'Why did the window break when it was hit by the stone? Because the window is brittle and the stone is hard; hardness and brittleness are powers, dispositional properties or dispositions.' Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. This book is a record of the debate on the nature of dispositions between three distinguished philosophers - D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin and U. T. Place - who have been thinking about dispositions all their working lives. Their distinctive (...) accounts cover many of the issues surrounding dispositions such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation. Dispositions illuminates this central topic in analytic philosophy and at the same time highlights deeper concerns of metaphysics. (shrink)

Ambivalence is a form of inner volitional conflict that we experience as being irresolvable without significant cost. Because of this, very few of us relish feelings of ambivalence. Yet for many in the Western philosophical tradition, ambivalence is not simply an unappealing experience that's hard to manage. According to Unificationists--whose view finds its historical roots in Plato and Augustine and is ably defended by contemporary philosophers such as Harry Frankfurt and Christine Korsgaard--ambivalence is a failure of well-functioning agency. The reasons (...) for this, we're told, are threefold. First, it precludes agents from resolving their wills in a way that is necessary for autonomy. Second, it precludes agents from fully affirming their live and, in particular, from fully affirming the choices they make. As a result, ambivalence robs them of an important source of meaning. Finally, ambivalence causes agents to act in self-defeating ways. In so doing, they act without integrity. Ambivalence is thus seen as a threat to a trio of important agential goods, and as a result, it imperils the best forms of human agency. -/- Against the Unificationists, D. Justin Coates argues that ambivalence does not preclude volitional resolution or normatively significant forms of affirmation. Nor does it guarantee self-defeat. Consequently, ambivalence as such is no threat to autonomy, meaning, or integrity. In assessing these arguments, ambivalence is also revealed to have an important role in securing the very goods that unificationists contend it undermines. The reason for this is that each of these goods requires the agent to be normatively competent. But normative competence itself, Coates argues, often leads agents to be ambivalent. The best forms of human agency are therefore shown to be not only compatible with ambivalence but as regularly requiring it. Ambivalence is thus not a volitional defect, but a crucial constituent of well-functioning agency. (shrink)

Sots-art, the mock use of the Soviet ideological clichés of mass culture, originated in Soviet nonconformist art of the early 1970s. An original and provocative guide, Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style examines the conceptual aspect of sots-art, sots-art poetry, and sots-art prose, and discusses where these still-vital intellectual currents may lead.

I temi della fede e della religione, e del loro conflitto con la cultura laica, sono da qualche tempo al centro di un interesse mediatico crescente, alimentato anche dalle polemiche politiche suscitate dal moltiplicarsi degli interventi e delle "scomuniche" del papa e della Conferenza Episcopale Italiana contro la modernità. Mancava fin qui, tuttavia, un testo di discussione, da punti di vista diversi e reciprocamente problematici, sulle ragioni dell'ateismo e della fede. Un confronto tra gli esponenti di tre posizioni ideologiche molto (...) lontane tra loro, accomunate però dal rifiuto di ogni appartenenza accademica: il cristianesimo nietzschiano del "pensiero debole" di Gianni Vattimo, la saggezza atea di una tradizione antica rilanciata da Michel Onfray e l'empirismo naturalistico-esistenziale della "filosofia del finito" di Paolo Flores d'Arcais. In questo insolito dialogo a tre voci emergono tutti gli interrogativi essenziali legati al problema, a partire da quello più generale: quali devono essere i rapporti tra filosofia e ateismo? L'"ipotesi Dio" deve ormai essere considerata superflua anche dalla riflessione filosofica, visto che le scienze ne fanno metodologicamente a meno? Quali sono le conseguenze etiche e politiche dell'essere atei o, all'opposto, credenti? (shrink)

This is the classic study of the history and continuing philosophical values of the law of nature. D'Entrèves discerned three distinct sources that have contributed to the development of natural law: Roman law teachings, Christian beliefs regarding law, and egalitarian and revolutionary theories of the Enlightenment. Now regarded as a classic work, Natural Law has exercised considerable influence over the course of Anglo-American legal theory in the past forty years. The statements of Clarence Thomas during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearings (...) show that the law of nature still holds powerful appeal in defining judicial rules. In the new introduction, Cary J. Nederman points out both the contemporary value and the historical significance of Natural Law. He also provides the biographical as well as intellectual context for d'Entrèves immense accomplishments. This volume is essential reading for students of legal history, political theory, and philosophy. It will also be of interest to historians. "Few texts provide as concise or as cogent an introduction to natural theory as Alexander Passerin d'Entrèves' Natural Law: An Introduction to Legal Philosophy.... Transaction Publishers has performed a genuine service by bringing out a new edition of Natural Law. D'Entrèves' analysis is clear and penetrating, and will guide the student of natural law to further, fruitful study."--Mitchell Muncy, The University Bookman. (shrink)

Contributed papers on concept of False and Indivisibles (Philosophy) in Hindu philosophy presented at Seminar organized by Department of Advaita Vedanta, Rāṣṭrīyasaṃskr̥tavidyāpīṭham, Tirupati from December 31, 2005 to January 01, 2006).

Giuseppina D'Oro explores Collingwood's work in epistemology and metaphysics, uncovering his importance beyond his better known work in philosophy of history and aesthetics. This major contribution to our understanding of one of the most important figures in history of philosophy will be essential reading for scholars of Collingwood and all students of metaphysics and the history of philosophy.

The article is devoted to the study of the nature of consciousness within the framework of the information concept. The paper proposes a definition of consciousness as an informational environment in which an extended model of reality is realized. The process of realization of this extended model is defined as thinking. The result of thinking is information objects that form a system in the form of information environment. Information objects are reflections of the real world properties, not directly, but by (...) means of translation through a special object – a carrier of consciousness. In the case of human consciousness, such a carrier is a human being (represented in the form of his nervous system). As a result, consciousness can be qualified as a simulacrum of reality, i.e., a model of a model: an information model of the carrier of consciousness, which in turn is a means of physical modeling of the real "big" world. Possible mechanisms mediating thinking are considered. For this purpose, two new concepts are introduced: neural circuit and neurophysical pattern. An approach to the study of self-consciousness based on the localization of the consciousness carrier in the multidimensional space of states of initial real objects, as well as their reflections in the form of information objects is proposed. This localization is ensured by the presence of feedbacks. Summarizing the results of the study, the article states the following connection between consciousness, self-consciousness and subjectness: under certain conditions (when consciousness is localized in the state space of the carrier of consciousness), consciousness acquires the property of self-consciousness, a special case of which (when the initiator of changes determining localization is the carrier of consciousness) is self-consciousness endowed with subjectness. (shrink)

A substantial guide providing an overview of both physicalism and metaphysical naturalism, reviewing both questions of formulation and justification for both doctrines. Includes a diagnostic strategy for understanding talk of naturalism as a metaphysical thesis.

My making choices and acting on those choices in a way that might count as my being free would seem to require that those choices are truly my choices. Furthermore, for my choices to be truly mine, it would seem that these choices must reflect my true self. So it seems that choosing and acting freely depends in a robust sense on such choosing and acting being authentic. Yet the concept of authenticity seems problematic. What or where is that true (...) self which would be the basis for authentic choosing, acting and living? Perhaps there is no such true self. This problem is central to the philosophies of both Sartre and Foucault. For the philosophers freedom authenticity or self-hood were central. The paper aims to show that, in spite of Foucault’s criticism, Sartre does not fall back on the idea of a true or deep self that is given to us. Sartre can appeal to the idea of authenticity without holding on such a dubious construct as a given, true self. Therefore the exploration of bad faith, good faith and authenticity in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, where the problem is posed but left unresolved, is necessary. Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew, where a more concrete problem – the problem of authentically identifying oneself with a group of human beings − actually opens up a way how to overcome the problem of authenticity. (shrink)

One problem that students of cognitive science are likely to encounter in their examination of the literature on bounded rationality is that of finding a succinct formulation of the relevant boundedness claim in the first place. In this chapter I provided such a formulation, before going on to locate the debate about bounded rationality against the background of competing pictures of cognitive virtue. I also consider a reason for pause about the the bounded rationality claim, viz. that it commits us (...) to a troubling form of "cognitive luck.". (shrink)

Placing Goodenough and Deacon’s “From Biology to Consciousness to Morality” against the background of the ethical naturalism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British moral theory, Yeager highlights the contribution the authors make to the moral sense tradition as well as indicating the limitations of such accounts of moral agency, judgment, and conduct. Yeager also identifies two strands of the essay that seem to open toward a more comprehensive account than the authors actually give. The first concerns the “interplay between self-interest and (...) pro-sociality,” and the other concerns the ethical implications of coevolution. On the latter point, the work of G. H. Mead is offered as an illuminating contrast. (shrink)

A tribute, originally given at David Armstrong's retirement in 1991 as Challis Professor of Philosophy at Sydney University. Stove recalls Armstrong's role in the "Sydney disturbances" of the 1970s when under attack from Marxists.

The object of this paper is creativity as a cultural philosophical and historical-philosophical phenomenon. The subject of the research is the substantiation of the essence of creativity by Russian religious philosophy on the example of the doctrine of V.S. Solovyov and N.A. Berdyaev. The aim of this research is to identify and articulate the key semantic constructs of creativity from the positions of the above-mentioned thinkers. The article also explores ideas about the nature of creativity and the specific features of (...) a creative subject through the prism of relevant concepts of a socio-humanitarian orientation. A brief historical and philosophical excursion into the understanding of the ontological essence of creativity is carried out, modern ontological concepts of creativity are revealed and an existentially oriented concept of creativity is proposed. The theoretical basis of the research is the original works of V.S. Solovyov and N.A. Berdyaev, as well as various commenting scientific sources. The methodological foundation of the research is a comparative analysis and a method of contextual vision of creativity. The main result of the conducted research is the articulation of key aspects of the understanding of creativity by V.S. Solovyov and N.A. Berdyaev. It is shown that for the first philosopher, the central task of creativity is the spiritualization of the material world through the realization of the unity of Goodness, Truth and Beauty, while the second thinker considers the main mission of creativity to be the establishment of a fundamentally different spiritual being by the subject. The scientific novelty of the research also lies in the comparative characterization of the concepts of creativity of these thinkers in terms of essence, tasks, meaning, material, sources, functions, result and other structural aspects. (shrink)