What do the rules of logic say about the meanings of the symbols they govern? In this book, James W. Garson examines the inferential behaviour of logical connectives, whose behaviour is defined by strict rules, and proves definitive results concerning exactly what those rules express about connective truth conditions. He explores the ways in which, depending on circumstances, a system of rules may provide no interpretation of a connective at all, or the interpretation we ordinarily expect for it, or (...) an unfamiliar or novel interpretation. He also shows how the novel interpretations thus generated may be used to help analyse philosophical problems such as vagueness and the open future. His book will be valuable for graduates and specialists in logic, philosophy of logic, and philosophy of language. (shrink)

Nevertheless, despite whatever optimism about the future unification of sciences is justified, there are now, as there have been for centuries, difficult problems confronting the materialist. Perhaps the crucial problem concerns the status of sensations, a problem clearly evident as far back as Hobbes who said that sense is "some internal motion in the sentient, generated by some internal motion, of the parts of the object, and propagated through all the media to the innermost part of the organ." Here Hobbes (...) reduces sense to physical motion. But he is also found to say that sense is not motion, but "in all cases, is nothing else but original fancy," or, he says elsewhere, "phantasms" caused by internal motions. He is then directly faced with the problem of reconciling appearances and sensations with his avowed materialism. Neither Hobbes nor any one else has solved this problem, although there have recently been some novel and instructive attempts to do so. (shrink)

One thing that would profit both the frustrated readers of Sellars and Sellars himself would be a careful attempt to explicate and evaluate critically the many interrelated theses stated and defended by Sellars. But, so far as I know, there has been little work of this kind done. I know only of two fine reviews by Keith Lehrer and Gilbert Harman, and a very helpful expository article by Richard Bernstein that deal directly and in some detail with Sellars' work. This (...) is not to mention, however, the many philosophers, including myself, who have been influenced by his work. What I believe would be most helpful at this point would be a critique of some central thesis in Sellars' work, that is, an attempt to raise objections to this thesis and to refute the replies that can be anticipated, based upon other of Sellars' claims. This is what I shall try to do in this paper. My hope is that it will further the understanding of his complex philosophy, and help carry forward discussion of the philosophical issues involved. (shrink)

William James and Education is a dynamic collection of original essays spotlighting William James as a role model for bringing philosophy to bear on the persistent issues of life and education. Using James's philosophical ideas, the contributors evade the polarization and superficiality that permeate the debate around such educational issues as standards versus diversity, cultural consensus versus multiculturalism, religion versus science, and individual freedom versus social determinism. The result is a synthetic collection of essays offering original, unique, (...) and useful insights. One of the most influential of American philosophers, William James is relevant today because he provides a way of understanding human behavior that is both rigorous and humane. James shows how we may soften and sometimes harmonize rigid ideological divisions, such as those plaguing contemporary education, with a pragmatic approach to issues of theory and practice. By reconsidering some of the roots of American thought in James's work, this volume points the way to valuing both uniqueness and universality, among other seemingly opposing concerns. The result is a lively weave of historical and contemporary thought, providing philosophical perspectives on the critical issues facing educators today. (shrink)

Most important, James W. Walters compares and contrasts Buber's and feminism's personalist ethics in light of two considerations: the lack of attention by ...

This book is a major contribution to the study of the philosopher F. H. Bradley, the most influential member of the nineteenth-century school of British Idealists. It offers a sustained interpretation of Bradley's Principles of Logic, explaining the problem of how it is possible for inferences to be both valid and yet have conclusions that contain new information. The author then describes how this solution provides a basis for Bradley's metaphysical view that reality is one interconnected experience and how this (...) gives rise to a new problem of truth. (shrink)

Throughout more than forty years of distinguished teaching and scholarship, James W. Felt has been respected for the clarity and economy of his prose and for his distinctive approach to philosophy. The seventeen essays collected in __Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy__ reflect Felt's encounters with fundamental philosophical problems in the spirit of traditional metaphysics but updated with modern concerns. Among the main themes of the volume are: the enrichment of Thomistic philosophy through engagement with modern philosophers, Whitehead and Bergson, in (...) particular; considerations of metaphysical method and its effect on philosophic conclusions; the development of a nuanced epistemological realism; and the relation of possibility to actuality and of time to experience. "__Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy__ does indeed lie off the beaten path. To deal straightforwardly today with God, the self, freedom, and the meaning of human life is not only unfashionable: it is considered terminally naive. James Felt, however, is not naive. His clear, careful thought breathes new life into old problems, providing fresh insights where traditional approaches have failed." --_Pete A. Y. Gunter, University of North Texas__"_ _"___Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy_ _is equivalently James Felt's intellectual autobiography. In a series of essays written over a period of forty years and now republished with introductory self-critical comments, Felt records his journey from a youthful enthusiasm for the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead to his conversion to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and, in recent years, his efforts to come up with a creative synthesis of the major insights of both Aquinas and Whitehead. One does not have to agree with all his conclusions, but everyone should admire the dispassionate way in which he analyzes and critiques both systems for their relative strengths and weaknesses." --_Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., Xavier University_ "Felt makes no concessions to the current unfashionable status of classical metaphysics. With justified confidence in the foundational importance of the discipline, and in dialog with some of its most famous practitioners, he explores and advances many of its perennial themes in essays exemplary in their clarity of reasoning and expression." --_Jorge Nobo, Washburn University_ "__Adventures in Unfashionable Philosophy_ _is a sound, insightful, mature, and philosophically rich work. One hears a distinctive voice in all of the essays of the collection, the voice of a teacher anxious to share ideas that have animated his own philosophical development. This is rare, and something to be celebrated when it is found." --_Brian Martine, University of Alabama, Huntsville_. (shrink)

Some public reason liberals identify coercive law as the subject matter of public justification, while others claim that the justification of coercion plays no role in motivating public justification requirements. Both of these views are mistaken. I argue that the subject matter of public justification is not coercion or coercive law but political decision-making about the basic institutional structure. At the same time, part of what makes a public justification principle necessary in the first place is the inherent coerciveness of (...) a legally organized basic institutional structure. While most public reason liberals seem to presuppose that the meaning of “coercion” is sufficiently obvious so as not to warrant further analysis, my defense of the essay’s main thesis explicitly draws on an account of coercion as a powerful agent’s employment of enforceable constraints to determine the will of another agent. (shrink)

Zen Buddhist Attitudes to War HIRATA Seiko IN ORDER FULLY TO UNDERSTAND the standpoint of Zen on the question of nationalism, one must first consider the ...

Designed for use by philosophy students, this 2006 book provides an accessible, yet technically sound treatment of modal logic and its philosophical applications. Every effort has been made to simplify the presentation by using diagrams in place of more complex mathematical apparatus. These and other innovations provide philosophers with easy access to a rich variety of topics in modal logic, including a full coverage of quantified modal logic, non-rigid designators, definite descriptions, and the de-re de-dictio distinction. Discussion of philosophical issues (...) concerning the development of modal logic is woven into the text. The book uses natural deduction systems and also includes a diagram technique that extends the method of truth trees to modal logic. This feature provides a foundation for a novel method for showing completeness, one that is easy to extend to systems that include quantifiers. (shrink)

Forrester eloquently argues his new system of deontic logic (a special branch of logic involved with obligation and permission) pitting it against standard systems and fitting it into a general logic of practical reasoning. He manages all this with a comprehensive discussion of the general principles of deontics, the semantics of "should" and "ought to do" in standard deontic logic, and a map of what he thinks the logic ought to do to achieve moral realism. Paper edition (unseen), $24.95. Annotation (...) copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Much Ado About Nothingness brings together 14 essays on Nishida Kitaro and Tanabe Hajime by one of the leading scholars of twentieth-century Japanese philosophy. With Nishida’s “logic of place” and Tanabe’s “logic of the specific” providing a continuity to the whole, the author writes from a conviction that “the overriding challenge for those doing philosophy in the key of the Kyoto School, with their sights set squarely on self-awareness like Nishida and Tanabe before them, is to turn its attention to (...) the wider world….”. (shrink)

Defining "directly perceive" is made hard enough by the confused and vague ways in which philosophers have used the term, but it is made even more difficult by the fact that it is used quite differently by different philosophers. Two philosophers whose philosophy depends upon a clear understanding of direct perception are Berkeley and Russell. Consider what they say that is relevant to an understanding of their uses of the term. Berkeley, through Philonous, asks Hylas, "Are those things only perceived (...) by the senses which are perceived immediately? Or may those things properly be said to be ’sensible’ which are perceived mediately, or not without the intervention of others?" Russell, in speaking of knowledge by acquaintance, says that "we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of truths. Thus in the presence of my table I am acquainted with the sense-data that make up the appearance of my table." Another quite common interpretation is given by Norman Malcolm, who states the definition "A directly perceives x if and only if A’s assertion that he perceives x could not be mistaken.". (shrink)

Preface to the fifth edition -- A world of difference -- A universe charged with the grandeur of God : Christian theism -- The clockwork universe : deism -- The silence of finite space : naturalism -- Zero point : nihilism -- Beyond nihilism : existentialism -- Journey to the east : eastern pantheistic monism -- A separate universe : the New Age spirituality without religion -- The vanished horizon : postmodernism -- A view from the Middle East : Islamic (...) theism -- The examined life. (shrink)

A library is not just a collection of books, but also the buildings that house them. From the great dome of the Library of Congress, to the white facade of the Seinäjoki Library in Finland, the architecture of a library is a symbol of its time as well as of its builders' wealth, culture, and learning.

In the case of the Parmenides, I thought that I had sufficiently protected myself by saying that the details were not to be pressed. But, if I am required to take Plato's version of Parmenides au pied de la lettre, I can still reply that quite possibly it is historically accurate, that scholars know far less about Parmenides than they could wish, that perhaps they have erred in not taking Plato's testimony into serious account in their reconstruction of the philosophy (...) of Parmenides, and that perhaps Plato's dialogue--in which Parmenides is old--represents a late stage in the development of Parmenides' philosophy whereas the fragments of the poem come from an earlier period. (shrink)

This book announces itself to be an introduction to the philosophy of Thomas Reid which seeks to attain this goal through a critical examination of Reid's principal doctrines. The central focus, as the title indicates, is Reid's own critique of "the way of ideas"--that philosophical approach commonly linked to empiricism, which regards the individual mind as having direct access only to ideas, thus rendering the external, material world either problematic or fictitious.

This fully revised and extended edition of James Nickel's classic study explains and defends the conception of human rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent human rights treaties. Combining philosophical, legal, and political approaches, Nickel addresses questions about what human rights are, what their content should be, and whether and how they can be justified.