Two studies investigated how planning affects intention-behavior consistency. In Study 1 an experimental group and control group which each consisted of 14 undergraduates were requested in computerized interviews to indicate which activities they intended to perform on the following day. Subjects in the experimental group were also requested in a second phase of the interviews to specify when and where they intended to perform the activities. The results showed that activities for which time and place had been specified were more (...) likely to be performed. In Study 2 another 75 undergraduates volunteered to participate in an experiment in which they were requested to perform an activity (reporting mood effects of reading a prose excerpt) by themselves on one of three following days. One group of subjects only agreed to perform the activity, another group agreed to perform the activity as well as indicated when and where they would do it, and a third group in addition to this indicated which other activities they would perform on the same day. In support of the hypothesis that planning an activity increases the likelihood that it will be performed, the results showed that subjects who indicated other activities more frequently performed the target activity. More efficient time management resulting from planning may account for the findings, although further research is needed to show this conclusively. (shrink)

The results of a hypothetical experiment requiring a sequence of quantum measurements are obtained retrospectively, after the experiment has been completed, from a single reading of an “apparatus register.” The experiment is carried out reversibly and Schrödinger's equation is satisfied until the terminal reading of the register. The technique is illustrated using a feasible method of measuring photon spin as the quantum “object” observable and using the photon energy as the “apparatus register.” The technique is used to discuss the “watchdog” (...) effect, the effect of repeated measurements inhibiting quantum jumps. (shrink)

In this exemplary study of Cassiodorus, O'Donnell offers us a biography of the man, an analysis of his writings, and a reevaluation of Cassiodorus' contributions to western culture. The search for the man and for the motivation of the writings are entirely interdependent so that the image of the man emerges from the meticulous and often brilliant study of the literature.

In earlier work on limitarianism, I argued that setting an upper limit to the amount of wealth that people can permissibly have is justified when decision-makers are unaware of or disagree about the appropriate distributive criterion or if they are unaware of people’s relevant features (or both). Robert Huseby has raised several powerful objections to this presumptive argument for limitarianism. Some of these objections call for a revision of my defence of presumptive limitarianism while others call for clarification, both (...) of which I aim to do in this chapter. I will argue that unless decision-makers have substantive reasons to suggest otherwise, they must act as if there is an upper limit to the amount of wealth that people can permissibly have. (shrink)

Following David Lewis, Ted Sider has famously argued that unrestricted first-order quantification cannot be vague. His argument was intended as a type of reductio: its strategy was to show that the mere hypothesis of unrestricted quantifier vagueness collapses into the claim that unrestricted quantification is precise. However, this short article considers two natural reconstructions of the argument, and shows that each can be resisted. The theme will be that each reconstruction of the argument involves assumptions which advocates of vague (...) quantification have independent reason to reject. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DOES SCIENCE SAY THAT HUMAN EXISTENCE IS POINTLESS? ROBERT M. AUGROS St. Anselm College Manchester, New Hampshire I N AN ARTICLE published by Marine Biological Laboratory, historian of science William Provine claims that contemporary science imposes on us the view that human existence is meaningless: "Modern science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with mechanistic principles. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. (...) There are no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable.... Modern science directly implies that there are no inherent moral or ethical laws, no absolute guiding principles for human society.... When I die I shall rot and that is the end of me. There is no hope of life everlasting.... Free will as it is traditionally conceived, the freedom to make uncoerced unpredictable choices among alternative possible courses of action, simply does not exist.... There is no ultimate meaning for humans."1 Provine's position can be reduced to five denials: no purposefulness in nature, no God, no ethical principles, no immortality, no free will. Are these denials scientific as Provine contends? No one would maintain that they are scientific in the sense of being proven. No experimental science claims to prove any of them. One occasionally finds one of the five denials, simply asserted without evidence, in the introduction to a textbook or in the popular writings of a scientist, but no scientific proofs are ever offered. Provine himself, in the article proclaiming these denials, neither offers nor refers to any such proofs. He seems to 1 William Provine, "Evolution and The Foundation of Ethics," MBL Science 3 (1988): 27-28. 577 578 ROBERT M. AUGROS concede that there are none when he says "modern science directly implies," not proves. If the five denials are not scientific in the sense of being proven, perhaps they are nevertheless indispensable as background assumptions to make the scientific method work properly. Must the working scientist adopt Provine's five denials to make discoveries or to explain phenomena? The founders of modern science did not think so, and did not assume the five denials in their work. On the contrary, they integrated into their scientific work the existence of God, purpose in the universe, free choice, the immortality of the human soul, and the reality of ethics. For instance, Copernicus argued that the cosmos must be harmonious because' it is made by the "best and most orderly Workman of all."2 By explicitly following the principle that nature is purposeful, William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood.3 Seventeenth-century chemist Robert Boyle wrote: "When I consider the rational soul as an immaterial and immortal being, that bears the image of its divine maker, being endowed with a capacious intellect, and a will, that no creature can force: I am by these considerations disposed to think the soul of man a nobler and more valuable being, than the whole corporeal world."4 It was the passion of Kepler's life to investigate the deeper harmonies of the heavens, for, in his words, the "fuller knowledge of God through nature."5 "Galileo never thought of denying an ultimately religious answer to the problems of the universe," writes E. A. Burtt.6 Galileo repudiated Aristotle's physics but praised and extolled his ethics. Isaac Newton con2 Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions ofthe HemJenly Spheres, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis, vol. 16 of Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 508. 3 William Harvey, "An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals," vol. 26 of Great Books of the Western World, ed. Philip Goetz (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990), 285. 4 Robert Boyle, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1672) vol. 4, 19. sJoannis Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia, ed. Ch. Frisch (Frankfurt and Erlangen, 1858), vol. 8, 688. 6 Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950), 93. IS HUMAN EXISTENCE POINTLESS? 579 sidered his Principia to be one great proof for the existence of God whom he describes in his famous General Scholium as living, intelligent, perfect, eternal, omniscient, and omnipresent.7 If the founding fathers of modern... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Post-Genomic RevolutionA Paradigm Shift for Biopsychosocial SystemsClaude Robert Cloninger, MD, PhD (bio)The pstchologist Danielle Dick and psychiatrist Kenneth Kendler (DK) began an ongoing study in 2011 called Spit for Science (S4S) in which they obtained saliva as a peripheral source of DNA along with assessment of detailed self-report information on alcohol and other substance use, selected personality traits, and psychosocial history about the students entering a (...) large university (Dick et al., 2014). They hoped to identify the genes underlying the heritability of alcohol use and related behaviors to inform students about their individual risk, and thereby to promote increased self-awareness and health. The students were highly cooperative volunteers, and many peer-reviewed research papers have been published from these data.Eric Turkheimer, a psychologist who studies how genes and environments shape the development of human behavior (Harden et al., 2007; Loehlin et al., 2009; Turkheimer et al., 2003), reviewed all the resulting publications coming from S4S along with coauthor Sarah Greer (Turkheimer & Greer, 2024). Turkheimer and Greer (TG) were surprised to find the study has failed to identify any genes that have substantial (“nontrivial”) effects on reported levels of consumption or problems related to their use of alcohol or other substances, except for a variant of the gene for aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2), which was already known to cause many people of Asian descent to flush when they drink alcohol. TG state that, “Again and again, the results of S4S investigations demonstrated tiny, and frequently null, contributions of genetics to differences in drinking and related behaviors among college students. GWAS [genome-wide association studies] revealed practically no genome-wide significant SNPs [single nucleotide polymorphisms], and the SNPs identified at less stringent levels of significance were never mentioned more than once” (Turkheimer & Greer, 2024).TG concluded that the design, execution, psychometric measures, and analysis of the data were excellent. However, they also discuss facts that raise doubts about the adequacy of the design and methods. Namely, it is an inconvenient fact, [End Page 429] but widely known, that approaches to GWAS that are frequently used in psychiatric genetics require huge samples (often hundreds of thousands) to detect statistically significant genes because the observed effects have consistently been weak whenever genes are assumed to act independently, as did DK. Consequently, polygenic risk scores are weak and inconsistent predictors of behavioral phenotypes (Zwir et al., 2020c). Nevertheless, TG fault DK and their coauthors for an overemphasis on statistical significance in large samples rather than prominently reporting that the observed effect sizes of genes were only weakly and inconsistently associated with any measured features of substance use.TG report that they were surprised by the weak and inconsistent findings from genetic variants from this GWAS because they knew that twin and family studies (i.e., what they call “genetics at altitude”) have previously found strong and consistent evidence of the heritability of phenotypes like those measured by DK. For example, in my own research with adoptees separated from their biological parents at an early age and reared by adoptive parents, the risk of alcohol abuse in adoptees was strongly predicted by alcohol abuse and related behaviors in their biological, but not adoptive, parents (Bohman et al., 1981; Cloninger et al., 1981; Sigvardsson et al., 1996) and by their childhood personality, particularly novelty seeking, when the children were followed into young adulthood (Cloninger, 1987; Cloninger et al., 1988). However, it is well-known that the methods used by DK for GWAS consistently fail to detect most of the heritable variance for behavioral phenotypes estimated in twin studies, which include much variability from complex patterns of gene–gene interaction (Table 1) (Cloninger & Zwir, 2022). This consistent observation in GWAS studies that assume genes act independently is called the missing or hidden heritability problem.Nevertheless, DK expressed optimism in 2011 that genome-wide measurement of genetic variants would identify genetic markers to predict risk of alcohol-related phenotypes in college students. They do so because they assume that all the information about heritable processes can be extracted from genome-wise scans of SNPS. The heritable phenotypes of interest in S4S included patterns of use of alcohol and other recreational... (shrink)

In a political version of the old biological cliché “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” Cornelius Castoriadis seems to embody in his personal evolution fetal stages in the labor pains of the left since World War II. According to Dick Howard in the The Marxian Legacy Castoriadis was a youthful member of the Greek Communist Party where opposition to Stalinism lead him to Trotsky. After the war and the resistance he emerges in Paris studying philosophy and cuts his political teeth on the (...) splits and schisms within the political fantasy world of the IV International. He founds Socialisme ou Barbarie, abandons Trotskyism, moves through the Western Marxist tradition and after more splits and more journals he ends up, after May 68, a practicing psychoanalyst. (shrink)

This fresh and original book argues that the central questions in Hegel's practical philosophy are the central questions in modern accounts of freedom: What is freedom, or what would it be to act freely? Is it possible so to act? And how important is leading a free life? Robert Pippin argues that the core of Hegel's answers is a social theory of agency, the view that agency is not exclusively a matter of the self-relation and self-determination of an individual (...) but requires the right sort of engagement with and recognition by others. Using a detailed analysis of key Hegelian texts, he develops this interpretation to reveal the bearing of Hegel's claims on many contemporary issues, including much-discussed core problems in the liberal democratic tradition. His important study will be valuable for all readers who are interested in Hegel's philosophy and in the modern problems of agency and freedom. (shrink)

Robert John Ackermann deals decisively with the problem of relativism that has plagued post-empiricist philosophy of science. Recognizing that theory and data are mediated by data domains (bordered data sets produced by scientific instruments), he argues that the use of instruments breaks the dependency of observation on theory and thus creates a reasoned basis for scientific objectivity. Originally published in 1985. 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)

Natural selection is commonly interpreted as the fundamental mechanism of evolution. Questions about how selection theory can claim to be the all-sufficient explanation of evolution often go unanswered by today's neo-Darwinists, perhaps for fear that any criticism of the evolutionary paradigm will encourage creationists and proponents of intelligent design.In Biological Emergences, Robert Reid argues that natural selection is not the cause of evolution. He writes that the causes of variations, which he refers to as natural experiments, are independent of (...) natural selection; indeed, he suggests, natural selection may get in the way of evolution. Reid proposes an alternative theory to explain how emergent novelties are generated and under what conditions they can overcome the resistance of natural selection. He suggests that what causes innovative variation causes evolution, and that these phenomena are environmental as well as organismal.After an extended critique of selectionism, Reid constructs an emergence theory of evolution, first examining the evidence in three causal arenas of emergent evolution: symbiosis/association, evolutionary physiology/behavior, and developmental evolution. Based on this evidence of causation, he proposes some working hypotheses, examining mechanisms and processes common to all three arenas, and arrives at a theoretical framework that accounts for generative mechanisms and emergent qualities. Without selectionism, Reid argues, evolutionary innovation can more easily be integrated into a general thesis. Finally, Reid proposes a biological synthesis of rapid emergent evolutionary phases and the prolonged, dynamically stable, non-evolutionary phases imposed by natural selection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Hume's Skepticism about Inductive Inference N. SCOTT ARNOLD IT HAS BEEN A COMMONPLACE among commentators on Hume's philosophy that he was a radical skeptic about inductive inference. In addition, he is alleged to have been the first philosopher to pose the so-called problem of induction. Until recently, however, Hume's argument in this connection has not been subject to very close scrutiny. As attention has become focused on this (...) argument, a debate has been shaping up concerning just what Hume intended to establish here. The principal purpose of this article is to settle this interpretive issue as decisively as the texts permit. I should also like to locate Hume's main argument about induction in the larger context of his discussion of skepti- cism in book 1 of the Treatise. I shall suggest that arguments for the radical skepticism commonly attributed to Hume can be found only very late in book 1 of the Treatise and that the most famous argument about inductive inference establishes and is intended to establish only a relatively modest form of skepticism. The argument under consideration can found in book l, part 3, section 6 of the Treatise. It can also be found in essays 4 and 5 of the Enquiries and in the abstract of the Treatise published anonymously by Hume. I shall concen- trate on the Treatise version since it is the first and perhaps most explicit formulation of the argument and because part of my purpose is to place this argument in the larger context of book 1 of the Treatise. The received opinion concerning Hume's argument has it that Hume was highly skeptical about the mind's claims to knowledge about the future (or, more generally, about the unobserved). All beliefs arrived at via inductive I should like to thank M. G. Anderson, John Bahde, Jon Nordy, and Robert Paul Wolff, as well as David Fate Norton and a referee for the Journal of the History of Philosophy, for helpful comments on earlier drafts on this article. 32 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY inferences are unreasonable or unjustified. The alternative interpretation, to be defended below, is that Hume held that no such belief is or can be rendered certain relative to past experience and that such beliefs are not, upon that account, unreasonable or unjustified. Something like this inter- pretation has been defended by Tom L. Beauchamp, Thomas Mappes, and Alexander Rosenberg. ~ My view differs from theirs in that I shall argue that Hume did offer arguments for the more radical skepticism commonly attri- buted to him (though it is unclear whether he regarded them as decisive). These arguments, however, come at the end of book ~ of the Treatise and are independent of the more famous argument to be discussed below. Defenders of the received view are both numerous and distinguished. Versions of this interpretation of the main argument can be found in the writings of Karl Popper, Wesley Salmon, F. L. Will, and Norman Kemp Smith; most recently a variation on the standard interpretation has been defended by Barry Stroud. The fullest and most elaborate defense of the standard interpretation can be found in a monograph by D. C. Stove. '~ Stove's discussion is perhaps the most impressive because of his painstaking efforts to lay bare the structure of Hume's reasoning and to give a line-by- line analysis of the argument. This has the effect of bringing more clearly into focus the main grounds for the standard view. If this standard interpre- tation is correct, then Hume's position is that scientific method is epistemically no better than "superstition" and "enthusiasm." And, Hume would be among those for whom this claim, if true, would be very bad news, because one of his primary purposes in the Treatise is to construct a science of man. Thus, this argument is of considerable internal significance because, if my opponents are correct, Hume appears to have cut the ground out from under what he took to be one of his most important projects -- the construc- tion of a science of man. The other feature of this argument that makes it worthy of serious con- sideration is that it is philosophically... (shrink)

Who can divine the intentions of the human heart, the motives that guide behavior? Some of the reasons for our actions lie on the surface of consciousness, whereas others are more deeply embedded in the recesses of the mind. Recovering motives and intentions is a principal job of the historian. For without some attribution of mental attitudes, actions cannot be characterized and decisions assessed. The same overt behavior, after all, might be described as “mailing a letter” or “fomenting a revolution.” (...) The recovery of intentions is crucial for the historian’s narrative. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article provides an account of virtues as praiseworthy traits of character with a far-reaching capacity to influence conduct. Virtues supply their possessors both with good reasons that indicate, for diverse contexts, what sort of thing should be done and with motivation to do them. This motivational power of virtue is crucial for the question of what kind of person, or businessperson, one wants to be. The article shows how the contrast between virtue ethics and rule ethics is often drawn (...) too sharply and indicates how virtue theories can incorporate both theoretical and practical uses of rules. More generally, it shows how a virtue orientation affects attitudes in management practices and how an understanding of certain virtues can help in making better decisions, both ethically and in relation to success in business. (shrink)

Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy-altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but (...) is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness--a measure of perceived self-other overlap--was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy-altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness. (shrink)

This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy is dedicated to Timothy Williamson's work on modality. It consists of a new paper by Williamson followed by papers on Williamson's work on modality, with each followed by a reply by Williamson. -/- Contributors: Andrew Bacon, Kit Fine, Peter Fritz, Jeremy Goodman, John Hawthorne, Øystein Linnebo, Ted Sider, Robert Stalnaker, Meghan Sullivan, Gabriel Uzquiano, Barbara Vetter, Timothy Williamson, Juhani Yli-Vakkuri.

Mit diesem Buch wird erstmals ein umfassendes und systematisches Referenzwerk zu Christian Wolff vorgelegt, das alle wichtigen Aspekte zu Leben und Werk des Philosophen behandelt. Das Handbuch ist von international renommierten Experten verfasst und behandelt neben der Biographie und der philosophiegeschichtlichen Rolle Wolffs sowohl sein philosophisches als auch sein naturwissenschaftlich-mathematisches Werk.

In his collection George extends the critique of liberalism he expounded in Making Men Moral and also goes beyond it to show how contemporary natural law theory provides a superior way of thinking about basic problems of justice and political morality. It is written with the same combination of stylistic elegance and analytical rigour that distinguished his critical work. Not content merely to defend natural law from its cultural despisers, he deftly turns the tables and deploys the idea to mount (...) a stunning attack on regnant liberal beliefs about such issues as abortion, sexuality, and the place of religion in public life. (shrink)

The book aims to revitalise the interdisciplinary debate about evolutionary ethics and substantiate the idea that evolution science can provide a rational and robust framework for understanding morality. It also traces pathways for knowledge-based choices to be made about directions for future long-term biological evolution and cultural development in view of adaptation to the expected, probable and possible future and the ecological sustainability of our planetary environment The authors discuss ethical challenges associated with the major biosocial sources of human variation: (...) individual variation, inter-personal variation, inter-group variation, and inter-generational variation. This book approaches the long-term challenges of the human species in a holistic way. Researchers will find an extensive discussion of the key theoretical scientific aspects of the relationship between evolution and morality. Policy makers will find information that can help them better understand from where we are coming and inspire them to make choices and take actions in a longer-term perspective. The general public will find food for thoughts. (shrink)

In a style that is both philosophically sophisticated and accessible to general readers, Robert Almeder introduces readers to the vigorous debate in the scientific community about the possibility of personal survival after death. He argues that belief in some form of personal survival is as empirically justifiable as our belief in the past existence of dinosaurs. Drawing on 21 of the best case studies in reincarnation, apparitions of the dead, ostensible possession, out-of-body experiences, and trance mediumships, Death and Personal (...) Survival offers a comprehensive discussion of the best empirical evidence in each of these areas and refutes alternative explanations offered by sceptics. (shrink)

This book considers the relation between language and thought. Robert Wardy explores this huge topic by analyzing linguistic relativism with reference to a Chinese translation of Aristotle's Categories. He addresses some key questions, such as, do the basic structures of language shape the major thought patterns of its native speakers? Could philosophy be guided and constrained by the language in which it is done? And does Aristotle survive rendition into Chinese intact? Wardy's answers will fascinate philosophers, Sinologists, classicists, linguists (...) and anthropologists, and make a major contribution to the scholarly literature. (shrink)

In this paper, we will consider a phenomenon known as inverse linking, a term coined by May (1977) to describe the most salient readings of sentences such as “Someone from every city despises it.”.

I want to begin by thanking Judith Green for organizing this symposium, and all the contributors for their thoughtful attention to my work.Pragmatism is currently undergoing an apparent revival, with a number of philosophers not normally associated with the movement claiming to have joined the club: following the lead of Dick Rorty, Isaac Levi, and Hilary Putnam, Robert Brandom and Huw Price have also declared their pragmatist allegiance. I, too, have signed on. But, as Seth Joshua Thomas astutely (...) notes in his essay, should those who have labored long and hard during times when the writings of Peirce, James, and Dewey were neglected (and often brusquely dismissed) take these self-ascriptions seriously? After all.. (shrink)

This volume offers a selection of some of the best and most interesting articles that have been written on ethics and the environment in the past two decades. It constitutes an ideal introduction to the main debates in the area, dealing with issues such as duties to future people, resource conservatism, species and wilderness preservation, the relevance of ecology to ethics, ecofeminism, and the tension between political liberalism and environmentalism. This book will be of interest not just to professional philosophers (...) and students of philosophy, but to anyone who wishes to learn about the beliefs and principles which underlie environmentalism. (shrink)

In The Phenomenology of Religious Belief, the renowned philosopher Michael J. Shapiro investigates how art - and in particular literature and film - can impact upon both traditional interpretations and critical studies of religious beliefs and experiences. In doing so, he examines the work of prolific and award-winning writers such as Toni Morrison, Philip K. Dick and Robert Coover. By placing their work in conjunction with critical analyses of media by the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo (...) Pasolini and combining it with the work of groundbreaking thinkers such as George Canguilhem, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Shapiro takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to the question of how life should be lived. His assessment of phenomenological subjectivity also leads him to question the nature of political theology and extend the criticism of Pauline theology. (shrink)

One of the leading thinkers to emerge in the postwar conservative intellectual revival was the sociologist Robert Nisbet. His book The Quest for Community, published in 1953, stands as one of the most persuasive accounts of the dilemmas confronting modern society. Nearly a half century before Robert Putnam documented the atomization of society in Bowling Alone, Nisbet argued that the rise of the powerful modern state had eroded the sources of community—the family, the neighborhood, the church, the guild. (...) Alienation and loneliness inevitably resulted. But as the traditional ties that bind fell away, the human impulse toward community led people to turn even more to the government itself, allowing statism—even totalitarianism—to flourish. This edition of Nisbet’s magnum opus features a brilliant introduction by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and three critical essays. Published at a time when our communal life has only grown weaker and when many Americans display cultish enthusiasm for a charismatic president, this new edition of The Quest for Community shows that Nisbet’s insights are as relevant today as ever. (shrink)

The Renaissance development of science fulfilled the ancient ideal of integrating quantitative and qualitative thinking, but failed to recognize valuational thinking and thus deprived moral, aesthetic, and political thought of cognitive status. The task of this book is to reconstruct the concept of thinking in order to exhibit valuation, not reason, as the foundation for thinking and to integrate valuational with quantitative and qualitative modes. Part I explains the broad thesis, interpreting the problem of the foundations for thinking and providing (...) a general theory of value. Part II explains the role of valuation at the imaginative level of thinking with discussions of synthesis, perception, form, and art. The method of reconstruction requires a cosmology that is generated in successive waves. (shrink)

Book 10 of the Laws sets out Plato's last thoughts on the gods, piety, and religion. Robert Mayhew presents a new English translation of this important text with a detailed commentary that highlights its philosophical, political, and religious significance.