An attempt is made to answer the question why wittgenstein might have found the analogy between speaking and playing games philosophically exciting. It is argued that on the face of it the two are strikingly disanalogous, But that on reflecting further one can find various features of games (9 are distinguished in all) which are also features of some speech episodes, And the awareness of which could be philosophically significant.

In his book The View from Nowhere , Thomas Nagel says that ‘the subjectivity of consciousness is an irreducible feature of reality’ . He speaks of ‘the essential subjectivity of the mental’ , and of ‘the mind's irreducibly subjective character’ . ‘Mental concepts’, he says, refer to ‘subjective points of view and their modifications’ : The subjective features of conscious mental processes—as opposed to their physical causes and effects—cannot be captured by the purified form of thought suitable for dealing with (...) the physical world that underlines the appearances. Not only raw feels but also intentional mental states—however objective their content—must be capable of manifesting themselves in subjective form to be in the mind at all. (shrink)

If you are interested in art, you engage in artistic evaluation, thinking of one work as being better than another; one artist as being better than another; some works and some artists as being great, mediocre, or poor; and, perhaps, thinking of some forms or genres of art as being superior to others in that works within the favored form or genre have achieved or can aspire to a higher artistic value than is possible for those less favored. The greatest (...) philosophical challenge to this practice—a challenge that, if successful, would have wide-ranging consequences outside philosophy, in particular in undermining the status of the practice of art criticism—would maintain that it is, all of it, taken at face value.. (shrink)

In 1962 I offered an analysis of the Line and Cave which maintained that the four main divisions of each are parallel and interpreted the three stages of ascent in the Cave allegory as representing the three stages in Plato's educational programme: music and gymnastic, mathematics and dialectic. At that time a major portion of my task was to counter arguments which purported to show that the Line and Cave could not be parallel. The present situation is quite different since (...) recent writers, for the most part, not only take the four main divisions of the Cave as parallel to those of the Line, but also accept the restriction of the Cave allegory to moral and mathematical education as a crucial step in the establishing of this fact. This last move, which is clearly in harmony with the form and content of the Republic, enables us to allow for the ordinary unenlightened man to be at the bottom level of the Cave without our having to suggest that he confuses the shadows of visual objects with their originals, which could well be the case if the Cave were taken to represent all sense perception as such. Despite fairly general agreement on these basic points of interpretation there remains, however, a wide divergence of opinion as to the significance of the various levels of education or moral awareness portrayed by the Cave. In keeping with several recent papers on this topic I shall focus my attention on the bottom two stages of this allegory: the state of the prisoners viewing shadows on the cave wall and that of the released prisoners, still in the cave, but turned around and looking at the puppets which cast these shadows. (shrink)

This article analyses the negative ethical impact of privatisation, alongside the ongoing marketisation of social care and social work provision for children and young people in England. It critically appraises the implications of a market-based formal social care system, which includes the risk-averse and often detached role of social workers within ever more fragmented sectors of care. Analysis begins with a discussion of background policy and context. The tendency towards ‘service user’ objectification and commodification are then detailed, followed by a (...) discussion of the limiting of choice for service users. Service and social fragmentation, and the often severely restricted ‘life chances’ of many children and young people in care, are then deliberated. The concluding discussion reiterates the ethical implications of marketisation in relation to ethical frameworks, including those associated with autonomy, informed choice, social exclusion and social justice. The tendency towards children increasingly being utilised as a means to an end within business-orientated sectors of care is highlighted, alongside moral questions asked about the State’s purpose in providing a community of support. (shrink)

In modern representative democracies, much healthcare is publicly funded or provided and so the question of what healthcare systems should do is a matter of public policy. Given that public resources are inevitably limited, what should be done and who should benefit from healthcare? It is a dilemma for policymakers and a subject of debate within several disciplines, but rarely across disciplines. In this paper, I draw on thinking from several disciplines and especially philosophy, economics, and systems theory. I conclude (...) that economist and philosopher John Broome’s writing provides the framework for an answer: a healthcare system in a democracy should do as much good as possible, although sometimes we should sacrifice some overall good for the sake of fairness. This leaves open some detailed questions about what in practice we consider to be good and fair, and about when some good should be traded off in order to be fair. The answers to these questions depend on our values, or as explained by systems theory, our weltanschauung. How policy decisions should be made when citizens’ values differ is a subject of extensive academic debate. However, it is a separate question. Representative democracies have mechanisms for resolving such debates. (shrink)

The principal aim of Eddy Zemach’s book is to articulate and demonstrate the correctness of a realistic understanding of aesthetic sentences, sentences the surface grammar of which consists in the attribution of an aesthetic property to an item. Zemach is content to represent realism in aesthetics as the view that aesthetic sentences have genuine truth values, describe or misdescribe matters of fact, are objectively true or false depending on whether they correspond to reality, are true if and only if the (...) aesthetic properties they ascribe to things really characterize those things. He is aware that this characterization of realism will not be thought adequate on a minimalist theory of truth, but dismisses the view of those who, like Paul Horwich, advocate a deflationary theory of truth, asserting that this records a special nonrealistic sense of truth. But the difference between a realist and a nonrealist sense of truth is left unexplained. (shrink)

Or future of Professor Skutsch, 60, 378), calling the contraction ‘impossible’, insists on the latter; F. Vian in his Bude Apollonius leaves the question open. A.R.1.685 ~ 693.

This article considers some ethical consequences which are linked to the more recent rapid expansion in contingency social work. It is noted that increased privatisation within state social work has led to a much greater reliance upon flexible labour. Consequentially, the relationship between temporary workers and clients has altered, and new beliefs and attitudes have formed amongst some employees who lack permanency. With reference to Nietzsche, Marx and Hobbes, it is suggested that if this political process of market-led ?atomisation? persists (...) then the consequences are likely to be many. However, more recent labour market trends within state social work suggest some grounds for optimism. (shrink)

Explains Kant's idea of a pure aesthetic judgement of the sublime in nature and his division of the sublime into the mathematically and the dynamically sublime. Kant's account of the mathematically sublime contains numerous obscurities, some of which I highlight. I reject his leading idea that the mathematically sublime rests on a so‐called aesthetic estimation of magnitude, one that must inevitably be defeated by the infinity or limitlessness of nature or space. I also reject his accounts of the double‐aspect emotions (...) integral to the mathematically and dynamically sublime and propose alternative accounts. (shrink)

Nietzsche remains what he wanted to be - the limit-philosopher of a modernity that never ends. This book argues that merely to reject Nietzsche is not to escape his lure. His appeals to our desire for victory, our creativity, our very humanity are seductions we cannot resist simply by disagreeing with him.

This study aimed to see if context in the form of priming can alter a participants thinking style based on their level of implicit association with either a religious or paranormal belief. This was based on the theory of alief, when a person’s explicit belief and behaviour are mismatched. This was also linked to dual process theory, with alief being analogous to type one thinking styles (fast and automatic). One hundred and seventy-two participants were recruited from the University of Derby (...) and social media. Implicit association was measured using a modified Brief Implicit Association Test that looked at paranormal and religious belief. Explicit supernatural belief, cognitive reflection, metacognition, and confidence were also measured. A hierarchical multiple regression revealed that a lower belief in the supernatural (apart from psychokinesis), a religious prime and high confidence predicted reflective thinking. Common paranormal perceptions, religious prime and confidence were significant predictors in the model. It was concluded that the prime worked on a moral level and influenced someone with an already open mind to different beliefs to be more analytical, positive, and confident. This study does not support the theory of alief, however, it indicates certain beliefs are susceptible to a certain prime, and that a person can be influenced to be more analytical. (shrink)

Platonic Conversations, by McCabeMary Margaret. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 416.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Re-editing the RepublicMalcolm SchofieldS. R. Slings, ed. Platonis Respublica. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. xxiv + 428 pp. Cloth, $45.S. R. Slings' Republic is the second volume to appear in the new OCT edition of Plato. Reviewing the first—the new volume I, containing the first two tetralogies—Slings rounded off with some general remarks for the "average user of OCTs," who "will want to know to what degree (...) all this work has improved the text" (Mnemosyne 51 [1998] 101). If we apply the question to the fruits of his own tireless labours (the last of his seven general editorial principles is: editori non est fatiscendum), the answer is the same verdict as Slings passed on volume I: "The text is not all that different from Burnet's, and rightly so," for "he was a superb editor with a feeling for Platonic Greek that is unlikely to be ever surpassed" (ibid. 93). But did you know something Slings reports elsewhere (Mnem. 42 [1989] 192): that "when the volumes of Burnet's Platonis Opera first appeared, they were generally considered a provisional editio minor, soon to be superseded by more impressive tomes?" What is hugely improved is the apparatus criticus. There are two main reasons for this.First, Slings' text is based on a much more secure assessment of the textual tradition than was Burnet's, thanks not least to the comprehensive work of his former pupil Gerard Boter in The Textual Tradition of Plato's Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1989). Burnet gave pride of place to three primary witnesses: Parisinus 1807, ninth century (A); Marcianus 185, twelfth century (D); and Vindobonensis suppl. gr., dated by Slings to the period 1250-1325 (F). But he reported them selectively and sometimes inaccurately and never collated any of them himself. Moreover, while he was the first editor to recognise the true importance of the Vindobonensis, in Slings' opinion he accorded it more authority, particularly relative to the Parisinus, than it really carries. Finally, Burnet attached some weight to M, a manuscript in the library of the Malatestas at Cesena variously attributed to the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries (but considered fifteenth century by Slings and Boter) and collated for the Republic by Lewis Campbell. Boter's investigations have established that M carries no independent authority. Slings and Boter have reexamined all three of the primary medieval manuscripts both in photocopies and in situ, with what was evidently extreme care, and Slings says he has no doubt that the readings reported in the new OCT are a lot more reliable than in any previous edition. His general view of the [End Page 607] merits and demerits of A, D, and F—repeated here—was already set out in Appendix 2 to his major edition of the Clitophon (which precedes the Republic in the seventh tetralogy and shares its textual tradition); see Plato: Clitophon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 340-44. Roughly speaking, A is the weightiest, D is of relatively minor importance, and F is "a typical representative of the cheap Plato omnibus as found in later antiquity," with "many uniquely true readings" but lots of errors and "untrustworthy variants in word order and particles" (ibid. 341).Second, as well as exploiting Plato papyri and translations into Coptic, Arabic, and Hebrew, Slings makes more generous use of the indirect tradition than do earlier editions by using quotations and allusions in subsequent ancient authors and scholia. He thanks a number of other Dutch scholars for their help in compiling this material and cites in particular Gerard Boter's index of testimonia in The Textual Tradition. Slings includes a list of those cited in his apparatus criticus as an appendix (it runs to seventeen pages). Moreover, interpretation of the information provided in the apparatus is aided by the clear explanation in the editor's pithy Latin preface of the rules and the orthographic practices he proposes to follow. In general, while Slings' apparatus is not consistently bulkier than Burnet's, it is often richer. Mostly this is thanks to better information about the textual tradition. But in line with the usual modern practice, Slings also gives the source of any Platonic quotation... (shrink)

We frequently use single words or expressions to mean multiple things, depending upon context. I argue that a plausible model of this phenomenon, known as lakṣaṇā by Indian philosophers, emerges in the work of ninth-century Kashmiri Mukulabhaṭṭa. His model of lakṣaṇā is sensitive to the lexical and syntactic requirements for sentence meaning, the interpretive unity guiding a communicative act, and the nuances of creative language use found in poetry. After outlining his model of lakṣaṇā, I show how arthāpatti, or presumption, (...) forms the basis of both semantic and pragmatic processes in this approach. I employ a model from contemporary linguist James Pustejovsky as one way of reconstructing Mukulabhaṭṭa’s analysis. Finally, I argue that presumption is responsible for the wide range of interpretations in creative uses of language, and that our interpretations are constrained, through defeasible in a way that our decodings of literal meanings typically are not. (shrink)

‘More light is thrown on the poetic art of Stesichorus by the papyrus-text of his Geryoneis than by all his other fragments together.’ This verdict continues to be as true now as when it was first enunciated. But we are also in the fortunate position of being able to infer much of value about what we may term the pre-history of the legend which the poet took as the basis for his composition. And a key document within this process turns (...) out to be a text that is not preserved upon papyrus, that is not, indeed, included as part of any edition of the poet, and which has been the object of some very serious misconceptions. The relevant section consists of a phrase only three words long, but it is difficult to underestimate their importance, once they are rightly understood. (shrink)

Hobbes's manuscript refutation of Thomas White bears no title. Some modern scholars have proposed, on the basis of references to it by Mersenne, that the work was entitled 'De motu, loco et tempore', and the abbreviated version of this, 'De motu', has become current in modern scholarship. This research note analyses Mersenne's references, and concludes that this apparent title was a descriptive phrase introduced by Mersenne himself. The full description included the term 'philosophia' ; this suggests a double focus, not (...) only on the manuscript text, but also on Hobbes's 'body' of natural philosophy more generally. (shrink)