William of Malmesbury's Regesta Regum Anglorum is one of the great histories of England, and one of the most important historical works of the European Middle Ages. Although its focus is national, its scope encompasses most of Western Europe and beyond, providing a full-scale account of the First Crusade. Apart from its formidable learning, it is characterized by narrative skill and entertainment value - with topics including unpowered flight and Henry I's zoo. This edition in the Oxford Medieval Texts series (...) is the first modern translation and edition. A full historical introduction is supplied in Volume II. (shrink)

William of Malmesbury's Regesta Regum Anglorum is one of the great histories of England, and one of the most important historical works of the European Middle Ages. Although its focus is national, its scope encompasses most of Western Europe and beyond, providing a full-scale account of the First Crusade. Apart from its formidable learning, it is characterized by narrative skill and entertainment value - with topics including unpowered flight and Henry I's zoo. This edition in the Oxford Medieval Texts series (...) is the first modern translation and edition. A full historical introduction is supplied in Volume II. (shrink)

Das Ritual der Aštu : Rekonstruktion und Tradition eines hurritisch-hethitischen Rituals aus Boğazköy/Ḫattuša. By Susanne Görke. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, vol. 40. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Pp. xvii + 365. $179.

This volume contains ten papers presented at the fourth and concluding Hayden Colloquium of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960-61. Despite the generality of the title, the papers are devoted essentially to a consideration of the roles played by causal explanation and causal laws in the context of the social and biological sciences. Though the contributors are without exception distinguished scientists or philosophers, the volume suffers as a whole from the fact that the papers tend to be expository and (...) factual rather than critical. The result is a work from which helpful insights into the strategies and concerns of contemporary science can be gleaned, but one which at the same time tends to obscure if not actually suppress important philosophical issues surrounding the role of causal concepts in the biological and social sciences.—V. R. M. (shrink)

We argue that thoughts are structures of concepts, and that concepts should be individuated by their origins, rather than in terms of their semantic or epistemic properties. Many features of cognition turn on the vehicles of content, thoughts, rather than on the nature of the contents they express. Originalism makes concepts available to explain, with no threat of circularity, puzzling cases concerning thought. In this paper, we mention Hesperus/Phosphorus puzzles, the Evans-Perry example of the ship seen through different windows, and (...) Mates cases, and we believe that there are many additional applications. (shrink)

[R. M. Sainsbury] Evans argued that most ordinary proper names were Russellian: to suppose that they have no bearer is to suppose that they have no meaning. The first part of this paper addresses Evans's arguments, and finds them wanting. Evans also claimed that the logical form of some negative existential sentences involves 'really' (e.g. 'Hamlet didn't really exist'). One might be tempted by the view, even if one did not accept its Russellian motivation. However, I suggest that Evans gives (...) no adequate account of 'really', and I point to unclarities in Wiggins's similar, but distinct, attempt to use 'really' in the logical form of true negative existentials. /// [David Wiggins] Evans was not wrong (I maintain) to say that the senses of genuine proper names invoke and require objects. Names in fiction or hypothesis mimic such names. Pace Evans, Sainsbury and free logicians, proper names are scopeless. (Evans's 'Julius' is not a name.) Names create a presumption of existential generalization. In sentences such as 'Vulcan does not really exist', that presumption is bracketed. The sentence specifies by reference to story or report a concept identical with Vulcan and declares it be really uninstantiated. (The sentence, which partakes of play, is a kind of palimpsest.) It is explained why this second level view of 'exists' is to be preferred. (shrink)

I had a strange dream, or half-waking vision, not long ago. I found myself at the top of a mountain in the mist, feeling very pleased with myself, not just for having climbed the mountain, but for having achieved my life's ambition, to find a way of answering moral questions rationally. But as I was preening myself on this achievement, the mist began to clear, and I saw that I was surrounded on the mountain top by the graves of all (...) those other philosophers, great and small, who had had the same ambition, and thought they had achieved it. And I have come to see, reflecting on my dream, that, ever since, the hard-working philosophical worms have been nibbling away at their systems and showing that the achievement was an illusion. True, their skeletons, indigestible to worms, remained, and were surprisingly similar to one another. But I was led to think again about what one can, and what one cannot, achieve in this direction. (shrink)

This is a lively discussion between two perceptive philosophical thinkers as comfortable with vulnerable intimacy and abstract ideas as they are savvy with the aesthetics of oppression and the many neurotic loops of fear-based escape routes from the Real. With a deep concern for finding the best ways to build a healthy and sane society, their Integrating of East-West, Indigenous and ecological knowledges brings forward a synthesis of ideas to be reckoned with. Dr. Fisher, founder of The Fearology Institute and (...) Luke Barnesmoore a doctoral student in the Geography department at The University of British Columbia caress the contours of fear and fearlessness and the importance of admitting how much fear exists in most all places humans dwell in contemporary urban societies. if we are to avoid the worst catastrophe's of crises we face on the planet in the very near future, Fisher and Barnesmoore are sure that fear is going to be a major player in the outcomes. (shrink)

This book is divided into three parts: in Part I, R. M. Hare offers a justification for the use of philosophy of language in the treatment of moral questions, together with an overview of his moral philosophy of ‘universal prescriptivism’. The second part, and the core of the book, consists of five chapters originally presented as a lecture series under the title ‘A Taxonomy of Ethical Theories’. Hare identifies descriptivism and non‐descriptivism as the two main positions in modern moral philosophy. (...) The former he divides into Naturalism and Intuitionism, and the latter into Emotivism and Rationalism. Hare argues that all forms of descriptivism tend to lead to Relativism because the truth conditions of moral statements are culturally variant. Of the positions discussed, only Hare's own position, a form of Rationalism, which he calls Universal Prescriptivism, meets all of the requirements that an adequate ethical theory should meet. Part III consists of Hare's previously published essay ‘Could Kant have been a Utilitarian?’ (Utilitas 5, 1993). Here, Hare puts forward the controversial thesis that Kant's moral philosophy is, in its basic principles, compatible with utilitarianism. (shrink)

R. M. Sainsbury; IX*—Understanding and Theories of Meaning, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 80, Issue 1, 1 June 1980, Pages 127–144, https://doi.

From the Amazon.com description: On 5–6 April 1991, there was a conference on Kant at Florida State University; this volume collects the (revised versions of the) papers presented on that occasion. The occasion was, give or take a few months, the 90th birthday of Professor (Emeritus) William H. Werkmeister. Werkie (as all his friends call him) himself gave the final paper at this conference. Hence the inclusion of a paper by Werkie in a volume honoring him. Although he is primarily (...) known for his expertise in the field of Kantian philosophy, Werkie’s published scholarship has spanned a wide range of subjects for more than fifty years: his first book, A Philosophy of Science, appeared in 1940. (shrink)