THE PURPOSE OF THIS NOTE IS TO SHOW THAT BOCHENSKI'S\nBELIEF THAT WE DO NOT FIND IN ARISTOTLE'S LOGICAL WORKS THE\nPRINCIPLE OF THE TRANSITIVITY OF IDENTITY IS MISTAKEN. A\nPASSAGE IS CITED FROM THE SECOND BOOK, CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE\nOF THE "PRIOR ANALYTICS" WHERE ARISTOTLE EXPLICITLY STATES\nTHE LOGICAL PRINCIPLE WHICH BOCHENSKI THINKS IS MISSING\nFROM THE "ORGANON.".

I Pletho's Date of Death In 1976 I denied the correctness of the commonly held date of 1452 for Pletho's death. I argued instead for 1454. The difference of two years meant not only that Pletho lived to see the fall of Constantinople in 1453, but also that a whole series of works in the Plato-Aristotle controversy had to be redated. The basis for the 1452 date is a notice found amid other notes by an unknown hand on the last (...) folio of the fifteenth-century manuscript M. 15 in the University Library in Salamanca and in another series of notes in the hand of Pletho's disciple and admirer Demetrius Raoul Kabakes on f. 50v of Gr. 495 of the Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek, Munich. With only trivial variation, both notes state that Master Gemistus died on the first hour of Monday, 26 June in the fifteenth Indiction. Since the only year in this period in which 26 June falls on a Monday in the fifteenth Indiction is 1452, Pletho's date of death seems well established. Though Kabakes was a bizarre character whose trademark was, in Bidez's phrase, an orthographe fantasiste, the fact that he wrote the notice in Munich Gr. 495 might be viewed as strenghtening its credibility. Futhermore, since Dositheus, Metropolitan of Monembasia seems to have died on 1 September 1452 and on blank folios (ff. 7v–8r) in MS Venice, Bibl. Marc., Zan. Gr. 333 (= 644) Bessarion wrote his memorial verses on Pletho and then his memorial verses on Dositheus, one can argue that in the summer of 1452 Bessarion first heard of Pletho's death and then a few months later of Dositheus'. Nonetheless, the death notice is certainly wrong. (shrink)

In 1924 W. W. Tarn published an article in which he attempted to prove that the mother of Philip V of Macedon was the Epirot princess Phthia. Previously all historians had accepted the statement of Eusebius that Philip was the son of Demetrius II and Chryseis, whom, after the death of her husband, the Macedonians gave in marriage to Antigonus Doson. Despite the cogency of Tarn's arguments, his theory has been rejected by both Beloch and Dinsmoor, who adhere to (...) the traditional view. This problem of the identity of Philip's mother is one of considerable importance, and consequently in this paper I intend to collect the evidence once again and subject it to a careful analysis. The results will be found strongly to corroborate Tarn's contention. (shrink)

Demetrius Chrysoloras was a Byzantine anti-Unionist and anti-Thomist theologian. He was in the service of John VII Palaeologus and a member of the court of the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus. He wrote theological, philosophical, astronomical, and rhetorical works.

John Hawthorne is widely regarded as one of the finest philosophers working today. He is perhaps best known for his contributions to metaphysics, and this volume collects his most notable papers in this field. Hawthorne offers original treatments of fundamental topics in philosophy, including identity, ontology, vagueness, and causation. Six of the essays appear here for the first time, and there is a valuable introduction to guide the reader through the selection.

John Passmore was a renowned Australian empirical philosopher and historian of ideas. In this book, which was originally published in 1952, Passmore's intention was to disentangle certain main themes in Hume's philosophy and to show how they relate to Hume's main philosophic purpose. Rather than offering a detailed commentary, the text provides an account based on specificity and critical scholarship, seeking to complement the other more comprehensive works on Hume's philosophy that had become available around the same time. This (...) book will be of value to anyone with an interest in perspectives on Hume and Passmore's philosophical approach. (shrink)

"Despite a dramatic rise in average income in the last 40 years, people are no happier. Since the millennium personal well-being has recently shot up the political and educational agendas, with schools in the UK even including "Personal Well-being" as a curriculum topic in its own right.This book takes teachers, student teachers and parents step by step through the many facets of well-being, pausing at each step to look at the educational implications for teachers and parents trying to make our (...) children's lives more meaningful. With his renowned talent for distilling the most complex of philosophical arguments into accessible laymen's terms, John White addresses the moral maze of well-being through three distinct parts:Part 1 describes the remarkable growth of interest in children's well-being in the UK since 2000, and suggests that a philosophical look at the concept of well-being is essential, so that teachers and parents can avoid confusion and misunderstanding.Part 2 takes the reader step by step through the intricacies of the concept in a deliberately accessible way with each chapter containing a substantial section showing how the new ideas just introduced can be taken up in education, especially in schools.Part 3 is about the future of education for well-being, pulling together, expanding on home as well as school, discussing the main aims and emphases of an education focussed on personal well-being. The author also looks at how school's traditional practices will have to change, given the new focus on well-beingAs well as looking at educational implications of all these questions step by step, the book concludes with an extensive practical guide for families and schools wanting to realise the new well-being agenda.This short, engaging book takes the reader with little or no background in philosophy into these issues. It is of special interest to teachers and parents, since they are now at the sharp end of the culture change we are now experiencing"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

While functioning quite well for many years, the bioethics profession is in crisis. John H. Evans closely examines the history of the bioethics profession, and based on the sociological reasons the profession evolved as it did, proposes a radical solution to the crisis.

This chapter reviews a number of related problems in the epistemology of testimony, and suggests some dilemmas for any theory of knowledge that tries to solve them. Here a common theme emerges: It can seem that any theory must make testimonial knowledge either too hard or too easy, and that therefore no adequate account of testimonial knowledge is possible. The chapter then puts forward a proposal for making progress. Specifically, an important function of the concept of knowledge is to govern (...) the acquisition and distribution of quality information within an epistemic community. Testimonial exchanges paradigmatically serve in the distribution role, but sometimes serve in the acquisition role. The resulting position, it is argued, explains why testimonial knowledge is sometimes easy to get, and sometimes much harder. (shrink)

When and why are coercion, indoctrination, manipulation, deception, and bullshit morally wrongful modes of influence in the context of educating children? Answering this question requires identifying what valid claims different parties have against one another regarding how children are influenced. Most prominently among these, it requires discerning what claims children have regarding whether and how they and their peers are influenced, and against whom they have these claims. The claims they have are grounded in the weighty interests they each equally (...) have in their wellbeing, prospective autonomy and being regarded with equal concern and respect. Plausibly children have valid claims regarding the content and means of influence they themselves are subjected to. For instance, considerations of concern and respect for children confer duties on others enable them to know important information and develop important skills. Children also plausibly have valid claims to be free from certain means of influence including indoctrination. This is because indoctrinatory practices threaten to diminish both their capacity to reason soundly, thereby constituting a wrongful harm, and their opportunities to form judgements and choices in response to relevant evidence and reasons, thereby constituting a wrong of disrespect. (shrink)

Is nature all there is? John Haught examines this question and in doing so addresses a fundamental issue in the dialogue of science with religion. The belief that nature is all there is and that no overall purpose exists in the universe is known broadly as 'naturalism'. Naturalism, in this context, denies the existence of any realities distinct from the natural world and human culture. Since the rise of science in the modern world has had so much influence on (...) naturalism's intellectual acceptance, the author focuses on 'scientific' naturalism and the way in which its defenders are now attempting to put a distance between contemporary thought and humanity's religious traditions. Haught seeks to provide a reasonable, scientifically informed alternative to naturalism. His approach will provide the basis for lively discussion among students, scholars, scientists, theologians and intellectually curious people in general. (shrink)

The Claims of Common Sense investigates the importance of ideas developed by Cambridge philosophers between the World Wars for the social sciences concerning common sense, vague concepts and ordinary language. John Coates examines the thought of Moore, Ramsey, Wittgenstein and Keynes, and traces their common drift away from early beliefs about the need for precise concepts and a canonical notation in analysis. He argues that Keynes borrowed from Wittgenstein and Ramsey their reappraisal of vague concepts, and developed the novel (...) argument that when analysing something as complex as social reality, theory might be simplified by using concepts which lack sharp boundaries. Coates then contrasts this conclusion with the view shared by two contemporary philosophical paradigms - formal semantics and Continental post-structuralism - that the vagueness of ordinary language inevitably leads to interpretive indeterminacy. Developing a link between Cambridge philosophy and work on complexity, vague predicates and fuzzy logic, he argues that Wittgenstein's and Keynes's ideas on the economy of ordinary language present a mediating route for the social sciences between these philosophical paradigms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Elizabethan Bacchae STEPHEN ORGEL Euripides’s Bacchae, with its antic hero and celebration of the joys of revenge, would seem to be especially relevant to Elizabethan drama, an ancestor of The Spanish Tragedy or Hamlet. In fact, however, it seems to have been practically unknown to the Elizabethans. With the new ProQuest version of EEBO (Early English Books Online) it is now possible to search early English books for (...) specific references; so I paired the name Euripides with books printed in England before 1640 to see what came up. I got 474 hits. Many of these, of course, were duplicates, appearing in works that were issued in multiple editions—the actual figure, however, was still something over three hundred. Most of those, however, were cases in which Euripides’s name simply appears in a list of famous ancient authors. Citations which actually quoted Euripides for the most part indicated no knowledge of the work cited, but were only bits of wisdom that might have come from any of the multitude of collections of aphorisms and moral stories throughout the period. There was only one English edition of a play of Euripides in Greek, The Trojan Women, published by John Day in 1575— continental editions were, of course, easily obtainable, but it must be to the point that English publishers did not see a sufficient market to produce them domestically; and there were no subsequent editions of Day’s Trojan Women. As for The Bacchae, I found only a single case where I believe it is being cited, and in a context, moreover, that indicates some familiarity with the play. John Bishop’s Beautiful Blossoms, a collection of historical anecdotes published in 1577, recounting the history of Demetrius, king of Macedonia, says, “Then fled Demetrius unto Thebes, where one scoffingly applied vnto him that verse arion 28.3 winter 2021 64 the elizabethan bacchae of Euripides: he came vnto the Dyrcean springs, and Ismenus, his divine and goodly fourme and shape being chaunged in to a mortall.”1 This is a version of a bit of Dionysus’s opening speech, I am here at the springs of Dirce, the river Ismenos, Changing my shape from divine to mortal... There is no reason to assume that John Bishop (about whom I can learn nothing) knew the play, but he is certainly citing someone who did. The play, then, to the Elizabethans was either practically unknown or deliberately ignored. It was not translated into English until the 1780s, and then two translations were published within a year of each other—for the English, it was an enlightenment and romantic text. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (delivered 1806, published 1846) and Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy (1872) were the works that established The Bacchae as the quintessential Greek tragedy, though for Nietzsche, ironically, the two destroyers of the Greek tragic sense, the two great cultural villains, were Euripides the ironist and Socrates the arch-rationalist. But Nietzsche sees Euripides, at the end of his life, having a major change of heart, realizing that Dionysus was simply too powerful to be expunged from art and society; and The Bacchae was thus the fullest expression of this tragic truth. The problems with this argument are manifold: Euripides the ironist is quite evident in The Bacchae, so it hardly represents a change of heart; and the claims of the irrational are fully present in his earlier plays, for example, in Hippolytus, where all the poetic energy is in expressing the uncontrollable violence of passion, and the virtues of morality and self-control are meagre indeed. The essay was soundly refuted in its own time, and Nietzsche withdrew and recanted it. Its celebrity is a modern phenomenon: whatever its historical defects, it speaks to the dangerous attractions of unreason. There is a perverse element in Nietzsche’s argument, too: Dionysus, as the embodiment of revelry, is surely as essential Stephen Orgel 65 to comedy as to tragedy; and one could press this further. At the end of The Symposium, Socrates tells Agathon and Aristophanes, tragic and comic dramatists, that their arts (or crafts: the word is techne) are essentially the same. Heavy weather has... (shrink)

In this awaited follow up to his book _Faithful Reason_, the well-known philosopher and Catholic thinker John Haldane brings his unrivalled insight to bear on questions of the existence of God and the nature and destiny of the human soul. His arguments weave elements drawn from philosophy of mind, epistemology and aesthetics, together with recurrent features of human experience to create a structure that simultaneously frames and supports ideas such as that the cosmos is a creation, human beings transcend (...) their material composition, and that human fulfilment lies beyond death. As in many of his other writings this volume blends themes from Aquinas with insights drawn from analytical philosophy and further establishes John Haldane as the leading 'analytical thomist'. (shrink)

This book is a study of comparative philosophy and theology. The themes are the critical issues arising from the modern interpretation of Confucian doctrine as they confront the Christian beliefs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Nikolaos Kavasilas was a notable lay theologian of the Greek Orthodox Church. He is regarded as one of the most profound Byzantine theologians of the fourteenth century and one of the foremost Marian theologians in the Greek patristic tradition. He was an original exponent of anthropocentric Mariology and Christocentric theology. A prolific author renowned for his liturgical and sacramental writings, but also concerned with social and political issues. He lived in a period of political strife and theological controversy. He was (...) a younger contemporary of Gregorios Palamas, a close friend of Demetrius Cydones and an advisor to the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, novelist and historian John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet Saul shows that there has never before been such pressure for conformity. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We are obsessed with competition, yet the single largest item of international trade is (...) a subsidized market in armaments. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about "invasive government," yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are breaking down. While most observers view these problems separately, Saul demonstrates that they are largely manifestations of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the last 400 years, our "rational elites" have gradually instituted reforms in every phase of social life. But Saul shows that they have also been responsible for most of the difficulties and violence of the same period. This paradox arises from a simple truth which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts - "Voltaire's bastards"--Whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose peoples increasingly dwell in a world of illusion. Already known to millions of readers as the author of novels which portray the overwhelming effects of this power on the modern individual by weaving together international finance, the oil and arms business, guerrilla warfare, drug traffic, and the world of art, here Saul lays aside the mask of fiction to speak in his own voice. Only by withdrawing from our addiction to "solutions," he argues, reclaiming the citizens' right to question and participate in public life, and recovering a common sense capacity for intelligent panic, can we find a way out of our permanent crisis. (shrink)

By John R. Searle Copyright John R. Searle I. Naturalizing Language I believe that the greatest achievements in philosophy over the past hundred or one hundred and twenty five years have been in the philosophy of language. Beginning with Frege, who invented the subject, and continuing through Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin and their successors, right to the present day, there is no branch of philosophy with so much high quality work as the philosophy of language. In my view, (...) the only achievement comparable to those of the great philosophers of language is Rawls’s reinvention of the subject of political philosophy (and therefore implicitly the subject of ethics). But with this one possible exception, I think that work in the philosophy of language is at the top of our achievements. Having said that, however, I have to record a serious misgiving I have about the subject. The problem is that its practitioners in general do not treat language as a natural phenomenon. This may seem a strange charge to make, given that so many contemporary and recent philosophers of language are anxious to emphasize the empirical character of their theories of language. Quine and Davidson are striking examples of resolute empiricism. My objection is that few contemporary and recent philosophers of language attempt to treat language as a natural extension of non-linguistic biological capacities. Language is not seen as continuous with, nor as an extension of, the rest of our specifically human biological inheritance. I think there is a deep reason, both historically and intellectually, why language has not been treated naturalistically. It is.. (shrink)

John Ogbu has studied minority education from a comparative perspective for over 30 years. The study reported in this book--jointly sponsored by the community and the school district in Shaker Heights, Ohio--focuses on the academic performance of Black American students. Not only do these students perform less well than White students at every social class level, but also less well than immigrant minority students, including Black immigrant students. Furthermore, both middle-class Black students in suburban school districts, as well as (...) poor Black students in inner-city schools are not doing well. Ogbu's analysis draws on data from observations, formal and informal interviews, and statistical and other data. He offers strong empirical evidence to support the cross-class existence of the problem. The book is organized in four parts: *Part I provides a description of the twin problems the study addresses--the gap between Black and White students in school performance and the low academic engagement of Black students; a review of conventional explanations; an alternative perspective; and the framework for the study. *Part II is an analysis of _societal and school factors_ contributing to the problem, including race relations, Pygmalion or internalized White beliefs and expectations, levelling or tracking, the roles of teachers, counselors, and discipline. *_Community factors_--the focus of this study--are discussed in Part III. These include the educational impact of opportunity structure, collective identity, cultural and language or dialect frame of reference in schooling, peer pressures, and the role of the family. This research focus does _not_ mean exonerating the system and blaming minorities, nor does it mean neglecting school and society factors. Rather, Ogbu argues, the role of community forces should be incorporated into the discussion of the academic achievement gap by researchers, theoreticians, policymakers, educators, and minorities themselves who genuinely want to improve the academic achievement of African American children and other minorities. *In Part IV, Ogbu presents a summary of the study's findings on community forces and offers recommendations--some of which are for the school system and some for the Black community. _Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement_ is an important book for a wide range of researchers, professionals, and students, particularly in the areas of Black education, minority education, comparative and international education, sociology of education, educational anthropology, educational policy, teacher education, and applied anthropology. (shrink)

John Rist surveys the history of ethics from Plato to the present and offers a vigorous defence of an ethical theory based on a revised version of Platonic realism. In a wide-ranging discussion he examines well-known alternatives to Platonism, in particular Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume and Kant as well as contemporary 'practical reasoners', and argues that most post-Enlightenment theories of morality depend on an abandoned Christian metaphysic and are unintelligible without such grounding. He also argues that contemporary choice-based theories, whether (...) they take a strictly ethical or more obviously political form, are ultimately arbitrary in nature. His lively and accessible 2001 study is informed by a powerful sense of philosophical history, and will be of interest to both students and scholars of ethics. (shrink)

Defining Species: A Sourcebook from Antiquity to Today provides excerpts and commentary on the definition of «species from source material ranging from the ...

In the 1990s, the role of the chief executive officer (CEO) of major United States corporations underwent a profound transformation in which CEOs went from being bureaucrats or technocrats to shareholder partisans who acted more like proprietors or entrepreneurs. This transformation occurred in response to changes in the competitive environment of U.S. corporations and also to the agency theory argument that high levels of compensation by means of stock options helped to overcome the agency problem inherent in the separation of (...) ownership and control. Some critics charge that this new CEO role is objectionable for a variety of reasons, which may also be applicable to the current financial crisis in which CEO misconduct may have played a part. These objections are based largelyon a team production model of corporate governance, which is held by these critics to be superior to the standard agent-principal model. This article examines the objections offered by critics of the changed role of the CEO and argues that their negative assessment of this development and their use of the team production model to support their conclusions are not warranted. CEOs have changed from hired hands to co-owners, and this change may have contributed in some measure to the current financial crisis. However, in determining the morally preferable role of the CEO, care must be taken not to discard what is sound in the changed role. (shrink)

Clearly, if a man holds a self-contradictory belief, then his belief cannot be rational, for there can be no set of evidence sufficient to justify it. This is most apparent when the self contradictory belief is a belief in a conjunction, , rather than when it is a non-conjunctive self-contradictory belief, e.g. a belief that red is not a color.

John Russon draws from a broad range of art and literature to show how philosophy speaks to the most basic and important questions in our everyday lives. In Sites of Exposure, Russon grapples with how personal experiences such as growing up and confronting death combine with broader issues such as political oppression, economic exploitation, and the destruction of the natural environment to make life meaningful. His is cutting-edge philosophical work, illuminated by original and rigorous thinking that relies on cross-cultural (...) communication and engagement with the richness of human cultural history. These probing interpretations of the nature of phenomenology, the philosophy of art, history, and politics, are appropriate for students and scholars of philosophy at all levels. (shrink)