This paper is a response to Brad Hooker's “Does having deep personal relationships constitute an element of well‐being?” (2021). The paper begins with a discussion of the implications of disagreement about such issues. After raising some general questions for Hooker's account, the paper turns to the key elements in a deep personal relationship, according to Hooker: multi‐faceted understanding, and strong affection. The issue of impartiality is discussed, and it is claimed that Hooker's account is consistent with morality's being impartial. Some (...) possible interpretations of Hooker's overall project are offered, and the paper ends with a discussion of Hooker's suggestions that the affection in valuable personal relationships must be merited. (shrink)

Argues that the only way to understand the Confucian vision of the consummate moral life is to take the tradition on its own terms.

This book grew out of previously published papers of mine composed over a period of years; they have been reworked (sometimes beyond recognition) so as to form a reasonably coherent whole. Part One treats of informative inference. I argue (Chapter 2) that the traditional principle of induction in its clearest formulation (that laws are confirmed by their positive cases) is clearly false. Other formulations in terms of the 'uniformity of nature' or the 'resemblance of the future to the past' seem (...) to me hopelessly unclear. From a Bayesian point of view, 'learning from experience' goes by conditionalization (Bayes' rule). The traditional stum bling block for Bayesians has been to fmd objective probability inputs to conditionalize upon. Subjective Bayesians allow any probability inputs that do not violate the usual axioms of probability. Many subjectivists grant that this liberality seems prodigal but own themselves unable to think of additional constraints that might plausibly be imposed. To be sure, if we could agree on the correct probabilistic representation of 'ignorance' (or absence of pertinent data), then all probabilities obtained by applying Bayes' rule to an 'informationless' prior would be objective. But familiar contra dictions, like the Bertrand paradox, are thought to vitiate all attempts to objectify 'ignorance'. BuUding on the earlier work of Sir Harold Jeffreys, E. T. Jaynes, and the more recent work ofG. E. P. Box and G. E. Tiao, I have elected to bite this bullet. In Chapter 3, I develop and defend an objectivist Bayesian approach. (shrink)

Roger Scruton is Britain's best-known intellectual dissident, who has defended English traditions and English identity against an official culture of denigration. Although his writings on philosophical aesthetics have shown him to be a leading authority in the field, his defence of political conservatism has marked him out in academic circles as Public Enemy Number One. Contrary to orthodox opinion, however, Roger Scruton is a human being, and Gentle Regrets contains the proof of it - a quiet, witty but (...) also serious and moving account of the ways in which life brought him to think what he thinks, and to be what he is. His moving vignettes of his childhood and later influences illuminate this book. (shrink)

There are predicates that I call “stubbornly distributive” based on what happens when they are combined with plural count noun phrases. I will use these stubbornly distributive predicates to identify and analyze a certain subset of mass nouns which I call “multi-participant nouns”. Traffic and rubble are multi-participant nouns but furniture and luggage turn out not to be. Importantly, ‘typical’ mass nouns like water are multiparticipant nouns.

Propose une philosophie ontologique du rock, et de l'enregistrement musical.

Recent years have witnessed a renewed scholarly interest in David Hume’s History of England (1754–1762), and this essay adds to that interest by analyzing the sources that Hume used in the History. Unfortunately, Hume did not provide a bibliography or guide to those sources, and no scholar has produced one since. We have been preparing a bibliography for publication and the following essay is a preliminary view of some of what it will show. It demonstrates that Hume consulted and used (...) more varied sources, and used them in more skillful ways, than commonly has been assumed. (shrink)

Er is een groot verschil tussen een slecht en een kwaadaardig mens. In de wereldliteratuur vinden wij vele voorbeelden, waarin het diabolische karakter wordt beschreven. Maar nog gevaarlijker is de ideologie, die tot individuele kwaadaardigheid aanzet en deze rechtvaardigt. Daarbij speelt de seksualiteit vanouds een rol in de verleiding van de mens tot het kwaad.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Scruton stelt dat wij Europeanen met het verliezen van religie niet alleen sociale broederschap en het heilige kwijtraken, maar ook het verlies zelf, omdat we in drugs, instantopwinding en verzakelijkte seks vluchten voor liefde en rouw. Alleen de kunst kan ons nog helpen verlies te begrijpen en aanvaarden.

The title of this essay, ›Living Chinese Philosophy‹ is a double entendre that captures the transformative nature of Chinese philosophy for those who study it, and the fact that it is a philosophical tradition taking the ordinary affairs of the day as both source of philosophical reflection and warrant for the conclusions reached. The goal of the canonical texts is not only to provide a vocabulary for thinking cogently about philosophical issues, but more importantly to encourage a personal cultivation directed (...) at making one’s life significant and transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. (shrink)

Doing ethics in a pluralistic world -- Ethical issues for religion in Canada.

This book recalls, for nonscientific readers, the history of quantum mechanics, the main points of its interpretation, and Einstein's objections to it, together with the responses engendered by his arguments. We point out that most popular discussions on the strange aspects of quantum mechanics ignore the fundamental fact that Einstein was correct in his insistence that the theory does not directly describe reality. While that fact does not remove these counterintuitive features, it casts them in a different light."--page vi.

Avtor ugotavlja, da so se zamajale stare gotovosti zgodovine in zgodovinopisja, da se je črv dvoma zalezel najprej v spoznavno-epistemološke kriterije vede, v kritiko tako strukturalnih kot kvantifikativnih metod, potem pa se še razširil z razpravo o ločnici med zgodovinsko in literarno pripovedjo. Po njegovem mnenju se zato na doslej neznanem križišču srečujejo tekstna kritika, zgodovina knjige in sociologija kulture. Izzive vidi tako na metodološki kot na teoretski ravni in ugotavlja, da so se nekateri avtorji že uspešno spoprijeli z njimi: (...) nastajajo predlogi novih paradigem, med katerimi se mu med najbolj obetavnimi kažejo postopki mikrozgodovine. Opozarja tudi na novo branje zgodovine žensk oziroma na študij te zgodovine z novimi metodološkimi prijemi, kar bo zgodovino zopet in dokončno vrnilo med družbene vede - teza, za katere pripadnika se ima tudi avtor. (shrink)