"Over many centuries, philosophers, theologians, and poets have been fascinated by the interplay of will and desire in the human psyche. Does will follow or precede desire? How can we bond them and thus unite body, soul, and spirit in harmonic concord? For fresh insights to these age-old questions, Dr. Joanne Stroud enlists the tools of modern psychology. Her eclectic probe of basic human drives moves from the awesome power of Eros, the great liberator of antiquity, through the (...) impact of the monotheistic faiths on will and desire, and finally to the discordant views of the great philosophers and psychologists of the modern era, among them Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, and the little known but magnetic Frenchman, Gaston Bachelard." "Love and will, human aspirations and desires, are caught - the author concludes - in a whirlwind of change, with impersonal scientific data supplanting the myths, the ancient lore, the stories rich in imagery, that previously contoured human behavior. As a result we live, in W.B. Yeat's famous phrase, in "the age of disordered will."" "In the twentieth century will became recognized only in its more conscious applications, as almost synonymous with ego. With this increasing reverence for the strong ego, will was elevated (by psychologists, among many others) to new egotistical summits as a potent tool of power. The more subtle aspects of will, such as the way it delineates identity, have been neglected, the author contends, and can only be recaptured by an understanding of how will becomes bonded to desire."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Distinguished scholar Barry Stroud presents a sustained and intricate philosophical argument based upon the question of whether physical objects are 'actually' coloured, or whether they merely appear to be so. He demonstrates how this specific question is inextricably linked to some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics. He also questions the very nature and constitution of these specific metaphysical issues. This long-awaited model of subtle, elegant, and rigorous philosophical writing ahould have a wide readership among philosophers working in (...) all areas of philosophy. (shrink)

The article deals with the dissatisfaction we can fall into in reflecting on some of our indispensable ways of thinking. This dissatisfaction brings out where consistent thought reaches its limits: in trying to investigate some of our ways of thinking, we seem to have to step beyond them in order to properly assess them, and still find ourselves making use of those very ways of thinking in order to attain any understanding of them at all. Drawing from Kant, the article (...) emphasizes the inevitability of this problem that metaphysical reflection poses for us and the need to recognize our necessarily engaged perspective upon it. Drawing from Wittgenstein, it abstains from a straightforward answer in favour of a deeper understanding of the very stakes of the problem: it leaves the reader with the question of how to make sense of the peculiar metaphysical undertaking we are drawn into in thinking about the conditions of consistent thought. (shrink)

Barry Stroud presents nineteen of his philosophical essays, on the nature of philosophy, sense experience, the possibility of perceptual knowledge, intentional action and self-knowledge, the reality of the colours of things, alien thought and the limits of understanding, moral knowledge, meaning, use, and understanding of language.

McCoy and colleagues (2023) offer a reflective framework for data ethics and governance with several historical bioethics principles as a foundation. Their framework is one among a plethora of othe...

Disagreement and the implications thereof have emerged as a central preoccupation of recent analytic philosophy. In epistemology, articles on so-called peer disagreement and its implications have burgeoned and now constitute an especially rich subject of discussion in the field. In moral and political philosophy, moral disagreement has of course traditionally been a crucial argumentative lever in meta-ethical debates, and disagreement over conceptions of the good has been the spark for central controversies in political philosophy, such as the limits of legitimate (...) state authority and public reason. Philosophers of language have also been keen to take up disagreement as a tool, for instance in motivating or exploring the merits of contextualist or relativist semantics for certain areas of discourse, such as matters of taste, aesthetic evaluation, and epistemic discourse. (shrink)

In this book, Stroud delves deeper into the fundamental metaphysical questions that he began to explore in 'The Quest for Reality'.

We say "the grass is green" or "lemons are yellow" to state what everyone knows. But are the things we see around us really colored, or do they only look that way because of the effects of light rays on our eyes and brains? Is color somehow "unreal" or "subjective" and dependent on our human perceptions and the conditions under which we see things? Distinguished scholar Barry Stroud investigates these and related questions in The Quest for Reality. In this (...) long-awaited book, he examines what a person would have to do and believe in order to reach the conclusion that everyone's perceptions and beliefs about the color of things are "illusions" and do not accurately represent the way things are in the world as it is independently of us. Arguing that no such conclusion could be consistently reached, Stroud finds that the conditions of a successful unmasking of color cannot all be fulfilled. The discussion extends beyond color to present a serious challenge to many other philosophical attempts to discover the way things really are. A model of subtle, elegant, and rigorous philosophical writing, this study will attract a wide audience from all areas of philosophy. (shrink)

Despite his producing voluminous writings beyond Utopia, scholarly consensus seems to be that if we want to understand the political thought of Thomas More, we must turn to this ‘little book’. This approach, however, has yielded little consensus about how to categorise More as a political thinker, as Utopia is notoriously and intentionally enigmatic. This article attempts to generate a portrait of More as a political thinker by going beyond an investigation of Utopia alone and taking into consideration those texts (...) often overlooked or rejected by scholars, primarily his polemical and religious writings. Doing so provides an outline of More as a thinker concerned with themes of natural and artificial inequality, popular authority and representation and, at the least, justifies the exercise of reading More’s work beyond Utopia. (shrink)

Published to coincide with an exhibition at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, Women on the Waterfront combines essays, first-person accounts, and stunning photographic images to tell the story of the twentieth-century women who worked, and continue to work, in and around the city’s waterfront—or who abandoned urban life to earn a living at sea. At the heart of the project are Michelle Sank’s remarkable and vibrant portraits of the women she has photographed, alongside their own words—alternately chillingly real in their (...) gritty depictions of life on the waterfront and remarkably confident, vulnerable, and even otherworldly. Enhancing these already extraordinary stories is Joanne Lacey’s rich essay, “Journey to the Water’s Edge,” which examines the story behind this fascinating archive and its origins in Lacey’s own family history. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

while many have explored the international reception of Dewey’s thought—for instance, by Hu Shih in the Chinese context—little has been said about the fate of pragmatism in India. Yet there is a line of discernable influence to Indian politics and civil rights movements in the person of Bhimrao Ambedkar. Ambedkar was a famous Indian statesman and anti-caste activist, but he was also a formidable intellectual and philosopher whose collected works span over twenty volumes. He also was highly educated in the (...) West, earning degrees from universities in America and England. Importantly for the fate of pragmatism in India, one of the academic mentors that made a significant impact on Ambedkar during his... (shrink)

Since the 1970s Barry Stroud has been one of the most original contributors to the philosophical study of human knowledge. This volume presents the best of Stroud's essays in this area. Throughout, he seeks to clearly identify the question that philosophical theories of knowledge are meant to answer, and the role scepticism plays in making sense of that question. In these seminal essays, he suggests that people pursuing epistemology need to concern themselves with whether philosophical scepticism is true (...) or false. Stroud's discussion of these fundamental questions is essential reading for anyone whose work touches on the subject of human knowledge. (shrink)

Among the many practical failures that threaten us, weakness of will or akrasia is often considered to be a paradigm of irrationality. The eleven new essays in this collection, written by an excellent international team of philosophers, some well-established, some younger scholars, give a rich overview of the current debate over weakness of will and practical irrationality more generally. Issues covered include classical questions such as the distinction between weakness and compulsion, the connection between evaluative judgement and motivation, the role (...) of emotions in akrasia, rational agency, and the existence of the will. The also include new topics, such as group akrasia, strength of will, the nature of correct choice, the structure of decision theory, the temporality of prudential reasons, and emotional rationality. Because these questions cut across philosophy of mind and ethics, the collection will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates in both these fields. (shrink)

Understanding the nature of science has long been a desired outcome of science education, despite ongoing disagreements about the content, structure, and focus of NOS expectations. Addressing the concern that teachers likely focus only on student learning expectations appearing in standards documents, this study examines the current state of NOS in science education standards documents from nine diverse countries to determine the overt NOS learning expectations that appeared, NOS statements provided near those learning expectations, but not identified as learning outcomes, (...) and NOS statements found in ancillary text. Findings indicate that NOS ideas rarely occur as expectations for student learning and are far more commonly found in ancillary material. Moreover, consensus was not apparent in the overt learning outcomes for students. Given the well-documented poor state of NOS instruction and the consistent lack of NOS appearing in published curriculum materials, the NOS standards appearing in nearly all documents analyzed are unlikely to provide sufficient conceptual or pedagogical support for NOS to be accurately interpreted or translated into meaningful experiences for students. (shrink)

The A to Z of the Lesbian Liberation Movement: Still the Rage is a comprehensive overview and resource guide for one of the most invisible social political movements: the Lesbian Liberation Movement. This book helps to make the still-active movement visible—the history, successes, setbacks, controversies, and issues. This book is a good resource for those studying this social political movement, containing a chronology, contextual overview, dictionary entries that cover persons, laws, terminology, issues, and countries, and an extensive bibliography of primary (...) resources and current work. (shrink)

Many commentators have contrasted the way that sociability is theorized in the writings of Mary Astell and Damaris Masham, emphasizing the extent to which Masham is more interested in embodied, worldly existence. I argue, by contrast, that Astell's own interest in imagining a constitutively relational individual emerges once we pay attention to her use of religious texts and tropes. To explore the relevance of Astell's Christianity, I emphasize both how Astell's Christianity shapes her view of the individual's relation to society (...) and how Masham's contrasting views can be analyzed through the lens of her charge that Astell is an “enthusiast.” In late seventeenth-century England, “enthusiasm” was a term of abuse that, commentators have recently argued, could function polemically to dismiss those deemed either excessively social or antisocial. By accusing Astell of enthusiasm, I claim, Masham seeks to marginalize the relational self that Astell imagines and to promote a more instrumental view of social ties. I suggest some aspects of Astell's thought that may have struck contemporaries as “enthusiastic” and contrast her vision of the self with Masham's more hedonistic subject. I conclude that, although each woman differently configures the relation between self and society, they share a desire to imagine autonomy within a relational framework. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John Dewey and India:Expanding the John Dewey-Bhimrao Ambedkar StoryScott R. StroudFor those who appreciate the complexity of the pragmatist tradition, the addition of international aspects and figures into recent narratives of its evolution comes as no surprise. John Dewey's influence on his students—and future reformers—from China has been usefully explored, focusing most notably on Hu Shih. Hu saw the value of Dewey's thought, even though he did not imbibe (...) all of it. Later, he would recall the power of the pragmatist's thoughts to provoke creative new ways of expanding pragmatism as a practical philosophy: "John Dewey, with his slow way of lecturing and conversation, was always throwing out right and left these 'seed ideas'—ideas which may fall on fertile soil in the mind of some of his students and grow into intellectual structures probably beyond the dream of the originator" (Hu Shih 95). Hu would return to China after his time in Dewey's classroom and nurture various "seeds" planted in the classrooms of Columbia University into his own creative literary and philosophical approaches to China's problems in the early twentieth century.By now, the Chinese episode of pragmatism's global history is well-known.1 But what of pragmatism's connection to India? Sitting in the same classroom as Hu and Dewey in 1915–1916 was a young Indian student, Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891–1956)—a thinker and leader who would serve a similar function to Hu, germinating useful ideas from Dewey into a new philosophy and a new context. Ambedkar would become a profound thinker who authored many books on a range of subjects pertinent to India's social problems and its democratic hopes. As a political leader, he led many protests for "untouchable" rights, and he served as one of the chief architects for India's democratic constitution in the 1940s. But he was also a deeply pragmatic thinker, one who took inspiration from parts of Dewey's thought that he first encountered while a student at Columbia University 1913–1916. [End Page 65] Ambedkar would write in the Columbia Alumni News in 1930 that "the best friends I have had in my life were some of my classmates at Columbia and my great professors, John Dewey, James Shotwell, Edwin Seligman, and James Harvey Robinson" (qtd. in "'Untouchables' Represented" 12). Ambedkar would be called back to Columbia in 1952 to receive an honorary degree; while he was bouncing around from airport to airport on his way to New York, Dewey died of pneumonia. Ambedkar sat in the King's Crown Hotel across from Columbia University's campus on 4 June and wrote to his wife, Savita, lamenting the news of Dewey's passing: "I am so sorry. I owe all my intellectual life to him. He was a wonderful man."2 Ambedkar had not seen Dewey in person since June 1916, but his work bears the undeniable marks of pragmatism in its unique anti-caste democratic emphases.3Ambedkar would imbibe the thought of Dewey—along with his other progressive professors at Columbia University (as well as institutions in London after 1916)—and return to India to get increasingly involved in the fight for "untouchable" (now referred to as "Dalit," the self-chosen Marathi term meaning "crushed") rights in India. His insistence on gaining the respect that thousands of years of the caste system had denied to him and his fellow Dalits put him at odds with figures like Gandhi, who wanted to emphasize political independence of the Indian nation over what they considered social challenges like caste. While all parts of Ambedkar's education were significant for his fight against caste oppression, he had a particular affinity for Dewey. As recent research has demonstrated, Ambedkar extended and adapted the ideal of social democracy and psychological ethics that he learned from Dewey's courses (Philosophy 231 in the Fall of 1914) and engaged the conversation on custom and force that he heard in Dewey's Philosophy 131-132 course on Moral and Political Philosophy in 1915–1916 (Stroud, "Recovering the Story"). Ambedkar also appropriated Dewey's method of reconstruction and employed it in novel argumentative ways in... (shrink)

A milestone in Wittgenstein scholarship, this collection of essays ranges over a wide area of the philosopher's thought, presenting divergent interpretations of his fundamental ideas. Different chapters raise many of the central controversies that surround current understanding of the Tractatus, providing an interplay that will be particularly useful to students. Taken together, the essays present a broader and more comprehensive view of Wittgenstein's intellectual interests and his impact on philosophy than may be found elsewhere.The thirteen chapters treat topics from both (...) periods of Wittgenstein's work: More than half are devoted to his early thought, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of 1921, reflecting a growing interest today among philosophers in reexamining this seminal book, while three chapters treat the Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953. The remaining chapters discuss such "nonstandard" topics as philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and anthropology.Contents: The Early Wittgenstein and the Middle Russell, Kenneth Blackwell; Frege and Wittgenstein, Michael Dummett; Wittgenstein and the Theory of Types, Hide Ishiguro; The So-called Realism of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Brian McGuinness; The Logical Independence of Elementary Propositions, David Pears; The Rise and Fall of the Picture Theory, Peter Hacker; The Picture Theory and Wittgenstein's Later Attitude to It, Erik Stenius; Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy of Mind, Anthony Kenny; A Theory of Language?, G. E. M. Anscombe; Im Anfang war die Tat, Peter Winch; Wittgenstein's Full Stop, D. Z. Phillips; Quote: Judgments from Our Brain, Paul Ziff; Wittgenstein and the Fire Festivals, Frank Cioffi, Index.Irving Block is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at The University of Western Ontario. (shrink)

We contribute to the literature on ethics in the professions by theorizing how global mobility precipitates professional insecurity and constrained moral agency. We present our findings of a study of accountants migrating to Canada. Using postcolonial theory and relational/poststructuralist theories of identity and ethics, we contrast the experiences of marginalized and privileged migrant accountants to show how those with “diverse” social identities are not recognized by professionals in Canada and must seek recognition from Canadian colleagues, employers, and clients to reconstitute (...) their professional identities and moral agency. We discuss the implications of the exclusion and marginalization of professionals for migrants, the profession, and society more generally. (shrink)

There is little empirical evidence showing a direct link between a capacity for statistical learning (SL) and proficiency with natural language. Moreover, discussion of the role of SL in language acquisition has seldom focused on literacy development. Our study addressed these issues by investigating the relationship between SL and reading ability in typically developing children and healthy adults. We tested SL using visually presented stimuli within a triplet learning paradigm and examined reading ability by administering the Wide Range Achievement Test (...) (WRAT-4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2006). A total of 38 typically developing children (mean age of 9;5 years, range 6;4–12;5) and 37 healthy adults (mean age of 21 years, range 18–34) were assessed. In children, SL was significantly related to reading ability. Importantly, this relationship was independent of grade and also age. The adult data, too, revealed that SL was significantly related to reading ability. A regression analysis of the combined child and adult data revealed that SL accounted for a unique amount of variance in reading ability, after age and attention had been taken into consideration. For the first time, this study provides empirical evidence that a capacity for more effective SL is related to higher reading ability in the general population. (shrink)