Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalized--conducted as part of natural science.

This paper is about some of the ways in which people sometimes speak while be- ing indifferent toward what they say. We argue that what Harry Frankfurt called ‘bullshitting’ is a mode of speech marked by indifference toward inquiry, the coop- erative project of reaching truth in discourse. On this view bullshitting is character- ized by indifference toward the project of advancing inquiry by making progress on specific subinquiries, represented by so-called questions under discussion. This ac- count preserves the central (...) insight of Frankfurt’s influential analysis of bullshitting in seeing the characteristic of bullshitting as indifference toward truth and falsity. Yet we show that speaking with indifference toward truth is a wider phenomenon than the one Frankfurt identified. The account offered in this paper thereby agrees with various critics of Frankfurt who argue that bullshitting is compatible with not being indifferent toward the truth-value of one’s assertions. Further, we argue that, while bullshitting and lying are not mutually exclusive, most lies are not instances of bullshitting. The account thereby avoids the problem that Frankfurt’s view ulti- mately is insufficient to adequately distinguish bullshitting and lying. (shrink)

Despite his well-known criticisms of popular religion, Hume refers in seemingly complimentary terms to ‘true religion’; in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, his character Philo goes so far as to express ‘veneration for’ it. This paper addresses three questions. First, did Hume himself really approve of something that he called ‘true religion’? Second, what did he mean by calling it ‘true’? Third, what did he take it to be? By appeal to some of his key doctrines about causation and probability, and (...) to some key features of the characters and content of the Dialogues, I argue, contrary to important recent interpretations by Immerwahr and Falkenstein, that Hume's ‘true religion’ is a doctrine, enunciated by Philo, that he regarded as true in an epistemic sense. (shrink)

THE MYTH OF THE PLAN: LESSONS OF SOVIET PLANNING EXPERIENCE by Peter Rutland. LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1985. 286 pp., $26.95. LENIN AND THE END OF POLITICS by A. J. Polan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. 240 pp., $22.50, $9.95 (paper).

Postphenomenology, in a complementary role with other science studies disciplines, remains within the trajectory of those theories which reject early modern epistemology and metaphysics, including rejection of ‘subject’–‘object’ distinctions, and holds, instead, to an inter-relational, co-constitutive ontology. Here the critiques which sometimes echo vestiges of such early modern epistemology are counter-challenged.

John Lizza says that to define death well, we must go beyond biological considerations. Death is the absence of life in an entity that was once alive. Biology is the study of life. Therefore, the definition of death should not involve non-biological concerns.

Occasionally, in the introductory philosophy courses I teach, a student will give an interesting argument for non-belief in God. Though I have never seen this argument in print, it seems familiar. Basically, the argument goes like this. Religious belief is largely determined by geography – where you are born and raised largely determines your religious beliefs. But believing something just because of where you are born and raised is not a reliable indication of whether that belief turns out to be (...) true. So, in some sense, you are not justified in your religious beliefs. I will attempt a more rigorous reconstruction of this argument and offer an objection to it. (shrink)

"Any man-any artist, as Nietzsche or Cezanne would say- climbs the stairway in the tower of his perfection at the cost of a struggle with a deunde-not with an angel, as some have maintained, or with his muse. This fundamental distinction must be kept in mind if the root of a work of art is to be grasped." -Frederico Garcia Lorca.

With the appearance of Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane came the inauguration of theologians and philosophers questioning the preeminence of scholarly attention given to time to the virtual exclusion of space.

Thomas Polger has argued in favor of the mind-brain type-identity theory, the view that mental states or processes are type-identical to states of the central nervous system. Acknowledging that the type-materialist must respond to Kripke's modal anti-materialist argument, Polger insists that Kripke's argument rests on dubious assumptions concerning the identity conditions of brain states. In brief, Polger claims that one knows that x and y are non-identical when one knows the identity conditions for both x and y. Replace x and (...) y with 'brain states' and 'sensations' and it follows that one can know that brain states and sensations are non-identical only if one knows the identity conditions for brain states. But, according to Polger, we do not know the identity conditions for brain states. Hence, we should not be so confident that brains states and sensations are non-identical after all. But Polger's account is terribly flawed. Ironically, if Polger's skepticism is warranted, then Polger himself has no good reasons to be a type-materialist. But more importantly, Polger's skepticism regarding the identity conditions of brain states is deeply defective. We do, I submit, understand the identity conditions of brain states. In the end, I submit, Kripke is safe from Polger. (shrink)

We want God to make sense, to be reasonable, to act according to how we think God should act. This kind of thinking, though, is not far from where we live today. If I give money to the church, then God will bless me financially. If I have my “quiet time” in scripture, then God will bless my day. If I raise my children right, then surely they will turn out right. In themselves these actions are good and right; however, (...) we have to ask ourselves, “Do our motives emerge from the desire to give a place to the mystery of faith, or, rather, to conquer mystery?”. (shrink)

We live in a world of many odd-shaped pieces, a cosmic jigsaw puzzle that often seems to have been further complicated by cruel fate.

P. J. E. Kail's Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy is an excellent book, consisting—like Hume's Treatise itself—of three excellent parts. I will comment on one central aspect of its second part: its explanation of the source of the second thoughts that Hume famously expressed, with a frustrating lack of specificity, about his own initial discussion of personal identity in the Treatise.As is well known, Hume holds in the section "Of personal identity" (T 1.4.6) that a self, mind, or person (...) is "nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions" (T 1.4.6.4; SBN 252) and, more specifically, a "system of different perceptions or different existences link'd together by the relation of cause and .. (shrink)

Hume's Morality: Feeling and Fabrication 1 is a most useful and agreeable book. It contains a wealth of analysis, argument, and insight about many of the most central elements of the moral theory of one of the greatest moral philosophers in human history: David Hume. The book is well-conceived, well-argued, stimulating, informative, clear, precise, thorough, balanced, nuanced, and ingenious, while evincing—especially in its concluding chapter, when considering possible extensions of Hume's theory—a certain subtle but pleasing "warmth in the cause of (...) virtue." As Hume would be the first to recognize, these traits of the book are indications of the personal merit of its author: Rachel Cohon. Indeed, if Cleanthes. (shrink)

Logic as a subject has existed for a long time. Aristotle and the Stoics identified some of its principles, as did Indian logicians. And this ancient logic underwent an extraordinary mathematical development in the last hundred and fifty years. So logic certainly exists, at least as a branch of mathematics. The question is whether it is anything more than that.

Student Learning Outcomes are increasingly de rigueur in US higher education. Usually defined as statements of what students will be able to measurably demonstrate upon completing a course or program, proponents argue that they are essential to objective assessment and quality assurance. Critics contend that Student Learning Outcomes are a misguided attempt to apply corporate quality enhancement schemes to higher education. It is not clear whether faculty should embrace or reject Student Learning Outcomes. With sincere apologies to Plato, this dialogue (...) explores arguments for and against their use. (shrink)

Abstract. For the past two decades, I have been developing an integrative Christian marriage theory, based in part on a grounding concept of natural law and an overarching theory of covenant. The natural law part of this theory starts with an account of the natural facts, conditions, interests, needs, and qualities of human life, interaction, and generation—what I call the “premoral” goods or realities of life. It then identifies the natural inclinations of humans to form enduring and exclusive monogamous marriages (...) and to preserve these units as the central site for intimacy, procreation, and nurture of children. In this paper, I first summarize this natural law theory of marriage and then compare it to the formulations of other modern Christian thinkers. I also defend this theory against various modern critics of natural law—in part by reinterpreting some traditional natural law teachings that in my view have been misunderstood, in part by looking at the interesting convergences between the insights into sex, marriage, and family life offered by contemporary Christian theological ethicists and by evolutionary biologists and biological anthropologists. (shrink)

The Stranger, the Alien and the Foreigner are not individuals or groups - they are conclusions and classifications, motives and explanations created through a belief in the power and borders of division. This book seeks meaning and understanding for those that define their existence to a relationship with an identity that doesn't include them.

Explorationism (see www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Logi/LogiFaus.htm, WCP XX, “Conflict without Contradiction”) is a perspective concerning human knowledge: as yet, our ignorance of the Real World remains great. With this perspective, all our knowledge is so far only partial and tentative. Evidence Logic (EL) (see “The Concept of Evidence”, INTER. JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS 15 (2000), 477‐493) provides an example of a reasonable Base Logic for Explorationism:EL provides machinery for the representation and processing of gradational evidential predications. Syntactically, for any evidence level e, for (...) a proposition symbol P, Pc:e asserts that there is level e confirmatory evidence regarding P, while Pr:e asserts level e refutatory evidence (n‐ary predications, for n>0, are handled similarly). Semantically, EL has similarly enriched model spaces. The Boolean sentence algebras of the variety of EL languages, varying across stipulated families of predicate and functions symbols, have been analyzed, and EL is sound and complete. Belief Systems, we will argue, are all unnecessary: in science, as well as in all broader domains of human relations and activity, it is always sufficient to have simply commitments, which entail no assertion of Truth but rather simply entail agreed‐upon consequent actions. (Agent A believes a sentence S if A asserts S is True although A does not know (have absolute evidence) that S is True.) We will further seek to explore ways in which such a perspective may help in engendering more enhanced discourse, less absolutist and shrill advocacy and violence, and more rationality, in the Global Village of the new century. (shrink)

For Gifford, the profoundest explorer of the human consciousness, time, and memory is James Joyce and in its range of reference, wit, and humanity the spirit of ...

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

In his recent and suitably provocative book on The Object of Morality G. J. Warnock argues that the fundamental moral concern is with what he sums up as the ‘amelioration of the human predicament’, a predicament which is made even more pressing by the natural limitations of our human sympathies. The distinctively moral virtues, Warnock concludes, will be those dispositions which tend to countervail these natural limitations, especially non-maleficence, fairness, beneficence, and non-deception; and from these fundamental moral virtues we can (...) derive, in turn, four fundamental moral standards or principles. The theory of morality—and it is thank heaven a theory of morality, not of moral language—which I have crudely summarised here seems to me correct as far as it goes, but it also seems to me that Warnock’s concentration on the predicament of the individual human being leads him to ignore what is at least as fundamental, the essentially social and interpersonal aspect of much morality. (shrink)

The right to be free -- Born in England -- Raised a Quaker -- School days -- Off to sea -- Meeting Ben Franklin -- "Common sense" -- A fighter and a writer -- For the love of his country -- Rights of man -- The age of reason -- A great patriot -- Time line -- Glossary.

The title of this article raises a question: Does the author think that this idea, at the beginning of the twentieth century and during the nineteenth century, was something different from what it is now at the end of the twentieth century? Yes, the author does think so: at the end of the present century the Russian idea has changed, though its new features are still visibly weaker than its former, traditional features, and our future all but depends on which (...) carries the day—the old or the new—in this Russian idea. Alas, there is much evidence that things will take their usual course. (shrink)

Shares strategies for maintaining business competitiveness in an increasingly transparent world, revealing the importance of professional honesty, solution-driven practices and integrity-based customer support. By the authors of The One-to-One Future. 20,000 first printing.