The seven deadly sins have provided gossip, amusement, and the plots of morality plays for nearly fifteen hundred years. In Wicked Pleasures, well-known philosopher, business ethicist, and admitted sinner Robert C. Solomon brings together a varied group of contributors for a new look at the old catalogue of sins. Solomon introduces the sins as a group, noting their popularity and pervasiveness. From the formation of the canon by Pope Gregory the Great, the seven have survived the sermonizing of the (...) Reformation, the Inquisition, the Enlightenment, the brief French reign of supreme reason, the apotheoses of capitalism, communism, secular humanism and postmodernism, the writings of numerous rabbis and evangelical moralists, two series in the New York Times, and several bad movies. Taking their cue from this remarkable history, the contributors, including Thomas Pynchon, allowed one sin apiece, provide a non-sermonizing and relatively light-hearted romp through the domain of the deadly seven. (shrink)

This anthology of selections from the works of noted philosophers affords the student an immediate contact with the unique historical background of the philosophy of science. The selections, many of which have not been readily accessible, follow the development of the philosophy of science from 1786 to 1927. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editor designed to familiarize the reader with a particular philosopher and provide insights into his work. Joseph J. Kockelmans divides the selections into (...) several sections. Part 1, from 17861850, includes chapters by Immanuel Kant, on the metaphysical foundations of natural science, John Frederick William Herschel, on experience and the analysis of phenomena, William Whewell, on the nature and conditions of inductive science, and John Stuart Mill, on induction and the law of universal causation; part 2, from 18701899, includes chapters by Hermann Von Helmholtz, on the origin and significance of geometrical axioms, William Stanley Jevons, on the philosophy of inductive inference, John Bernard Stallo, on the kinetic theory of gasses and the conditions of the validity of scientific hypotheses, Ernst Mach, on the economical nature of physical inquiry, Karl Pearson, on perceptual and conceptual space, Emile Boutroux, on mechanical laws, Heinrich Hertz, on the appropriateness, correctness, and permissibility of scientific theories, and Ludwig Boltzmann, on the fundamental principles and basic equations of mechanics. The third part, covering the first decade of the twentieth century, includes chapters by Henri Jules Poincare, on science and reality, Charles Peirce, on Induction, Pierre Marie Duhem, on the laws of physics, William Ostwald, on energetism and mechanics, Emile Meyerson, on identity of thought and nature as the final goal of science, Ernst Cassirer, on functional concepts of natural science; part 4, from 19101927, includes chapters by Charles Dunbar Broad, on phenomenalism, Alfred North Whitehead, on time, space, and material, Bertrand Russell, on the world of physics and the world of sense, Norman Robert Cambbell, on the meaning of science, Moritz Schlick, on basic issues of the philosophy of natural science, and Percy Williams Bridgman, on the concepts of space, time, and causality. Philosophy of Science provides a concise single volume text to the discipline and enables students to understand and evaluate the various trends in our contemporary philosophy of science. Joseph J. Kockelmans is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Pennsylvania State Univers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:1 1 6 Philosophy and Literature 1.Jesse Kalin, "Philosophy Needs Literature: John Barth and Moral Nihilism,"Philosophy and Literature 1(1977): 170-82. 2.Kalin states, in summary fashion, that in argument by "exhibition" we are made aware that Jake's concern for Rennie is a "case of relative value which is genuinely reason giving" (p. 176). But he does not defend this claim, so we can only note it and pass on. 3.A. (...) C. Bradley, "Poetry for Poetry's Sake," Oxford Lectures On Poetry (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), p. 24. 4.On the "heresy of the separable substances," see Bradley, p. 12 ff., where he defends the claim that "subject is the opposite... of the whole poem. Substance is within the poem." Recall also Robert Frost's dictum that the poem is what remains after translation. 5.J. Glenn Gray, On Understanding Violence Philosophically and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 79. 6.Cf. Eliseo Vivas, "Critical Assizes," The Blue Guitar 1 (1975):84. "... The critic who is interested in going through literature to moral philosophy, political thought, social theory, or the rest, is a man the seriousness of whose interest in any of these disciplines can be questioned. As a moral philosopher, no novelist or literary critic can tie Kant's shoes or those of Bishop Butler; I know of no novelist or literary critic who as a political thinker can hold a candle to Edmund Burke or Michael Oakeshott, or who as a sociologist can rival Karl Marx or Max Weber. A literary critic who thinks he can go through literature to a well established discipline cultivated by the men I have mentioned or others of lesser stature is a dilettante in the pejorative sense of the term. He can't take his drink at the bar and take it straight; he sits in a booth and sweetens his bourbon with gingerale, or, God forbid, with Coca-Cola." 7.William Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p. 11. "An idea must be thought before it can be tested, but a principle encased in fiction has, most likely, not been thought at all. It has been used." HOW WIDE THE GULF? a rejoinder by Jesse Kalin Several rather loosely related but important theses can be abstracted from Curtler's remarks. First, that philosophy and literature are so different in character that it is hard to see how they can seriously have anything to do with each other. Second, that the main thesis of my paper—that philosophy at least sometimes needs literature as an essential stage in its program—is false. And third, that my interpretation of Barth's novels is, if not incorrect, only one of several conflicting readings and hence not able to support the claims I base upon it. I shall discuss each of these in turn. Jesse Kalin117 Throughout, Curtler tries to draw the difference between philosophy and literature as sharply as possible. He concludes that not only do they have no need for each other, but to the degree that one "succeeds as a poet he fails as a philosopher" (p. 115). What might appear to be overstatement (and thus most unphilosophical) is supported by a series of contrasts. Philosophy is a matter of proof, not intuition, of argumentation, not persuasion, of concepts, not images, and so on. However, this rigid and rather positivistic picture of philosophy, resting on a supposedly clear and unbridgeable distinction between philosophy and literature made in terms of method and style, is mistaken, and with it the corollary that the two have nothing to contribute to one another.1 If we look at the actual practice of major philosophers, especially modern ones, we will find that their styles are not readily describable in the terms Curtler suggests they should be to count as philosophy. Imagination, intuition, images, makings, even the actual construction of characters and "dramatic action," are in many cases central. Descartes, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Sartre are all cases in point. The essence of this supposed gulf between philosophy and literature is brought out when Curtler says "the way of... (shrink)

Selected by CHOICE as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1995.

In the decades since his death, Adorno's thinking has lost none of its capacity to unsettle the settled, and has proved hugely influential in social and cultural thought. To most people, the entertainment provided by television, radio, film, newspapers, astrology charts and CD players seem harmless enough. For Adorno, however, the culture industry that produces them is ultimately toxic in its effect on the social process. Here, Robert Witkin unpacks Adorno's notoriously difficult critique of popular culture in an engaging (...) and accessible style, looking first at the development of the overarching theories of authority, commodification and negative dialectics within which Adorno's work needs to be seen. This book is an essential guide for understanding one of the key thinkers of our time. (shrink)

How can we experience real emotions when viewing a movie or reading a novel or watching a play when we know the characters whose actions have this effect on us do not exist? This is a conundrum that has puzzled philosophers for a long time, and in this book Robert Yanal both canvasses previously proposed solutions to it and offers one of his own. First formulated by Samuel Johnson, the paradox received its most famous answer from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (...) who advised his readers to engage in a "willing suspension of disbelief." More recently, philosophers have argued that we are irrational in emoting toward fiction, or that we do not emote toward fiction but rather toward factual counterparts, or that we do not have real but only quasi-emotion toward fiction, generated by our playing games of make-believe. All of these proposed solutions are critically reviewed. Finding these answers unsatisfactory, Yanal offers an alternative, providing a new version of what has been dubbed "thought theory." On this theory, mere thoughts not believed true are seen as the functional equivalent of belief at least insofar as stimulating emotion is concerned. The emoter's disbelief in the actuality of components of the thoughts must be rendered relatively inactive. Such emotion is real and typically has the character of being richly generated yet unconsummated. The book extends this theory also to resolving other paradoxes arising from emotional response to fiction: how we feel suspense over what comes next in a story even when we are re-reading it for a second or third time; and how we take pleasure in narratives, such as tragedy, that excite unpleasant emotions such as fear, pity, or horror. (shrink)

The United Nations Special Representative on Transnational Corporations and Human Rights, John Ruggie, has adopted a new framework for considering this issue within the international legal system. This article examines this framework in terms of its coherence, its consistency with international human rights law and how it can be 'operationalized' (which is required by the United Nations). In regard to the states legal obligation to protect human rights, it is considered whether this obligation is broader and deeper than is envisaged (...) in the framework, especially if it can include the extra-territorial activities of corporations. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights is examined in terms of its conceptual and definitional problems, and the article also questions whether there will be sufficient legal remedies available to victims under the framework. (shrink)

Testimony is the mainstay of human communication and essential for the spread of knowledge. But testimony may also spread error. Under what conditions does it yield knowledge in the person addressed? Must the recipient trust the attester? And does the attester have to know what is affirmed? A related question is what is required for the recipient to be justified in believing testimony. Is testimony-based justification acquired in the same way as testimony-based knowledge? This paper addresses these and other questions. (...) It offers a theory of the role of testimony in producing knowledge and justification, a sketch of a conception of knowledge that supports this theory, a brief account of how trust of others can be squared with critical habits of mind, and an outline of some important standards for intellectual responsibility in giving and receiving testimony. (shrink)

Can it be rational to be religious? Robert Audi gives a persuasive positive answer through an account of rationality and a rich, nuanced understanding of what religious commitment means. It is not just a matter of belief, but of emotions and attitudes such as faith and hope, of one's outlook on the world, and of commitment to live in certain ways.

In this paper we explore the thesis that the role of argumentation in practical reasoning in general and legal reasoning in particular is to justify the use of defeasible rules to derive a conclusion in preference to the use of other defeasible rules to derive a conflicting conclusion. The defeasibility of rules is expressed by means of non-provability claims as additional conditions of the rules.We outline an abstract approach to defeasible reasoning and argumentation which includes many existing formalisms, including default (...) logic, extended logic programming, non-monotonic modal logic and auto-epistemic logic, as special cases. We show, in particular, that the admissibility semantics for all these formalisms has a natural argumentation-theoretic interpretation and proof procedure, which seem to correspond well with informal argumentation. (shrink)

Studie over de filosofie van de in Oostenrijk geboren Engelse wijsgeer.

This text by an established specialist in French deconstruction, written after his many years in Asia and in the West, celebrates both Buddhist and Christian cultures and the negative but fertile differences between them.

This anthology of selections from the works of noted philosophers affords the student an immediate contact with the unique historical background of the philosophy of science. The selections, many of which have not been readily accessible, follow the development of the philosophy of science from 1786 to 1927. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editor designed to familiarize the reader with a particular philosopher and provide insights into his work. Joseph J. Kockelmans divides the selections into (...) several sections. Part 1, from 17861850, includes chapters by Immanuel Kant, on the metaphysical foundations of natural science, John Frederick William Herschel, on experience and the analysis of phenomena, William Whewell, on the nature and conditions of inductive science, and John Stuart Mill, on induction and the law of universal causation; part 2, from 18701899, includes chapters by Hermann Von Helmholtz, on the origin and significance of geometrical axioms, William Stanley Jevons, on the philosophy of inductive inference, John Bernard Stallo, on the kinetic theory of gasses and the conditions of the validity of scientific hypotheses, Ernst Mach, on the economical nature of physical inquiry, Karl Pearson, on perceptual and conceptual space, Emile Boutroux, on mechanical laws, Heinrich Hertz, on the appropriateness, correctness, and permissibility of scientific theories, and Ludwig Boltzmann, on the fundamental principles and basic equations of mechanics. The third part, covering the first decade of the twentieth century, includes chapters by Henri Jules Poincare, on science and reality, Charles Peirce, on Induction, Pierre Marie Duhem, on the laws of physics, William Ostwald, on energetism and mechanics, Emile Meyerson, on identity of thought and nature as the final goal of science, Ernst Cassirer, on functional concepts of natural science; part 4, from 19101927, includes chapters by Charles Dunbar Broad, on phenomenalism, Alfred North Whitehead, on time, space, and material, Bertrand Russell, on the world of physics and the world of sense, Norman Robert Cambbell, on the meaning of science, Moritz Schlick, on basic issues of the philosophy of natural science, and Percy Williams Bridgman, on the concepts of space, time, and causality. Philosophy of Science provides a concise single volume text to the discipline and enables students to understand and evaluate the various trends in our contemporary philosophy of science. Joseph J. Kockelmans is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Pennsylvania State Univers. (shrink)

Are guest-worker programs exploitative? Egalitarian and neoclassical theories of exploitation agree that they always are. But these judgments are too indiscriminate. Privileged guests are the exception, and the exception points toward a more sensitive standard for identifying exploitation. This more sensitive standard, the sufficiency theory of exploitation, is used to analyze several guest-worker programs. Even when guest-worker programs are exploitative, it is argued that the unfairness should be tolerated if the exploitation is modest, not severe, and if the most likely (...) nonexploitative alternative worsens the plight of the disadvantaged. (shrink)

In this essay I describe two of the accounts that Peirce provides of personhood: the semiotic account, on which a person is a sequence of thought-signs, and the naturalistic account, on which a person is an animal. I then argue that these disparate accounts can be reconciled into a plausible view on which persons are numerically distinct entities that are nevertheless continuous with each other in an important way. This view would be agreeable to Peirce in some respects, as it (...) is modeled on his theory of perception, incorporates his categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, and is in harmony with his objective idealism. But it diverges from Peirce in one important respect, viz. its rejection of the idea that some groups of human beings count as persons. (shrink)

Growing concern about economic inequality has generated a polarized narrative regarding the causes and consequences of extreme wealth. We contend that divided ideological positions obscure a more mundane reality about the typical wealthiest 1% households. Using data from the triennial survey of consumer finance, we demonstrate that there is substantial heterogeneity within the 1%. Contrary to public discourse, the typical 1% household does not have wealth reflective of popular rich lists, but derives a significant share of its wealth from ownership (...) and active management of small- to medium-sized private enterprise. We use these findings to shed new insights on business families’ relationship to economic inequality and open promising new areas of inquiry regarding the role of the family business in society. (shrink)

This paper is an examination of modest foundationalism in relation to some important criteria of epistemic dependence. The paper distinguishes between causal and epistemic dependence and indicates how each might be related to reasons. Four kinds of reasons are also distinguished: reasons to believe, reasons one has for believing, reasons for which one believes, and reasons why one believes. In the light of all these distinctions, epistemic dependence is contrasted with defeasibility, and it is argued that modest foundationalism is not (...) committed to criteria of epistemic dependence on which foundational beliefs are indefeasible. Modest foundationalism is contrasted with coherentism and is shown to be hospitable to a causal criterion of epistemic dependence, compatible with reliabilism, and neutral with respect to skepticism. (shrink)

Barrett et al. present four puzzles for the ZFEL-view of evolution that we present in our 2010 book, Biology’s First Law: The Tendency for Diversity and Complexity to Increase in Evolutionary Systems. Our intent in writing this book was to present a radically different way to think about evolution. To the extent that it really is radical, it will be easy to misunderstand. We think Barrett et al. have misunderstood several crucial points and so we welcome the opportunity to clarify.

Many methodologists are firmly convinced that Popper's arguments concerning the status of the rationality principle (RP) are incoherent or incompatible with the essentials of falsificationism. The present essay first shows that the accusation of incompatibility of situational logic with falsificationism does not hold up to scrutiny but then shows that Popper's arguments are nonetheless flimsy if not indefensible. For it seems that one can distinguish between two different versions of the RP in Popper's writings. If the first version is plainly (...) "objectivist" and can be characterized with Popper as empirically false, the second one is rather "subjectivist" and is not falsifiable as such. The essay shows that this second reading of the RP is the one that Popper finally adopts but that, unfortunately enough, this formulation of the RP looks more like a metaphysical statement than like an empirical law. It could then be held to be a priori valid as such, by analogy with Popper's line of argument concerning the principle of causality. If this is correct, then Popper's thesis on the empirical status of the RP is confuted. (shrink)

The author outlines his thesis that legal discourse is a special case of general practical discourse (Sonderfallthese) and develops it as an attempt to cover both the authoritative, institutional, or real and free, discursive, or ideal dimension of legal reasoning. On this basis, he examines the objections raised by Habermas (1996) to the special case thesis. First, he discusses the reduction of general practical discourse to moral discourses (genus proximum problem) holding that the former is a combination of moral, ethical, (...) and pragmatic arguments within the priority of just; second, he examines the objection that general practical arguments change their character or nature when employed in legal contexts (subset and specification problem) and the related problems concerning legal validity and unjust law. He concludes proposing a procedural (opposite to a coherential) integration of general practical arguments in the legal context. (shrink)

Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence What is the difference between a simulation of X and simply another instance of X? Is there a point at which the ‘‘virtual reality’’ of a model becomes the real thing? This paper examines these questions using cases taken from recent developments in evolutionary engineering and artificial life research. By implementing the Darwinian mechanism and setting it to work on a design problem, scientists and engineers find that evolution not only can improve prior (...) designs, but also produce novel technological solutions. Artificial life systems Tierra and Avida which operate at a higher level of abstraction than evolutionary engineering applications. I analyze simulation as a rational concept ‘‘S simulates R’’ and argue that it always includes some relevant property P, of R, that is captured but that there is always also some other that it omits, and that pragmatic factors fix what counts as relevant. The border between a simulation and an instance can change depending upon the context. I show that in one sense, evo-technology and artificial life simulate organic evolution, but in another relevant sense they are instances of evolution itself. Biologists can use such systems to experimentally test evolutionary hypotheses such as those involving the evolution of complex features and altruism. This analysis suggests lines for future research on broader questions about models classification and confirmation. (shrink)

This paper addresses the recent resurgence of Nagel style reduction in the philosophical literature. In particular, it considers the so-called multiple realizability objection to reductionism presented most forcefully by Sober in 1999. It is argued that this objection misses the point of multiple realizability and that there remain serious problems for reductionist methodologies in science.

Bender, Robert Review of: The other side of Israel: My journey across the Jewish-Arab divide, by Susan Nathan, 2005 Harper Collins, 300 pages.

By deduction, we often extend both our knowledge and our justified belief. Moreover, in achieving knowledge or justified belief of some proposition, we commonly acquire justification for believing many of its entailed consequences, such as at least some of those that self-evidently follow from it. These and related facts have led some philosophers to endorse strong closure principles, for instance: If a person, S, is justified in believing a proposition, p, and p entails q, then S is justified in believing (...) q. Others have denied such principles, whether for justification or, with the appropriate additions, for knowledge. The debate continues. There is, however, this much consensus: there are difficult problems about the scope of closure, and epistemology should develop theories that can resolve them. (shrink)