Do spatial features appear the same whether they are perceived through vision or touch? This question is at stake in the puzzle that William Molyneux posed to John Locke, concerning whether a man born blind whose sight was restored would be able immediately to identify the shapes of the things he saw. A recent study purports to answer the question negatively, but I argue here that the subjects of the study likely could not see well enough for the result (...) to have been meaningful. I then propose a way to improve the study, by including cues from object motion. (shrink)

Essentialism in philosophy is the position that things, especially kinds of things, have essences, or sets of properties, that all members of the kind must have, and the combination of which only members of the kind do, in fact, have. It is usually thought to derive from classical Greek philosophy and in particular from Aristotle’s notion of “what it is to be” something. In biology, it has been claimed that pre-evolutionary views of living kinds, or as they are sometimes called, (...) “natu-ral kinds”, are essentialist. This static view of living things presumes that no tran-sition is possible in time or form between kinds, and that variation is regarded as accidental or inessential noise rather than important information about taxa. In contrast it is held that Darwinian, and post-Darwinian, biology relies upon varia-tion as important and inevitable properties of taxa, and that taxa are not, therefore, kinds but historical individuals. Recent attempts have been made to undercut this account, and to reinstitute essentialism in biological kind terms. Others argue that essentialism has not ever been a historical reality in biology and its predecessors. In this chapter, I shall outline the many meanings of the notion of essentialism in psychology and social science as well as science, and discuss pro- and anti-essentialist views, and some recent historical revisionism. It turns out that nobody was essentialist to speak of in the sense that is antievolutionary in biology, and that much confusion rests on treating the one word, “essence” as meaning a single notion when in fact there are many. I shall also discuss the philosophical implica-tions of essentialism, and what that means one way or the other for evolutionary biology. Teaching about evolution relies upon narratives of change in the ways the living world is conceived by biologists. This is a core narrative issue. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to deny the morality and instrumentality of the behavior known as bestiality, or the use of non-human animals for sexual gratification by human beings. While to most modern peoples, this hardly even seems like it should be in question, it should be the nature of the human mind to occasionally question long-standing traditional moray in the hopes of finding solutions to problems and the disbanding of superstition. It has been proposed that the moral question, and (...) by extension the legal question, of bestiality is based on traditions long outlived and unnecessary. In an IceNews.is article written in 2008, Norwegian lawyers were growing concerned over the prevalence of animal brothels in Denmark and the precedent it set for Norway [http://www.icenews.is, 2008]. The article, when coupled with the 2001 article title “Heavy Petting” by prominent Utilitarian philosopher, Peter Singer, proves that the issue of bestiality is no longer the purview of jokes and psychological discussions. I will argue against bestiality as a socially acceptable practice based on five standard premises. The standard premises I will present will contain notes in regard to: instrumentality; consent; disease transmission; deviance; and morality. There is significant work available on the harm done to the beast, so aside from brief summary; the question of the good of the beast is not in the focus. I will also ignore any religious concerns, either surrounding morality or freedom of practice. Instead, these arguments are in support of the moral identity of the individual and of society as a whole. (shrink)

To naturalize religion, we must identify what religion is, and what aspects of it we are trying to explain. In this paper, religious social institutional behavior is the explanatory target, and an explanatory hypothesis based on shared primate social dominance psychology is given. The argument is that various religious features, including the high status afforded the religious, and the high status afforded to deities, are an expression of this social dominance psychology in a context for which it did not evolve: (...) high-density populations made possible by agriculture. (shrink)

Within the context of Heidegger’s claim that his thinking has moved from the “meaning of being” to the “truth of being” and finally to the “place of being,” this paper examines the “spatial” motifs that become pronounced in his post-1930 attempts to think being apart from temporality. My contention is that his “shift” (Wendung) in thinking was a move beyond his earlier focus upon the project-horizon of the meaning (Sinn) of being, i.e., time, based on the existential hermeneutic of mortality, (...) and instead towards a focus upon the “space”—variously discussed in terms of the open, the clearing, the expanse, the region, etc.—that allows fur such horizonal projection. The very matter of thought that becomes discussed in the 1930s Beiträge as the “turning” (Kehre) of “en-ownment” (Ereignis) involves this clearing or opening of a “space” in the strife of unconcealment-concealment. This in turn underscores the alterity from out of which the emission of the Sinn of being is possible. In the 1940s and ‘50s this spacing becomes developed in terms of a “regionalizing” (Gegnen) in explicit distinction from the “horizon.” I shall also examine the implications for human spatiality, i.e., our receptivity vis-à-vis this alterity of Ereignis or Gegnen, which Heidegger discusses in terms of “letting” or “releasement.”. (shrink)

Draws on interviews with many of the worlds leading scientists to discuss the possibility that humankind has reached the limits of scientific knowledge.

It is often noted that if someone has a tertiary degree in a scientific field who promotes an anti-science-establishment, antiscience, or pseudoscience agenda, they are very often engineers, dentists, surgeons or medical practitioners. While this does not mean that all members of these professions or disciplines are antiscience, of course, the higher frequency of pseudoscience among them is indicative of what I call the “deductivist mindset” regarding science itself. Opposing this is the “inductivist mindset”, a view that has been deprecated (...) among philosophers since Popper. Roughly, the deductivist mindset tends to see problems as questions that can be resolved by deduction from known theory or principle, while the inductivist sees problems as questions to be resolved by discovery. These form cognitive poles, which nobody ever purely instantiates, but a cognitive tendency to be a deductivist may explain why some people find results that conflict with prior theoretical commitments, whether scientific or not, unacceptable. The deductivist tends to be a cognitive conservative, where the inductivist tends to be a cognitive progressive, and the conservative mindset leads to a ressentiment about modernism, and hence about certain scientific results, more often, or so I shall argue in this chapter. (shrink)

I examine the role of the imagination (Einbildung) for Martin Heidegger after his Kant-reading of 1929. In 1929 he broadens the imagination to the openness of Dasein. But after 1930 Heidegger either disparages it as a representational faculty belonging to modernity; or further develops and clarifies its ontological broadening as the clearing or poiesis. If the hylo-morphic duality implied by Kantian imagination requires a prior unity, that underlying power unfolding beings in aletheic formations (poiesis) of being (the happening of being, (...) the opening of the world) would have to ultimately be in excess to any spontaneous power of subjectivity. (shrink)

Author John E. Rexine expounds on the theologies of the great Roman thinkers Plato and Cicero in this essay.

A fundamental issue concerning the treatment of meaning in context is how to deal with the extremely flexible relationship that appears to hold between descriptions, which are taken as the exchange...

CUA Press proudly announces the reissue of 32 titles from this internationally acclaimed series. These long-unavailable titles, which cover all aspects of philosophy, will be published in paperback and ebook formats. Authors include renowned philosophers such as Ralph McInerny, Robert Sokolowski, and John Wippel.

John Haldane; The Mystery of Emergence, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 261–268, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristot.

"Don't believe any of this. Place no value in the book, in the author. Give it up, the idea of author, of truth. Give up all believe: believe only in yourself. You: you are nothing but my experience. Me: I don't. I don't believe any of this." —John Brockman.

Thornhill, John Among the thinkers who have helped me expand my intellectual horizons, Dawson has a unique place. From an early date, I became aware of the importance of situating the Church's expression of our faith tradition in its historical and cultural context. In time I was to find that Dawson's interpretation of cultural history made it possible to do this within the enlightening framework he provided.

In Adulthood, Morality, and the Fully Human, John Shea examines what it means for someone to achieve full moral development or to become what he calls “fully human.” Shea highlights integrity, mutuality, care, and justice as core components of this process and depicts the effects of personal growth on education, psychotherapy, and spirituality.

Over the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of 'good' music--highly serious, wondrously deep, stylistically authentic, heroically created, and strikingly original--and, at the same time, has marginalized music that does not live up to those ideals. In Good Music, John J. Sheinbaum explores these traditional models for valuing music. By engaging examples such as Handel oratorios, Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, jazz improvisations, Bruce Springsteen, and prog rock, he argues that metaphors of perfection do justice (...) to neither the perceived strengths nor the assumed weaknesses of the music in question. Instead, he proposes an alternative model of appreciation where abstract notions of virtue need not dictate our understanding. Good music can, with pride, be playful rather than serious, diverse rather than unified, engaging to both body and mind, in dialogue with manifold styles and genres, and collaborative to the core. We can widen the scope of what music we value and reconsider the conventional rituals surrounding it, while retaining the joys of making music, listening closely, and caring passionately"-- $c Page [4] of cover. (shrink)

The Foundations of Pragmatism in American Thought Series offers two sets of volumes containing the most significant defenses and critiques of pragmatism written before World War I: the Early Defenders of Pragmatism and Early Critics of Pragmatism. This, the first collection, Early Defenders, provides key texts for understanding the context of pragmatism's years of greatest vitality. The early defenders were products of pragmatism's three cradles. H. Heath Bawden was a graduate of the Chicago philosophy department, having studied with John (...) Dewey and George Mead. John E. Boodin and Horace M. Kallen earned their Ph.Ds with William James and Josiah Royce at Harvard. D. L. Murray and Howard V. Knox were independent scholars and writers inspired by F. C. S. Schiller's humanistic pragmatism at Oxford. This collection brings together the central texts of the movement along with a representative selection of the secondary texts, reviews and responses, they elicited. Each volume features a newly-commissioned introduction by a leading scholar of American pragmatism. --five central texts reproduced in facsimile, accompanied by the main responses and replies, reset in new typography --scattered and scarce works available together for the first time --new introductions to each volume by leading scholars of American pragmatism. (shrink)

John Haught offers a “critical intelligence” argument against naturalism. In this article, I outline Haught’s version of theistic evolution. Then I discuss the case he makes against naturalism with his critical intelligence argument. He uses two versions of the argument to make his case: a trustworthiness of critical intelligence argument and an ineffectiveness of naturalistic theories of the mind argument. I evaluate both versions of his critical intelligence argument against naturalism and find that they contain false premises. They thus (...) come up short in making a strong case against naturalism. (shrink)

During the last 40 years, political philosophers have made important advances in our understanding of why equality is valuable, and what kind of equality is important. This article summarizes the development of these ideas, in particular, the contributions of John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Ronald Dworkin, Robert Nozick, Richard Arneson, and G. A. Cohen. It shows how these ideas have filtered into economic thinking in the conceptualization of equality of opportunity. It concludes with a brief discussion of how these ideas (...) might be extended to evaluate intergenerational and global distributions of income or welfare. (shrink)

RECENT JEWISH—CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE HAS UNCOVERED THAT THE EARLY church's ethics were firmly rooted in Jewish halakhic thinking. This essay explores the topic through a study of the church's moral reasoning in Acts 10—15. We see the church readily employing distinctions that are now rarely invoked by Christian ethicists, such as between universal and particular moral law. These distinctions allowed the church to understand the ethical significance of the Torah not by imposing external categories on it but through the Torah's own, (...) internal distinctions. Thus, the church's understanding of the Torah can best be understood through the image of geirei toshav. This image could help Christian ethicists understand their relation to pluralistic contexts because it was precisely the increased pluralism of gentile inclusion that prompted the church in Acts. I briefly consider the implications for a concrete case: the Episcopal-Anglican Communion's debate about homosexuality, which employs the Acts 10—15 narrative. (shrink)

OBVIOUSLY, OBSERVERS EXIST ONLY WHERE LIFE IS POSSIBLE ("THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE"). NOW, THERE MAY BE MANY COSMIC REGIONS, PERHAPS GIGANTIC AND LARGELY OR ENTIRELY SEPARATE "MULTIPLE UNIVERSES," OF WHICH ONLY VERY FEW PERMIT LIFE’S EVOLUTION. GUTH’S COSMIC INFLATION MAY BE INVOLVED HERE, AND DOMAINS WITH DIFFERENTLY BROKEN SYMMETRIES. APPARENT LIFE-ENCOURAGING FINE-TUNING OF NATURAL CONSTANTS MIGHT BE UNDERSTOOD AGAINST THIS BACKGROUND. MANY SCIENTISTS PREDICTIONS RESULT. AN ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNT SPEAKS OF THE WORLD’S CREATIVE ETHICAL REQUIREDNESS ("GOD").

What demands must be met for phenomenology to be the rigorous science Husserl projected? Janicaud complains that some French phenomenologists, while pretending to observe these demands, play fast and loose with them when they apply phenomenology to matters of theology: Derrida, Marion, and Levinas; methodological phenomenology and Henry's phenomenology of the Christian Way. Derrida's deconstructions of the oppositions of immanence and transcendence and of the factual and the transcendental suggest that the rift between him and Henry is not as deep (...) as it must at first seem. Analogical appresentation is a motive of the theological turn. (shrink)

Le livre III de l’Essai de Locke passe pour un des textes importants que la fin du XVIIe siècle consacre exclusivement au langage. Mais il ne faut pas s’attendre à y trouver un traité de linguistique innovant dans un champ vierge; même si Locke découvre tardivement l’importance du nom dans le savoir, il lui est facile de trouver autour de lui suffisamment de travaux pour prendre position, critiquer, simplifier, réorienter. Réorienter car son étude du nom ne vise qu’à préparer un (...) traité de la connaissance, non à faire de la linguistique pour elle-même. Il simplifie de ce fait les travaux que le Scolastique nominaliste notamment avait multipliés. Il critique tous ceux qui dissocient le mot de la double “référence” qui lui est “naturelle” : l’idée et la chose; contre Hobbes mais aussi contre les théoriciens des langues universelles, il ancre les langues dans l’usage commun d’une part, dans le rapport incertain aux choses d’autre part, toujours par la médiation de la pensée individuelle. Il prend enfin position : le nom est l’instrument privilégié de l’abstraction et de la généralisation : indispensable pour la communication et l’accumulation du savoir, il est aussi le lieu de toutes les illusions. Par son approche des espèces naturelles, par sa critique de l’essentialisme qui restaure paradoxalement l’abstrait et l’universel, par sa réduction du langage à la communication d’informations, plus que par sa théorie linguistique, ce texte nous donne encore à penser. (shrink)