_One Hundred Twentieth-Century Philosophers_ offers biographical information and critical analysis of the life, work and impact of some of the most significant figures in philosophy this century. Taken from the acclaimed _Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers_, the 100 entries are alphabetically organised, from Adorno to Zhang Binglin, and cover individuals from both continental and analytic philosophy. The entries have an identical four-part structure making it easy to compare and contrast information, comprising: * biographical details * a bibliography of major works (...) * a listing of relevant secondary and critical literature * an appraisal of the philosopher's thoughts and achievements. A separate glossary provides an introduction to the origins, development and main features of major philosophical schools and movements and offers select bibliographies to guide the reader to further research. (shrink)

_What is psychotherapy about?_ _What are the similarities and differences of its many forms?_ _What are the most recent developments in the field?_ _Introduction to Psychotherapy_ has been an essential reference book since its publication in 1979, and is regularly included in reading lists for trainee psychotherapists, psychiatrists and other professionals. It is often recommended to interested lay people and prospective patients. This third edition takes into account recent changes in psychotherapy theory, practice and research. The authors are all psychoanalysts. (...) The first edition arose from the experiences of Dennis Brown and Jonathan Pedder working and teaching together as Consultant Psychotherapists at St Mary's Hospital and Medical School, London. (shrink)

The work of Lawrence Kohlberg has become the central focus in both the research and applied dimensions of moral education. While teachers and academics are generally familiar with Kohlberg's account of his six stages of moral development, his hints about a highest and culminating seventh stage have had no sustained critique. This essay attempts to provide a detailed account and critique of all of Kohlberg's writings dealing with stage seven, from a philosophical standpoint. This essay critiques Kohlberg's analysis of Moore's (...) naturalistic fallacy, and rejects his attempt to disarm the fallacy by adopting a strategy of ?parallelism?, or ?complementarity?. I argue that it might be better to accept the fact that one cannot derive an ought from an is, and then to view ought-claims as selected or preferred is-claims. This allows morality to remain sui generis, and the support for a moral choice must arise from the complete ?story? or world-view in which it is embedded. Stage seven is not just any ?whole story?, however, but the best or ideal whole story. As well, it serves as the answer to the fundamental ethical question, ?but why should I be moral in the first place?? Stage seven gains its justificatory power from its stance of empathetic identification of the moral agent with others, and with the cosmos as a whole, as thinkers as varied as Marcus Aurelius and Teilhard de Chardin have suggested. If stage seven is, as Kohlberg argues, an ethics of love, and if the first six stages are to be thought of as comprising an ethics of justice, then what is to be done if they conflict? Kohlberg deals with this question, and eventually decides in favour of justice, even given the seventh stage as somehow the ground of all normativity in his system. I argue that he cannot consistently adopt a parallelist thesis here, but needs to recognize the normatively fundamental character of his own seventh stage. It serves as his ?whole story?, on which the previous six stages all rest. Kohlberg's own thesis forces him to retain an ethics of justice only until one reaches the level of agape. Then, as with all higher stages, the lower stages are not abandoned, but are taken up and enriched by the thinking and acting which emerge from the higher stage perspective. Neither justice nor agape can stand alone as sufficient basis for an adequate ethics. But it is agape that is the more fundamental, and which enriches justice without rejecting its generally overwhelming claims. Stage seven consciousness simply reminds one that justice is not enough, even though it does constitute the largest part of ethics. (shrink)

Since the 1909 work of Carathéodory, formulations of thermodynamics have gained ground which highlight the role of the the binary relation of adiabatic accessibility between equilibrium states. A feature of Carathéodory's system is that the version therein of the second law contains an ambiguity about the nature of irreversible adiabatic processes, making it weaker than the traditional Kelvin-Planck statement of the law. This paper attempts first to clarify the nature of this ambiguity, by defining the arrow of time in thermodynamics (...) by way of the Equilibrium Principle. It then argues that the ambiguity reappears in the important 1999 axiomatisation due to Lieb and Yngvason. (shrink)

The book is an introduction to oriental philosophy via individual consideration of the ideas of thirty-five major figures drawn from six traditions. Commentaries on each philosopher are accompanied by overviews of these traditions.

This study addresses a central theme in current philosophy: Platonism vs Naturalism and provides accounts of both approaches to mathematics, crucially discussing Quine, Maddy, Kitcher, Lakoff, Colyvan, and many others. Beginning with accounts of both approaches, Brown defends Platonism by arguing that only a Platonistic approach can account for concept acquisition in a number of special cases in the sciences. He also argues for a particular view of applied mathematics, a view that supports Platonism against Naturalist alternatives. Not only (...) does this engaging book present the Platonist-Naturalist debate over mathematics in a comprehensive fashion, but it also sheds considerable light on non-mathematical aspects of a dispute that is central to contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

The idea to produce the current volume was conceived by Jiirgen Mittelstrass and Robert E. Butts in 1978. Idealist philosophers are wrong about one thing: the temporal gap separating idea and reality can be very long indeed - even ten or so years! Problems of timing were joined by personal problems and by the pressure of other professional commitments. Fortunately, James Brown agreed to cooperate in the editing of the volume; the infusion of his usual energy, good judgement (...) and good-natured promptness saved the volume and made its produc tion possible. Despite the delays, the messages of the papers included in the book have not gone stale. An extremely worthwhile exercise in international philosophical cooperation has come to fruition; the German constructivist philosophical position is here represented in papers in English that will make its contemporary importance available to a larger audience. The editors owe thanks to many persons. All involved in the project owe much to the interest and support of Nicholas Rescher, a friend of the undertaking from the time of its inception. My review of the translations was helped immensely by Andrea Purvis' careful copy editing of the typescript. Most of all, however, we owe gratitude and admiration for the tireless efforts on behalf of this enterprise to Jiirgen Mittelstrass. (shrink)

This eye-opening book reveals how little we've understood about the ongoing pitched battles between the sciences and the humanities--and how much may be at ...

Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy-altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but (...) is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness--a measure of perceived self-other overlap--was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy-altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness. (shrink)

Most disciplines make use of thought experiments, but physics and philosophy lead the pack with heavy dependence upon them. Often this is for conceptual clarification, but occasionally they provide real theoretical advances. In spite of their importance, however, thought experirnents have received rather little attention as a topic in their own right until recently. The situation has improved in the past few years, but a mere generation ago the entire published literature on thought experiments could have been mastered in a (...) long weekend. Now the subject is beginning to flourish. Given the relative newness of the field, it might be useful to have several examples at one’s finger tips, so a number of great ones will be described. Attention will also be drawn outside physics and philosophy. In mathematics there is something analogous to thought experiments -- visual reasoning and picture proofs. I will look briefly at this class of thought experiments and try using them to make a case for possibly settling the continuum hypothesis. After this, I will return to thought experiments in the sciences and propose an account of how they work. Finally, I will end with a sketch of a topic I am currently working on, a kind of progress report which, I hope, will be an inducement to others. (shrink)

THE SOCIOLOGICAL TURN The problem we are concerned with is just this: How should we understand science? Are we to account for scientific knowledge (or ...

The VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtue has received substantial attention since its inception as a model of 24 dimensions of positive human functioning, but less so as a potential contributor to a psychological science on the nature of virtue. The current paper presents an overview of how this classification could serve to advance the science of virtue. Specifically, we summarize previous research on the dimensional versus categorical characterization of virtue, and on the identification of cardinal virtues. We give (...) particular attention to the three-dimensional model of cardinal virtues that includes moral, self-regulatory, and intellectual domains. We also discuss the possibility that these three clusters be treated as fundamental elements of a virtue model, meaning that they clearly and directly contribute to both individual and communal flourishing across various cultures. This discussion includes a summary of previous speculations about the evolution of adaptations underlying the human capacity for using behavioral repertoires associated with the three virtues, as well as discussing ways in which they simultaneously enhance community and individual, in the last case focusing particularly on evidence concerning mating potential. We then discuss the relationship between the evolutionary perspective on virtues and Aristotle’s concept of the reciprocity of the virtues. Finally, we provide speculations about the nature of practical wisdom. While accepting the potential value of future revisions to the VIA model, that model even under its current conditions has the potential to generate a number of intriguing and testable hypotheses about the nature of virtue. (shrink)

In his long-awaited new edition of Philosophy of Mathematics, James Robert Brown tackles important new as well as enduring questions in the mathematical sciences. Can pictures go beyond being merely suggestive and actually prove anything? Are mathematical results certain? Are experiments of any real value?" "This clear and engaging book takes a unique approach, encompassing nonstandard topics such as the role of visual reasoning, the importance of notation, and the place of computers in mathematics, as well as traditional (...) topics such as formalism, Platonism, and constructivism. The combination of topics and clarity of presentation make it suitable for beginners and experts alike. The revised and updated second edition of Philosophy of Mathematics contains more examples, suggestions for further reading, and expanded material on several topics including a novel approach to the continuum hypothesis."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Over the past several decades, medical ethics has gained a solid foothold in medical education and is now a required course in most medical schools. Although the field of medical ethics is by nature eclectic, moral philosophy has played a dominant role in defining both the content of what is taught and the methodology for reasoning about ethical dilemmas. Most educators largely rely on the case‐based method for teaching ethics, grounding the ethical reasoning in an amalgam of theories drawn from (...) moral philosophy, including consequentialism, deontology, and principlism.In this article we hope to make a case for augmenting the focus of education in medical ethics. We propose complementing the traditional approach to medical ethics with a more embedded approach, one that has been described by others as “microethics,” the ethics of everyday clinical practice. (shrink)

_Philosophy of Mathematics_ is an excellent introductory text. This student friendly book discusses the great philosophers and the importance of mathematics to their thought. It includes the following topics: * the mathematical image * platonism * picture-proofs * applied mathematics * Hilbert and Godel * knots and nations * definitions * picture-proofs and Wittgenstein * computation, proof and conjecture. The book is ideal for courses on philosophy of mathematics and logic.

The negative emotions generated following stressful life events can increase one’s risk of depressive symptoms and promote higher levels of perceived stress. The process model of emotion regulation can help distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies to determine who may be at the greatest risk of worse psychological health across the lifespan. Heart rate variability may affect these relationships as it indexes aspects of self-regulation, including emotion and behavioral regulation, that enable an individual to dynamically adapt to the (...) changing demands of both internal and external environments. In this study, we expected individual differences in resting vagally mediated HRV to moderate the influence of emotion regulatory strategies among our sample of 267 adults. We found support for the hypothesis that higher vagally mediated HRV buffers against the typical adverse effects of expressive suppression when evaluating depressive symptoms and found weak support when considering perceived stress. There was no evidence for an interaction between cognitive reappraisal and vagally mediated HRV but there was a significant, negative association between cognitive reappraisal and depressive symptoms and perceived stress. Future work may determine if intervening on either emotion regulation strategies or HRV may change these within-persons over time. (shrink)

As a background notion commonly ascribable to all actual beings, the idea of "concern" affords Weiss continuity; in the operation of its actual exemplifications it accounts for novelty and sometimes for radical discontinuity. The major concept of freedom in Weiss's cosmology is not an infinite, wholly vacuous freedom, a completely pure chance, lacking reference to any object or objectives; it is specified in concerns which do have reference both to other entities and to internal demands. Concerns are thus also strategic (...) in the description of actuality and possibility. (shrink)

Feynman diagrams are now iconic. Like pictures of the Bohr atom, everyone knows they have something important to do with physics. Those who work in quantum field theory, string theory, and other esoteric fields of physics use them extensively. In spite of this, it is far from clear what they are or how they work. Are they mere calculating tools? Are they somehow pictures of physical reality? Are they models in any interesting sense? Or do they play some other kind (...) of role?It is safe to say they are linked to some sort of calculation tool, but after that it is far from clear. If you ask me how to get from Toronto to Montreal, I could respond two ways: I could tell you to drive north until you... (shrink)

Starting from the assumption that the history of science is, in some significant sense, rational and thus that historical episodes may serve as evidence in choosing between competing normative methodologies of science, the question arises: "Just what is this history-methodology evidential relation?" After examining the proposals of Laudan, a more plausible account is proposed.

Everyone appreciates a clever mathematical picture, but the prevailing attitude is one of scepticism: diagrams, illustrations, and pictures prove nothing; they are psychologically important and heuristically useful, but only a traditional verbal/symbolic proof provides genuine evidence for a purported theorem. Like some other recent writers (Barwise and Etchemendy [1991]; Shin [1994]; and Giaquinto [1994]) I take a different view and argue, from historical considerations and some striking examples, for a positive evidential role for pictures in mathematics.

Thought experiments provide us with scientific understanding and theoretical advances which are sometimes quite significant, yet they do this without new empirical input, and possibly without any empirical input at all. How is this possible? The challenge to empiricism is to give an account which is compatible with the traditional empiricist principle that all knowledge is based on sensory experience. Thought experiments present an enormous challenge to empiricist views of knowledge; so much so that some of us have thrown in (...) the towel and embraced good old fashioned platonism. I'll try to explain why one brand of empiricism, namely John Norton's argument view of thought experiments, won't work. (shrink)

This new edition of Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy sets forth clearly, for the first time for the English reader, what Hegel actually said. These lectures challenged the antiquarianism of Hegel's contemporaries by boldly contending that the history of philosophy is itself philosophy, not just history. It portrays the journey of reason or spirit through time, as reason or spirit comes in stages to its full development and self-conscious existence, through the successive products of human intellect and activity. (...) These lectures proved to be extremely influential on the intellectual history of the past two centuries. They are crucial to understanding Hegel's own systematic philosophy in its constructive aspect, as well as his views on the centrality of reason in human history and culture. Volume I holds additional importance because, as well as setting out Hegel's discussion of the history of Chinese and Indian philosophy, it presents the interesting and significant changes that Hegel made to the stage-setting introduction to these lectures across the years from 1819 to 1831. This edition adapts the considerable editorial resources of the German edition that it translates, to the needs of the general reader as well as the serious scholar, so as to constitute an unparalleled resource on this topic in the English language. (shrink)

This volume examines critical social philosophy today, furthering the dialogue between German critical theory and French post-structuralism, exploring the relationship between philosophy and social theory, and developing new approaches to theories of recognition, social hope, and modern power.

In response to recent critics, this is a vigorous defence of realism. The roles of abstraction, abstract objects and a priori methods are explored, demonstrating the ways in which science mirrors the world.

Hegel gave various lecture series on aesthetics or the philosophy of art, but never published a book of his own on this topic. His famous works on aesthetics were compiled from transcripts of lectures. This volume now presents one transcript complete in English for the first time, with extensive introductory material.

This is a review discussion of Nenad Miščević’s stimulating new book, Thought Experiments (2022). His mental models account is of great importance in the various current debates about the nature of thought experiments. I discuss some of the pros and cons of his account.

There is sufficient evidence that intellectual property rights are corrupting medical research. One could respond to this from a moral or from an epistemic point of view. I take the latter route. Often in the sciences factual discoveries lead to new methodological norms. Medical research is an example. Surprisingly, the methodological change required will involve political change. Instead of new regulations aimed at controlling the problem, the outright socialization of research seems called for, for the sake of better science. I (...) appeal to an analogy between socialized medicine and socialized research. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2M8, Canada; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Newton's bucket, Einstein's elevator, Schrödinger's cat – these are some of the best-known examples of thought experiments in the natural sciences. But what function do these experiments perform? Are they really experiments at all? Can they help us gain a greater understanding of the natural world? How is it possible that we can learn new things just by thinking? In this revised and updated new edition of his classic text _The Laboratory of the Mind_, James Robert Brown continues (...) to defend apriorism in the physical world. This edition features two new chapters, one on “counter thought experiments” and another on the development of inertial motion. With plenty of illustrations and updated coverage of the debate between Platonic rationalism and classic empiricism, this is a lively and engaging contribution to the field of philosophy of science. (shrink)

Other formats of this book available via https://openeducationalberta.ca/educationaltechnologyethics/.

Donald Coxeter died in 2003, at a ripe old age of 96. Though I had regularly seen him at mathematics talks in Toronto for over twenty years, I never felt rushed to seek him out. It seemed he would go on forever. His death left me regretting my missed opportunity and Siobhan Robert's excellent book makes me regret it even more. Like any good biography of an intellectual, King of Infinite Space contains personal details and mathematical achievements in some (...) detail. Thus, we learn of the traumatic effects on Coxeter of his parents' divorce, his search for a spouse, his vegetarianism, and his progressive politics. We also learn a fair bit about the kaleidoscopes he made while in Cambridge during his student days in order to study the symmetry properties of polyhedra. These involved mirrors that Coxeter had specially constructed for this purpose. Along the way we are treated to interesting tidbits, such as G.H. Hardy's detestation of mirrors . There are brief accounts of the brilliant notation Coxeter invented, known as Coxeter diagrams, and of course, the now famous Coxeter groups. Short appendices fill in a bit more detail. It is all very well done and thoroughly engrossing.Wittgenstein befriended Coxeter, who was part of the very small group to whom …. (shrink)

Thinkers as diverse as Kuhn and Salmon agree that should an account of scientific rationality not square with actual scientific practice, then this should be considered as a reductio ad absurdum of the proposed norms and not be taken as evidence that the history of science is in large measure irrational. While many are willing to accept the need to do justice to the history of science as a constraint on the acceptability of any candidate theory of scientific method, very (...) few are willing to use the history of science as evidence in the positive, confirming sense. However, some are; and I join them in believing that the history of science can be used as evidence for or against the various rival normative philosophies of science. That is, of the competing accounts which claim to be the scientific method , the history of science provides the sort of evidence which can lead to a choice from among them. ;This, then, is my starting point: There is a history-methodology evidential relationship. The problem to be tackled is how to characterize this relationship. Just how does what scientists have actually done support or refute an account of what scientists ought to do? This is the main quesion the thesis is devoted to answering. ;Starting from the same assumption that there is a history-methodology evidential relationship, Lakatos and Laudan have given accounts of just what the relationship is. They are critically investigated here and found wanting. ;The account which I think correct and which I defend is along these lines: That normative philosophy of science is correct which best is able to reconstruct the history of science so that it is maximally rational while maintaining a coherence with our best theories in other domains, e.g., psycho-social theories. In arguing for such an account of the history-methodology relation there are many difficulties to overcome. One is that the history of science has to be written up in order for it to be used as evidence. But such an historiography is loaded with normative concepts, so is it not the case that the testing procedure is circular? This is a problem of long standing, but it is shown that the account of testing rival methodologies that I offer will completely obviate the difficulty. This is one piece of strong evidence for my account, and others come from the fact that it overcomes the difficulties that I see in the accounts of Lakatos and Laudan. . . . UMI. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a number of naturalist accounts of mathematics. Philip Kitcher’s version is one of the most important and influential. This paper includes a critical exposition of Kitcher’s views and a discussion of several issues including: mathematical epistemology, practice, history, the nature of applied mathematics. It argues that naturalism is an inadequate account and compares it with mathematical Platonism, to the advantage of the latter.

Having an agreed-upon definition of character education would be useful for both researchers and practitioners in the field. However, even experts in character education disagree on how they would define it. We attempted to achieve greater conceptual clarity on this issue through a prototype analysis in which the features perceived as most central to character education were identified. In Study 1 (N = 77), we asked character education experts to enumerate features of character education. Based on these lists, we identified (...) 30 features. In Study 2 (N = 101), experts assessed which features were central to character education through a categorization task. In Study 3 (N = 166), we assessed the extent of centrality using scalar items. We conclude by offering practical advice for the development of future character education studies and programs rooted in what is deemed central to such programs. (shrink)

William (Bill) Newton-Smith was a renowned Canadian philosopher of science who spent his career largely in Oxford and then at the Central European University in Hungary.Newton-Smith was born in Ori...

An obituary notice outlining the main aspects of Charles Hartshorne's life, career, and thought.