In this short monograph, John Horty explores the difficulties presented for Gottlob Frege's semantic theory, as well as its modern descendents, by the treatment of defined expressions. The book begins by focusing on the psychological constraints governing Frege's notion of sense, or meaning, and argues that, given these constraints, even the treatment of simple stipulative definitions led Frege to important difficulties. Horty is able to suggest ways out of these difficulties that are both philosophically and logically plausible and Fregean (...) in spirit. This discussion is then connected to a number of more familiar topics, such as indexicality and the discussion of concepts in recent theories of mind and language. In the latter part of the book, after introducing a simple semantic model of senses as procedures, Horty considers the problems that definitions present for Frege's idea that the sense of an expression should mirror its grammatical structure. The requirement can be satisfied, he argues, only if defined expressions--and incomplete expressions as well--are assigned senses of their own, rather than treated contextually. He then explores one way in which these senses might be reified within the procedural model, drawing on ideas from work in the semantics of computer programming languages. With its combination of technical semantics and history of philosophy, Horty's book tackles some of the hardest questions in the philosophy of language. It should interest philosophers, logicians, and linguists. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, novelist and historian John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet Saul shows that there has never before been such pressure for conformity. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We are obsessed with competition, yet the single largest item of international trade is (...) a subsidized market in armaments. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about "invasive government," yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are breaking down. While most observers view these problems separately, Saul demonstrates that they are largely manifestations of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the last 400 years, our "rational elites" have gradually instituted reforms in every phase of social life. But Saul shows that they have also been responsible for most of the difficulties and violence of the same period. This paradox arises from a simple truth which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts - "Voltaire's bastards"--Whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose peoples increasingly dwell in a world of illusion. Already known to millions of readers as the author of novels which portray the overwhelming effects of this power on the modern individual by weaving together international finance, the oil and arms business, guerrilla warfare, drug traffic, and the world of art, here Saul lays aside the mask of fiction to speak in his own voice. Only by withdrawing from our addiction to "solutions," he argues, reclaiming the citizens' right to question and participate in public life, and recovering a common sense capacity for intelligent panic, can we find a way out of our permanent crisis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BALTHASAR'S USE OF THE THEOLOGY OF AQUINAS }AMES J. BUCKLEY Loyola College in Maryland Baltimore, Maryland T HE AIM OF THIS essay is to raise some questions about the internal consistency of Hans Urs von Balthasar's use of the theology of Thomas Aquinas. These are genuine questions. That is, they are not questions ("Is Balthasar's use of Aquinas consistent?") disguising or masking answers ("Balthasar's use of Aquinas is inconsistent"). (...) While I hope the questions set an agenda for disputations between students of these two theologians, my aim is not to settle the many disputations between the theologies of Aquinas and Balthasar, but to propose some quaestiones disputatae. In Balthasar's terms, the aim is to set up the theater and put some characters on the stage, not to stage the drama itself. Why bother? First, Balthasar's theology arises out of a tradition critical of the theology of Aquinas, and students of Aquinas can only ignore such objections at the price of abandoning Aquinas's habit of responding to such criticisms. The locus classicus of this critique is Balthasar's claim that he omits Aquinas from his canon of theological aestheticians because Aquinas is one of those whose "deep and lucid philosophical aesthetics" has "failed to achieve a theological translation, that is, to be seen as the unfolding of a theology based on biblical revelation" (GL II, 21).1 Thomas Aquinas (Balthasar later says) "was more of a philosopher than a theologian" (GL III, 9). We shall see later that ' I shall use the following abbreviations: ST = Summa Theologiae. Latin text and English translation, ed. Thomas Gilby, various translators (New York: McGraw-Hill; London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964-80). GL =The Glory ofthe Lord: A Theological Aesthetic, ed. Joseph Fessio, S.J., and John Riches, various translators, 7 vols. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press; New York: Crossroad Publications, 1982-91). 517 518 JAMES J. BUCKLEY Balthasar also mentions other objections to Aquinas. In fact, part of my argument will be that this central criticism of Thomas's aesthetics is intelligible only against the background of other even more important criticisms of Aquinas's theology. I ought also to note at this early stage, however, that Balthasar 's criticisms of Aquinas are almost always carefully qualified. For example, in the locus classicus just cited, Balthasar objects to Aquinas's aesthetics, not his ethics or metaphysics; indeed, it is a criticism of Aquinas's theological aesthetics, not his philosophical aesthetics. Still further, Balthasar even says it "would perhaps" be possible to develop the "implicit" theological aesthetics in Thomas's philosophical aesthetics; however, Balthasar (inexplicably, some would say at this point) thinks this could only be done "witn uncertain success" (GL II, 21). One reason for the frequent allusiveness of Balthasar's objections to Aquinas is a second reason for bothering with Balthasar's use of Aquinas: in and with the firmness of Balthasar 's criticisms of Aquinas, the vast majority of Balthasar's uses of Aquinas are constructive rather than critical. Indeed, if taking the measure of theological disputation were primarily a matter of weighing quotations, it could easily be shown that Balthasar's use of Aquinas is by far more positive than negative. More importantly, I shall propose that Balthasar notices features of Aquinas's theology not often noted (or still not noted often enough) by many students of Aquinas. This common ground between Balthasar and Aquinas recalls how, among Roman Catholics in the first part of this century, there was a sort of alliance among Catholic reformers-over against strains of Catholic traditionalisms-between some forms of Thomism and TD= Theodramatik, 4 vols. (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1973-83). T-D =Theo-drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, various translators, 5 vols. planned (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988-). TL= Theologik, 3 vols. (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1985-87). For a summary of Balthasar's trilogy on beauty and goodness and truth, see his Epilog (Einsiedeln/Trier: Johannes Verlag, 1987) as well as My Work: In Retrospect, trans. Cornelia CapoI (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993). BALTHASAR'S THEOLOGY OF AQUINAS 519 what was known as la nouvelle theologie (including Balthasar).2 It is this common ground that ought to make us wary of... (shrink)

This is a collection of John Hick's essays on the understanding of the world's religions as different human responses to the same ultimate transcendent reality. Hicks is in dialogue with contemporary philosophers (some of whom contribute new responses); with Evangelicals; with the Vatican and other both Catholic and Protestant theologians. The book is alive with current argument for all interested in contemporary philosophy of religion and theology.

Schumaker (philosophy, science and technology department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) examines how the terms of posture encompass all the major disciplines and investigates a variety of philosophical topics: abstract thought, ...

The great biologist Louis Pasteur suppressed 'awkward' data because it didn't support the case he was making. John Snow, the 'first epidemiologist' was doing nothing others had not done before. Gregor Mendel, the supposed 'founder of genetics' never grasped the fundamental principles of 'Mendelian' genetics. Joseph Lister's famously clean hospital wards were actually notorious dirty. And Einstein's general relativity was only 'confirmed' in 1919 because an eminent British scientist cooked his figures. These are just some of the revelations explored (...) in this book. Drawing on current history of science scholarship, Fabulous Science shows that many of our greatest heroes of science were less than honest about their experimental data and not above using friends in high places to help get their ideas accepted. It also reveals that the alleged revolutionaries of the history of science were often nothing of the sort. Prodigiously able they may have been, but the epithet of the 'man before his time' usually obscures vital contributions made their unsung contemporaries and the intrinsic merits of ideas they overturned. These distortions of the historical record mostly arise from our tendency to read the present back into the past. But in many cases, scientists owe their immortality to a combination of astonishing effrontery and their skills as self-promoters. (shrink)

John Tagg claims that, to answer this question, we must look at the ways in which everything that frames photography - the discourse that surrounds it and the institutions that circulate it - determines what counts as truth.

How do we recognize identities between seen shapes and felt ones? Is this due to associative learning, or to intrinsic connections these sensory modalities? We can address this question by testing the capacities of newly sighted subjects to match seen and felt shapes, but only if it is shown that the subjects can see the objects well enough to form adequate visual representations of their shapes. In light of this, a recent study by R. Held and colleagues fails to demonstrate (...) that their newly sighted subjects’ inability to match seen and felt shape was due to a lack of intermodal connections rather than a purely visual deficit, as they may not have been able visually to represent 3D shape in the perspective-invariant way required for intermodal matching. However, the study could be modified in any of several ways to help avoid this problem. (shrink)

This article articulates and defends an indeterministic weightings model of libertarian free will. It begins by defining the conception of free will at issue and then goes on to present versions of the luck objection which is often made against theories of LFW. It is argued that the sort of indeterministic weightings model of LFW which has been defended in the recent literature by Storrs McCall and E.J. Lowe and John Lemos has the resources to answer such luck objections (...) while possessing virtues which some other libertarian views lack. According to the indeterministic weightings model of LFW, in making undetermined free-willed choices between two courses of action, A or B, the reasons for choosing each option don’t come with pre-established evaluative weights. During the process of deliberation, the agent assigns weight in an undetermined way to the reasons for each option and this typically leads to the choice of the option that has been assigned a greater value. In the paper, it is not only argued that this theory can resolve worries about luck but also that the view has virtues which certain other libertarian views lack, as such the view is contrasted with the modest libertarian models of LFW from Daniel Dennett and Alfred Mele as well as Robert Kane’s view. (shrink)

This thesis investigates how children ought to be influenced with respect to religion. To answer this question, I develop a theory of cognitive curriculum content and apply it to the teaching of religious beliefs and beliefs about religions. By ‘a theory of cognitive curriculum content,’ I mean a theory that determines which truth-claims belong on the curriculum, and whether or not teachers ought to promote students’ belief of those claims. I extend this theory to help educators to decide which attitudes (...) address on the curriculum and whether or not to promote them. I then apply this to the case of religious attitudes and attitudes about religions. I argue that where having or failing to have a certain attitude makes a significant difference to students’ lives, it ought to be addressed by curricula. Where failing to have the attitude is irrational, this failure ought to be remedied; where having the attitude is irrational, that attitude ought to be discouraged; and where neither having nor failing to have the attitude is irrational, that attitude ought to be introduced and discussed without encouragement or discouragement. In so far as is practicable, educators should aim to acquaint students with arguments for and against having these attitudes and initiate them into the practice of assessing their soundness. The implications of this theory for extra-curricular influence, such as upbringing in the home, are also explored. (shrink)

This book attempts to isolate the question of ethics in the work of Foucault and Lacan and explores its ramifications and implications for the present day.

This is a translation of the chapter on perception of Kumarilabhatta's magnum opus, the Slokavarttika, one of the central texts of the Hindu response to the criticism of the logical-epistemological school of Buddhist thought. In an extensive commentary, the author explains the course of the argument from verse to verse and alludes to other theories of classical Indian philosophy and other technical matters. Notes to the translation and commentary go further into the historical and philosophical background of Kumarila's ideas. The (...) book provides an introduction to the history and the development of Indian epistemology, a synopsis of Kumarila's work and an analysis of its argument. (shrink)

This book contains some rare combinations: first, an author who is as concerned with conceptual clarification as he is with the absolute truthfulness of the biblical text; second, an argument that avoids the common "either-ors" and contends for the importance of both divine sovereignty and divine solicitude in equal measure; third, an approach that espouses divine determinism and divine temporality. No One Like Him takes on the most intractable intellectual challenges of contemporary evangelical theology. Kevin Vanhoozer , Research Professor of (...) Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School John Feinberg judicially reconstructs aspects of the classical view of God in a way that proves more faithful than process and openness of God theisms. Arguably, this is the best study of theology proper in print. Bruce Demarest , Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation, Denver Seminary Feinberg reads theology with a philosopher's eye and writes it with a philosopher's sensitivity to illogic and incoherence. J. I. Packer , Professor of Theology, Regent College A magisterial work, one that truly deserves to be called a magnum opus....It reveals its author as...perhaps the only modern scholar whose work, like that of Carl. F. H. Henry, can compare in size, detail, comprehensiveness, and intellectual acuity with the accomplishments of the late Karl Barth.... It is not risky to predict that Feinberg's No One Like Him will come to be a milestone in evangelical theology. Harold O. J. Brown , Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary. (shrink)

A comprehensive exploration of pragmatic themes emerging from neuroscientific research,illustrating why neurophilosophy should take this advancing pragmatist direction seriously.

In 15 insightful essays, Jacques Derrida and an international group of scholars of religion explore postmodern thinking about God and consider the nature of forgiveness in relation to the paradoxes of the gift. Among the themes addressed by contributors are the possibilities of imagining God as unthinkable, imagining God as non-patriarchal, imagining a return to Augustine, and imagining an age in which praise is far more important than narrative. Questioning God moves readers beyond the parameters of metaphysical reason and modernist (...) rationality as it attempts to think the questions of God and forgiveness in a postmodernist context. Contributors include John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, Mark Dooley, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Robert Gibbs, Jean Greisch, Kevin Hart, Richard Kearney, Cleo McNelly Kearns, John Milbank, Regina M. Schwartz, Michael J. Scanlon, and Graham Ward. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1938, is based upon the Muirhead lectures on political philosophy delivered in the University of Birmingham in January and February of 1938. This title was intended to be of interest to students and scientific workers in the belief that Marxism will prove valuable to them in their scientific work, as well as to a wider audience.

John Henry gives a dramatic account of the background to Bacon's innovations and the sometimes unconventional sources for his ideas.

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.

John Maynard Smith, one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists, recently summarized in the NYRB the sharply conflicting assessments of Stephen Jay Gould: "Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not (...) be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists.". No one can take any pleasure in the evident pain Gould is experiencing now that his actual standing within the community of professional evolutionary biologists is finally becoming more widely known. If what was a stake was solely one man's self-regard, common decency would preclude comment. (shrink)

In this provocative book, John Keane calls for a fresh understanding of the vexed relationship between democracy and violence. Taking issue with the common sense view that 'human nature' is violent, Keane shows why mature democracies do not wage war upon each other, and why they are unusually sensitive to violence. He argues that we need to think more discriminatingly about the origins of violence, its consequences, its uses and remedies. He probes the disputed meanings of the term violence, (...) and asks why violence is the greatest enemy of democracy, and why today's global 'triangle of violence' is tempting politicians to invoke undemocratic emergency powers. Throughout, Keane gives prominence to ethical questions, such as the circumstances in which violence can be justified, and argues that violent behaviour and means of violence can and should be 'democratised' - made publicly accountable to others, so encouraging efforts to erase surplus violence from the world. (shrink)

John Henderson focuses on three key Letters visiting three Roman villas, and reveals their meaning as designs for contrasting lives. Seneca brings the philosophical epistle to Latin literature, creating models for moralizing which feature self-criticism, parody, and animated revision of myth. The Stoic moralist wrests writing away from Greek gurus and texts, and recasts it into critical thinking in Latin terms, within a Roman context. The Letters embody critical thinking on metaphor and translation, self-transformation and cultural tradition.

From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "If I Stay" Allyson Healeys life is exactly like her suitcase--packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything shes not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform (...) Allysons life. A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the "accidents" of fate, "Just One Day" shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost... and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know. The first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willems story--"Just One Year"--is coming soon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC TIME AND MOTION J. J. MACINTOSH University ofCalgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada A. THOMAS'S STANDARD DOCTRINE: THE NEED FOR ASINGLE TIME. T HERE IS an under-discussed problem about time for St. Thomas. Most discussions of his views on time center around either the question of God's foreknowledge or around the notions of eternity and aeviternity. Even those discussions which deal directly with Thomas's views on time (...) ignore the issue I wish to discuss here.' The problem is this: St. Thomas held both that there is a single time, created by God, and that there are three distinct times: two for the angels, and one for the rest of creation. Moreover, he seems, fairly explicitly, to have been unwilling to adopt either of the obvious ways out of this apparent contradiction. Thomas believed, and often said, that time is unitary, and typically offered an Aristotelian reason for the claim: "the true reason why time is one, is to be found in the oneness of the first movement by which, since it is most simple, all other movements are measured. Therefore time is referred to that movement, not only as a measure is to the thing measured, but also as accident 1 See, for example, Piero Ariotti, "Celestial reductionism of time: on the scholastic conception of time from Albert the great and Thomas Aquinas to the end of the 16th century," Studia Internationale Filosofia 4 (1972): 91-120, and Antonio Moreno, "Time and Relativity: Some Philosophical Considerations," The Thomist 45 (1981): 62-79. I have referred to this problem earlier in "Time and St. Thomas" (in To Myselffrom Others, ed. David Miller [Warwick: University of Warwick, 1989)), and in "Aquinas, Ockham, and Prior (and the unexpected examination),'' Auckland Philosophy Papers, no. 1 (1990). 547 548 J. J. MACINTOSH is to subject; and thus receives unity from it."2 Moreover, such a doctrine is necessary if what he tells us about the foreknowledge of God, and God's inability to change the past,3 not to mention his views on the knowledge that angels and demons have of what is genuinely future, is to be correct. Briefly, those views commit him to a view of a single time that is linear past, and is nonbranching future as well.4 There is some exegetical question as to whether or not his views on time, contingency, and freedom led him to adopt a truth-gap account of genuinely future tense contingent propositions, but that the singleness of time is required has not been questioned.5 This is not the place to deal with the difficulties Aquinas faced concerning God's foreknowledge, but a brief introductory word is in order to show how central the singleness of time is for his thought in this area. Since all past- and present-tense truths have necessity per accidens (that is, they concern matters which are now irrevocable), the class of contingent truths is a proper subset of genuinely future-tense claims. A proper subset because 2 Summa Theologiae, I, q. 10, a. 6 c (hereafter cited as sn; English translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols., (1920; reprint, Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1981). This is the translation I have standardly used, sometimes with slight changes, but I have also made use of the translation by the Blackfriars (61 vols. [London: Blackfriars, in conjunction with Eyre and Spottiswood, 1964-81], hereafter cited as Blackfriars). 3 Thus, for example, "God can make the existence of an angel not future; but He cannot cause him not to be while he is, or not to have been, after he has been" (ST I, q. 10, a. 5, ad 3). 4 By contrast, Ockham, for example, adopted an implicit tense logic with branching future possibilities. As far as I know, no mediaeval thinker allowed branching pasts. For a discussion of that possibility, see John Mackie, Truth, Probability and Paradox: Studies in Philosophical Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). For a helpful general discussion of the issues involved, see R. Thomason, "Combinations of Tense and Modality," in D. Gabbay and D. Guenthner, eds., Handbook of Philosophical Logic, 3 vols. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984), 2... (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)

The early development of autobiographical memory is a useful case study both for examining general relations between language and memory, and for investigating the promise and the difficulty of interdisciplinary research in the cognitive sciences of memory. An otherwise promising social-interactionist view of autobiographical memory development relies in part on an overly linguistic conception of mental representation. This paper applies an alternative, ‘supra-communicative’ view of the relation between language and thought, along the lines developed by Andy Clark, to this developmental (...) framework. A pluralist approach to current theories of autobiographical memory development is sketched: shared early narratives about the past function in part to stabilize and structure the child’s own autobiographical memory system. (shrink)

Our love of art, writes John Barrow, is the end product of millions of years of evolution. How we react to a beautiful painting or symphony draws upon instincts laid down long before humans existed. Now, in this enhanced edition of the highly popular The Artful Universe, Barrow further explores the close ties between our aesthetic appreciation and the basic nature of the Universe. Barrow argues that the laws of the Universe have imprinted themselves upon our thoughts and actions (...) in subtle and unexpected ways. Why do we like certain types of art or music? What games and puzzles do we find challenging? Why do so many myths and legends have common elements? In this eclectic and entertaining survey, Barrow answers these questions and more as he explains how the landscape of the Universe has influenced the development of philosophy and mythology, and how millions of years of evolutionary history have fashioned our attraction to certain patterns of sound and color. Barrow casts the story of human creativity and thought in a fascinating light, considering such diverse topics as our instinct for language, the origins and uses of color in nature, why we divide time into intervals as we do, the sources of our appreciation of landscape painting, and whether computer-generated fractal art is really art. Drawing on a wide variety of examples, from the theological questions raised by St. Augustine and C.S. Lewis to the relationship between the pure math of Pythagoras and the music of the Beatles, The Artful Universe Expanded covers new ground and enters a wide-ranging debate about the meaning and significance of the links between art and science. (shrink)

John Stapleford interacts with seven standard introductory economics texts to show how ethics are inextricably intertwined with economic life and analysis. This revised and expanded edition includes discussions of entitlements, global poverty, government debt, healthcare reform and immigration reform.

In I'd Rather Be Dead Than Be a Girl, John Marcus Sweeney explains a threefold thesis of a study that language influences how human beings perceive reality, that the development of theoretical constructs can help explain resistances to and possibilities for inclusive language, and that the implementation of inclusive language is an important goal for religious education." "The study begins with a description of the problem to be considered, that is, the role of sexist language in perpetuating sexual discrimination. (...) Beginning in the third chapter, insights from Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism, Benjamin Lee Whorf's principle of linguistic relativity, and Jean Piaget's genetic epistemology are used to investigate the stubbornness of sexist linguistic habits and the bases for developing inclusive linguistic habits. Finally, inclusive language is shown to be important for religious education, and some strategies for implementing inclusive language are presented."--Jacket. (shrink)

An Indexed Synopsis of the Grammar of Assent by John J. Toohey. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1906 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.

John Burbidge shows that, far from incorporating everything into an all-consuming necessity, Hegel's philosophy requires the novelty of unexpected contingencies to maintain its systematic pretensions. To know without fear of failure is to expect that experience will confound our confident claims to knowledge. And the universal character of all life involves acting, discovering what happens as a result, and incorporating both intention and result into a new comprehensive understanding. Burbidge explores how Hegel applied this approach when he turned from (...) his logic to chemistry, biology, psychology and history, and suggests how a Hegelian might function within the changed circumstances of contemporary science. (shrink)

As adults we have little difficulty thinking of ourselves as mental beings extended in time. Even though our conscious thoughts and experiences are constantly changing, we think of ourselves as the same self throughout these variations in mental content. Indeed, it is so natural for adults to think this way that it was not until the 18th century—at least in Western thought—that the issue of how we come to acquire such a concept of an identical but constantly changing self was (...) first recognized as a problem that required an explanation. Philosophical discussion of this issue was initiated when John Locke (1694/1975) proposed a notion of personal identity and selfhood based on consciousness: For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ‘tis that, that makes every one to be, what he calls self; and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal Identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational Being: And as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the Identity of that Person; it is the same self now it was then; and ‘tis by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that Action was done. (p. 335) According to this view, we are the same self insofar as we can consciously accept as our own not only those mental and physical acts that we perform now but also those acts done in the past, that we can.. (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)

John Buridan (d. ca. 1360) was one of the most talented and influential philosophers of the later Middle Ages. His Questions Commentary on the eight books of Aristotle's Physics is the most important witness to Buridan's teachings in the field of natural philosophy. This volume presents the first critical edition of books III and IV of the final redaction of Buridan's Questions Commentary on the Physics. The critical edition of the Latin text is accompanied by a detailed guide to (...) the contents of Buridan's questions by Edith D. Sylla. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

In what seems to have been his last paper, Insight and Reflection (1954), Hermann Weyl provides an illuminating sketch of his intellectual development, and describes the principal influences—scientific and philosophical—exerted on him in the course of his career as a mathematician. Of the latter the most important in the earlier stages was Husserl’s phenomenology. In Weyl’s work of 1918-22 we find much evidence of the great influence Husserl’s ideas had on Weyl’s philosophical outlook—one need merely glance through the pages of (...) Space-Time-Matter or The Continuum to see it. Witness, for example, the following passages from the former. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ The Ethics Of George Eliot's Works 3 John Crombie Brown W. Blackwood, 1880 Literary Criticism; European; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / Women Authors. (shrink)

In this book, John Hanwell Riker develops and expands the conceptual framework of self psychology in order to offer contemporary readers a naturalistic ground for adopting an ethical way of being in the world.