The following are some of the entries received in the contest presented in our March, 1960 issue. The starred essays were judged as winners and were awarded $25.00 prizes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Wandering at Ease in the ZhuangziJames MillerWandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Edited by Roger T. Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Pp. viii + 239."Good grief!" exclaimed the reviewer as he greedily tore open the package from Philosophy East and West. "Not another book on Zhuangzi!"As it turns out, Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, edited by Roger T. Ames, was found to be (...) not just "another book on Zhuangzi" but, instead, a wonderful collection of creative essays that genuinely wanders on Zhuangzi's vast spirit and that should appeal to a broad academic audience. Do not be deceived by the publisher's blurb on the back cover: "an excellent balance of philological and philosophical analysis." This summary of the book's contents proves to be fortunately misleading.The common thread running through this book is that it is dedicated to Yang Yu-wei, who taught many of the contributors while they were graduate students at Taiwan Normal University. Randall P. Peerenboom hilariously describes his first encounter with Professor Yang in a coda to his essay "Living Beyond the Bounds:Henry Miller and the Quest for Daoist Realization":He darted across the busy main street, dodging traffic, all the while calling out my name in a booming voice sure to attract the attention of the wandering undead and waving his arms in whirlwind fashion, managing somehow to evoke simultaneously images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the Bodhidharma. Welcome, I thought, to the wonderful world of Oz.(p. 139) [End Page 125]This description sets the tone for the essays here, which concentrate on the Zhuangzi's humor, character, and personality, unafraid to stride out across the busy, one-way streets of traditional academic disciplines. While remaining rigorously within the bounds of academic probity, this volume steadfastly resists the dangerous encroachment of desiccating intellectualism upon the wit, intelligence, and charm of one of the world's greatest works of literature.All of the essays "live beyond the bounds" in some fashion or other. Chris Jochim's "Just Say No to 'No Self' in Zhuangzi" reviews recent writing on self and personhood in the Zhuangzi, and includes the treatment of Zhuangzi in the theories of flow and happiness by the noted psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. Daniel Coyle's study of the zhenren (authentic person), lurks tentatively in the shadows of comparative mysticism. A comparison such as "Theocentrism aside, Zhuangzi's language is Eckhart-like in that it cancels itself out, short-circuiting the intellect so as to open one up to spontaneity and the omnipresence of Heaven" deserves greater exploration than a short essay can afford. James D. Sellmann's essay on the transformative effects of humor is briefly illuminated by a reference to Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1986),1 but this worthy literary intersection is only pursued in a footnote. The question of philosophy and literature is also raised in William Callahan's study of action and decision making in the story of Cook Ding. Callahan, again in footnotes, acknowledges the influence of Kundera, Barthes, and Derrida in his quest to understand what it means to "read" literary philosophy or philosophical literature. His essay, however, owes its chief debt to the linguistic analysis of Chad Hansen and A. C. Graham, and we can only hope that he will soon furnish us with the full fruits of his literary education.One group of essays deals with particular characters in the Zhuangzi. Kirill Ole Thompson's inventive study of fishermen in the Zhuangzi wades into the waters of Tang poetry, incorporating translations of Zhang Zhihe, Liu Zongyuan, Wang Wei, and Sikong Shu. The literary connection is only in a coda, but it is there nonetheless. A future study would perhaps do well to broaden this research to include works of art. One thinks of Wang Meng's masterpiece of around 1360, Fisherman of Huaxi or the Yuan literatus Wu Zhen's Fisherman Recluse on Lake Dongting, both in the collection of the National Palace Museum, T'aipei.2Zhuangzi's close companion, Hui Shi, is the subject of... (shrink)

Recent history makes clear that the quantum leaps being made in technology are the leading edge of a groundswell of paradigm shifts taking place in science, politics, economics, social institutions, and the expression of cultural values. Indeed it is the simultaneity and interdependence of these changes occurring in every dimension of human experience and endeavor that makes the present so historically distinctive. The essays gathered here give voice to perspectives on the always improvised relationship between technology and cultural values from (...) Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific. Contributors: Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, Roger T. Ames,Yoko Arisaka, Carl Becker, Francesca Bray, James Buchanan, Arindam Chakrabarti, Frank W. Derringh, Rolf Elberfeld, Charles Ess, Andrew Feenberg, Susantha Goonatilake, H. Jiuan Heng, Peter Hershock, Thomas P. Kasulis, George Khushf, David Farrell Krell, Joel J. Kupperman, William R. LaFleur, Lois Ann Lorentzen, David Loy, Joseph Margolis, Hans-Georg Möller, Robert Cummings Neville, Peimin Ni, Monica Atieno Opole, Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ, Helen Petrovsky, Ramon Sentmartí, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Vasanthi Srinivasan, Marietta Stepaniants, Vyacheslav S. Stiopin, Henk ten Have, Paul B.Thompson, Mary Tiles, David B.Wong. (shrink)

Using yet untapped resources from moral and political philosophy, this book seeks to answer the question of whether an all good God who is presumed to be all powerful is logically compatible with the degree and amount of moral and natural evil that exists in our world. It is widely held by theists and atheists alike that it may be logically impossible for an all good, all powerful God to create a world with moral agents like ourselves that does not (...) also have at least some moral evil in it. James P. Sterba focuses on the further question of whether God is logically compatible with the degree and amount of moral and natural evil that exists in our world. The negative answer he provides marks a new stage in the age-old debate about God's existence. (shrink)

In recent work, W. Matthews Grant challenges the common assumption that if humans have libertarian free will, and the moral responsibility it affords, then it is impossible for God to cause what humans freely do. He does this by offering a “non-competitivist” model that he calls the “Dual Sources” account of divine and human causation. Although we find Grant’s Dual Sources model to be the most compelling of models on offer for non-competitivism, we argue that it fails to circumvent a (...) theological version of Peter van Inwagen’s direct argument for incompatibilism. In the paper, we motivate and deploy a theological take on the direct argument, and we contend that this theological rendition of the direct argument effectively dismantles Grant’s Dual Sources account of non-competitivism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kenneth Burke on Dialectical-Rhetorical TranscendenceJames P. ZappenKenneth Burke's concept of rhetoric is complex and elusive, increasingly so as it becomes intertwined and infused with dialectic in the long third part of A Rhetoric of Motives and in some essays published shortly thereafter (1951; 1955; 1969b [1950], 183–333).1 The connection between Burke's rhetoric and dialectic is well established (Brummett 1995; Crusius 1986; 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 136–216; Wolin 2001, 143–204), (...) and his concept of rhetoric as identification is widely recognized for its broadening of the traditional view of rhetoric as persuasion to include identification as a means of inducing cooperation and building communities (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Hauser 1986, 120–37; Henderson 1988, 33–34). Timothy W. Crusius establishes the fundamental relationship between A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives as dialectical and rhetorical counterparts and explains both the strengths and the limitations of identification as a means of inducing cooperation (1986). According to Crusius, dialectic explores the substance of a person or thing—all that "supports or 'substands'" it—from multiple and shifting perspectives, viewing human action dramatistically as act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose (24–28). Rhetoric complements dialectic and its multiple dramatistic perspectives by promoting "identification" and "cooperation," building "a community, a sense of oneness amid diversity of conflicting interests and values" (28–30). As Crusius and others observe, [End Page 279] however, identification as a means of inducing cooperation is inherently limited since any identification necessarily also entails a division: "Every 'us' requires a 'them'" (29; Biesecker 1997, 47–49; Wolin 2001, 177–78). Thus, for example, while Christianity provides a powerful instance of identification, it also provides an equally powerful illustration of its division from other peoples—"Satan and his counter-kingdom," "the Turk infidel," and "the pagan hordes of Asia" (28–29). For Burke, these divisions were largely political (George and Selzer 2007, 16–57, 110–32; Lentricchia 1983, 21–38). For us, they are differences of gender, culture, and economic and social class (Condit 1992), compounded by political, economic, and religious differences on a global scale. By this account, the first two parts of the Rhetoric offer at best a partial solution to the problem. The third part challenges and mystifies and in itself seems to offer little more than a utopian vision without purpose or outcome (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3).2 Situated within the broader context of Burke's work, however, the third part seems rather to offer a bold and creative solution to the problem by merging dialectic and rhetoric with dialogue and poetic myth in a dialectical-rhetorical transcendence—a concept that merits a place alongside identification as a major contribution to rhetorical theory (1969b, 197–208, 221–33).3Burke's concept of dialectical-rhetorical transcendence developed over the course of more than twenty years, from the mid 1930s to the mid 1950s and beyond. Its sources are partly Hegelian and Marxist but increasingly Platonic,4 as Burke comes to perceive the Hegelian and Marxist concepts of history as part of the problem of competing ideologies and his version of Platonic transcendence as the solution—a solution that leads, on the one hand, toward "pure persuasion" and "ultimate identification" and, on the other, toward the pragmatics of a new rhetoric and a revolutionary program of lifelong education (1951; 1955; 1969b, 267–94, 328–33; Biesecker 1997, 43–47; Lee 2004; Wess 1996, 203–5, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3). In the midst of the political divisiveness of the 1930s, Burke glimpsed in Hegel and even Marx the possibility of bridging conflicting ideologies via transcendence, but he turned to Plato in the Grammar and again in the Rhetoric to explain the processes by which opposing ideas and ideologies might merge in transcendent visions or myths that encompass what he perceived to be partial and partisan points of view. In the Grammar, his solution is dialectical—a merger of opposing ideas at higher levels of generalization through a process of linguistic abstraction and transformation that respects a diversity of individual interests, even as it seeks to transcend them in larger [End... (shrink)

Rule A: if it's metaphysically necessary that p, we may validly infer that no one is even partly morally responsible for the fact that p. Our principal aim in this article is to highlight the importance of this rule and to respond to two recent challenges to it. We argue that rule A is more important to contemporary theories of moral responsibility than has previously been recognized. We then consider two recent challenges to the rule and argue that neither challenge (...) successfully undermines the rule's initial appeal. (shrink)

The modal version of the ontological argument (MOA) for God’s existence is controversial, primarily, at its first premise, the premise that reads “possibly, there exists a maximally great being.” So, what’s needed is an argument for the possibility of a maximally great being, a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, has these properties essentially, and is such that it exists necessarily. Ironically, I think that such an argument can be found in the literature on the problem of evil, literature (...) generally devoted to arguments against God’s existence. In particular, I argue that Alvin Plantinga’s “free will defense” (FWD) gives us such an argument. Moreover, since most philosophers agree that the FWD is successful, I argue that most philosophers should agree that FWD gives us a successful argument for the first premise of MOA. Thus, I argue that if most philosophers agree FWD is successful, then most philosophers should agree that God exists. There are several pressing objections to this line of reasoning that I consider in the paper. I argue that these objections fail. (shrink)

James P. Sterba offers something that philosophers have long sought: an argument showing that morality is rationally required. Furthermore he argues that morality requires substantial equality. Even libertarian perspectives, which would seem to require minimal enforcement of morality, are shown to lead to a requirement of equality.

The so-called Direct Argument for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and causal determinism depends on a rule of inference called Rule A, a rule that says no one is even partly morally responsible for a necessary truth. While most philosophers think that Rule A is valid, Stephen Kearns has recently offered several alleged counterexamples to the rule. In the paper, I show that Kearns’ counterexamples are unsuccessful.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.2 (2002) 27-38 [Access article in PDF] On the Possibility of Grounding a Defense of Ecofeminist Philosophy James P. Sterba It is a pleasure to comment on Karen Warren's excellent book. 1 The book is a treasure trove of discussions in ecofeminist philosophy that I am sure people will be drawing upon for years to come. In the introduction to the book, Warren says (...) that her main goal is to present and defend a particular version of ecofeminist philosophy (xiii). In my brief comments, I want to consider how Warren understands that defense, consider how strong it is, and consider further how one might add to it to make it even stronger.As I was trying to figure out how best to understand Warren's defense of ecofeminist philosophy, I kept being reminded of Warren's conception of philosophy as quiltmaking. 2 According to this conception, in philosophizing we bring together a wide array of ideas like patches with some prima facie constraining conditions, and we don't quite know what will emerge until we put all the ideas or patches together. Well, I sort of felt that way about Warren's various remarks throughout the book on how she understands herself to be defending a particular version of ecofeminist philosophy. They were like various patches that needed to be brought together to illuminate her defense. Moreover, according to Warren's conception of philosophy as quiltmaking, we will sometimes need to repair or replace certain ideas or patches in our philosophical quilt patches that we [End Page 27] have come to recognize do not fit well with the rest of the quilt. Similarly, when I was trying to bring together Warren's various remarks on how she was defending a particular version of ecofeminist philosophy; some of her remarks did not seem to fit well with her overall purpose of defending ecofeminist philosophy. These remarks did not seem to belong to her own ecofeminist philosophy quilt, or at least they needed to be repaired to make a better fit. But, of course, this is just what one would expect given Warren's quiltmaking conception of doing philosophy; repairing and replacing patches in one's philosophical quilt is business as usual according to Warren's preferred way of doing philosophy. Or, as Warren herself puts it, correcting such mistakes is "simply a lovely and welcome part of the process of theorizing" (102).As her book makes abundantly clear, Warren is against both the domination of women and the domination of nature. Early in the book, she considers how we might defend her perspective against someone who was against the domination of women but not against the domination of nature, presumably because the person did not think that nonhuman nature deserved moral consideration (57). Warren's defense here is to appeal to the very definition of environmental ethics. Warren distinguishes environmental ethics, an ethics of the environment, from an ethics concerning the environment. An environmental ethics, by definition, Warren tells us, takes nonhuman nature to deserve moral consideration whereas an ethics concerning the environment does not. So for those committed to an environmental ethics, so defined, it is not an open question whether to be against the domination of nonhuman nature, or, presumably, the domination of women. They must be against both forms of domination. Now while this part of Warren's defense of ecofeminist philosophy does work to some extent, it is worth noting how close the premises are to the desired conclusion. The defense is directed at those who regard both women and nonhuman nature as deserving moral consideration. The conclusion that is drawn is that those same individuals should be against both the domination of women and against the domination of nonhuman nature.Later in the book, in another related philosophical patch, Warren considers whether she can provide an argument in defense of the moral considerability of nonhuman nature, and she claims that she cannot (74-76). This is because, she claims, the moral considerability of nonhuman nature is groundless.Here Warren compares her view... (shrink)

In conversation, individuals work together to achieve communicative goals, complementing and aligning language and body with each other. An important emerging question is whether interlocutors entrain with one another equally across linguistic levels (e.g., lexical, syntactic, and semantic) and modalities (i.e., speech and gesture), or whether there are complementary patterns of behaviors, with some levels or modalities diverging and others converging in coordinated fashions. This study assesses how kinematic and linguistic entrainment interact with one another across levels of measurement, and (...) according to communicative context. We analyzed data from two matched corpora of dyadic interaction between—respectively—Danish and Norwegian native speakers engaged in affiliative conversations and task‐oriented conversations. We assessed linguistic entrainment at the lexical, syntactic, and semantic level, and kinetic alignment of the head and hands using video‐based motion tracking and dynamic time warping. We tested whether—across the two languages—linguistic alignment correlates with kinetic alignment, and whether these kinetic‐linguistic associations are modulated either by the type of conversation or by the language spoken. We found that kinetic entrainment was positively associated with low‐level linguistic (i.e., lexical) entrainment, while negatively associated with high‐level linguistic (i.e., semantic) entrainment, in a cross‐linguistically robust way. Our findings suggest that conversation makes use of a dynamic coordination of similarity and complementarity both between individuals as well as between different communicative modalities, and provides evidence for a multimodal, interpersonal synergy account of interaction. (shrink)

Well-known philosophers from a variety of philosophical orientations vigorously discuss James Sterba's bold claims that morality is required by reason and that even a minimal morality leads to braodly egalitarian commitments--Alison M. Jaggar, on back cover.

Drawing on and inspired by Paul Taylor’s Respect for Nature, I develop a view which I call “biocentric pluralism,” which, I claim, avoids the major criticisms that have been directed at Taylor’s account. In addition, I show that biocentric pluralism has certain advantages over biocentric utilitarianism (VanDeVeer) and concentric circle theories (Wenz and Callicott).

Most philosophers who study moral responsibility have done so in isolation of the concept of truth. Here, I show that thinking about the nature of truth has profound consequences for discussions of moral responsibility. In particular, by focusing on the very trivial nature of truth—that truth depends on the world and not the other way around—we can see that widely accepted counterexamples to one of the most influential incompatibilist arguments can be shown not only to be false, but also impossible.

This chapter discusses some of the most engaging natural phenomena, those in which highly structured collective behavior emerges over time from the interaction of simple subsystems. Emergence is generally understood to be a process that leads to the appearance of structure not directly described by the defining constraints and instantaneous forces which control a system. Over time “something new” appears at scales not directly specified by the equations of motion. An emergent feature also cannot be explicitly represented in the initial (...) and boundary conditions. A feature emerges when the underlying system puts some effort into its creation. These observations form an intuitive definition of emergence. For it to be useful, however, one must specify what the “something” is and in what manner it is “new.” Otherwise, the notion has little or no content, since almost any time-dependent system would exhibit emergent features. (shrink)

In his “Plantinga on Exclusivisim,” Richard Feldman argues that Alvin Plantinga, in an earlier paper, has not sufficiently addressed a particular problem for the religious exclusivist. The particular problem that Feldman thinks Plantinga has failed sufficiently to address is the problem of epistemic peer disagreement—that is, disagreement between two (or more) equally competent thinkers who share equally good reasons for, and are in equally good epistemic situations regarding, their contradictory beliefs—in matters of religious belief. To demonstrate that Plantinga has so (...) failed, Feldman introduces a principle, “B”, that purports to show that exclusivism (religious or not) tends to lead to unjustified beliefs. But I think that Feldman has failed successfully to show that B demonstrates exclusivism’s tendency to lead to unjustified beliefs; so, in the paper, I defend Plantinga, and the exclusivist more generally, from Feldman’s criticisms. (shrink)

In his “Plantinga on Exclusivisim,” Richard Feldman argues that Alvin Plantinga, in an earlier paper, has not sufficiently addressed a particular problem for the religious exclusivist. The particular problem that Feldman thinks Plantinga has failed sufficiently to address is the problem of epistemic peer disagreement—that is, disagreement between two (or more) equally competent thinkers who share equally good reasons for, and are in equally good epistemic situations regarding, their contradictory beliefs—in matters of religious belief. To demonstrate that Plantinga has so (...) failed, Feldman introduces a principle, ‘B’, that purports to show that exclusivism (religious or not) tends to lead to unjustified beliefs. But I think that Feldman has failed successfully to show that B demonstrates exclusivism’s tendency to lead to unjustified beliefs; so, in the paper, I defend Plantinga, and the exclusivist more generally, from Feldman’s criticisms. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Seth Shabo sets out to show that logical renderings of the Direct Argument for incompatibilism about moral responsibility and causal determinism, an influential incompatibilist argument for this conclusion, fail. In particular, Shabo argues that the Direct Argument—cashed out in logical terms—fails because it rests on an invalid rule of inference, Rule B. Shabo argues that Rule B, rendered logically, is subject to a counterexample that he constructs. If he’s right about this, it follows that logical versions (...) of the Direct Argument fail. In the paper, I argue that Shabo’s alleged counterexample to Rule B is unsuccessful. Since Shabo’s counterexample fails, I conclude that he has failed successfully to undermine logical versions of the Direct Argument. (shrink)

Charles Darwin questions whether conflicts between species palpably captured by the conflict between Ichneumonidae and the caterpillars on which they prey could be compatible with the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God. He also questioned whether the suffering of millions of lower animals throughout our almost endless prehistory could be compatible with an all-good, all-powerful God. In this paper, I show that these two problems of natural evil that Darwin raised in his work can be resolved so as to present (...) no objection to theism once it is recognized what the moral principles are that should govern our relationship to the natural world and analogously should govern God’s relationship to the natural world. (shrink)

Meditation I -- Meditation II -- Meditation III -- Meditation IV.

This up-to-date introductory social and political philosophy text provides a survey of the major social and political ideals of our time and discusses the practical requirements of each of these ideals. It argues for the controversial thesis that all contemporary social and political ideals can be reconciled in practice-a challenging idea for students to discuss and evaluate.

Among the distinguished contributors to the series are fellows of the Institute, past and present, Leonard E. Boyle, Jocelyn Hillgarth, Edouard Jeauneau, James K. McConica, M. Michèle Mulchahey, Joseph Owens, Walter H. Principe, James P. ...