Within the relatively sparse secondary literature that focuses on and interprets medieval philosophy in light of continental philosophy, a number of scholars have attempted to exonerate the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas from accusations of onto-theology. Attempts at exonerating the metaphysics of Duns Scotus, however, are almost completely lacking. In fact, some have even suggested that Scotus ’ metaphysics represents the commencement of onto-theology. In this paper I strive to establish a starting point for an exoneration of Scotus ’ metaphysics by (...) reexamining and reevaluating Heidegger’s reasons for condemning Western metaphysics as onto-theology. (shrink)

We are material beings in a material world, but we are also beings who have experiences and feelings. How can these subjective states be just a matter of matter? To defend materialism, philosophical materialists have formulated what is sometimes called "the phenomenal-concept strategy," which holds that we possess a range of special concepts for classifying the subjective aspects of our experiences. In Consciousness Revisited, the philosopher Michael Tye, until now a proponent of the the phenomenal-concept strategy, argues that the (...) strategy is mistaken. A rejection of phenomenal concepts leaves the materialist with the task of finding some other strategy for defending materialism. Tye points to four major puzzles of consciousness that arise: How is it possible for Mary, in the famous thought experiment, to make a discovery when she leaves her black-and-white room? In what does the explanatory gap consist and how can it be bridged? How can the hard problem of consciousness be solved? How are zombies possible? Tye presents solutions to these puzzles -- solutions that relieve the pressure on the materialist created by the failure of the phenomenal-concept strategy. In doing so, he discusses and makes new proposals on a wide range of issues, including the nature of perceptual content, the conditions necessary for consciousness of a given object, the proper understanding of change blindness, the nature of phenomenal character and our awareness of it, whether we have privileged access to our own experiences, and, if we do, in what such access consists. (shrink)

Michael Devitt is a distinguished philosopher of language. In this book he takes up one of the most important difficulties that must be faced by philosophical semantics: namely, the threat posed by holism. Three important questions lie at the core of this book: what are the main objectives of semantics; why are they worthwhile; how should we accomplish them? Devitt answers these 'methodological' questions naturalistically and explores what semantic programme arises from the answers. The approach is anti-Cartesian, rejecting the (...) idea that linguistic or conceptual competence yields any privileged access to meanings. This new methodology is used first against holism. Devitt argues for a truth-referential localism, and in the process rejects direct-reference, two-factor, and verificationist theories. The book concludes by arguing against revisionism, eliminativism, and the idea that we should ascribe narrow meanings to explain behaviour. (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.

Modern physics has revealed the universe as a much stranger place than we could have imagined. The puzzle at the centre of our knowledge of the universe is time. Michael Lockwood takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the nature of things. He investigates philosophical questions about past, present, and future, our experience of time, and the possibility of time travel. We zoom in on the behaviour of molecules and atoms, and pull back to survey the expansion of (...) the universe. We learn about entropy and gravity, black holes and wormholes, about how it all began and where we are all headed. Things will never seem the same again after a voyage through The Labyrinth of Time. (shrink)

A consideration of some of the most common questions about animal minds.Do birds have feelings? Can fish feel pain? Could a honeybee be anxious? For centuries, the question of whether or not animals are conscious like humans has prompted debates among philosophers and scientists. While most people gladly accept that complex mammals - such as dogs - share emotions and experiences with us, the matter of simpler creatures is much less clear. Meanwhile, the advent of the digital age and artificial (...) intelligence has created an added dimension to questions about non-human consciousness. In Tense Bees and Shell-Shocked Crabs, Michael Tye offers answers to some of today's most pressing questions about nonhuman consciousness. Blending the latest research about animal sensation with theories about the nature of consciousness, Tye develops a methodology for addressing the mysteries of the animal mind. Without endorsing any specific theory on the nature of consciousness, Tye tackles issues such as the animal experience of pain and fear, and the role of brain anatomy in determining consciousness. He then turns his attention to the artificial realm, considering whether complex robots could ever be considered conscious. Tye concludes with a discussion of how, if we consider animals conscious, this might impact our ethical obligations to them. From insects to crabs, fish to birds, Tense Bees and Shell-Shocked Crabs offers an insightful exploration of the ways in which animals relate to the world. Tense Bees and Shell-Shocked Crabs will appeal to students and scholars of philosophy and neuroscience, as well as general readers with an interest in animal and environmental ethics. (shrink)

Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, in this volume Michael Gill shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy. They effected a shift from thinking of morality as independent of human nature to thinking of it as part of human nature itself. He also shows how the British Moralists - sometimes inadvertently, sometimes by design - disengaged ethical thinking, first from distinctly Christian ideas and then from (...) theistic commitments altogether. Examining in detail the arguments of Whichcote, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson against Calvinist conceptions of original sin and egoistic conceptions of human motivation, Gill also demonstrates how Hume combined the ideas of earlier British moralists with his own insights to produce an account of morality and human nature that undermined some of his predecessors' most deeply held philosophical goals. (shrink)

In a rich and thought-provoking paper, Lambros Malafouris argues that taking material culture seriously means to be ‘systematically concerned with figuring out the causal efficacy of materiality in the enactment and constitution of a cognitive system or operation’ (Malafouris 2004, 55). As I understand this view, there are really two intertwined claims to be established. The first is that the things beyond the skin that make up material culture (in other words, the physical objects and artefacts in which cultural networks (...) and systems of human social relations are realized) may be essential to the enactment of, and be partly constitutive of, certain cognitive systems or operations. The consequence of establishing this claim is supposed to be that we have a mandate to recast the boundaries of the mind so as to include, as proper parts of the mind, things located beyond the skin. Thus, in talking about the contribution of the world to cognition, Malafouris (2004, 58) concludes that ‘what we have traditionally construed as an active or passive but always clearly separated external stimulus for setting a cognitive mechanism into motion, may be after all a continuous part of the machinery itself; at least ex hypothesi’. This is the position that, in philosophical circles, is known increasingly as the extended mind hypothesis (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Menary forthcoming). Henceforth I shall refer to this hypothesis as EM. A stock example will help bring the idea into view. Rumelhart et al. (1986) note that most of us solve difficult multiplication problems by using ‘pen and paper’ as an external resource. This environmental prop enables us to transform a difficult cognitive problem into a set of simpler ones, and to temporarily store the results of certain intermediate calculations. For the fan of EM, the distributed combination of this external resource and certain inner psychological processes constitutes a cognitive system in its own right. (shrink)

This book presents a detailed analysis of three ancient models of spatial magnitude, time, and local motion. The Aristotelian model is presented as an application of the ancient, geometrically orthodox conception of extension to the physical world. The other two models, which represent departures from mathematical orthodoxy, are a "quantum" model of spatial magnitude, and a Stoic model, according to which limit entities such as points, edges, and surfaces do not exist in (physical) reality. The book is unique in its (...) discussion of these ancient models within the context of later philosophical, scientific, and mathematical developments. (shrink)

Real Likenesses presents a radical new approach to artistic representation. At its heart is a serious reconsideration of the relationship between medium and content in representational art, which counters current dominant theories that make attention to the former inevitably a distraction from attending to the latter. Through close analysis of paintings, photographs, and novels, Michael Morris proposes a new understanding of the real likenesses we encounter in representational art; what they are, how they are made present to us, and (...) how they are created. The result is an intuitive way of thinking about how these art forms work. (shrink)

In this important study, Michael Luntley offers a compelling reading of Wittgenstein’s account of meaning and intentionality, based upon a unifying theme in the early and later philosophies. A compelling reading of Wittgenstein’s account of meaning and intentionality. Offers an important and original reading of Wittgenstein’s key texts. Based upon a unifying theme in Wittgenstein’s early and later philosophies.

In a rich and thought-provoking paper, Lambros Malafouris argues that taking material culture seriously means to be ‘systematically concerned with figuring out the causal efficacy of materiality in the enactment and constitution of a cognitive system or operation’ (Malafouris 2004, 55). As I understand this view, there are really two intertwined claims to be established. The first is that the things beyond the skin that make up material culture (in other words, the physical objects and artefacts in which cultural networks (...) and systems of human social relations are realized) may be essential to the enactment of, and be partly constitutive of, certain cognitive systems or operations. The consequence of establishing this claim is supposed to be that we have a mandate to recast the boundaries of the mind so as to include, as proper parts of the mind, things located beyond the skin. Thus, in talking about the contribution of the world to cognition, Malafouris (2004, 58) concludes that ‘what we have traditionally construed as an active or passive but always clearly separated external stimulus for setting a cognitive mechanism into motion, may be after all a continuous part of the machinery itself; at least ex hypothesi’. This is the position that, in philosophical circles, is known increasingly as the extended mind hypothesis (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Menary forthcoming). Henceforth I shall refer to this hypothesis as EM. A stock example will help bring the idea into view. Rumelhart et al. (1986) note that most of us solve difficult multiplication problems by using ‘pen and paper’ as an external resource. This environmental prop enables us to transform a difficult cognitive problem into a set of simpler ones, and to temporarily store the results of certain intermediate calculations. For the fan of EM, the distributed combination of this external resource and certain inner psychological processes constitutes a cognitive system in its own right. (shrink)

In this book Michael Heim provides the first consistent philosophical basis for critically evaluating the impact of word processing on our use of and ideas about language. This edition includes a new foreword by David Gelernter, a new preface by the author, and an updated bibliography. "Not only important but seminal, on the cutting-edge, furrowing new conceptual territory."-Walter J. Ong, S.J. "A philosopher ponders how the word processor has affected language use and our ideas about it. Heim shrewdly updates (...) a school of thought, associated with such thinkers as Walter Ong, that maintains all changes in writing technology tend to change the way we perceive the world. His argument that word processing leads to fragmented thinking should be addressed and debated."-Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer "The arguments range over all of Western philosophy, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary phenomenology.... Everyone who has used a word processor will find much to think about in Heim's ideas."-David Weinberger, Byte "Fascinating, clear, and well-done... stimulating and challenging."-Don Ihde, Philosophy and Rhetoric. (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)

The type of completeness Whitehead and Russell aimed for in their Principia Mathematica was what I call descriptive completeness. This is completeness with respect to the propositions that have been proved in traditional mathematics. The notion of completeness addressed by Gödel in his famous work of 1930 and 1931 was completeness with respect to the truths expressible in a given language. What are the relative significances of these different conceptions of completeness for traditional mathematics? What, if any, effects does incompleteness (...) of the type Gödel had in mind have for the evaluation of the Principia Mathematica project and other projects like it? (shrink)

This new book by Michael Slote argues that Western philosophy on the whole has overemphasized rational control and autonomy at the expense of the important countervailing value and virtue of receptivity. Recently the ideas of caring and empathy have received a great deal of philosophical and public attention, but both these notions rest on the deeper and broader value of receptivity, and in From Enlightenment to Receptivity, Slote seeks to show that we need to focus more on receptivity if (...) we are to attain a more balanced sense and understanding of what is important to us. -/- Beginning with a critique of Enlightenment thinking that calls into question its denial of any central role to considerations of emotion and empathy, he goes on to show how a greater emphasis on these factors and on the receptivity that underlies them can give us a more realistic, balanced, and sensitive understanding of our core ethical and epistemological values. This means rejecting post-modernism's blanket rejection of reason and of compelling real values and recognizing, rather, that receptivity should play a major role in how we lead our lives as individuals, in how we relate to nature, in how we acquire knowledge about the world, and in how we relate morally and politically with others. (shrink)

This translation seeks to make Aristotle's terse and concentrated Greek fairly intelligible to those who read him in English. Those who want to read through the Ethics to grasp the main outlines of Aristotle's position need a translation that can be understood without detailed explanations.

Leibniz states that 'metaphysics is natural theology', and this is especially true of his metaphysics of modality. In this book, Michael V. Griffin examines the deep connection between the two and the philosophical consequences which follow from it. Grounding many of Leibniz's modal conceptions in his theology, Griffin develops a new interpretation of the ontological argument in Leibniz and Descartes. This interpretation demonstrates that their understanding God's necessary existence cannot be construed in contemporary modal logical terms. He goes on (...) to develop a necessitarian interpretation of Leibniz, arguing that Leibniz, like Spinoza, is committed to the thesis that everything actual is metaphysically necessary, but that Leibniz rejects Spinoza's denial of God's moral perfection. His book will appeal to scholars of early modern philosophy and philosophers interested in modal metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

A detailed account of human language and evolution, reconciling the apparent dichotomy between humans and all other animals. Focuses on the speculative presence of a Generative Assembly Device, unique to Homo sapiens.

I focus on three preoccupations of recent writings on proof. -/- I. The role and possible effects of empirical reasoning in mathematics. Do recent developments (specifically, the computer-assisted proof of the 4CT) point to something essentially new as regards the need for and/or effects of using broadly empirical and inductive reasoning in mathematics? In particular, should we see such things as the computer-assisted proof of the 4CT as pointing to the existence of mathematical truths of which we cannot have a (...) priori knowledge? -/- 2. The role of formalization in proof. What are the patterns ofinference according to which mathematical reasoning naturally proceeds? Are they of 'local' character (i.e. sensitive to the subject-matter of the reasoning concerned) or 'global' character (i.e. invariant across all subject-matters)? Finally, what if any relationship is there (a) between the patterns of inference manifest in a proof and its explanatory capacity and (b) between explanatory capacity and rigor? -/- 3. Diagrams and their role in mathematical reasoning. What essentially is diagrammatic reasoning, and what is the nature and basis of its usefulness? Can it play a justificative role in the development of mathematical knowledge and, more particularly, in genuine proof? Finally, does the use of diagrammatic reasoning force an adjustment either in our conception of rigor or in our view of its importance? (shrink)

The desire for a meaningful life is ubiquitous, yet the ordinary concept of a meaningful life is poorly understood. Across six experiments (total N = 2,539), we investigated whether third-person attributions of meaning depend on the psychological states an agent experiences (feelings of interest, engagement, and fulfillment), or on the objective conditions of their life (e.g., their effects on others). Studies 1a–b found that laypeople think subjective and objective factors contribute independently to the meaningfulness of a person’s life. Studies 2a–b (...) found that positive mental states are thought to make a life more meaningful, even if derived from senseless activities (e.g., hand-copying the dictionary). Studies 3a–b found that agents engaged in morally bad activities are not thought to have meaningful lives, even if they feel fulfilled. In short, both an agents’ subjective mental states and objective impact on the world affect how meaningful their lives appear. (shrink)

Against arealist background, the paper starts by demonstrating the horror of the very popular doctrine, “Worldmaking”, according to which a known world is partly constructed by our imposition of concepts. The rest of the paper aims to make worldmaking hard. (i) It rejects the usual episternological and semantic paths to Worldmaking arguing that they use the wrong methodology and proceed in the wrong direction. (ii) It considers the relation between Worldmaking and the response-dependency theory of concepts. Philip Pettit has proposed (...) a global version of that theory: all our concepts are response-dependent. The paper argues that this theory provides an example of the semantic path to Worldmaking and for that reason alone should be rejected. (shrink)

Radical ecology typically brings to mind media images of ecological activists standing before loggers' saws, staging anti-nuclear marches, and confronting polluters on the high seas. Yet for more than twenty years, the activities of organizations such as the Greens and Earth First! have been influenced by a diverse, less-publicized group of radical ecological philosophers. It is their work—the philosophical underpinnings of the radical ecological movement—that is the subject of _Contesting Earth's Future_. The book offers a much-needed, balanced appraisal of radical (...) ecology's principles, goals, and limitations. Michael Zimmerman critically examines the movement's three major branches—deep ecology, social ecology, and ecofeminism. He also situates radical ecology within the complex cultural and political terrain of the late twentieth century, showing its relation to Martin Heidegger's anti-technological thought, 1960s counterculturalism, and contemporary theories of poststructuralism and postmodernity. An early and influential ecological thinker, Zimmerman is uniquely qualified to provide a broad overview of radical environmentalism and delineate its various schools of thought. He clearly describes their defining arguments and internecine disputes, among them the charge that deep ecology is an anti-modern, proto-fascist ideology. Reflecting both the movement's promise and its dangers, this book is essential reading for all those concerned with the worldwide ecological crisis. (shrink)

Founded in 1365, not long after the Great Plague ravaged Europe, the University of Vienna was revitalized in 1384 by prominent theologians displaced from Paris--among them Henry of Langenstein. Beginning with the 1384 revival, Michael Shank explores the history of the university and its ties with European intellectual life and the city of Vienna. In so doing he links the abstract discussions of university theologians with the burning of John Hus and Jerome of Prague at the Council of Constance (...) (1415-16) and the destruction of the Jewish community of Lower Austria (1421). Like most other scholars of the period, Henry of Langenstein (d. 1397) at one time believed that Aristotle's syllogistic was universally valid even in Trinitarian theology. In touch with the vibrant Jewish community in Vienna, Langenstein had high hopes of converting its members by logical argument. When he failed in his purpose, he lost his confidence in Aristotle's syllogistic as a universal tool of apologetics and handmaiden to Trinitarian theology. ("Unless you believe, you shall not understand," he quoted from Isaiah, in order to express his change of opinion.) During the next generation, the intellectual climate at the university changed from academic openness to increasing rigidity, and theologians turned from argument to persecution. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Dyson explores the fate of pride from Christain theology to the social responsibilities of self-regard and regard for the society as a whole. Also discusses pride in black communities.

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 theory of important criteria -- Value judgments and the theory of important criteria -- The rationality of aesthetic value judgments -- Inapplicable concepts -- Morality and ignorance -- Time in counterfactuals -- Assertion and belief -- Understanding free will -- Selective necessity and the free-will problem -- Is virtue possible? -- Morality not a system of imperatives -- Review of Alvin Plantinga's God and other minds -- Utilitarianism, moral dilemmas, and moral cost -- Object utilitarianism -- Utilitarian virtue -- (...) Moderation, rationality, and virtue -- Rational dilemmas and rational supererogation -- Ethics naturalized -- Nietzsche and virtue ethics -- Caring versus the philosophers -- Global caring, global justice -- Empathy and objectivity -- In place of moral reasoning -- Some thoughts for the future. (shrink)