s Formal logic has been familiar to students for twenty years, but the historical section that was originally meant to accompany it was never published. In this book P. T. Geach and A. J. P. Kenny have selected from those parts of the material that were not superseded by Prior’s later publications a self-contained study of the philosophical prehistory of contemporary logic. Like Prior’s early work Logic and the Basis of Ethics the material here presented is both historical (...) and critical: Prior was not concerned to decide for us the controverted questions of logical doctrine which he discusses. He may be compared to an experienced judge summing up in a complicated civil action: the case for each side is clearly and fairly presented, and although on some issues the summing-up amounts to a pretty clear direction of the jury, the jurymen themselves are left to decide the issues. The value of such an historical survey is to be measured by the ill effects of ignoring our predecessors’ labours. The course of the philosophy of logic in the decades since Prior wrote these pages has continued to illustrate the saying that those who will not learn the history of philosophy are compelled to relive it.” - Publisher. (shrink)

The purpose of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer is to offer translations of the best modern German editions of Schopenhauer's work in a uniform format for Schopenhauer scholars, together with philosophical introductions and full editorial apparatus. The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire philosophy, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of art, to ethics, the meaning of life and the philosophy of religion. This second volume was added to the (...) work in 1844, and revised in 1859. Its chapters are officially 'supplements' to the first volume, but are indispensable for a proper appreciation of Schopenhauer's thought. Here we have his most mature reflections on many topics, including sex, death, conscious and unconscious desires, and the doctrines of salvation and liberation in Christian and Indian thought. Schopenhauer clarifies the nature of his metaphysics of the will, and synthesizes insights from a broad range of literary, scientific and scholarly sources. This new translation reflects the eloquence and power of Schopenhauer's prose, and renders philosophical terms accurately and consistently. It offers an introduction, glossary of names, bibliography, and succinct editorial notes. (shrink)

This book was designed primarily as a textbook; though the author hopes that it will prove to be of interests to others beside logic students. Part I of this book covers the fundamentals of the subject the propositional calculus and the theory of quantification. Part II deals with the traditional formal logic and with the developments which have taken that as their starting-point. Part III deals with modal, three-valued, and extensional systems.

Clinical bioethics is big business. There are now hundreds of people who bioethics in community and university hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation and home care settings, and some who play the role of clinical ethics consultant to transplant teams, managed care companies, and genetic testing firms. Still, there is as much speculation about what clinically active bioethicists actually do as there was ten years ago. Various commentators have pondered the need for training standards, credentials, exams, and malpractice insurance for ethicists engaged (...) in clinical consultation. Much of the discussion seems to accept an implicit presumption that all clinical ethics consultation practices look pretty much alike. But is this accurate? What do clinical ethicists do, how and where do they do it, and what kind of clinical ethics is useful in the hospital and in other settings? (shrink)

My topic is the parallels between attacks on free speech by the U.S. war party, and attacks on free speech by what Charles Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate have called “the shadow university”; and the blindness to these parallels of that part of the left and right that is not libertarian on free speech and due process.

I Several years ago, when the Carter administration announced that it would support congressional action to end the public fund ing of abortions, the President was asked at a press conference whether he thought that such a policy was unfair; he responded, "Life is unfair." His remarks provoked a storm of controversy. For other than those who, for principled reasons, opposed abor tion on any grounds, it seemed that the President's comments were cruel, violating what was thought to be an (...) American com mitment to providing equal access to health services to all citi zens, regardless of their capacity to pay. Those sentiments had, in fact, been reflected in public opinion polls that had, for at least three decades, indicated that Americans supported the propo sition that the government should guarantee health care to all. Ultimately, those beliefs had been translated into the oft-ex 1 pressed political demand for a one-class system of health care. This commitment to equality is rather remarkable. American society evidences a striking willingness to tolerate vast inequal ities with regard to income and wealth. While it guarantees ed ucation to all children, there is not even a pretense that the children of the wealthy and the children of the poor ought to get precisely the same kind of schooling. While some commitment 'Hazel Erskine. "The Polls: Health Insurance," Public Opinion Quarterly, XXXIX (Spring, 1975), 128-143. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

All candid philosophers, in setting out on their great task of coordinating and criticizing the whole range of human thought, must often feel embarrassed by the limitations of their own knowledge. Their difficulties in dealing with scientific thought have increased very greatly during the last thirty years. For, while science has been rapidly growing more complex and abstruse, philosophers have been tending to require a more intimate knowledge of it. They are no longer interested only in scientific methods ; they (...) are beginning to find significance in particular propositions and principles. Some of these cannot be comprehended in their entirety by anyone who has not submitted himself to a training so specialized and so severe as to be almost incompatible with the width of outlook that makes the philosopher. Accordingly, philosophers have abandoned all attempts to acquire their knowledge of certain branches of science from the original memoirs and expository treatises addressed to scientists; they have recourse to interpreters. (shrink)

In At the Will of the Body , Arthur Frank told the story of his own illnesses, heart attack and cancer. That book ended by describing the existence of a "remission society," whose members all live with some form of illness or disability. The Wounded Storyteller is their collective portrait. Ill people are more than victims of disease or patients of medicine they are wounded storytellers. People tell stories to make sense of their suffering when they turn their diseases (...) into stories, they find healing. Drawing on the work of authors such as Oliver Sacks, Anatole Broyard, Norman Cousins, and Audre Lorde, as well as from people he met during the years he spent among different illness groups, Frank recounts a stirring collection of illness stories, ranging from the well-known--Gilda Radner's battle with ovarian cancer--to the private testimonials of people with cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and disabilties. Their stories are more than accounts of personal suffering: they abound with moral choices and point to a social ethic. Frank identifies three basic narratives of illness in restitution, chaos, and quest. Restitution narratives anticipate getting well again and give prominence to the technology of cure. In chaos narratives, illness seems to stretch on forever, with no respite or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about finding that insight as illness is transformed into a means for the ill person to become someone new. (shrink)

During Abraham Nussbaum's first year of medical school, he participated in a white coat ceremony and was invested, literally, with a white coat that is symbolic of entry into the medical profession. He was also given a book, an anthology of writings on medicine that Nussbaum describes as having a "wistful quality" and being "engaging but reverential" ; the dust jacket featured a Norman Rockwell painting. He later went to a second-hand bookstore and traded the anthology for Abraham Verghese's (...) 1994 memoir, My Own Country, an excerpt from which was in the anthology. For Nussbaum, struggling to figure out what it means to be a doctor, Verghese's writing "portrays the physician as the storyteller of his... (shrink)

At the end of the twenty-eighth chapter of the eighth book of the Natural History Aristotle says: S0009838800018425_inline1, and goes on to narrate a strange story of the method employed to procure the hybrid. Though the details are entirely fabulous, it has not been doubted that the Indian dog was a real animal. In de Generatione Animalium 746a34 he says more cautiously S0009838800018425_inline2 What then was this creature ? Sundevall declines to commit himself. Aubert and Wimmer think perhaps a jackal, (...) for they hold that the θxs1F7Dς of Aristotle was no jackal. But apart from other considerations there is not the slightest reason for saying that θxs1F7Dς does not mean a jackal in Aristotle as much as in other authors; if some of his statements about it are not true, no more are most of his statements about the lion. Yet this absurd notion that the ‘Indian dog’ was perhaps a jackal is adopted in the Berlin Index 419a15. If we look to India for a dog really foreign to the Greeks we are of course at once confronted with the genus Cyon, familiar to all readers of the Jungle Books as the Red Dog; accordingly our problematical Indian has been identified also with this. One would not think that anybody who had ever seen a specimen of Cyon would dream of calling it a cross between a dog and a tiger. It is true, however, that Aristotle believed that the Laconian hound was descended from a cross between dog and fox , and that the ancients were very reckless in making guesses of this kind; so the Arabs say that the cheetah is a ‘breed between the lion and the pard’! (shrink)

For forty years, successive editions of Ethical Theory and Business have helped to define the field of business ethics. The 10th edition reflects the current, multidisciplinary nature of the field by explicitly embracing a variety of perspectives on business ethics, including philosophy, management, and legal studies. Chapters integrate theoretical readings, case studies, and summaries of key legal cases to guide students to a rich understanding of business ethics, corporate responsibility, and sustainability. The 10th edition has been entirely updated, ensuring that (...) students are exposed to key ethical questions in the current business environment. New chapters cover the ethics of IT, ethical markets, and ethical management and leadership. Coverage includes climate change, sustainability, international business ethics, sexual harassment, diversity, and LGBTQ discrimination. New case studies draw students directly into recent business ethics controversies, such as sexual harassment at Fox News, consumer fraud at Wells Fargo, and business practices at Uber. (shrink)

Books reviewed:Mark Munn, The School of History: Athens in the Age of SocratesKathryn Morgan, Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to PlatoMary Margaret McCabe, Plato and his Predecessors: The Dramatization of ReasonJohannes M. van Ophuijsen, Plato and Platonism.Nicholas D. Smith and Paul B. Woodruff, Reason and Religion in Socratic PhilosophyAndrew Gregory, Plato's Philosophy of ScienceHugh H. Benson, Socratic Wisdom: The Model of Knowledge in Plato's Early DialoguesAngela Hobbs, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal GoodMelissa Lane, Plato's Progeny: (...) How Plato and Socrates still Captivate the Modern MindAlan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer, Rereading Aristotle's RhetoricEdward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle AgesJohn Marenbon and Giovanni Orlandi, Peter Abelard’s Collationes.Terence Penelhum, Themes in Hume: The Self, the Will, ReligionStephan R. Palmquist, Kant's Critical ReligionJohn Lippitt, Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard's ThoughtDavid B. Allison, Reading the New Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Genealogy of MoralsMaurice Blondel, The Idealist Illusion and Other EssaysDaniel O. Dahlstrom, Heidegger's Concept of TruthLawrence J. Hatab, Ethics and Finitude: Heideggerian Contributions to Moral PhilosophyMichel Foucault, L’Herméneutique du sujet: Cours au Collège de France W. W. Meissner, Freud and PsychoanalysisScott Sturgeon, Matters of Mind: Consciousness, Reason and NatureDavid Jopling, Self–Knowledge and the SelfDouglas C. Langston, Conscience and Other Virtues: From Bonaventure to MacIntyreMartin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral AutonomyPhilippa Foot, Natural GoodnessJohn Leslie, Infinite Minds. A Philosophical CosmologyBerys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes, The Routledge Companion to AestheticsPaul Kurtz, Embracing the Power of HumanismJohn Gray, Two Faces of LiberalismDonald A. Hay and Alan Kreider, Christianity and the Culture of Economics.Marcia Bunge, The Child in Christian ThoughtDean Hoge, Willian Dinges, Mary Johnson and Juan Gonzales, Young Adult CatholicsStephan C. Barton, Life Together: Family, Sexuality and Community in the New Testament and TodayColin E. Gunton, Stephen R. Holmes and Murray A. Rae, The Practice of Theology: A ReaderDavid Jobling, Tina Pippin and Ronald Schleifer, The Postmodern Bible ReaderThomas L. Martin, Reading the Classics with C. S. Lewis. (shrink)

‘Romanticism’ is one of the more hotly contested terms in the history of ideas. There is a singular lack of consensus as to its meaning, unity, and historical extension, and many attempts to fix the category of romanticism very quickly become blurry. As a result, the great historian of ideas, Arthur Lovejoy, famously concludes that: ‘the word ‘romantic’ has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing. It has ceased to perform the function of a (...) verbal sign’ But his pessimistic advice has not stopped scholars from trying to define romanticism. If anything, it has brought renewed vigour to the determination with which critics try to pinpoint the term. There are several approaches to take, for those who attempt to do so. One class of critics tries to enumerate the features shared by the authors and texts generally considered romantic. An alternative approach would try to identify the fundamental unity that informs romanticism and gives rise to the empirical commonalities. But what would this essential feature be? Both of these approaches take an external perspective on romanticism, seeing it as the object of inquiry. An alternative approach, which we will pursue, looks at romantic subjects, and romanticism as a self-constituting category, rather than merely as an externally imposed one. In other words, we will take as basic neither an (empirical) array of candidate properties constituting romanticism, nor a supposed underlying (rationalist) essence from which properties can be derived, but rather we will focus on how the romantics themselves took up the idea of romanticism and transformed it into a self-conscious movement. We will treat the question of romanticism with respect to England, but above all Germany. Although romantic movements arose and flourished elsewhere in Europe (and in France in particular), German and English romanticism were uniquely theoretically sophisticated and philosophically nuanced. (shrink)

'Wolterstorff (2009) provides an important explanation to the question: What caused the surprising resurgence in philosophical theology that has occurred over the last 50 years—a resurgence that rivals its zenith in the Middle Ages? This article supplements that with a more fine-grained answer to the question. Recent discoveries in Arthur Norman Prior’s correspondence with J.J.C Smart and Mary Prior, between November 1953 and August 1954 on the possibility of necessary existence, demonstrates the importance of Prior’s discussion of the (...) Barcan formulae in Time and Modality (1957) for the resurgence of analytic theology. The correspondence establishes that Prior’s discovery of tense-logic, and his discussion of quantified tense-logic constituted the perfect opportunity for him to challenge key anti-metaphysical assumptions in analytic philosophy, from which four important consequences can be drawn for the resurgence of philosophical theology. First, Prior’s discussion of time and existence challenged the idea of Russell (1945) and Findlay (1948) on the logical status of a necessary existing being. Second, the discussion challenged the Analytic school’s view of analysis and gave Prior the opportunity to introduce a different perspective on the relationship between logic and metaphysics. Third, it gave Prior a good opportunity to demonstrate that the then-prevailing attitude towards medieval logic was wrong. Fourth, it made it possible for Prior to demonstrate that the highly surprising metaphysical conclusions of quantified tense-logic brings modern logicians into a discussion with the theologically minded medieval logicians. (shrink)

Fox, McGee, and Caplan's, in the Summer 1998 issue of CQ, evoked memories and an image.

The article discusses Nicholas Wolterstorff’s explanations for the flourishing of philosophical theology in analytic philosophy by taking Arthur Norman Prior’s (1914–1969) development of tense-logic into account. Prior’s work challenged the prevailing anti-metaphysical norms in analytic philosophy and introduced an alternative understanding of the relationship between logic and metaphysics. Prior’s application of tense-logic to an analysis of the concept of existence in quantified tense-logic and his exploration of future contingency in branching time semantics provide a strong reason for why (...) analytic philosophy naturally incorporates philosophical theology. These considerations lead us to modify Wolterstorff’s emphasis on the importance of meta-epistemology for the resurgence of philosophical theology. A development in logic was necessary. Furthermore, Prior’s importance questions the assumption that philosophical theology was a consequence of theistic philosophers seeking ways to defend theistic beliefs in analytic philosophy. This is not true for Prior. His invention of tense-logic and discussion of omniscience was driven by an existential interest in finding answers to philosophical problems concerning divine foreknowledge and human freedom which ultimately led him to reject his Christian beliefs. (shrink)

Arthur Norman Prior's early theological writings have been relatively neglected for many years. Moreover, to the extent that they have been discussed at all they have been treated mainly as youthful work quite separate from Prior's later work as a philosopher and logician. However, as interest in Prior's achievements has been growing significantly in recent years it has become more important to investigate the development with his overall work. In fact, Prior's putatively "youthful" theological work overlapped his work (...) as a philosopher and logician for many years, as is richly documented by examples discussed in this paper. A particularly important theme is the problem of predestination. This paper presents comprehensive evidence that this theme, which was Prior's most important single preoccupation as a theological writer, was a most important source of inspiration for his development of tense logic. Via questions regarding divine foreknowledge and human free will, predestination was to motivate Prior as a logician to focus on time and tense. Whilst investigating this development, the paper also traces Prior's parallel development from Calvinist Christian believer to a more agnostic position. (shrink)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914 – 1969) and Georg Henrik von Wright (1916 – 2003) both attended a conference in England sometime in the spring of 1956, after which they corresponded on Anselm’s ontological argument. Prior had at the conference presented a formal treatment of the ontological argument. Based upon notes from the Prior archive at the Bodleian Library, and correspondence with von Wright, we here presents Prior’s and von Wrights’ discussion of Anselm’s argument in light of Prior’s published, (...) as well as unpublished writings on the ontological argument. Three versions of the ontological argument from Prior’s unpublished as well as published papers is presented: a non-modal, an argument from possible existence and finally a modal version. While Prior dismissed the first on the basis of a meta-theorem for proof in argumentation, the second on the basis of a fallacious commutation of operators, he argued that a valid version of the ontological argument can be proven from the distinctive S5 thesis of Lewis modal logic. While Prior gave reasons for a rejection of those distinct S5 thesis, in favour of Lewis S4 system, he also provided a novel argument in favour of accepting the S5 thesis for necessity and possibility. Finally we relate Prior’s work to Plantinga (1974) and consider objections raised by Oppy (2012) and Gale (2007) toward the modal versions of the ontological argument. (shrink)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914-69) was a logician and philosopher from New Zealand who contributed crucially to the development of ‘non-standard’ logics, especially of the modal variety. His greatest achievement was the invention of modern temporal logic, worked out in close connection with modal logic. However, his work in logic had a much broader scope. He was also the founder of hybrid logic, and he made important contributions to deontic logic, modal logic, the theory of quantification, the nature of (...) propositions and the history of logic. In addition, he discussed questions of ethics, free will, and general theology. Prior’s philosophical works comprise about 200 titles. His earliest articles center on philosophical theology and historical studies of Scottish Reformed Theology. This led on to the publication of his first influential work on ethics: Logic and The Basis of Ethics (1949). With the invention of tense-logic in the early 1950s, his focus shifted to investigations into the syntax of tempo-modal logic leading to his seminal Time and Modality (1957), a volume derived from his John Locke Lectures in Oxford in 1956. Furthermore Prior, together with the Irish mathematician and logician C.A. Meredith (1904-76), made important early contributions to the semantics of possible worlds. Prior’s tense-logic provided a strong conceptual framework for problems pertaining to the philosophy of time. In Time and Modality, Prior discussed the philosophical implications of Ruth Barcan’s famous formulae for tense-logic, and in the 1960s he worked on the notion of the present. The most persistent problem running through Prior’s work is his study of the questions surrounding human freedom and divine foreknowledge, and more general philosophical problems emerging from this classical theological question. His thorough analysis of this problem, with the conceptual tools of tense-logic, received a crucial impetus from his correspondence with the young Saul Kripke, when the latter suggested the semantic tool of branching time to Prior. Prior’s development of two solutions based on branching time for the problem of future contingency, the Peircean and the Ockham solution, was most thoroughly developed in Past, Present and Future (1967), the most important work published by Prior. Characteristically for Prior’s methodological approach, the development of these two solutions were at the same time a development of two new systems of tense logic, and vice versa. One of Prior’s significant contributions to logic was his work on world propositions and instant propositions. In the course of developing these notions he also made one of the earliest formulations of hybrid logic. In Papers on Time and Tense (1968), he presented this idea in a more detailed manner in the context of his four grades of tense-logical involvement. (shrink)

Logical realism, by Arthur Norman Prior understood as the view that logic is not about language but about reality, is a consistent and strong tenet in all of Prior's philosophical work. Recent disc...

At the beginning of modern logic, propositions were defined as unchangeable entities placed in a certain idealistic realm. These unchangeable propositions contain in themselves so-called indexical, i.e. the place, time and other circumstances of the utterance. This concept of the proposition, which is entitled eternalism, was and is still prevalent among analytic philosophers. Often even the term ‘proposition’ is identified with an idealistic entity located outside the real world. In my paper, I would like to focus on the concept of (...) propositions of two logicians who deviated from the standard understanding of propositions, Arthur N. Prior and Pavel Tichý. They were both proponents of temporalism, i.e. the view that propositions could change their truth-value over time. The paper will discuss the reasons why they were proponents of temporalism and compare their views. It claims that in Prior’s case, his metaphysical views were the main reasons he was a proponent of temporalism. In contrast, when Tichý presented his arguments for temporalism, he focused primarily on natural language. (shrink)

Recently scholars have discovered a diary entry of Arthur Norman Prior dated the 25 March 1942, in which Prior is reflecting on his own views and attitudes towards theology. The purpose of the present article is to consider what the diary entry can teach us about this period of transition in Prior’s life, and its effects upon his philosophical interests. This article will argue that the diary entry provides an explanation for why theology continued to be significant in (...) Prior’s work. (shrink)

Arthur Hilary Armstrong, 1909-1997Max Beloff, 1913-1999Tom Burns, 1913-2000John Desmond Clark, 1916-2002Arthur Geoffrey Dickens, 1910-2001Edmund Boleslaw Fryde, 1923-1999Ernest Andre Gellner, 1925-1995Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, 1909-2001Jean Gottmann, 1915-1994Oliver Robert Gurney, 1911-2001Nicholas Geoggrey Lempriere Hammond, 1907-2001^LFrancis Harry Hinsley, 1918-1998^LHenry David Jocelyn, 1933-2000^LHenry Loyn, 1922-2000^LHenry Mathison Pelling, 1920-1997^LMervyn Reddaway Popham, 1927-2000^LJames Cochran Stevenson Runciman, 1903-2000^LJohn Denis Sargan, 1924-1996^LRichard William Southern, 1912-2001^LThomas Bertram Lonsdale Webster 1905-1974^LElizabeth Mary Wilkinson, 1909 2001^LThomas Wilson, 1916-2001^LGeorge David Norman Worswick, 1916-2001^LFrances Amelia Yates, 1899-1981.