A study of the life & views of the noted British critic & philosopher, & of his neo-classical & neo-conservative philosophy. Valuable as a study of the cultural scene in Europe & the United States in the years before World War I. Provides interesting insights & sidelights into the works & characters of such luminaries as Henri Bergson, Georges Sorel & Edmund Husserl.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Literary Modernist Assault on PhilosophyMichael LackeyIn a recent essay, Richard Rorty makes an insightful distinction between two views of the concept in order to distinguish analytic from conversational philosophy. Rorty defines traditional and analytic philosophy's orientation toward knowledge in terms of "an overarching ahistorical framework of human existence that philosophers should try to describe with greater and greater accuracy."1 Implicit in this view is the belief that there (...) exists a mind-independent Concept that is what it is whether humans perceive it or not. Moreover, this Concept is best suited to represent the world's essence or nature. Therefore, the task of the philosopher is "to pin down" this invariable and universally valid Concept so that he or she can represent reality. Starting with Hegel, however, concepts were treated "like persons—never quite the same twice, always developing, always maturing" ("ACP," p. 21). This is, according to Rorty, the conversational philosopher's view of the "concept." Instead of being an immutable, mind-independent reality, it is a human-constructed semiotic force that evolves in relation to specific communities of language users. The idea of getting a concept right, therefore, is simply incoherent.This distinction between an immutable and evolving concept is certainly a valuable way of understanding some crucial developments in philosophy, but Rorty's use of it to characterize non-analytic philosophy as conversational instead of Continental philosophy is certainly an executive decision on his part. And yet, Rorty is not alone in making such an executive declaration about philosophy, for many early twentieth-century writers also examined this shift to a view of the concept as an ever-evolving and ever-shifting force of meaning, but instead of reconfiguring [End Page 50] and redefining philosophy in light of this shift, they proclaimed the discipline dead. What I want to do in this short essay is to identify a tension in the writings of early twentieth-century writers on the topic of philosophy and to initiate a dialogue that would take more seriously the crisis in philosophy that led to the split between the analytic and Continental traditions.2I"The appartement of the Boulevard des Philosophes presented the dreary signs of impending abandonment. It looked desolate and as if already empty to my eyes."3In the Western intellectual tradition, philosophy has been defined as a discipline that makes use of rigorous forms of logic in order to apprehend an overarching ahistorical truth, which is embodied in either an Ideal Form or a universal concept. Given the superior nature of philosophy's intellectual tools and primary object of desire, it has been dubbed a "nonempirical super science,"4 a disciplinary touchstone used to determine the quality and value of all other systems of knowledge.5 According to this view, a discipline has legitimacy and worth insofar as it contributes to, approximates, or yields philosophical knowledge. Philosophy certainly dominated the Western intellectual tradition from Plato to the end of the nineteenth century, but by 1899, Bertrand Russell was suggesting that philosophy was on the verge of losing its title as the Monarch of knowledge and truth: "Philosophy, by the slow victories of its own offspring, has been forced to forgo, one by one, its high pretensions."6 Friedrich Nietzsche's genealogical method certainly did much to undermine philosophy's credibility, for in exposing the way concepts evolve in relation to an individual community's ideological needs and desires, Nietzsche implicitly identified the philosopher's non-normative, mind-independent truth as the seething product of an overheated imagination.7Deeply concerned about the radical subversion of philosophy was T. E. Hulme, the modernist aesthetician who understood the threat that the anthropomorphic turn in knowledge posed to Truth. For Hulme, should the intellectual world accept the view that truth is a human construction instead of a pre-given Idea, all conceptual systems would be nothing more than a Weltanschauung. To save universal Truth and objective Reality, therefore, modernist intellectuals have only one option: to purge philosophy of "anthropomorphism" so that they could [End Page 51] re-establish an "objective basis" for knowledge, a basis that does "not in the least depend on the human mind." Once... (shrink)

Our capacity for planning agency is central to our human lives. These essays aim both to deepen our understanding of basic norms that guide our plan-infused thinking and to defend their status as norms of practical rationality. This defense appeals both to forms of pragmatic support and to the ways in which these norms track conditions of a planning agent's self-governance, both at a time and over time.

New brain-computer interface and neuroimaging techniques are making differentiation less ambiguous and more accurate between unresponsive wakefulness syndrome patients and patients with higher cognitive function and awareness. As research into these areas continues to progress, new ethical issues will face physicians of patients suffering from total locked-in syndrome, characterized by complete loss of voluntary muscle control, with retention of cognitive function and awareness detectable only with neuroimaging and brain-computer interfaces. Physicians, researchers, ethicists and hospital ethics committees should be aware of (...) and prepared to handle ethical issues unique to these totally locked-in patients. Several thought experiments are discussed, to highlight potential ethical dilemmas surrounding surrogate decision-making, autonomy, end-of-life care, and pediatric care, which will be unique to total LIS patients. These, along with other ethical problems especially relevant to total LIS patients, merit further discussion among physicians, researchers, ethicists and hospital ethics committees, to facilitate consensus regarding these issues, and improve patient care. (shrink)

In previous work I have argued against internalism by means of a dilemma intended to force all internalists to accept one of two undesirable options: either their internalism is unmotivated or it is saddled with vicious regress problems. Recently it has been argued that Phenomenal Conservatism—a theory of justification according to which justification depends on seemings—is a kind of internalism that can escape this dilemma. In this paper, I argue that Phenomenal Conservatism cannot escape my dilemma for internalism. In order (...) to do this, it is helpful to get clear on what Phenomenal Conservatism is saying, and for that reason I begin, in section I, by examining in some detail what seemings are. I then argue, in the remainder of the paper, that, whichever horn of the dilemma for internalism they take, Phenomenal Conservatives are in trouble. (shrink)

Michael Ruse, a leading expert on Charles Darwin, presents a fictional dialogue among characters with sharply contrasting positions regarding the tensions between science and religious belief.

The paper explains why an ontology of permanent point particles that are individuated by their relative positions and that move on continuous trajectories as given by a deterministic law of motion constitutes the best solution to the measurement problem in both quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. This case is made by comparing the Bohmian theory to collapse theories such as the GRW matter density and the GRW flash theory. It is argued that the Bohmian theory makes the minimal changes, (...) concerning only the dynamics and neither the ontology nor the account of probabilities, that are necessary to get from classical mechanics to quantum physics. There is no cogent reason to go beyond these minimal changes. (shrink)

Since heaven is the most perfect state or position possible – namely of loving God perfectly – and sinning is failing to love God, it will not be possible to sin in heaven. However, if freedom is a mark of perfection, and loving God is only possible when one freely loves God, will we be loving God at all if we are not free not to love him? Three cumulative arguments for an affirmative answer are developed. The first is to (...) distinguish the ability to love or sin from the opportunity to do so. In heaven we are loving God in an infinite variety of ways, so we are freely exercising our ability to love, even when God has taken away any opportunities for sinning. However, one might reply that our freedom will only be the freedom to love God in various ways, not the freedom to love God or not. Hence the second argument is that in heaven are only people who have freely chosen to love God while on earth, where there was a real opportunity not to love God. Since the free choice to love God was made before entering heaven, loving God in heaven remains a free choice. Moreover, since in heaven God takes away the opportunity to sin, and stopping to love God would be a sin, you will remain steadfast in that free choice. However, one might reply that also having the opportunity to sin would add an extra possibility for willing something, so one would be 'more free' in heaven, and heaven would be more perfect, if one would also have the opportunity to sin. Hence the third argument is that freedom is a perfection shared by both God and humans, and the freedom of God is in an important respect a freedom to create. Hence, our human freedom is also greater if our creative power is greater. We have no creative power but by participating in God’s creative power, which is necessarily directed towards the good. So by willing what is good we extend and perfect creation and thereby extend and perfect our possibilities for willing, hence we become more free. On the contrary, by sinning we destroy creation and possibilities for willing and we become less free, so an opportunity to sin is not a possibility that increases our freedom. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas conceives of our lives as fundamentally interpersonal and ethical, claiming that our responsibilities to one another should shape all of our actions. While many scholars believe that Levinas failed to develop a robust view of political ethics, Michael L. Morgan argues against understandings of Levinas’s thought that find him politically wanting or even antipolitical. Morgan examines Levinas’s ethical critique of the political as well as his Jewish writings—including those on Zionism and the founding of the Jewish state—which (...) are controversial reflections of Levinas’s political expression. Unlike others who dismiss Levinas as irrelevant or anarchical, Morgan is the first to give extensive treatment to Levinas as a serious social political thinker whose ethics must be understood in terms of its political implications. Morgan reveals Levinas’s political commitments to liberalism and democracy as well as his revolutionary conception of human life as deeply interconnected on philosophical, political, and religious grounds. (shrink)

This book, first published in 2000, adopts a balanced perspective on the subject to offer a serious examination of both Darwinism and Christianity. He covers a wide range of topics, from the Scopes Monkey Trial to claims about the religious significance of extraterrestrials. He deals with major figures in the current science/religion debate and considers in detail the claims of the new creationism, revealing some surprising parallels between Darwinian materialists and traditional thinkers such as St. Augustine. Michael Ruse argues (...) that, although it is at times difficult for a Darwinian to embrace Christian belief, it is by no means inconceivable. At the same time he suggests ways in which a Christian believer should have no difficulty accepting evolution in general, and Darwinism in particular. (shrink)

After outlining why the notion of conscious control of action matters to us and after distinguishing different challenges to that notion, the contribution focuses on the challenge posed by the literature on unconscious goal pursuit. Based on a conceptual clarification of the notion of consciousness, I argue that the understanding of consciousness in that literature is too restricted. The hypothesis that the behaviors reported can be accounted for by nonconceptual forms of consciousness, such as emotions and motor experiences, rather than (...) by—conscious or unconscious—conceptual level intentions tends to be disregarded, even though it promises to be empirically fruitful. (shrink)

Martin O'Shaughnessy _Jean Renoir_ Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000 ISBN 0719050626 hb; 0719050634 pb 251 pp.

At a time in medicine where the cost of human clinical labor continues to rise, with an overall shortage of providers at all levels, improved AI performance raises critical, pressing questions with...

Throughout this compelling work, Jackson demonstrates that existentialism, far from being a philosophy of individual being, enables us to explore issues of ...

The various jurisdictions worldwide that now legally permit assisted suicide (or voluntary euthanasia) vary concerning the medical conditions needed to be legally eligible for assisted suicide. Some jurisdictions require that an individual be suffering from an unbearable and futile medical condition that cannot be alleviated. Others require that individuals must be suffering from a terminal illness that will result in death within a specified timeframe, such as six months. -/- Popular and academic discourse about assisted suicide paradigmatically focuses on individuals (...) with ‘physical,’ i.e., non-psychiatric medical conditions, such as cancer or AIDS. Here I defend analyses of the notions of unbearable suffering, futility, and terminality that imply that, regardless of which of these medical conditions is invoked, at least some individuals with severe and persistent psychiatric illnesses satisfy these conditions and ought to be classified as legally eligible for assisted suicide. The legal and moral case for a right to assisted suicide is therefore not in principle weaker for the severely psychiatrically disordered than for those with ‘typical’ terminal or futile medical conditions. (shrink)

One of the most foundational and continually contested questions in the cognitive sciences is the degree to which the functional organization of the brain can be understood as modular. In its classic formulation, a module was defined as a cognitive sub-system with nine specific properties; the classic module is, among other things, domain specific, encapsulated, and implemented in dedicated neural substrates. Most of the examinations—and especially the criticisms—of the modularity thesis have focused on these properties individually, for instance by finding (...) counterexamples in which otherwise good candidates for cognitive modules are shown to lack domain specificity or encapsulation. The current paper goes beyond the usual approach by asking what some of the broad architectural implications of the modularity thesis might be, and attempting to test for these. The evidence does not favor a modular architecture for the cortex. Moreover, the evidence suggests that best way to approach the understanding of cognition is not by analyzing and modelling different functional domains in isolation from the others, but rather by looking for points of overlap in their neural implementations, and exploiting these to guide the analysis and decomposition of the functions in question. This has significant implications for the question of how to approach the design and implementation of intelligent artifacts in general, and language-using robots in particular. (shrink)

This leading scholar draws on extensive research from four plurinational states - the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, and Canada - to provide a radical rethink of the very nature of sovereignty and the state. This innovative account demonstrates how transnational integration and other demands on the nation-state have broken the automatic link between state and nation, and goes on to provide a major new analysis of the subsequent challenges of recognition of nationality and democracy.

While some conclude from the revolutions of 1989 that socialism is dead, interest in socialism continues because of persisting problems of contemporary capitalism. In this exciting text, Michael W. Howard offers critiques of liberal, communitarian, postmodern and some Marxist perspectives in order to develop a 'left-liberal' defense of a model of self-managed market socialism that includes a basic income for all. Specific applications of his view include analyses of its implications for the global marketplace, the changing nature of workplaces, (...) and media restructuring and ownership. This work is sure to be of interest to social scientists, public policy makers, and economists as well as to feminists, ecologists, and others concerned with how market socialism is relevant to their social issues. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of the unity of Transcendental Idealism at the end of Eighteenth Century German philosophy, given that it circulated in different versions, Kant’s Critique [of humans’ rational powers] and Fichte’ System of Science [Wissenschaftslehre]. Both thinkers take the transcendental turn. They base conceptual investigations not on facts or empirical evidence, but on the possibility of a situation; they are idealists since they look inward to the spontaneity of the agent/knower for explanation, not the environment, stimulus, or (...) sensory given. Reason can fathom only what it has constructed. (shrink)