'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)

How should the “physical” in “physicalism” be understood? I here set out systematic criteria of adequacy, propose an account, and show how the account meets those criteria. The criteria of adequacy focus on the idea of rational management: to vindicate philosophical practice, the account must make it plausible that we can assess various questions about physicalism. The account on offer is dubbed the “Ideal Naturalist Physics” account, according to which the physical is that which appears in an ideal theory that (...) both meets the explanatory goals of physics and is naturalist in a sense to be explained. The combination of these two provides a satisfying account of the physical that meets the criteria of adequacy and can be used to predict puzzle cases as well. (shrink)

Cambrai, Bibl. munic. 940, ff. 1-59 [integralement reproduit]--Bibl. Vatic. Reg. Lat. 689 A, ff. 334-353.--Bibl. Vatic. Reg. Lat. 1653, ff, 1v-2v (feuilles de garde), ff. 3r, 29r-35r.--Pièces justificatives.

Human aesthetic experiences are pervasive; they are triggered by faces, art, natural scenery, foods, ideas, theories, and decision-making situations, among many sources, and seem to be a distinctive trait of our species. Our moral sense, understood as our capacity to judge events, actions, or people as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, also seems to be an exclusively human endowment (Ayala 2010). As part of the scientific efforts to characterize the biological foundations of our human uniqueness, recently there has been (...) interest in the brain’s underpinnings of aesthetic reactions to art on the one hand, and in the neural correlates of moral judgment and decision-making on the other (Greene and Paxton .. (shrink)

Susan Schneider argues that the entities to be identified as part of the 'physical base' for physicalism must be in part abstract and that this fact either falsifies physicalism or renders it so problematic as to be 'no physicalism worth having'. I accept the abstractness of the entities but argue both that physicalism is consistent with such and that none of the alleged problems for Platonistic physicalism are serious.

This article explores the link between Winstanley's analysis of the broken promises of the English Revolution and his attempt to mobilize the class- consciousness of the labouring poor. It suggests that his communalist reading of the promises made by Parliament to the people of England, and especially his interpretation of the Solemn League and Covenant, stretched the boundaries of language and logic to breaking point. It argues, however, that Winstanley's peculiar interpretation of the Covenant was significant because it enabled him (...) to incorporate a concrete empirical referent into his otherwise eschatological historical schema, and this he considered essential if the labouring poor were to be persuaded to take the risk of their lives and join the digging venture on George Hill. (shrink)

These books entertain as well as teach philosophical wisdom by looking closely at entertainment icons.

What place has poetry in the teaching or reflection of ethicists? Even poetry that has no obvious political edge can play an important role in refining a poetics of the will, where will is understood at once as the motive power of action and as the seat of both our freedom and our bondage. Poems by W. H. Auden, Anthony Hecht, Galway Kinnell, William Carols Williams, and others are examined against a background provided by the work of Erazim Kohák, H. (...) Richard Niebuhr, and Paul Ricoeur. A poetics of the will requires attention to affirmation, beauty, and wonder, but also to concrete embodiment, full recognition of the complex reality of persons and situations, and mature resistance to the temptation to righteousness and the seduction of despair. (shrink)

This new translation of _De Caelo_ fits seamlessly with other volumes in the New Hackett Aristotle series, enabling Anglophone readers to study Aristotle’s work in a way previously not possible. The Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what it is about, what it is trying to do, how it goes about doing it, and what sort of audience it presupposes. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index indicates the places where (...) focused discussion of key notions occurs. (shrink)