John Hawthorne is widely regarded as one of the finest philosophers working today. He is perhaps best known for his contributions to metaphysics, and this volume collects his most notable papers in this field. Hawthorne offers original treatments of fundamental topics in philosophy, including identity, ontology, vagueness, and causation. Six of the essays appear here for the first time, and there is a valuable introduction to guide the reader through the selection.

Most scholars think not. But in this pioneering book, John H. Zammito challenges that view by revealing a precritical Kant who was immensely more influential than the one philosophers think they know.

Including three of his most famous and important essays,Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Essay onBentham, along with formative selections from Jeremy Benthamand John Austin, this volume provides a uniquely perspicuous viewof Mill's ethical and political thought. Contains Mill's most famous and influential works,Utilitarianism and On Liberty as well as hisimportant Essay on Bentham. Uses the 1871 edition of Utilitarianism, the last to bepublished in Mill's lifetime. Includes selections from Bentham and John Austin, the twothinkers who most influenced Mill. Introduction (...) written by Mary Warnock, a highly respected figurein 20th-century ethics in her own right. Provides an extensive, up-to-date bibliography with the bestscholarship on Mill, Bentham and Utilitarianism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Michael L. MarkPatrice Madura Ward-SteinmanI met Michael Mark at the first Philosophy of Music Education conference held at Indiana University in the summer of 1990. I was a doctoral student at IU then and had studied the writings of many of the conference presenters and so the experience of hearing and meeting them in person was a heady one, indeed. I will never forget those impressions of Phil Alperson, (...) Wayne Bowman, Allen Britton, David Elliott, Peter Kivy, Gerard Knieter, Thomas Regelski, Bennett Reimer, John Shepherd, Ann Stokes, Eleanor Stubley, Keith Swanwick, and many others.I was interested in meeting Michael after hearing his response to the presentation of one of my favorite IU professors of musicology, Austin Caswell. Caswell’s provocative paper, “How We Got into Canonicity and What it has Done to Us: An American Music Historian’s View of Music in Academia,” claimed that “the effect of canonicity on American musical life is destructive,” while Michael’s response was characterized by his style of writing that I came to recognize over the decades as distinct, calm, logical, methodical, and based in an extraordinarily wide and deep wealth of historical knowledge. While I greatly admired my rebellious and passionate professor’s views and temperament which were not unlike my own, I also appreciated hearing Michael’s measured and thoughtful response. Thus began my friendship with Michael, who, I learned, was not only a professor [End Page 92] and dean at Towson State University but also an avid big band woodwind doubler who showed interest in my doctoral research in the art of vocal jazz improvisation. That friendship lasted for almost twenty-eight years and we enjoyed memorable reunions at other conferences. For example, there was the ISPME conference held at UCLA where he invited me to dinner with his good friend and connoisseur of fine wines, Bennett Reimer, and the ISPME conference in Helsinki where, after I tripped and severely broke my ankle, requiring surgery, Michael, Estelle Jorgensen, Iris Yob, and two then-doctoral students (Kasia Bugaj and Leonard Tan) visited me in the Helsinki hospital.When I began teaching at the University of Southern California in 1995, it was fortuitous that Michael’s brother, Brian, lived in the Los Angeles area. His frequent visits allowed him to make several guest lectures to my graduate research methods classes, very welcome opportunities. After one of those lectures, I relayed the history of my family’s ballroom in the Chicago area that was open for business with big band music from 1929 until 1967. He asked if I had any artifacts from Madura’s Danceland, and when I mentioned my father’s stacks of dusty record books, newsletters, photos, and posters in our basement, he became very enthusiastic and told me that I had a “gold mine” of an archive with which to write a book about the place! As a trained quantitative researcher, I began to explore the record books to analyze trends in band pay over the Depression and World War II years.1 Over the next ten years, with help from Michael’s regular prodding and encouragement, I organized the large archive into the history of Madura’s Danceland.2 I owe this personally important accomplishment to Michael Mark.Michael invited me (in his endearing way which I could not refuse) to coauthor a music education textbook with him3 and our writing partnership went so smoothly that he invited me to co-author the 4th edition of his Contemporary Music Education.4 Although our writing styles and areas of expertise were very different, I learned much from his narrative approach which included illustrative scenarios, interviews, and the informal use of contractions, a style of writing that was not second nature for me. We wrote both books without meeting in person, except to celebrate the publication of the first at the Metropolitan Art Museum café in New York with our beloved spouses, Lois Mark and David Ward-Steinman.Dr. Michael L. Mark will long be remembered for his many books, chapters, and articles on the history of music education and his many symposium presentations; for his university teaching and administrative achievements; and for his... (shrink)

John Passmore was a renowned Australian empirical philosopher and historian of ideas. In this book, which was originally published in 1952, Passmore's intention was to disentangle certain main themes in Hume's philosophy and to show how they relate to Hume's main philosophic purpose. Rather than offering a detailed commentary, the text provides an account based on specificity and critical scholarship, seeking to complement the other more comprehensive works on Hume's philosophy that had become available around the same time. This (...) book will be of value to anyone with an interest in perspectives on Hume and Passmore's philosophical approach. (shrink)

"Despite a dramatic rise in average income in the last 40 years, people are no happier. Since the millennium personal well-being has recently shot up the political and educational agendas, with schools in the UK even including "Personal Well-being" as a curriculum topic in its own right.This book takes teachers, student teachers and parents step by step through the many facets of well-being, pausing at each step to look at the educational implications for teachers and parents trying to make our (...) children's lives more meaningful. With his renowned talent for distilling the most complex of philosophical arguments into accessible laymen's terms, John White addresses the moral maze of well-being through three distinct parts:Part 1 describes the remarkable growth of interest in children's well-being in the UK since 2000, and suggests that a philosophical look at the concept of well-being is essential, so that teachers and parents can avoid confusion and misunderstanding.Part 2 takes the reader step by step through the intricacies of the concept in a deliberately accessible way with each chapter containing a substantial section showing how the new ideas just introduced can be taken up in education, especially in schools.Part 3 is about the future of education for well-being, pulling together, expanding on home as well as school, discussing the main aims and emphases of an education focussed on personal well-being. The author also looks at how school's traditional practices will have to change, given the new focus on well-beingAs well as looking at educational implications of all these questions step by step, the book concludes with an extensive practical guide for families and schools wanting to realise the new well-being agenda.This short, engaging book takes the reader with little or no background in philosophy into these issues. It is of special interest to teachers and parents, since they are now at the sharp end of the culture change we are now experiencing"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

While functioning quite well for many years, the bioethics profession is in crisis. John H. Evans closely examines the history of the bioethics profession, and based on the sociological reasons the profession evolved as it did, proposes a radical solution to the crisis.

This chapter reviews a number of related problems in the epistemology of testimony, and suggests some dilemmas for any theory of knowledge that tries to solve them. Here a common theme emerges: It can seem that any theory must make testimonial knowledge either too hard or too easy, and that therefore no adequate account of testimonial knowledge is possible. The chapter then puts forward a proposal for making progress. Specifically, an important function of the concept of knowledge is to govern (...) the acquisition and distribution of quality information within an epistemic community. Testimonial exchanges paradigmatically serve in the distribution role, but sometimes serve in the acquisition role. The resulting position, it is argued, explains why testimonial knowledge is sometimes easy to get, and sometimes much harder. (shrink)

When and why are coercion, indoctrination, manipulation, deception, and bullshit morally wrongful modes of influence in the context of educating children? Answering this question requires identifying what valid claims different parties have against one another regarding how children are influenced. Most prominently among these, it requires discerning what claims children have regarding whether and how they and their peers are influenced, and against whom they have these claims. The claims they have are grounded in the weighty interests they each equally (...) have in their wellbeing, prospective autonomy and being regarded with equal concern and respect. Plausibly children have valid claims regarding the content and means of influence they themselves are subjected to. For instance, considerations of concern and respect for children confer duties on others enable them to know important information and develop important skills. Children also plausibly have valid claims to be free from certain means of influence including indoctrination. This is because indoctrinatory practices threaten to diminish both their capacity to reason soundly, thereby constituting a wrongful harm, and their opportunities to form judgements and choices in response to relevant evidence and reasons, thereby constituting a wrong of disrespect. (shrink)

Is nature all there is? John Haught examines this question and in doing so addresses a fundamental issue in the dialogue of science with religion. The belief that nature is all there is and that no overall purpose exists in the universe is known broadly as 'naturalism'. Naturalism, in this context, denies the existence of any realities distinct from the natural world and human culture. Since the rise of science in the modern world has had so much influence on (...) naturalism's intellectual acceptance, the author focuses on 'scientific' naturalism and the way in which its defenders are now attempting to put a distance between contemporary thought and humanity's religious traditions. Haught seeks to provide a reasonable, scientifically informed alternative to naturalism. His approach will provide the basis for lively discussion among students, scholars, scientists, theologians and intellectually curious people in general. (shrink)

This book is a study of comparative philosophy and theology. The themes are the critical issues arising from the modern interpretation of Confucian doctrine as they confront the Christian beliefs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In this awaited follow up to his book _Faithful Reason_, the well-known philosopher and Catholic thinker John Haldane brings his unrivalled insight to bear on questions of the existence of God and the nature and destiny of the human soul. His arguments weave elements drawn from philosophy of mind, epistemology and aesthetics, together with recurrent features of human experience to create a structure that simultaneously frames and supports ideas such as that the cosmos is a creation, human beings transcend (...) their material composition, and that human fulfilment lies beyond death. As in many of his other writings this volume blends themes from Aquinas with insights drawn from analytical philosophy and further establishes John Haldane as the leading 'analytical thomist'. (shrink)

John Ogbu has studied minority education from a comparative perspective for over 30 years. The study reported in this book--jointly sponsored by the community and the school district in Shaker Heights, Ohio--focuses on the academic performance of Black American students. Not only do these students perform less well than White students at every social class level, but also less well than immigrant minority students, including Black immigrant students. Furthermore, both middle-class Black students in suburban school districts, as well as (...) poor Black students in inner-city schools are not doing well. Ogbu's analysis draws on data from observations, formal and informal interviews, and statistical and other data. He offers strong empirical evidence to support the cross-class existence of the problem. The book is organized in four parts: *Part I provides a description of the twin problems the study addresses--the gap between Black and White students in school performance and the low academic engagement of Black students; a review of conventional explanations; an alternative perspective; and the framework for the study. *Part II is an analysis of _societal and school factors_ contributing to the problem, including race relations, Pygmalion or internalized White beliefs and expectations, levelling or tracking, the roles of teachers, counselors, and discipline. *_Community factors_--the focus of this study--are discussed in Part III. These include the educational impact of opportunity structure, collective identity, cultural and language or dialect frame of reference in schooling, peer pressures, and the role of the family. This research focus does _not_ mean exonerating the system and blaming minorities, nor does it mean neglecting school and society factors. Rather, Ogbu argues, the role of community forces should be incorporated into the discussion of the academic achievement gap by researchers, theoreticians, policymakers, educators, and minorities themselves who genuinely want to improve the academic achievement of African American children and other minorities. *In Part IV, Ogbu presents a summary of the study's findings on community forces and offers recommendations--some of which are for the school system and some for the Black community. _Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement_ is an important book for a wide range of researchers, professionals, and students, particularly in the areas of Black education, minority education, comparative and international education, sociology of education, educational anthropology, educational policy, teacher education, and applied anthropology. (shrink)

In the 1960s Lewis White Beck criticized Kant’s highest good as a moral concept. In 1963 John Silber responded. Thus, the “Beck-Silber controversy.” This paper explores such controversy in the Spanish literature. It begins identifying four criticisms: the problems of heteronomy, derivation, impossibility, and irrelevance. It then identifies a new problem rescued from the Spanish literature: dualism. After categorizing, following Matthew Caswell, the Spanish defenses into revisionists, secularizers, and maximalists, this paper assesses these defenses. The paper also translates (...) sections of such literature into English and leaves us closer to a complete defense of the highest good by salvaging what it can of the Spanish literature’s unique points. (shrink)

Although many of us deny it, it is not uncommon to feel pleasure over the suffering of others, particularly when we feel that suffering has been deserved. The German word for this concept-_Schadenfreude_-has become universal in its expression of this feeling. Drawing on the teachings of history's most prominent philosophers, John Portmann explores the concept of _Schadenfreude_ in this rigorous, comprehensive, and absorbing study.

John Rist surveys the history of ethics from Plato to the present and offers a vigorous defence of an ethical theory based on a revised version of Platonic realism. In a wide-ranging discussion he examines well-known alternatives to Platonism, in particular Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume and Kant as well as contemporary 'practical reasoners', and argues that most post-Enlightenment theories of morality depend on an abandoned Christian metaphysic and are unintelligible without such grounding. He also argues that contemporary choice-based theories, whether (...) they take a strictly ethical or more obviously political form, are ultimately arbitrary in nature. His lively and accessible 2001 study is informed by a powerful sense of philosophical history, and will be of interest to both students and scholars of ethics. (shrink)

By John R. Searle Copyright John R. Searle I. Naturalizing Language I believe that the greatest achievements in philosophy over the past hundred or one hundred and twenty five years have been in the philosophy of language. Beginning with Frege, who invented the subject, and continuing through Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin and their successors, right to the present day, there is no branch of philosophy with so much high quality work as the philosophy of language. In my view, (...) the only achievement comparable to those of the great philosophers of language is Rawls’s reinvention of the subject of political philosophy (and therefore implicitly the subject of ethics). But with this one possible exception, I think that work in the philosophy of language is at the top of our achievements. Having said that, however, I have to record a serious misgiving I have about the subject. The problem is that its practitioners in general do not treat language as a natural phenomenon. This may seem a strange charge to make, given that so many contemporary and recent philosophers of language are anxious to emphasize the empirical character of their theories of language. Quine and Davidson are striking examples of resolute empiricism. My objection is that few contemporary and recent philosophers of language attempt to treat language as a natural extension of non-linguistic biological capacities. Language is not seen as continuous with, nor as an extension of, the rest of our specifically human biological inheritance. I think there is a deep reason, both historically and intellectually, why language has not been treated naturalistically. It is.. (shrink)

Defining Species: A Sourcebook from Antiquity to Today provides excerpts and commentary on the definition of «species from source material ranging from the ...

In the 1990s, the role of the chief executive officer (CEO) of major United States corporations underwent a profound transformation in which CEOs went from being bureaucrats or technocrats to shareholder partisans who acted more like proprietors or entrepreneurs. This transformation occurred in response to changes in the competitive environment of U.S. corporations and also to the agency theory argument that high levels of compensation by means of stock options helped to overcome the agency problem inherent in the separation of (...) ownership and control. Some critics charge that this new CEO role is objectionable for a variety of reasons, which may also be applicable to the current financial crisis in which CEO misconduct may have played a part. These objections are based largelyon a team production model of corporate governance, which is held by these critics to be superior to the standard agent-principal model. This article examines the objections offered by critics of the changed role of the CEO and argues that their negative assessment of this development and their use of the team production model to support their conclusions are not warranted. CEOs have changed from hired hands to co-owners, and this change may have contributed in some measure to the current financial crisis. However, in determining the morally preferable role of the CEO, care must be taken not to discard what is sound in the changed role. (shrink)

I read Ernst Gombrich’s wonderful book Art and Illusion in 1981. I’d completed my BA a few months earlier, and I was spending a year in Geneva on a scholarship, before returning to Oxford to begin the BPhil. The topic in philosophy that interested me most at that time was perception, and I was struck by the extent to which Gombrich’s arguments relied on views about visual perception that he had inherited from the Helmholtzian tradition in psychology, and therefore indirectly (...) from Locke and Kant. I thought that arguments in the philosophy of perception exposed serious mistakes and confusions in this tradition, and that they could therefore shed important light on the fascinating questions about pictorial art that Gombrich discussed in his book. (shrink)

Clearly, if a man holds a self-contradictory belief, then his belief cannot be rational, for there can be no set of evidence sufficient to justify it. This is most apparent when the self contradictory belief is a belief in a conjunction, , rather than when it is a non-conjunctive self-contradictory belief, e.g. a belief that red is not a color.

_The Literary Wittgenstein_ is a stellar collection of articles relating the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to core problems in the theory and philosophy of literature. Amid growing recognition that Wittgenstein's philosophy has important implications for literary studies, this book brings together twenty-one articles by the most prominent figures in the field. Eighteen of the articles are published here for the first time. _The Literary Wittgenstein_ applies the approach of Wittgenstein to core areas of literary theory, including poetry, deconstruction, the ethical (...) value of literature, and the nature and logic of fictional discourse. The literary dimension of Wittgenstein's own writings is also explored, such as the authorial strategy of the _Tractatus_, and writing and method in the _Philosophical Investigations_. Major literary figures discussed in the book include William Faulkner, Joseph Conrad, and Friedrich Hölderlin. By mapping out the foundations of a new approach to literature, _The Literary Wittgenstein_ is essential reading for anyone interested in the relevance and application of Wittgenstein's thought to literary theory, aesthetics, and the philosophy of language and logic. (shrink)

John Russon draws from a broad range of art and literature to show how philosophy speaks to the most basic and important questions in our everyday lives. In Sites of Exposure, Russon grapples with how personal experiences such as growing up and confronting death combine with broader issues such as political oppression, economic exploitation, and the destruction of the natural environment to make life meaningful. His is cutting-edge philosophical work, illuminated by original and rigorous thinking that relies on cross-cultural (...) communication and engagement with the richness of human cultural history. These probing interpretations of the nature of phenomenology, the philosophy of art, history, and politics, are appropriate for students and scholars of philosophy at all levels. (shrink)

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill took thirty years to complete and is acknowledged as the definitive edition of J.S. Mill and as one of the finest works editions ever completed. Mill's contributions to philosophy, economics, and history, and in the roles of scholar, politician and journalist can hardly be overstated and this edition remains the only reliable version of the full range of Mill's writings. Each volume contains extensive notes, a new introduction and an index. Many of (...) the volumes have been unavailable for some time, but the Works are now again available, both as a complete set and as individual volumes. (shrink)

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill took thirty years to complete and is acknowledged as the definitive edition of J.S. Mill and as one of the finest works editions ever completed. Mill's contributions to philosophy, economics, and history, and in the roles of scholar, politician and journalist can hardly be overstated and this edition remains the only reliable version of the full range of Mill's writings. Each volume contains extensive notes, a new introduction and an index. Many of (...) the volumes have been unavailable for some time, but the Works are now again available, both as a complete set and as individual volumes. (shrink)

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill took thirty years to complete and is acknowledged as the definitive edition of J.S. Mill and as one of the finest works editions ever completed. Mill's contributions to philosophy, economics, and history, and in the roles of scholar, politician and journalist can hardly be overstated and this edition remains the only reliable version of the full range of Mill's writings. Each volume contains extensive notes, a new introduction and an index. Many of (...) the volumes have been unavailable for some time, but the Works are now again available, both as a complete set and as individual volumes. (shrink)

I recommend replacing Piccinini's elaborate metaphysics that grounds his approach in Neurocognitive Mechanisms with metascience. Reconceived as metascience, Piccinini's discussion of numerous case studies from recent neuroscience in his book's final chapters makes a strong case for his proposal that current neuroscience trades in neural representations and a special kind of computation over them. But I contrast this account with what a metascience focused on recent developments in 'molecular and cellular cognition' reveals, namely an account that no longer has use (...) for 'levels', a notion that has long infected new mechanism and remains prominent in Piccinini's latest contribution. (shrink)

This volume recreates the received notion of reflective equilibrium. It reconfigures reflective equilibrium as both a cognitive ideal and a method for approximating this ideal. The ideal of reflective equilibrium is restructured using the concept of discursive strata, which are formed by sentences and differentiated by function. Sentences that perform the same kind of linguistic function constitute a stratum. The book shows how moral discourse can be analyzed into phenomenal, instrumental, and teleological strata, and the ideal of reflective equilibrium reworked (...) in these terms. In addition, the work strengthens the method of reflective equilibrium by harnessing the resources of decision theory and inductive logic. It launches a comparative version of decision theory and employs this framework as a guide to moral theory choice. It also recruits quantitative inductive logic to inform a standard of inductive cogency. When used in tandem with comparative decision theory, this standard can aid in the effort to turn the undesirable condition of reflective disequilibrium into reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

Volume 1 of “The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882–1898” is entitled “Early Essays andLeibniz’s New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding,1882–1888.” Included here are all Dewey’s earliest writings, from his first ...