The dominant and deceptively simple theme of this book is the relationship between the moral environment of the courtroom and that of the society in which the court is situated. Like other Past and Present conference proceedings, the volume ranges widely across time and space, from ancient Greece to twentieth-century Africa. As a consequence, it encompasses not only the highly professional legal systems of the Roman, later medieval and modern worlds, but also the relatively unprofessionalised courts of classical Athens and (...) of the early middle ages and the alien, imposed legal systems of colonial Rhodesia and Kenya. The Moral World of the Law is based upon papers delivered at the conference of that name, sponsored by the journal Past and Present and held at the University of Birmingham in 1996. (shrink)

R. S. Peters, C. A. Mace; VII—Emotions and the Category of Passivity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 117–142, h.

This paper argues that, contrary to the claims of Alan Chalmers, Boyle understood his experimental work to be intimately related to his mechanical philosophy. Its central claim is that the mechanical philosophy has a heuristic structure that motivates and gives direction to Boyle's experimental programme. Boyle was able to delimit the scope of possible explanations of any phenomenon by positing both that all qualities are ultimately reducible to a select group of mechanical qualities and that all explanations of natural phenomena (...) are to be in terms of the operations of machines and are to appeal only to qualities that are already familiar. This is illustrated by his investigations into the Torricellian experiment. Boyle's explanation of the elevation of the mercurial cylinder by appeal to the spring of the air was an intermediate mechanical explanation. Boyle was convinced that the spring of the air was ultimately reducible to the mechanical qualities. This in turn had implications for his research into the cause of respiration. In a move that was both parsimonious and consistent with the broad requirements of the mechanical philosophy, Boyle was able to solve the problem of the cause of the inflow of air into the lungs by appeal to his research in pneumatics. This application of a mechanical explanation in pneumatics to physiology is just what one would expect if the mechanical philosophy was as universal as Boyle claimed it to be. Therefore, far from Boyle's experiments having a life of their own, they were clearly directed by and understood in terms of the mechanical philosophy.Keywords: Air-pump; Boyle; Chalmers; Experiment; Explanation; Mechanism. (shrink)

Two medical essays in the hand of John Locke survive amongst the Shaftesbury Papers in the National Archives (National Archives PRO 30/24/47/2, ff. 31r–38v and ff. 49r–56r). Since the 1960s their authorship has been disputed. Some scholars have attributed them to the London physician Thomas Sydenham, others have attributed them to Locke. Detailed analyses of their contents and the context of their composition provide very strong evidence for Lockean authorship. This is reinforced by the application of the most recent techniques (...) of computational stylistics. (shrink)

In this article I examine Skinner's objections to mentalism. I conclude that his only valid objections concern the "specious explanations" that mentalism might afford ? explanations that are incomplete, circular, or faulty in other ways. Unfortunately, the mere adoption of behavioristic terminology does not solve that problem. It camouflages the nature of "private events," while providing no protection from specious explanations. I argue that covert states and events are causally effective, and may be sufficiently different in their nature to deserve (...) a name other than "behavior."To call such events"mental"does not force a dualistic metaphysics: Such a distinction can be easily assimilated by an "emergent behaviorism." Emergent behaviorism would make explicit use of theories. It would be inductive and pragmatic, and would evaluate hypothetical constructs in terms of their utility in clarifying and solving the outstanding problems of the discipline. (shrink)

We examined Confucian moral philosophy, primarily the Analects, to determine how Confucian ethics could help managers regulate their own behavior (self-regulation) to maintain an ethical standard of practice. We found that some Confucian virtues relevant to self-regulation are common to Western concepts of management ethics such as benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, and trustworthiness. Some are relatively unique, such as ritual propriety and filial piety. We identify seven Confucian principles and discuss how they apply to achieving ethical self-regulation in management. In addition, (...) we examined some of the unique Confucian practices to achieve self-regulation including ritual and music. We balanced the framework by exploring the potential problems in applying Confucian principles to develop ethical self-regulation including whistle blowing. Confucian moral philosophy offers an indigenous Chinese theoretical framework for developing ethical self-regulation in managers. This is relevant for managers and those who relate to managers in Confucian-oriented societies, such as China, Korea, Japan, and Singapore. We recommend further research to examine if the application of the Confucian practices outlined here actually work in regulating the ethical behavior of managers in modern organizations. (shrink)

This article explores a framework for analyses of what has variously been termed the ‘implied’, ‘imagined’, ‘virtual’ or ‘putative’ reader/addressee – the effect by which ostensibly ‘monologic’ texts, such as news media commentary, political pronouncements and academic essays project particular attitudes, beliefs and expectations on to the reader/addressee. The framework is demonstrated in being applied to an examination of the construal of putative addressee positioning in a selection of mass media texts concerned with the Israeli military’s invasion of Gaza in (...) 2014. The framework is novel in the way in which it mobilises the account of the options for dialogistic positioning offered by the appraisal-framework literature, combined with some insights from Toulmin’s notion of the argumentative ‘warrant’. Conclusions are offered as to how such analyses of the readers being ‘written into the text’ can extend insights into the rhetorical workings of such texts and their ideological functionality in naturalising particular value positions. (shrink)

R. S. Peters on Education and Ethics reissues seven titles from Peters' life's work. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the books are concerned with the philosophy of education and ethics. Topics include moral education and learning, authority and responsibility, psychology and ethical development and ideas on motivation amongst others. The books discuss more traditional theories and philosophical thinkers as well as exploring later ideas in a way which makes the subjects they discuss still relevant today.

Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind is one of a handful of texts that began the physicalist revolution in the philosophy of mind. In this collection, distinguished philosophers examine what we still owe to it, how to expand it, as well as looking back on how it came about.

This collection of new essays on John Locke's philosophy provides the most up-to-date entrée into the exciting developments taking place in the study of one of the most important contributors to modern thought. Covering Locke's natural philosophy, his political and moral thought and his philosophy of religion, this book brings together the pioneering work of some of the world's leading Locke scholars.

There is a conflict of interest in behaviorism between diction and content, between clean speech and effective speech, between what we say and what we know. This article gives a framework for speech that is both clean and effective, that respects graded validation of hypotheses, and that favors distinction over doctrine. The article begins with the description of SDT, a mathematical model of discrimination based on statistical decision theory, which serves as leitmotif. It adopts Skinner's distinction between tacts and mands, (...) the former as responses under the predominant control of the stimulus and the latter as responses under the predominant control of the reinforcer. To analyze behavior is to understand the relative contribution of each of these loci of control, measured as d' and C, respectively. SDT is then applied to causal attributions. It is shown that Skinner's fundamental model of behavior, the three-term contingency, is itself a causal structure, with the initiating stimulus an efficient cause, the reinforcer a final cause, and the response and its various components the substrate upon which these act. In light of these correspondences, covert (mental) processes are viewed as links in a causal chain, under joint control of initiating and reinforcing stimuli. Their ascription is an inference, made with confidence when the links rise to the surface and with dubiety as they sink to the abyss. There exists no threshold at which the links become a different kind of thing; there are only gradients of clarity and confidence about what we take them to be. The host to these processes has a privileged but corrigible perspective on them and on the history of reinforcement that led to them. Skinner's model of the operant is a useful causal model of many nested levels, including covert processes such as cognition. In the avatar of SDT his model provides a tool for qualifying verbal behavior, including descriptions of cognition. (shrink)

In foreign policy-making there exists a tension between what the executive is prepared to do and what parliament or public interest groups would want it to do. A recent study of domestic pressure on foreignpolicy-making in the Netherlands has shown that there exists a close connection between the success of public interest groups in changing foreign policy behavior and their ability to mobilize parliamentary support for their efforts. That study, entitled Controversies at Home, was based on the results of 16 (...) case-studies of recent controversial foreign policy decisions.Foreign ministries aften use the need for secrecy, coherence and consistency as arguments to resist change. The role of the national parliament in foreign policy-making deserves to be strengthened. In this respect some of the experiences of the United States Congress could be applied to parliaments in other countries. The possibilities are discussed with specific reference to the situation in the Netherlands. (shrink)

This article examines the views of René Descartes, Robert Boyle, and John Locke on essence and kinds and outlines the polemical stances that motivate and direct each of their views. It describes the ontological categories to which they subscribed and their own speculative theories about the actual kinds in the world. It categories to which they subscribed and their own speculative theories about the actual kinds in the world and discusses the late-Aristotelian theory of substantial forms.

There are at least three deep and yet creative tensions in John Locke's writings on the knowledge of the natural world. An exposition of these tensions provides the framework for this chapter. The chapter provides an account of the development of Locke's views from his early medical essays of the late 1660s to his last published writings on natural philosophy. The central locus for Locke's "philosophy of science" will be the Essay. Chymical medicine provided the main field in which Locke (...) was regularly involved in experimentation. Locke believed that geometry and arithmetic presented paradigm examples of the sort of demonstrative reasoning that would be involved in a science of nature, that is, a demonstrative natural philosophy. An important consequence of Locke's ideal of a corpuscular metric is an ongoing concern with metrology. By the early 1690s, Locke modified his views on natural philosophy in the light of the Newtonian achievement. (shrink)

This paper addresses both semantic issues of countability in linguistics, and philosophical issues arising from the problem of the many. I argue (i) that the problem of the many is orthogonal to vagueness and we should look to the semantics of count nouns and numerals for its solution; (ii) that the problem of the many is a challenge for contemporary mereological analyses of count nouns in semantics; but (iii) that the count criterion in these theories can be weakened to avoid (...) the problem. Specifically, _weak quantization_ is proposed as the criterion: a sum, _x_, counts as _n_ _P_s if and only if _x_ has _n_ disjoint parts, each of which is in the extension of _P_, but where the sum of no two of them is also in the extension of _P_. I show how importing this idea into the semantics of numerals provides a semantic means of dissolving the paradox. (shrink)

R S Peters; Education and Justification, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 28–38, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1.

Layers in Husserl's Phenomenology situates Husserl firmly within the trajectory of later Continental thought and contributes to the recent reconsideration of Husserl as a legitimate precursor to the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida.

This is an online book exhibition at the University of Otago Library. It contains images of Hume's copy of Berkeley's New Theory of Vision, 1709.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about the state, nature, and practices related to British philosophy in the seventeenth century. The book is divided into five parts dealing with the philosophy of nature, the study of knowledge and human understanding, moral philosophy, political philosophy, and the works of leading seventeenth-century philosophers, including Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Hobbes. The chapter also discusses key developments in modern philosophy during this period, which include heightened (...) historiographical awareness and the reassessment of the philosophical canon. (shrink)

This chapter examines the main theories of material qualities developed by leading British philosophers during the seventeenth century, describes the taxonomy of qualities during this period, and analyzes the epistemological and metaphysical theses that influenced the development of the theory of material qualities in Great Britain. It also considers the relevant works of Thomas Hobbes, Walter Charleton, Robert Boyle, John Locke, and Isaac Newton.

This chapter provides an overview of John Locke's theory of knowledge.

R S Peters; Education and the Educated Man, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 4, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 5–20, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.