This book explores the role of aggression in primate social systems and its implications for human behavior.

In the conventional analysis of human behaviour, power and ethics are frequently considered contrary principles, in that power enforces, while ethics elicits a free response. But, as James Mackey forcefully shows, a more adventurous philosophical study of human morality escapes the sense of contraries, and sets us on a quest for the kind of power that liberates human creativity. It then becomes possible to establish the framework for a critical assessment of the kind of power that ought to be (...) operative in the major structures of human society, civil or ecclesiastical, state governments and church hierarchies. Mackey analyses the religious question which then quite naturally emerges, as to whether this Eros-type power so manifest in human society originates from beyond the more empirical structures of churches, states and 'nature'; and the effort to detect the specifically Christian characterisation of an allegedly ultimate power working in us for final well-being finds its natural context. (shrink)

An examination of Russia's philosophical heritage. It extends from the Slavophiles to the philosophers of the Silver Age, from emigre religious thinkers to Losev and Bakhtin and assesses the meaning for Russian culture as a whole.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Case against Rational Egoism in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground*James P. ScanlanWriting in his own voice, in letters, notebooks, and diaries, Fyodor Dostoevsky frequently attacked the philosophy of the Russian “nihilists,” as he typically called them—Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Dmitry Pisarev, and other representatives of the radical Russian intelligentsia in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. But because Dostoevsky also used fiction to argue against them, if we wish (...) to discern the full contours of his opposition, we must turn to his stories and novels; and there we face the problem of determining to what extent, if any, the statements of his narrators and characters express his own views.This problem is particularly challenging in regard to the radicals’ “Rational Egoism,” to use the label by which the Russian variant of the theory of enlightened egoism came to be known. 1 Dostoevsky’s most sustained and spirited attack on that aspect of “nihilist” philosophy is found in Part One of Notes from Underground (1864), but it is voiced by one of the darkest, least sympathetic of all his characters—the nameless narrator and protagonist known as the Underground Man. Was this repellent creature speaking for Dostoevsky? The Underground Man, moreover, can easily be viewed as a sheer irrationalist whose rejection of Rational Egoism is a tortured emotional outburst with no logical credentials. Robert L. Jackson, in his groundbreaking study of 1958, describes the Underground Man’s thinking at one point as follows: “It is impossible to argue [End Page 549] with the rationalists: reason is on their side. All that remains is irrationally to negate reason.” 2 If those words were to be taken not simply as a moment in Jackson’s rich analysis but as a comprehensive description of the Underground Man’s attitude, it would be senseless to expect philosophically nuanced arguments from him. And we would have no grounds for thinking that Dostoevsky’s own treatment of Rational Egoism went beyond emotional rejection.Critics from Vasily Rozanov to Joseph Frank have debated the Underground Man’s stance toward Rational Egoism and its relation to Dostoevsky’s, with no sign yet of a definitive resolution. Frank’s recent treatment, presented in the third volume of his monumental literary biography of Dostoevsky, offers a helpful history of the dispute as well as his own finely elaborated interpretation of the Underground Man as an irrational opponent of Rational Egoism. 3 Frank reads Notes from Underground as satire, and he contends that the Underground Man is caught in an agonizing self-contradiction: intellectually, he accepts the basic premises of the Rational Egoists’ outlook, such as the denial of free will; but he finds that, “despite the convictions of his reason,” he cannot live with the amoral and dehumanizing implications of those premises, which strip human beings of moral responsibility. 4 From a rational point of view, of course, rejection of the implications should force the Underground Man to reject the premises as well (by the hoary logical law of modus tollendo tolens), and indeed he does at times passionately condemn them. But according to Frank, these condemnations simply show the depth of his predicament: his “intellectual acceptance” of Chernyshevsky’s determinism is conjoined with “simultaneous rejection of it with the entire intuitive-emotional level of personality identified with moral conscience,” causing him to respond irrationally in a multitude of instances. 5 Frank’s Underground Man, then, is an intellectual disciple but an emotional critic of Rational Egoism; and he is triply an irrationalist: his thinking is mired in self-contradiction, he acts irrationally as a result, and his opposition to Rational Egoism has not a rational but an “intuitive-emotional” basis.But where does this leave Dostoevsky? Must we conclude that he, too, is somehow suspended between acceptance and rejection of Rational Egoism and for that reason has created in Notes from Underground a Bakhtinian equilibrium in which neither position is clearly privileged? For Frank, certainly not. It follows from Frank’s analysis that Dostoevsky himself, unlike the Underground [End Page 550] Man, is a fully consistent opponent of Rational Egoism, for that theory is the target of the inverted irony at the core of his satire; “the... (shrink)

It is still commonly supposed that Descartes based his argument for the mind-body distinction on the law of the indiscernibility of identicals. I argue that this interpretation is very unlikely to be correct. I explain three contemporary versions of this interpreta- tion and say why I reject it. Basically, use of this law for Descartes’s conclusion would require reference to human bodies or else the supposition, for the purpose of the argument, of reference to human bodies. But at the time (...) Descartes formulated his argument, he would not have allowed either. Instead, I amend a different interpretation which others have found, and briefly defend it against one famous objection. (shrink)

Donald R. Gregory has recently argued that the monk Gaunilo's response to St Anselm's ontological argument succeeds in showing what is fundamentally wrong with any ontological argument, including modern modal versions. He holds that the Gaunilo strategy in fact demonstrates what it alleges, that reasoning which parallels the form and intent ofAnselm's reductio argument can ‘prove’ a priori the existence of quite unacceptable entities.

Far from merely reinvigorating relativism, postmodernism has detected and expressed in our time a powerful nihilating process of which truth and reality itself are the final casualties; and with these morality and religion. Beginning from the theological reaches of philosophy, this book argues that gods played a crucial part in modern philosophy, even when it was most critical of them; that the dominant nihilism of Derrida is really an excessive and misleading outcome of a contemporary philosophy which could otherwise resonate (...) with all that is best in our evolutionary image of the universe; that moralists who turn to art in order to overcome the fact-value version of this deadly dualism do not thereby rule out religion; and that a Christian theology which recognises the evolutionary/historical conditions of faith and revelation is once again producing a theology that builds upon the best of contemporary philosophy and science. (shrink)

Systemism and social mechanisms, as articulated by Bunge, are concepts with great potential for application to assessment of research progress. This study will use the conceptual tools made available by systemism and social mechanisms to evaluate the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project as a scientific effort toward the greater understanding of crises in world politics. Systemism and social mechanisms are articulated as key concepts in the quest for scientific progress. The goals and basic characteristics of the ICB Project as a (...) scientific venture then are described. The ICB Project is assessed in terms of how well it lives up to standards for scientific progress. Finally, conclusions and ideas about future research are presented. The basic finding of this study is that the ICB Project is quite successful in meeting the standards for scientific progress entailed by the concepts of systemism and social mechanisms. Key Words: scientific progress • international relations • international crises • paradigm. (shrink)

Clement Dore has offered a demonstration that God is possible. This is important because the Ontological Argument shows that if God is possible, it is necessarily true that God exists. Dore’s demonstration parallels Descartes’s Meditation V argument: (roughly) God by definition has all perfections; but (Dore proposes) possible existence is a perfection; therefore, God is possible. However, Leibniz recognized that Descartes’s argument is incomplete, omitting proof that the concept of God is consistent. Dore’s demonstration fails for just this reason. Dore’s (...) defense misses this objection. If the concept of God is consistent, that directly establishes that God is possible, making assumptions about perfections irrelevant. (shrink)

This article presents texts recovered by post-processing of multispectral images from the fifth- or sixth-century underwriting of the palimpsest Codex Climaci Rescriptus. Texts identified include the Anonymous II Proemium to Aratus’ Phaenomena, parts of Eratosthenes’ Catasterisms, Aratus’ Phaenomena lines 71–4 and 282–99 and previously unknown text, including some of the earliest astronomical measurements to survive in any Greek manuscript. Codex Climaci Rescriptus also contains at least three astronomical drawings. These appear to form part of an illustrated manuscript, with considerable textual (...) value not merely on the basis of its age but also of its readings. The manuscript undertexts show significant overlap with the Φ Edition, postulated as ancestor of the various Latin Aratea. (shrink)

Geometric underdetermination (i.e., the underdetermination of the geometric properties of space and time) is a live possibility in light of some of our best theories of physics. In response to this, geometric conventionalism offers a selective anti-realism, refusing to assign truth values to variant geometric propositions. Although often regarded as being dead in the water by modern philosophers, in this article we propose to revitalise the programme of geometric conventionalism both on its own terms, and as an attractive response to (...) the above-mentioned live cases of geometric underdetermination. Specifically, we (1) articulate geometrical conventionalism as we conceive it, (2) anticipate various objections to the view, and defend it against those objections, and (3) demonstrate how geometric conventionalism plays out in the context of a wide variety of spacetime theories, both classical and relativistic. (shrink)

The experience of causation is a pervasive product of the human mind. Moreover, the experience of causing an event alters subjective time: actions are perceived as temporally shifted towards their effects [Haggard, P., Clark, S., & Kalogeras, J.. Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 382-385]. This temporal shift depends partly on advance prediction of the effects of action, and partly on inferential "postdictive" explanations of sensory effects of action. We investigated whether a single factor of statistical contingency could (...) explain both these aspects of causal experience. We studied the time at which people perceived a simple manual action to occur, when statistical contingency indicated a causal relation between action and effect, and when no such relation was indicated. Both predictive and inferential "postdictive" shifts in the time of action depended on strong contingency between action and effect. The experience of agency involves a process of causal learning based on statistical contingency. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation of the relationship between G\"odel's second incompleteness theorem and the well-foundedness of jump hierarchies. It follows from a classic theorem of Spector's that the relation $\{(A,B) \in \mathbb{R}^2 : \mathcal{O}^A \leq_H B\}$ is well-founded. We provide an alternative proof of this fact that uses G\"odel's second incompleteness theorem instead of the theory of admissible ordinals. We then derive a semantic version of the second incompleteness theorem, originally due to Mummert and Simpson, from this result. Finally, (...) we turn to the calculation of the ranks of reals in this well-founded relation. We prove that, for any $A\in\mathbb{R}$, if the rank of $A$ is $\alpha$, then $\omega_1^A$ is the $(1 + \alpha)^{\text{th}}$ admissible ordinal. It follows, assuming suitable large cardinal hypotheses, that, on a cone, the rank of $X$ is $\omega_1^X$. (shrink)

Recent research has shown that human instrumental action is associated with systematic changes in time perception: The interval between a voluntary action and an outcome is perceived as shorter than the interval between a physically similar involuntary movement and an outcome. The study by, Ebert and Wegner suggests that this change in time perception is related to higher order agency experience. Notwithstanding certain issues arising from their study, which are discussed, we believe it offers validation of binding as a measure (...) of sense of agency. (shrink)

Sense of agency refers to the sense of initiating and controlling actions in order to influence events in the outside world. Recently, a distinction between implicit and explicit aspects of sense of agency has been proposed, analogous to distinctions found in other areas of cognition, notably learning. However, there is yet no strong evidence supporting separable implicit and explicit components of sense of agency. The so-called ‘Perruchet paradigm’ offers one of the few convincing demonstrations of separable implicit and explicit learning (...) systems. We adopted this approach to evaluate the implicit–explicit distinction in the context of a simple task in which outcomes were probabilistically caused by actions. In line with our initial predictions, we found evidence of a dissociation. We discuss the implications of this result for theories of sense of agency. (shrink)

We investigate the processes underlying the feeling of control over one’s actions . Sense of agency may depend on internal motoric signals, and general inferences about external events. We used priming to modulate the sense of agency for voluntary and involuntary movements, by modifying the content of conscious thought prior to moving. Trials began with the presentation of one of two supraliminal primes, which corresponded to the effect of a voluntary action participants subsequently made. The perceived interval between movement and (...) effect was used as an implicit measure of sense of agency. Primes modulated perceived intervals for both voluntary and involuntary movements, but the modulation was greatest for involuntary movements. A second experiment showed that this modulation depended on prime–movement contiguity. We propose that sense of agency is based on a combination of internal motoric signals and external sensory evidence about the source of actions and effects. (shrink)

The disruptions to everyday life wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic include distortions in the experience of time, as reported widely by ordinary citizens and observed by journalists and social scientists. But how does this temporal disruption play out in different time scales—in the individual day as opposed to the medium- and long-term futures? And how might place influence how individuals experience and understand the pandemic's temporal transformations? This essay examines a range of temporal disruptions reported in day diaries and surveys (...) submitted to the Everyday Life in Middletown project, an online archive that has been documenting ordinary life in Muncie, Indiana, USA since 2016. Viewing these materials as instances of life writing, the essay probes the interactions between temporal disruptions and the local setting as they inflect the autobiographical selves our writers construct in their pandemic writings. It shows how living in Muncie—a postindustrial city with its particular combination of historical, demographic, economic, social, and political dynamics—structures the autobiographical stories available to our writers, and how the disruption of time produces new variations and problems for life writing. In the midst of a global crisis, we glimpse the pandemic's reshaping of a local structure of feeling in which a pervasive, local narrative of civic decline frames individual self-fashioning. (shrink)

?Objectivity?; has been a traditional ideal for American journalism despite recent characterizations of the principle as ?biased toward the status quo, against independent thinking, and against countenancing questions of morality and responsibility.?; This article explores the role of traditional objectivity in newspaper coverage of the nomination in Alaska of a socialist commissioner of environmental conservation and the subsequent ?framing?; of public discussion. The human qualities of sensitivity to history, to civil liberties, and to questions of morality appeared in editorials, but (...) professional norms of objectivity denied reporters the right to exercise their creativity and public responsibility. Reportorial sensitivity to diverse sources is necessary, supplemented by a fundamental and far?reaching examination of how reportorial language encodes public and private questions in ways that further established positions of power and privilege. (shrink)

Historical narratives can satisfy basic individual psychological needs. However, an over-reliance on a group's past can marginalize those who think differently – thus, homogenizing the culture and stifling creativity. By revising narratives to balance the power of collective narratives with the richness of individuality, we foster groups that encourage varied identities.

Introduction by Ralph McInerny The essays in this volume, indebted in great part to Jacques Maritain and to other Neo-Thomists, represent a contribution to an understanding of beauty and the arts within the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. As such they constitute a different voice in present-day discussions on beauty and aesthetics, a voice which nonetheless shares with many of its contemporaries concern over questions such as the relationship between beauty and morality, public funding of the arts and their educational role, objective and (...) universal standards of what is beautiful. In the tradition in which the contributors of this volume reflect, beauty manifests itself in the order of the universe, an order that provides human reason with a window onto the transcendent. For Aristotle and Aquinas the natural order grounds both art and morality, and yet it is this very order which has been called into question by modern science and philosophy. Instead of pointing us to a suprahuman order, the beautiful then points to the order of human freedom and creativity. Reflection on the beautiful since the modern philosopher Immanuel Kant has thus often taken a subjectivistic turn. Because of the importance of beauty and art in human existence, in man's education and life as a moral and political being, an alternative should be sought to any reduction of the beautiful to a purely subjective experience or cultural construct. The Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, in dialogue with modern and contemporary conceptions of the beautiful, provides us with just that alternative, and thus the essays herein represent a decisive step in the "journey for Thomistic aesthetics." THE CONTRIBUTORS: In addition to the editor, the contributors to the volume are: Brian J. Braman, Matthew Cuddeback, Christopher M. Cullen, S.J., Patrick Downey, Desmond J. FitzGerald, Donald Haggerty, Wayne H. Harter, Jeanne M. Heffernan, Thomas S. Hibbs, Gregory J. Kerr, Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., Daniel McInerny, Ralph McInerny, James P. Mesa, John F. Morris, Ralph Nelson, Katherine Anne Osenga, Carrie Rehak, Stephen Schloesser, S.J., Francis Slade, John G. Trapani, Jr., and Henk E. S. Woldring. ABOUT THE EDITOR: Alice Ramos is associate professor of philosophy at St. John's University. (shrink)

Examines the perennial issues that keep science and religion at arm's length, clarifies those issues, and fits them into an historical framework—from Plato, to Aquinas, to today's thinkers.

Political Freedom By George G. Brenkert Routledge, 1991. Pp. 278. ISBN 0–415–03372–1. £35 hbk.Wittgenstein: A Bibliographical Guide By Guido Frongia and Brian McGuinness Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. x + 438. ISBN 00631–13765–3. £60.00.Metaphysics By Peter van Inwagen Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. xiii + 222. ISBN 0–19–8751400. £11.95 pbk.The Nature of Moral Thinking By Francis Snare Routledge, 1992. Pp. 187. ISBN 0–415–04709–9. £9.99 pbk.Filosofía analitica hoy: Encuentro de tradiciones Edited by Mercedes Torrevejano Servicio de Publications Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, (...) 1991. Pp. 284. ISBN 84–7191–722‐X. $15.5 pbk.The Puzzle of Experience By J.J. Valberg Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. 227. ISBN 0–19–824291–3. £25.Religion and Philosophy Edited by Martin Warner Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 31 Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. vi + 155. ISBN 0–521–42951‐X. £10.95 pbk.The Uses of Philosophy By Mary Warnock Blackwell, 1992. Pp. 256. ISBN 0–631–18038–9. £35.00 hbk. £11.95 pbk.The Disappearance of Time: Kurt Godel and the Idealistic Tradition in Philosophy By Palle Yourgrau Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. x + 182. ISBN 0–521–41012–6. £27.50. (shrink)

The emergence of shared symbol systems is considered to be a pivotal moment in human evolution and human development. These changes are normally explained by reference to changes in people's internal cognitive processes. We present 2 experiments which provide evidence that changes in the external, collaborative processes that people use to communicate can also affect the structure and organization of symbol systems independently of cognitive change. We propose that mutual‐modifiability—opportunities for people to edit or manipulate each other's contributions—is a key (...) constraint on the emergence of complex symbol systems. We discuss the implications for models of language development and the origins of compositionality. (shrink)

This paper presents the principal findings from a three-year research project funded by the US National Science Foundation on ethics of human enhancement technologies. To help untangle this ongoing debate, we have organized the discussion as a list of questions and answers, starting with background issues and moving to specific concerns, including: freedom & autonomy, health & safety, fairness & equity, societal disruption, and human dignity. Each question-and-answer pair is largely self-contained, allowing the reader to skip to those issues of (...) interest without affecting continuity. (shrink)

(2000). Full transcript of inaugural AARST Science Policy Forum, New York Hilton, Friday 20 November 1998, 7?9 pm. Social Epistemology: Vol. 14, No. 2-3, pp. 131-180.

Arthur Ashe's public admission to being a victim of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) once again raises the question of media exposure of private facts. This study compares journalist and public responses to questions about how far the media should go, finding differences between the two groups, as the public is more tolerant of information bearing on official duties.

The paper investigates the status of gravitational energy in Newtonian Gravity, developing upon recent work by Dewar and Weatherall. The latter suggest that gravitational energy is a gauge quantity. This is potentially misleading: its gauge status crucially depends on the spacetime setting one adopts. In line with Møller-Nielsen’s plea for a motivational approach to symmetries, we supplement Dewar and Weatherall’s work by discussing gravitational energy–stress in Newtonian spacetime, Galilean spacetime, Maxwell-Huygens spacetime, and Newton–Cartan Theory. Although we ultimately concur with Dewar (...) and Weatherall that the notion of gravitational energy is problematic in NCT, our analysis goes beyond their work. The absence of an explicit definition of gravitational energy–stress in NCT somewhat detracts from the force of Dewar and Weatherall’s argument. We fill this gap by examining the supposed gauge status of prima facie plausible candidates—NCT analogues of gravitational energy–stress pseudotensors, the Komar mass, and the Bel-Robinson tensor. Our paper further strengthens Dewar and Weatherall’s results. In addition, it sheds more light upon the subtle link between sufficiently rich inertial structure and the definability of gravitational energy in NG. (shrink)