A companion to Charles Darwin's notebooks, 1836-1844 (Cornell U. Pr., 1987). Because Darwin was in the process of formulating his arguments, entries on a single topic might appear in several series of notes at any number of places in various manuscripts. This concordance gathers these citations toge.

The state that we inhabit plays a significant role in shaping our lives. For not only do its institutions constrain the kinds of lives we can lead, but it also claims the right to punish us if our choices take us beyond what it deems to be appropriate limits. Political philosophers have traditionally tried to justify the state's power by appealing to their preferred theories of justice, as articulated in complex and wide-ranging moral theories—utilitarianism, Kantianism, and the like. One of (...) John Rawls's greatest contributions to political philosophy has been his recognition that this is the wrong way for this field to approach its task. He points to what he calls “the fact of reasonable pluralism,” which is the incontestable fact that in a free society people striving to lead their lives ethically will subscribe to conflicting moral and religious doctrines, many of which will be “reasonable” in the special sense of leaving their adherents willing to cooperate with those with whom they have moral disagreements. And this means that political philosophers can no longer rely on any particular “comprehensive” doctrine in their attempts to justify the state. For doing so would be unfair to those who subscribe to a conflicting reasonable doctrine; it would mean that the coercive power of the state would not be justified to them in terms they can accept, even while they were forced to abide by its terms. (shrink)

Although Professor Lewin is not testing existing views that, for people in politics, 'egoism rules' on deep theoretical grounds, he strongly argues that empirical facts do not support such views and thus opens a new chapter in the debate on individuals' rationality.

The first set in Routledge's new _Critical Reviews_ series focuses on the period from the founding of the _Edinburgh Review_ to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Exhibiting all the richness that characterises economic writing of the period, the 95 articles collected here include pieces by Brougham, Horner, Southey and James Mill. The subjects addressed include: * international trade * banking and currency questions * the poor laws * the national debt * population Unlike many other recently published collections of (...) economic articles this work includes appropriate explanatory notes and a long introduction placing the anthology within the context of the times. (shrink)

The oral/aural power of the Bible has been strangely neglected within the worship life of the church as well as in recent biblical scholarship. In order to recover the Bible's power to take captive the imagination of readers and interpreters, we must once again attend to the public reading, or performance, of the Bible.

This paper shows how alternative, culturally-determined motivational forces can be substituted for self-interest or rationality in the theory of choice. Several possibilities are considered, including the replacement of preference optimization by such propellants as the selection of the `second best' or the `central' option. It is argued that although all choice behavior, even that consistent with the alternatives considered, can ultimately be understood as satisfying the criterion of rationality, richer and more meaningful explanation is obtained by focusing on culturally significant (...) alternative motivations when the latter turn out, in particular environments, to be more important than self-interest. (shrink)

Vico’s De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709) draws a distinction between two types of pedagogy, based on the difference between ars topica and ars critica, which is crucial to our present-day conception of human education. Ars critica is the source of the contemporary understanding of education. When Descartes put aside rhetoric, poetic, and history as having nothing to do with the conduct of right reasoning in the sciences, he established criticism as the ideal of education. On the Cartesian view no (...) education is offered in the art of topics, which Vico understands as “the art of finding the middle term” that is necessary to the making of arguments.In Vico’s view, children are to be trained in memory, metaphor, and narration—or when they are adults they will be unable to find the starting points of thought. The Cartesian child will become a hollow-minded adult, expert in the use of methods, organizing materials, and calling up information but unable to make original judgments without ingenuity (ingenium)—the power to see the similar in dissimilars. On Vico’s view ars critica and all it implies is to be introduced only when the mind has been formed in its original powers of imagination. (shrink)

Abstract In an important text, A Thousand Teachings, sometimes overlooked by scholars, Sankara expounds non?dualist religion. This article analyses Sankara's thought for its theoretical and practical perspectives. First, the discussion views non?duality from the viewpoint of ignorance. This pluralistic/dualistic perspective obscures the unenlightened seeker's vision of the Ultimate Truth. Secondly, the study examines Sankara's introduction of a transitional idea, Unevolved Name?and?Form (avy?krte n?mar?pe). Such an idea assists the seeker's intellectual progress from the state of ignorance to a rational understanding leading (...) toward nonduality (Advaita Ved?nta). Finally, the exposition clarifies Sankara's expression of the ?knowledge of Brahman?. This fulfilling wisdom affects a transformation of the life experience of the unenlightened. Subsequently disciplined in meditation (parisamkhy?na), the persistent seeker develops into an experiencer of the non?duality (advaitav?da). (shrink)

In a recent trial in the United States a physician was convicted of manslaughter during the performance of a hysterotomy on a woman pregnant from twenty to twenty eight weeks. Some members of the jury, in their deliberations, were much impressed by seeing a photograph of a fetus of about the same age. The experience apparently provided some jurors with reason to conclude that the fetus which did die during or immediately after the hysterotomy was a human being or a (...) person or, at least, was so like a child that the killing of it was prohibited by the law of homicide. If being a human being is not the same as being a pre-natal progeny of homo sapiens, it is difficult to understand how one could “tell by looking” whether the fetus is a human being. But the sight of a fetus of twenty weeks or longer does, I think, tempt us to think that from a moral standpoint we ought to extend the same treatment to such fetuses, or virtually the same, as we extend to newborn babies and young children. The visual similarities between middle or late stage fetuses and newborn babies is striking. (shrink)

Griffin’s book contributes to the literature of cumulative arguments for God’s existence, revealing the deficiencies of the “God Almighty” of traditional theism (i.e., Gawd) and the strengths of a Whiteheadian process theism (i.e., God). Since the concept of omnipotence is central, it is imperative to note that there are three ideas of divine power in traditional theism, not always carefully parsed by Griffin. Evolutionary theory requires rethinking theism, but, contrary to Griffin, many of the problems posed by the theory are (...) less for belief in Gawd than for fundamentalism. Nevertheless, an interactive dipolar deity fits most naturally with evolutionary thinking to provide a concept of God All-Loving. Griffin is at his best discussing the ground of abstract truths. He does not, however, avail himself of some of the best arguments against traditional theism found in Hartshorne’s work; there is also the question whether Griffin would accept Hartshorne’s idea of the modal coincidence of God’s existence and all possibility and how this would affect his cumulative case. (shrink)

This article primarily sets out to investigate whether Igbo (African) thoughts on death might be considered Heideggerian or not. It does so by analysing and juxtaposing five key elements of Heidegger’s existentialist analysis of Dasein’s death with some important features of Igbo (African) thoughts on death. This is aimed at challenging an identifiable attempt by scholars like Chukwuelobe and Onwuanibe to couch the Igbo metaphysics of death in Heideggerian terms. Therefore, the main argument of the article is that the important (...) features of Igbo thoughts on death, as outlined by these scholars, substantially conflict with key elements of Heidegger’s existentialist analysis of Dasein’s death. To make this case, the article thoroughly examines the key elements in both the Heideggerian and the Igbo frameworks, showing that they could hardly be reconciled. Though the article identifies some scholars and zeroes in on them, it simultaneously serves a larger pre-emptive purpose of pointing out the many hurdles that may have to be overcome in any attempt to align Igbo thoughts on death with Heidegger’s framework. This pre-emptive aspect is a worthwhile philosophical task in itself, given that the theme of death occupies an important place in both the existentialist tradition and in Igbo philosophy. (shrink)

This is the editorial introduction to the four papers on consciousness comprising the July 2014 issue of Essays in Philosophy (vol. 15, issue 2). The four authors are Keith E. Turausky, John K. Grandy, Adam Green, and Ben Gubran.

An anthology of substantive selections on human nature from fifteen authors: Plato, Aristotle, Mencius, Seneca, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Beauvoir, B. F. Skinner, and E. O. Wilson. Reprinted in 2015 by Biblio Publishing, ISBN 978-1-62249-267-1.