In this book, Joseph Millum explains how parental rights and responsibilities are acquired, what they consist in, and how parents should go about making decisions on behalf of their children. In doing so, he provides a set of frameworks to help solve pressing ethical dilemmas relating to parents and children.

The problem I have in mind is the problem of the possible justification of subjecting one's will to that of another, and of the normative standing of demands to do so. The account of authority that I offered, many years ago, under the title of the service conception of authority, addressed this issue, and assumed that all other problems regarding authority are subsumed under it. Many found the account implausible. It is thin, relying on very few ideas. It may well (...) appear to be too thin, and to depart too far from many of the ideas that have gained currency in the history of reflection on authority. The present article modifies some aspects the account, and defends it against some criticism made against it. (shrink)

In this second edition, Joseph Rychlak has retained his analysis of the philosophical antecedents of psychology and, at the same time, has considerably revised more complicated material illustration rigorous humanism to make the book more accessible for students. Rychlak here offers an analysis of the philosophical traditions underlying the social sciences and shows how functionalism came to dominate the modern science of psychology in America.

In the characterization of the ArCl2 'van der Waals complex', a recognizable pattern of well-defined peaks is observed in the microwave absorption spectrum. In the control of chaos in a chemical oscillatory reaction the power spectrum progressively becomes simpler, at length yielding a single peak. Since both of these cases generate coherences that are centers of agency, they should be considered to produce new chemical entities. Applicability of this ontological approach to coherences of wider societal interest is suggested.

In this paper I focus on John Locke as a representative figure of English Enlightenment theorizing about the legitimacy of cognitive authority and examine the way in which a greater attention to the cultural milieu in which Locke worked can lead to a profound reexamination of his writings on cognitive authority. In particular, I suggest that an inattention to the rise of a culture of reading and the growing availability of books in Early Modern England has led historians of philosophy (...) largely to misrepresent Locke's theory of testimonial justification. At the core of my paper are two interrelated claims. First, with respect to the history of ideas, I argue that the Locke's interest in testimony as a source of justification was in fact greater than that of his Scholastic forebears, and that this fact has a simple, if as yet unacknowledged, cultural cause -- viz., the rise of the book as a mass commodity in the late 17th century. Second, with respect to the history of philosophy more particularly, I argue that this failure to acknowledge the cultural movements that led to a consideration of testimony as a topic of interest to epistemologists in the Modern era has led to a misreading of Locke's work on the subject. Indeed, Locke, though usually read as having attempted to denigrate testimony as a legitimate source of justification, in fact sought to devise an epistemology that would do justice to the centrality of testimony in the intellectual lives of growing numbers of his contemporaries in 17th and 18th century England and Scotland. (shrink)

The paper offers a new account of the rule of law, revising my previous view, and criticising some alternatives. It focuses on the rule of law's aim to avoid arbitrary government, and on its relation to the essential functions of government. The rule of law requires that government action will manifest an intention to protect and advance the interests of the governed. As such it is almost a necessary condition for the law's ability to meet other moral demands, and it (...) facilitate coordination and cooperation internally and internationally. -/- . (shrink)

The question is how do Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEMs) give us access to the nano world? The images these instruments produce, I argue, do not allow us to see atoms in the same way that we see trees. To the extent that SEMs and STMs allow us to see the occupants of the nano world it is by way of metaphorical extension of the concept of “seeing”. The more general claim is that changes in scientific instrumentation effect changes in the (...) concepts central to our understanding of scientific results. (shrink)

Version 1.0 of this paper was delivered orally as an invited paper at a meeting of the American Physical Society, Lubbock, Texas, October 28, 1995. Version 2.0, November 22, 1997, was posted on-line. The present version, 3.1, differs only cosmetically from 3.0, but the latter does involve a substantial expansion from version 2.0.

2007 marks the sixtieth anniversary of Carl Schmitt's interrogations at Nuremberg. It has also been twenty years since Telos published the transcripts of what was presumed to be the complete three interrogations of him conducted by the prosecutor Robert M. W. Kempner in April 1947.1 Through the vicissitudes of research, these historical and scholarly milestones have coincided with the discovery of new archival documentation on Schmitt and Nuremberg. Among the most surprising of these new discoveries is the transcript of a (...) “fourth” interrogation of Schmitt that occurred on April 11, 1947, which apparently even Kempner had forgotten.2 The uncovering of…. (shrink)

War: A Primer for Christians provides a concise introduction to the main approaches that Christians have taken toward war and examines each approach critically. Some Christians have supported their country's wars as crusades of good against evil. Others, as pacifists, have rejected participation in or support for any war. Still others have followed the just-war tradition in holding that it can be justifiable under some conditions to resort to war, but that then Christian love must limit the conduct of war. (...) In an updated preface and new afterword, Allen explores aspects of current international relations that have a special bearing on the context of war. “Joseph Allen’s War: A Primer for Christians is just that: a succinct, fair-minded, wonderfully reasoned, and accessible account of the major Christian traditions on war—Just War, Holy War, and the Pacifist renunciation of violence. His book is also a primer in the further sense, that it will prime the pump for further discussion and debate as to when wars are just and how a nation might keep the means employed under restraints.”—William F. May. (shrink)

Placed in a historical context, sexuality was once so prominent in psychoanalytic writing that sexual drive and psychoanalysis were synonymous. The exciting discovery of childhood sexuality filled the literature. Then other discoveries came to the fore until sexuality slipped far in the background. This book evokes the excitement of the original discoveries of childhood sexual experience while linking childhood sensuality and sexuality to adult attachment, romantic, and lustful love. This revised perspective offers the general reader insight into contemporary psychoanalytic thought, (...) and presents clinicians with a perspective for exploring their patients sensuality and sexuality with renewed interest and knowledge. (shrink)

Few theories have influenced Western thought as much as psychoanalysis has, even in the absence of empirically confirmatory evidence. The raw data of psychoanalysis are the words and actions of the patient and their interpretation by the analyst. The psychoanalytic session has excluded other observers and, until very recently, even a tape recorder. The only evidence of what transpired between patient and therapist was supplied by the memories, accounts, and records each of them might have kept. The degree to which (...) each could be objective and veridical in recording the events in treatment is not known, but given the intense, emotional nature of the clinical interaction, it is likely that systematic distortions, omissions, and inventions occurred. Various writers have called attention to the lack of scientific investigation of psychodynamic propositions. This series is intended to describe the best and most current experimental work inspired by psychoanalytic theories. A scientific theory is expected to generate data that will force it to be revised and ultimately discarded. Most of the experiments reported in this series point to instances where the theory must be modified to fit the data more exactly. (shrink)

Thorstein Veblen is perhaps best thought of as America’s answer to Karl Marx. This is sometimes obscured by the rather unfortunate title of his most important work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), which misleading, insofar as it suggests that the book is just a theory of the “leisure class.” What the book provides is in fact a perfectly general theory of class, not to mention property, economic development, and social evolution. It is, in other words, a system of (...) theory that rivals Marx’s historical materialism with respect to scope, generality and explanatory power. Furthermore, it is a system of theory whose central predictions, with respect to the development of capitalism and the possibilities for emancipatory social change, have proven to be essentially correct. When stacked up against Marx’s prognostications, this success clearly provides the basis for what might best be described as an invidious comparison. (shrink)

Stanislas Breton's _A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul_, which focuses on the political implications of the apostle's writings, was an instrumental text in Continental philosophy's contemporary "turn to religion." Reading Paul's work against modern thought and history, Breton helped launch a reassessment of Marxism, introduce secular interpretations of biblical and theological traditions, develop "radical negativity" as a critical category, and rework modern political ideas through a theoretical lens. Newly translated and critically situated, this edition takes a fresh approach to Breton's (...) classic work, reacquainting readers with the remarkable ways in which an ancient apostle can reset our understanding of the political. Breton begins with Paul's biography and the texts of his conversion, which challenge common conceptions of identity. He broaches the question of allegory and divine predestination, introduces the idea of subjectivity as an effect of power, and confronts Paul's critique of Law, which leads to an exploration of the logics and limits of agency and power. Breton develops these and other insights in relation to Paul's subversive reflections on the crucified messiah, which challenge meaning and reason and upend our current world order. Neither a coherent theologian nor a stable humanist, Breton's Paul becomes a fascinating figure of excess and madness, experiencing a kind of being that transcends philosophy, secularity, and religion. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of Placide Tempel's epoch-making work Bantu Philosophy, African philosophers have worked to dispel the myth that there is no metaphysics in Africa.

That people do wrong would appear to be a moral datum: a moral realm without wrongdoing may not be coherent. Thus, an adequate philosophic theory of morality ought to allow for it. But such a theory ought also to explain wrongdoing, both axiologically and causally. This is so if we take such a theory to have practical significance. Indeed, insofar as moral philosophy and its cognate areas have practical significance, explaining wrongdoing is arguably the most pressing practical issue for theory (...) construction in this domain. For a philosophical theory of morality to have practical significance, and, further, to have influence on behavior, it must be psychologically relevant to the organisms that it ranges over. That is, the concepts that the theory purports to explain must be plausibly realized within the psychology of the creatures for which the theory is intended. Any theory satisfying this constraint would then be in a position to illuminate those psychological features that are explanatory of blameworthy behavior. The argument presented here is that moral realism and its underlying moral psychology, cognitivism, face serious difficulties allowing for and explaining, both metaphysically and psychologically, such behavior. Moral cognitivism and realism fail to adequately account for this most fundamental of moral phenomena. Hence, a comprehensive understanding of moral experience is impossible within the cognitivist/realist perspective. (shrink)

This book explores the metaphysical underpinnings of theories of human nature, personhood, and the self. The coverage of the work is broad in scope, moving from the Pre-Socratics to Postmodernism, critically assessing what transpired during the intervening 2500 year period, with a special focus on the contributions of the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition of inquiry. The work is designed to meet the needs of a wide range of readers, from beginners to more advanced students.