The twentieth-century Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd left behind an impressive canon of philosophical works and has continued to influence a scholarly community in Europe and North America, which has extended, critiqued, and applied his thought in many academic fields. Jonathan Chaplin introduces Dooyeweerd for the first time to many English readers by critically expounding Dooyeweerd's social and political thought and by exhibiting its pertinence to contemporary civil society debates. Chaplin begins by contextualizing Dooyeweerd's thought, first in relation to (...) present-day debates and then in relation to the work of the Dutch philosopher Abraham Kuyper. Chaplin outlines the distinctive theory of historical and cultural development that serves as an essential backdrop to Dooyeweerd's substantive social philosophy; examines Dooyeweerd's notion of societal structural principles; and sets forth his complex classification of particular types of social structure and their various interrelationships. Chaplin provides a detailed examination of Dooyeweerd's theory of the state, its definitive nature, and its proper role vis-a-vis other elements of society. Dooyeweerd's contributions, Chaplin concludes, assist us in mapping the ways in which state and civil society should be related to achieve justice and the public good. "This superb study simultaneously introduces and critically engages the work of one of the most important and neglected Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, while showing its connection to the pluralist tradition and bringing it to bear on the contemporary debate about civil society. More than just providing an overview of Dooyeweerd's thought, it seeks to advance his intellectual project and show its contemporary relevance. It is essential reading not only for those interested in the neo-Calvinist tradition, but for anyone interested in Christian social thought, structural pluralism, or the nature and fate of civil society." --_Kenneth L. Grasso, Texas State University _ "The subtlety, scope, and insightfulness of Dooyeweerd's social philosophy were unparalleled among Protestant thinkers in the past century. Yet his contributions are not well known. Jonathan Chaplin promises to remedy this neglect. His lucid and masterful study brings a new and transformative voice to contemporary debates about the future of a democratic society." --_Lambert Zuidervaart, Institute for Christian Studies and University of Toronto_ "Finally, an authoritative book that brings to brilliant light and life Herman Dooyeweerd's Christian philosophy of law, politics, and society. For the past half century, the profound and original teachings of this prolific Dutch sage have been lost on most readers. Jonathan Chaplin has rescued Dooyeweerd from his own obscure prose, poor translations, and cultic mystique to reveal his astonishing and engaging insights into our lives as persons and peoples, rulers and citizens, preachers and parishioners, parents and children. This will be the go-to book on Dooyeweerd for many years to come." --_John Witte, Jr., Emory University_ "Herman Dooyeweerd was both deep and original. Much of his writing is an articulation of rather undeveloped lines of thought in his Dutch predecessor, Abraham Kuyper. In the course of his exposition, Chaplin effectively highlights Dooyeweerd's significance for a theory of civil society and for present-day social theory in general." --_Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale University and the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Virginia_. (shrink)

This article examines the way in which the sublime comes to matter within various eighteenth century legal discourses, particularly in the work of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Edmund Burke. The essay seeks also to relate the theoretical works of these philosophers and lawyers to practical legislative developments of the period, in particular, the passage of the Black Act in1726 and the Marriage Act in 1753. The sublime comes to matter to the law in this period in the sense (...) that philosophical conceptualizations of the sublime in terms of power and transcendence become increasingly significant to representations of the nature and function of English law. Such theoretical accounts of the law as are found in the work of Hobbes, Locke, and Burke, moreover, translate into juridical practices designed to affirm the status of the law as a transcendentally sublime source of political authority in the eighteenth century. This article subjects that understanding of the law to a feminist critique that draws upon the work of the French philosopher, Luce Irigaray. It will be shown that the sublime within Western thought is generally associated with a sense of dread as to the possibility of the annihilation of consciousness. This ontological dread entails, in Jean Francois Lyotard’s terms, a recognition of the possibility of “nothing further happening” to the subject. Within Western discourse, this dread is projected onto, or made material in the form of, some ‘other’ that is, in Irigaray’s estimation, most usually feminine. Thus, the sublime comes to matter in this second, ontological sense and it is within this context that the transcendental sublime emerges as a response to a sense of dread that is projected on to some material, feminine, or feminised, ‘other’. In eighteenth century legal discourse, this ‘other’ take the form of the ‘state of nature’, or the revolutionary mob, or the revolutionary female who signifies more than anything a return to animality and chaos –an ontological and political fall from grace. The Black Act and the Marriage Act, with their shared emphasis upon the preservation of political stability and patriarchal property rights, may in this context be regarded as manifestations in the legal domain of the metaphysical principles of the transcendental sublime – with its emphasis upon an escape from, and a control of, the dreadful, feminine ‘other’. (shrink)

For three days in April, 2005, I was a speaker and panelist at the NASA-sponsored “Physics for the rd Millennium II Conference” in Huntsville, Alabama, where twelve of us, including two Nobel Laureates, were invited to give 50-minute lectures about cutting-edge physics to an audience of NASA engineers, teachers, students, parents, and other interested attendees. In this column, I want to tell you about the work described in one of the talks, given by Dr. George Chapline of the Lawrence Livermore (...) Laboratory. (shrink)

Fresnel's theory of light was (a) impressively predictively successful yet (b) was based on an "entity" (the elastic-solid ether) that we now "know" does not exist. Does this case "confute" scientific realism as Laudan suggested? Previous attempts (by Hardin and Rosenberg and by Kitcher) to defuse the episode's anti-realist impact. The strongest form of realism compatible with this case of theory-rejection is in fact structural realism. This view was developed by Poincare who also provided reasons to think that it is (...) the only realist view of theories that really makes sense. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke: Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 29, Number 1, April 2003, pp. 125-141 Dr. George Cheyne, Chevalier Ramsay, and Hume's Letter to a Physician JOHN P. WRIGHT The publication of a new intellectual biography of George Cheyne1 provides a "propitious" occasion for "a thoroughly skeptical review"2 of the question which has long exercised Hume scholars, whether Cheyne was the intended recipient of David Hume's fascinating pie-Treatise Letter to a Physician,3 the (...) letter which describes his own hypochondriacal physical and mental symptoms and gives an account of his early philosophical development.4 Hume's nineteenth-century biographer, John Hill Burton, argued that Hume was probably writing to Cheyne,5 while Ernest Mossner claimed to definitively refute that hypothesis in an article entitled "Hume's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," published in 1944.6 Anita Guerrini's intellectual biography does not discuss Cheyne as a possible recipient of Hume's letter, but she does present a well-rounded picture of this interesting eighteenth-century physician from which we can judge his appropriateness as its addressee. In the following discussion I will make use of the biographical material found in this new biography of Cheyne, as well as other sources, to show that Mossner's arguments are less than definitive, and that it would be wrong to dismiss the possibility that the letter was sent to George Cheyne.7 This is a possibility that, for reasons that I will make clear, makes good biographical and philosophical sense. At the same time, it is important to keep a proper suspense of judgment as Burton did, for the evidence that the letter was either intended for or actually sent to Cheyne is not definitive. John P. Wright is Professor of Philosophy, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 126 John P. Wright Burton, who first published the autobiographical letter of the 22-yearold Hume in 1846, narrowed down the possible addressees of Hume's letter to either Cheyne or John Arbuthnot. He also pointed out that it is possible that the letter was never sent, and that the ten and a half page manuscript is only a neatly written draft, rather than a fair copy of an actual letter. Nevertheless, Burton thought he could identify the unnamed addressee on the basis of the internal evidence of the manuscript and the records of Scottish physicians practicing in England at the time. In the letter, Hume refers to the intended recipient as his "Countryman, a Scotchman [,]... a skilful Physician, a man of Letters, of Wit, of Good Sense, & of great Humanity."8 Further he writes that he is consulting him because he is a person "of great Learning beyond [his]... own Profession" who is acquainted with the "Motions of the Mind" he has described in his letter, and that "Fame pointed [him]... out as the properest person to resolve my Doubts..." about the cure of his disorder.9 Burton tells us that "the first name that suggested itself... was Arbuthnot, whose fine genius was just then flickering in the socket."10 (John Arbuthnot had been ill for some time, and died a year later.) But he then added that "a more full consideration showed to my satisfaction that it must have been destined for Dr. George Cheyne." His main reason for settling on Cheyne was that Cheyne's immensely popular The English Malady (1733) had recently been published, and that "there is a certain unison of tone between Hume's letter and this book." Burton quotes a portion of Cheyne's own long autobiographical account of his own disease in The English Malady. Cheyne's autobiography begins with the claim that "I passed my Youth in close study, and almost constant Application to the abstracted Sciences, (wherein my chief pleasure consisted) and consequently in great Temperance and a Sedentary Life"; it is followed by the reflection that any overindulgence in food or drink led to physical and psychological problems.11 He goes on to describe these in great detail for 39 pages, along with a history of his life. Burton also quotes a section of the book in which Cheyne describes how a studious and sedentary life causes the symptoms... (shrink)

I want to discuss a doctrine and a concept in theory of knowledge which has various manifestations from at least the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The concept is that of direct or immediate cognition, the doctrine says that only what is like mind can be directly or immediately present to mind. This doctrine raises the question of how we can know things other than ourselves and our experiences: the concept of direct presence most usually had the consequence of (...) making our knowledge of the world indirect, uncertain, or impossible. The directly present must in some way inform us about the indirectly present. (shrink)

This book tells for the first time the long and complex story of the involvement of Locke's suggestion that God could add to matter the power of thought in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in the growth of French materialism. There is a discussion of the 'affaire de Prades', in which Locke's name was linked with a censored thesis at the Faculty of Theology in Paris. The similarities and differences between English "thinking matter" and the French "matiere pensante" of the (...) philosophes are also discussed. (shrink)

Late in his life, Hans-Georg Gadamer was asked to explain what the universal aspect of hermeneutics consisted in, and he replied, enigmatically, “in the _verbum interius_.” Gadamer devoted a pivotal section of his magnum opus, _Truth and Method_, to this Augustinian concept, and subsequently pointed to it as a kind of passkey to his thought. It remains, however, both in its origins and its interpretations, a mysterious concept. From out of its layered history, it remains a provocation to thought, expressing (...) something about the relation of language and understanding that has yet to be fully worked out. The scholastic idea of a word that is fully formed in the mind but not articulated served Augustine as an analogy for the procession of the Trinity, and served Thomas Aquinas as an analogy for the procession between divine ideas and human thought. Gadamer turned the analogy on its head by using the verbum interius to explain the obscure relation between language and human understanding. His learned interpretation of the idea of the inner word through Neoplatonism, Lutheranism, idealism, and historicism may seem nearly as complex as the medieval source texts he consulted and construed in his exegesis, but the profoundity of his insights are unquestioned. In unpacking Gadamer's interpretive feat, John Arthos provides an overview of the philosophy of the logos out of which the _verbum interius_ emerged. He summarizes the development of the _verbum _in ancient and medieval doctrine, traces its path through German thought, and explains its relevance to modern hermeneutic theory. His work unfolds in two parts, as an expansive intellectual history and as a close analysis and commentary on source texts on the inner word, from Augustine to Gadamer. As such, this book serves as an indispensable guide and reference for hermeneutics and the intellectual traditions out of which it arose, as well as an original theoretical statement in its own right. “Consummately researched, lucidly written, and persuasively argued throughout, __The Inner Word_ _succeeds brilliantly in bringing to light this neglected but pivotal matter in Gadamer’s work. Arthos is learned in the best ‘humanist’ way, for he succeeds in creating something new of his own that will speak eloquently to all of us.” —_Walter Jost, University of Virginia_ “Gadamer suggests that the Christian idea of incarnation is a key to his hermeneutics, but does not explain his position in a detailed or systematic manner. Arthos brings his considerable knowledge of hermeneutics and rhetoric to bear on Gadamer's insight, recounting the rich intellectual history to which Gadamer gestures, and providing an extended and detailed exegesis of this pivotal point in the third part of _Truth and Method_. Gadamer's account of 'linguisticality,' Arthos explains, can best be understood through his use of a complex metaphor—the ‘inner word.’ Arthos matches his erudition with clear and clean prose, and his account exemplifies, rather than just describes, Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy. Any scholar interested in Gadamer's philosophy should have this book on his or her shelf.” —_Francis J. Mootz III, William S. Boyd Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law_ “Arthos's strength lies for me in his careful reading of the sources. He effectively commands the literature on the subject. This work shows in a sophisticated way the legacy of trinitarian theology for philosophical hermeneutics. The very complex task of illuminating the phenomenon of the _verbum interius _and indicating its centrality for philosophical hermeneutics is accomplished by John Arthos with great sensitivity to the subject matter.” —_Andrzej Wiercinski, The International Institute for Hermeneutics_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of TraditionHarold D. BakerOsip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition, by Clare Cavanagh; xii & 365 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, $39.50.The great, enigmatic poet of twentieth-century Russia, Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938), employed a poetics based on recollection. The word-soul or psyche is not contained within a linguistic body but hovers amorously over it, [End Page 257] fleeing any too crude (...) attempt at capture. The reader must trace out Mandelstam’s personal networks of association, both inside and outside the text, before a kernel of thought and emotion can be recognized (“only the moment of recognition is sweet to us,” goes a famous line from his “Tristia”). Although Clare Cavanagh’s book does not emphasize this theme, her tactics could hardly be better suited to Mandelstam’s peculiar poetic sensibility.Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition is an exhaustive exploration of historical and cultural context. It opposes itself explicitly to the traditional structuralist and semiotic approaches to Mandelstam, and takes his works in their “secular” rather than their “hermetic” aspect (to borrow terms from Robert Scholes). In that sense it seeks to recollect and bring to mind everything that might affect our understanding of Mandelstam’s oeuvre. This turns out to be a varied field: Pound and Eliot (coeval modernists whose ideas resonate significantly with his), François Villon, Byzantine and Gothic church architecture, the marginalized yet culturally dynamic position of the Russian Jew, Pindar (an exemplar of the social-economic relation of poet to state), Dante, the psychology of literary play, and even Charlie Chaplin. Although it does not use extensive biographical framing, the book proceeds through Mandelstam’s poetry and prose in chronological order, alternately pursuing aspects of context and concentrating on selected works by Mandelstam for sustained analysis.What results is perhaps the most serious comprehensive work on the poet produced so far. Cavanagh’s approach may appear diffuse at first, but it enables her to capture a great deal of this elusive genius without confining Mandelstam within a narrow critical purview. The book’s argument is that Mandelstam qualifies as a central modernist poet through his agonistic relation to an ideal of “world culture.” He attempts to recreate an authoritative literary and cultural tradition that his own innovative work would both continue and transform. And it is from this point of view that Mandelstam’s Jewishness appears so significant to Cavanagh (a chief issue in three out of eight chapters): it gives a precise formula for that position both inside and outside of the dominant culture. Cavanagh even contends quite suggestively that, for Mandelstam, both Dante and Chaplin function as avatars of Jewishness.All this is well-founded and important, but perhaps the best thing about her book is that its central argument doesn’t do justice to the richness of Cavanagh’s own materials. Her discussion does not weaken, for instance, as it leaves Mandelstam’s early period, when the notion of “world culture” was indeed an obsessive one for him. The book is equally effective on the brilliant late poems of the Voronezh cycle, by which time not only a place in world culture but even a secure place in human society seemed futile dreams to Mandelstam. Cavanagh’s readings of the prose and especially the poetry are flexible and sensitive; she gives beautiful accounts of the poetic wordplay and follows closely the ebb and flow of musicality in the verse from one period and [End Page 258] collection to another. More than a milestone in Mandelstam studies, this book brings the poet closer to realizing his fondest dream: a responsive, understanding readership or “interlocutor.”Harold D. BakerUniversity of California, IrvineCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This book reveals how, when, where and why vitalism and its relationship to new scientific theories, philosophies and concepts of energy became seminal from the fin de siècle until the Second World War for such Modernists as Sophie Tauber-Arp, Hugo Ball, Juliette Bisson, Eva Carrière, Salvador Dalì, Robert Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Edvard Munch, Picasso, Yves Tanguy, Gino Severini and John Cage. For them Vitalism entailed the conception of life as a constant process of metamorphosis impelled by the free flow (...) of energies, imaginings, intuition and memories, unconstrained by mechanistic materialism and chronometric imperatives, to generate what the philosopher Henri Bergson aptly called Creative Evolution. Following the three main dimensions of Vitalist Modernism, the first part of this book reveals how biovitalism at the fin de siècle entailed the pursuit of corporeal regeneration through absorption in raw nature, wholesome environments, aquatic therapies, electromagnetism, heliotherapy, modern sports, particularly rugby; water sports, the Olympic Games and physical culture to energize the human body and vitalize its life force. This is illuminated by artists as geoculturally diverse as Gustave Caillebotte, Thomas Eakins, Munch and Albert Gleizes. The second part illuminates how simultaneously vitalism became aligned with anthroposophy, esotericism, magnetism, occultism, parapsychology, spiritism, theosophy and what Bergson called "psychic states", alongside such new sciences as electromagnetism, radiology and the Fourth Dimension, as captured by such artists as Juliette Bisson, Giacomo Balla, Albert Besnard, Umberto Boccioni, Eva Carrière, John Gerrard Keulemans, László Mohology-Nagy, James Tissot, Albert von Schrenck Notzing and Picasso. During and after the devastation of the First World War, the third part explores how Vitalism, particularly Bergson's theory of becoming, became associated with Dadaist, Neo-Dadaist and Surrealist notions of amorality, atemporality, dysfunctionality, entropy, irrationality, inversion, negation and the nonsensical captured by Hans Arp, Charlie Chaplin, Theo Van Doesburg, Kazimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitters and Vladimir Tatlin alongside Cage's concept of Nothing. After investigating the widespread engagement with Bergson's philosophies, Vitalism and art by Anarchists, Marxists and Communists during and after the First World War, it concludes with the official rejection of Bergson and any form of Vitalism in the Soviet Union under Stalin. This book will be of vital interest to gallery, exhibition and museum curators and visitors plus readers and scholars working in art history, art theory, cultural studies, modernist studies, occult studies, European art and literature, health, histories of science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, sport studies, heritage studies, museum studies and curatorship. (shrink)

Philosophy as a separate discipline is a rather new phenomenon. This presents problems for our understanding of what constitutes the history of philosophy. Past writers often approached their concerns from a multi-disciplinary perspective; thus to understand them we have to do more than answer a contemporary set of issues. To that end, I suggest we attend to Locke's advice on how to read a text. Following this advice may permit us to avoid several puzzles which result from misreading a text.

There are many good reasons for a merger between bioethics and human rights. First, though, significant philosophical groundwork must be done to clarify what a human right to health would be and—if we accept that it exists—exactly how it might influence the practical decisions we face about who gets what in very different contexts.

This paper represents the first installment of alarger project devoted to the relevance of pragmatism forbioethics. One self-consciously pragmatist move would be toreturn to the classical pragmatist canon of Peirce, James andDewey in search of substantive doctrines or methodologicalapproaches that might be applied to current bioethicalcontroversies. Another pragmatist (or neopragmatist) move wouldbe to subject the regnant principlist paradigm to Richard Rorty'ssubversive assaults on foundationalism in epistemology andethics. A third pragmatist method, dubbed ``freestandingpragmatism'' by its proponents, embraces a ``pragmatist'' approachto practical (...) reasoning without discernable moorings either to theclassical canon or to Rorty's neopragmatism. This thirdpragmatist approach to method in practical ethics is the subjectof this article. I begin with an examination of freestandingpragmatism in the theory of judicial decision making. I arguethat this version of legal pragmatism – so described on account ofits commitments to contextualism, instrumentalism, eclecticism,and freedom from grand theory – bears a striking resemblance tomuch self-described pragmatist work in bioethics today. Ifurther argue that if this is what we mean by ``pragmatism,'' thenin a certain sense ``we are all pragmatists now.''. (shrink)

This is an examination of the dialectical structure of deep disagreements about matters not open to empirical check. A dramatic case in point is the Law of Non-Contradiction . Dialetheists are notoriously of the view that, in some few cases, LNC has a true negation. The traditional position on LNC is that it is non-negotiable. The standard reason for thinking it non-negotiable is, being a first principle, there is nothing to negotiate. One of my purposes is to show that the (...) first-principle defence of LNC is inadequate. A second purpose is to argue that it flows from this inadequacy that LNC stands or falls on economic considerations, much in the spirit of Quine's pragmatism about logic generally. This is a tactical victory for dialetheists. It gives them room to make the case against LNC on cost-benefit grounds. As things presently stand, no such case can be considered decisive. But, given that costs and benefits shift with changing circumstances, it is possible that a winning case for the dialetheist may present itself in the future. Notwithstanding the rivalry between consistentists and dialetheists, they share a common opponent. This is trivialism, the doctrine that everything whatever is true. It is an ironic alliance, in as much as the dialetheist's case against the consistentist can be adapted to a defence of trivialism. How damaging this turns out to be depends on the adequacy of the reasons for the dialetheist's rejection of trivialism. My further purpose is to show that the damage is slighter than dialetheists commonly believe. (shrink)

What’s so bad about the placebo effect? John Worrall discusses the recent Nurofen labelling “scandal”.

Gerald Sykes -- Aldous Huxley -- Gerald Heard -- Christopher Isherwood -- John van Druten -- Marianna Masin -- J. Crawford Lewis -- Dorothy F. Mercer -- Kurt Friedrichs -- Swami Atulananda -- Jane Molard -- The Countess of Sandwich -- John Yale -- Joan Rayne -- Durgacharan -- Pravrajika Saradaprana.

It is important for our purposes to notice that in this first reduction of Theætetus' definition of knowledge as perception, Plato has introduced the distinction between sense object and physical object, for he has specifically said, "when the same wind is blowing, one of us feels chilly, the other does not." In using this example. Plato has, as Cornford observes, raised the question of how the several sense objects are related to the single physical object. This question is one of (...) the two major questions with which this paper will deal, since it is, as I have remarked, the more important question concerning the ontological status of sense-data. Cornford feels that Protagoras probably held that the physical object is both hot and cold, different observers perceiving different aspects of the same object. That is, Cornford suggests that Protagoras' own answer to this question of the relation between sense-data and physical objects is one of complete identification in every case. We will see that this theory is similar in many ways to the one worked out by Plato in the Theætetus, but the distinction between the physical object and the sense object, between the wind which feels hot and cold to different people, makes certain characteristic differences between Plato's and Protagoras' theory. Before going on to examine these differences, it is necessary to follow the further development of Plato's general theory of perception. (shrink)

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has argued that rock and roll happens from the neck down. In this contribution to The Rolling Stones and Philosophy, edited by Luke Dick and George Reisch, I draw on neuroscience to argue that, in the parlance of John Stuart Mill, rock and roll is both a higher and a lower pleasure.

Since its modern inception in the early 1970s, informal logic has placed a special emphasis on the analysis of fallacies and argumentative dialogue schemes. Concurrent developments in speech communication circles exhibit a like concentration on the dialectical character of argument.

In the newly discovered letter Hume answers Reid's charge that he held a theory of ideas derived from his predecessors and criticizes Reid's own theory of innate ideas. He defends his own theory that ideas are derived from impressions. I discuss Reid's own puzzlement that in the first _Enquiry_ Hume ascribes a natural belief in necessary connections to the vulgar without an idea--and its influence on subsequent readings of Hume as a 'regularity theorist.' I argue that it was the 'Common (...) Sense' school of philosophers following Reid, rather than Hume, who insisted that beliefs must be based on legitimate ideas. (shrink)

In Echoes, John Sallis mobilizes the figure of echo, used by Heidegger to characterize originary thinking, as the motif around which to organize a radical reading of Heidegger's most important texts.

It has often been remarked that bioethics is a quintessentially American phenomenon. Broadly speaking, bioethics as a field has tended to enshrine the value of autonomy, it places individual rights above communal well-being, and it has adopted a largely permissive and optimistic view of emerging biotechnologies. In contrast to much European thinking at the intersection of ethics and medicine, American-style bioethics has been resolutely middlebrow, eschewing grand philosophical schemes in favor of pragmatic policy-making and democratic consensus. It was, then, perhaps (...) only a matter of time before various theorists began proposing a marriage between bioethics and pragmatism, which is the homegrown American philosophy. (shrink)

Participants in AIDS research may justify noncompliance with protocols by a “coercion defense.” While this defense may not be philosophically successful, a prudent social policy can enhance compliance by encouraging community participation and providing greater access to non‐validated therapies.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:260 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and 8, although hc proposed no emendation of the text. [Raven's work is nowhere mentioned by Loenen, not even in connection with fr. 4 where he and Raven are in agreement, yet where he says "... all present-day authors assume this passage to refer to the material world," Raven believes with Loenen that the passage does not refer to the material world.] With regard to (...) Loenen's sensu stricto ~ar~, all commentators realized that Parmenides was at least some of the time using ~a~Lto denote necessity of existence and essence. Loenen does valuable work in emphasising this, but the observation is not revolutionarily original. Vlastos, following yon Fritz, argued (in Gnomon [1953]) that, for Parmenides, nothing exists but thought. Vlastos' arguments were not on as many fronts as are Loenen's, and Loenen develops the interpretation much further. Aristotle and Simplicius were the first of many who believed Parmenides to be a dualist, to have posited two worlds, fa ata~ra and ~& ~a~a, between which there was no causal relationship. Although there is much originality in Loenen's development and argument for his theses, it is nevertheless true that on the three grounds on which he lays claim to originality (introduction, pp. 3-5), his views have considerable precedents. M. C. SCHOLAR St. John's College, Cambridge Plato and the Individual. By Robert William Hall. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963. Pp. 224.) Professor Hall's main thesis is that Plato's ethical thought underwent a gradual and significant development and that in the face of this fact the mature Plato is neither a halfhearted moral philosopher, nor a utilitarian, but completely committed to the substantiality and immortality of the soul. The first issue is raised so that the claim that Plato reserved the ethical ideal only for the specialists in philosophical reflection can be dismissed as groundless. The second problem is discussed in order to demonstrate beyond doubt that Plato's later moral views went beyond the limited ethics of consequences that dominates the early Socratic dialogues. But it is the third issue that constitutes the core of Hall's book, and the discussion here is undertaken in order to identify the metaphysical principle to which Plato appealed when he reconstructed his ethics from an initially quite aristocratic affair into a publicly available ideal that was rendered universal in scope and attainment. Dr. Hall argues that if knowledge of the Forms is unconditionally required for genuine morality, then only the philosophically gifted can rise to the lofty occasion. Being himself a strong advocate of a moral ideal open to all human beings, Dr. Hall does not hesitate to challenge Plato's views with this formidable problem: If we suppose Plato's views grant to the ordinary individual nothing more than a second class morality, he hardly deserves his reputation as a great ethical thinker. In line with this question the author devotes the entire first chapter to an interesting discussion on the sources of modern democratic individualism as supported by the best in the Christian tradition and then uses his findings to test the strength of Plato's moral fiber. But the author knows all along that Plato will emerge unscathed. His purpo~ then is not so much to show that Plato actually held that view as it is to take the reader through the meandering paths only the modem scholar and erudite interpreter of the dialogues know how to travel best and by which it is believed Plato himself must have been able to reach the summit of the superb answer. Since Dr. Hall discerns two different available moralities in Plato, an "aristocratic" and a "demotic," he also finds it necessary to distinguish between the morality of the excellences of the individual man and the excellence of the philosopher. When all is told, it turns out that Plato's development as an ethical philosopher moves from a high-minded kind of utilitarianism based on arete, inherited from Socrates, to a non-utilitarian conception of virtue which is Plato's own discovery and contribution. The pivotal point is found to be in the Republic where the central problem is to justify the inherent value of... (shrink)

In this much-needed contribution toward an understanding of the complexity of human consciousness, John Boghosian Arden, Ph.D., demonstrates that within the three broad subsystems - biophysiology, sociocultural dynamics, and intrapsychic aspects - not only do further subsystems exist, but so does a great degree of interconnectivity. Biophysiological processes cannot be conceptualized without considering individual psychological and sociocultural factors. To understand the evolution of human consciousness, one must take into account the systemic co-evolutionary nature of all aspects of consciousness. In (...) this clearly written volume, Arden describes consciousness as a multidimensional, fluid process in which bi-directional causal interrelationships occur. In one unifying and multidisciplinary theory, he deals with issues of causality, determinism versus free will, and the mind/body connection. Arden's fresh attempt to describe consciousness factors in the changes occurring in evolutionary theory, chaos theory, and logic. (shrink)

For scientific essentialists, the only logical possibilities of existence are the real (or metaphysical) ones, and such possibilities, they say, are relative to worlds. They are not a priori, and they cannot just be invented. Rather, they are discoverable only by the a posteriori methods of science. There are, however, many philosophers who think that real possibilities are knowable a priori, or that they can just be invented. Marc Lange [Lange 2004] thinks that they can be invented, and tries to (...) use his inventions to argue that the essentialist theory of counterfactual conditionals developed in Scientific Essentialism [Ellis 2001, hereafter SE ] is flawed. (shrink)

The appeal of scientific realism is chiefly based on the – staggering – empirical success of the theories currently accepted in science. The realist exhibits some currently accepted scientific theory (the General Theory of Relativity, say), points to its astounding empirical success (with the gravitational redshift, the precession of Mercury’s perihelion, etc) and suggests that it would be monumentally implausible to suppose that the theory could score such empirical successes and yet not reflect, at least to some good approximation, the (...) underlying nature of reality. To hold that combination of beliefs would be, in Poincaré’s celebrated phrase (1905/1952, p. 150), “to attribute an inadmissible role to chance”. (shrink)

This article describes methods and ideas that emerged from a continuing enquiry into ‘metadesign’ that led us to think about the role of ‘consciousness’ in teams, communities and the biosphere. In the West the notion of ‘consciousness’ has been shaped by humanism, industrialization and some strident forms of individualism. These have encouraged us to see it in strongly anthropocentric and solipsistic terms. The global economic system also reflects this individualistic ideology, given that ‘growth’, is driven by personal avarice on a (...) collective scale. On the other hand, capitalism encourages enterprises to scale-up when they become successful. Both tendencies reduce the consciousness of organizations and communities. The article illustrates this idea by describing a ‘quadratic’ model of team consciousness that was developed to enhance practical developments that support personal, interpersonal, transpersonal and environmentally situated modes of awareness. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.