William James and Alfred North Whitehead strongly rejected materialism as a metaphysical option. While James lived and wrote only up to the beginning of the revolution in physics that brought to the fore fundamentally different theories such as quantum theory and the special and general theories of relativity, Whitehead, as an accomplished mathematician, was readily conversant with these new developments. Since their respective times, however, much innovation and refinement of theories in physics and other natural sciences has taken place. With (...) these later developments, conceptions of matter and its capabilities have undergone far-reaching explicit and implicit changes. A consequence of these... (shrink)

Argues that a pluralistic understanding of truth can foster productive conversations about common concerns involving religion, science, ethics, politics, economics, and ecology without falling into relativism. In this book, Donald A. Crosby defends the idea that all claims to truth are at best partial. Recognizing this, he argues, is a necessary safeguard against arrogance, close-mindedness, and potentially violent reactions to differences of outlook and practice. Crosby demonstrates how “partial truths” are inevitably at work in conversations and debates about religion, (...) science, morality, economics, ecology, and social and political progress. He then focuses on the concept in the discipline of philosophy, looking at a number of distinctions that are taken to be strictly binary—those between fact and value, continuity and novelty, rationalism and empiricism, mind and body, and good and evil—and demonstrates how in all of these cases, each on its own can offer only an incomplete picture. Partial Truths and Our Common Future invites ongoing dialogue with others for the sake of mutual enlargements of understanding rather than mere civility, and provides incentive for continuing open-minded and shared inquiries into the important issues of life. “This is a transdisciplinary philosophical work that moves with grace across traditions, time periods, and thinkers. It is a master class in the existential and public relevance of philosophy and a rare example of a book that is both timely and timeless.” — Michael S. Hogue, author of The Promise of Religious Naturalism. (shrink)

This book argues that the subjective and the objective are crucially dependent on one another and neither is intelligible apart from the other. There is no such thing as a purely external, in-itself world. This book is not intended as a defense of epistemological relativism but as a strong recommendation for modest fallibilism and pluralism.

Engages the work and career of a central figure in contemporary philosophy. Hugh J. Silverman was an inspiring scholar and teacher, known for his work engaging and shaping phenomenology, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, structuralism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction. As Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at Stony Brook University, State University of New York, Silverman’s work was marked by “the between,” a concept he developed to think the postmodern in the space between philosophy and non-philosophy. In this volume, leading scholars (...) explore and extend Silverman’s philosophical contributions, from reflections on the notions of care, time, and responsibility, to presentations of the practices and possibilities of deconstruction itself. They provide an assessment of Silverman’s life and work at the intersection of philosophy, ethics, and politics. (shrink)

Walras's Market Models describes and evaluates Léon Walras's models of competitive markets. Through identification of his career phases and the associated general equilibrium models, which are shown to be very different in character, this book differs from previous examinations of his work. During his mature phase of theoretical activity, Walras was concerned with a competitive economy which passes through a phase of disequilibrium in the production and sales of commodities. While in his last phase of theoretical activity, he developed a (...) model in which there is no production, sales, hiring, consuming or saving until an assumed set of equilibrium prices obtains of the model. The two phases of Walras's theoretical work have not previously been identified, and the models have not been subjected to an accurate analysis and evaluation. (shrink)

The year 2010 marks the hundredth anniversary of the Report on Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910), written by Abraham Flexner as Bulletin Four of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This report was monumental in helping to define excellence for the next century of medical education. The editors of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine determined that in recognition of the Flexner Report, this year is appropriate to consider emerging trends that are likely to guide (...) and revitalize medical education in the 21st century. That the observations and changes embodied in the Flexner Report have so long endured is a fitting tribute to the wisdom of the medical education reformers at .. (shrink)

This book explicates and defends the reality of time against its scientific, philosophical, and theological detractors, and it discusses how a proper view of the nature of time serves as a way to comprehend the challenges of human existence and confront the current ecological crisis.

Since its founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

This book explores the nature of human freedom, or what Crosby calls genuine freedom. He argues at length for the crucial importance of genuine freedom for responsible and meaningful human life and takes extended issue, on practical as well as theoretical grounds, with those who argue for the compatibility of freedom with causal determinism.

Este ensayo analiza –desde unas lentes éticas- las dos conclusiones posibles sobre los resultados de Cancún. Explicará que, aunque todavía queda alguna esperanza de encontrar soluciones globales al cambio climático debido a las decisiones adoptadas en Cancún, uno debe ver Cancún en el contexto de un error de veinte años en el intento de prevenir un cambio climático peligroso.

Music as an Imitation of Harmonious Balance.

In this volume Donald Walker brings together Robert Clower's influential essays on monetary economics, grouping them so as to bring out clearly the development of Clower's thought. Among Clower's contributions are an important reinterpretation of Keynes' work, a fresh treatment of the nature of money, the formulation of a microeconomic approach to the understanding of monetary behaviour, and distinct insights on money supply-and-demand and inflation. The essays constitute a well-rounded treatment of the major problems in monetary economics, and the (...) volume as a whole demonstrates how the study of monetary economics may extend knowledge of short-run economic fluctuations and prove useful in developing policy options to ameliorate them. (shrink)

Winner of the 2014 Edward Goodwin Ballard Award for an Outstanding Book in Phenomenology, awarded by the Center for Advance Research in Phenomenology. -/- Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression offers a comprehensive reading of the philosophical work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a central figure in 20th-century continental philosophy. -/- By establishing that the paradoxical logic of expression is Merleau-Ponty's fundamental philosophical gesture, this book ties together his diverse work on perception, language, aesthetics, politics and history in order to establish the (...) ontological position he was developing at the time of his sudden death in 1961. Donald A. Landes explores the paradoxical logic of expression as it appears in both Merleau-Ponty’s explicit reflections on expression and his non-explicit uses of this logic in his philosophical reflection on other topics, and thus establishes a continuity and a trajectory of his thought that allows for his work to be placed into conversation with contemporary developments in continental philosophy. The book offers the reader a key to understanding Merleau-Ponty's subtle methodology and highlights the urgency and relevance of his research into the ontological significance of expression for today's work in art and cultural theory. (shrink)

In his book Divine Beauty: The Aesthetics of Charles Hartshorne, Daniel A. Dombrowski performs a welcome service by bringing into clear focus a large number of the extensive writings of Hartshorne and relating them to the topic of aesthetics.1 In so doing, he shows how central Hartshorne’s analysis of aesthetic experience is to various aspects of his thought, including but by no means restricted to his views on the nature of art and the place of the arts in human life. (...) Dombrowski brings Hartshorne’s ideas on aesthetic experience into the context of the writings of aestheticians and other thinkers, comparing and contrasting his views with theirs, and in that way elaborating and clarifying Hartshorne’s views. He .. (shrink)

Any attempt to rise to the climate challenge will be fruitless unless it is understood as part of a much wider battle of worldviews, a process of rebuilding and reinventing the very idea of the collective, the communal, the commons, the civil, and the civic after so many decades of attack and neglect. Because what is overwhelming about the climate challenge is that it requires breaking so many rules at once.Columnist and editor Naomi Klein calls our attention to the urgent (...) need for a radical reenvisioning of entrenched worldviews or conceptions of reality in our time of direly threatening climate change and pending ecological disaster around the globe. We need, in other words, to question our most basic assumptions... (shrink)

Religious naturalism and three scientific revolutions: Introduction -- The cosmological revolution -- The evolutionary revolution -- The ecological revolution -- Inwardness and awareness in nature: Introduction -- Inwardness of life and inwardness of mind -- Mind and consciousness in nature -- The range of conscious awareness on earth -- Presumptive rights and conflicts of rights: Introduction -- Rs of the thou of nature -- A scheme of presumptive natural rights -- A fourth R of the thou of nature -- Conflicts (...) of rights -- Hunting and fishing : Introduction -- Hunting -- Fishing -- Responses to the charge of impractical idealism -- Eating and wearing: Introduction -- Using animals for food -- The vegetarian response -- Using animals for apparel and other purposes -- Other areas of responsibility and concern: Introduction -- Experimenting on animals -- Rodeos, circuses, zoos, and aquariums -- Endangered species and despoliations of natural environments -- The human population explosion -- The threat of global climate change -- A new moral and religious consciousness: Introduction -- Empowerment in religion of nature -- Objections and replies -- Principles and prescriptions. (shrink)

Gregor Sebba's monumental Bibliographia Cartesiana; A Critical Guide to the Descartes Literature 1800-1960 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964) is the basic bibliographical tool of pre-1960 Descartes scholarship. While somewhat weak in its coverage of twentieth century Anglo-American analytical literature on Descartes, it is outstanding ic its coverage of continental scholarship. Willis Doney's "Bibliography," in his Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1967), largely rectifies Sebba’s lack of coverage of pre-1960 analytical work on Descartes. Subsequent to Doney's 1967 bibliography, (...) there have been several useful bibliographical updates, including the excellent "Bulletin Cartésien," published annually in the Archives de Philosophie. However, Vere Chappell and Willis Doney's Twenty-Five Years of Descartes Scholarship, 1960-1984: A Bibliography (forthcoming, New York: Garland, 1987) promises to become the definitive update of Sebba. The present bibliography is designed to supplement the above bibliographies by listing Canadian and American dissertations on Descartes and Cartesianism from 1865 through 1984. It lists dissertations alphabetically by author and provides locations in Dissertations Abstracts as well as University Microfilms order numbers, whenever available. (shrink)