This volume brings together Seth Benardete's studies of Hesiod's Theogony, Homer's Iliad, and Greek tragedy, of eleven Platonic dialogues, and Aristotle's Metaphysics. These essays, some never before published, others difficult to find, span four decades of his work and document its impressive range. Benardete's philosophic reading of the poets and his poetic reading of the philosophers share a common ground that makes this collection a whole. The key, suggested by his reflections on Leo Strauss in the last piece, lies (...) in the question of how to read Plato. Benardete's way is characterized not just by careful attention to the literary form that separates doctrine from dialogue, and speeches from deed rather, by following the dynamic of these differences, he uncovers the argument that belongs to the dialogue as a whole. The "turnaround" such an argument undergoes bears consequences for understanding the dialogue as radical as the conversion of the philosopher in Plato's image of the cave. Benardete's original interpretations are the fruits of this discovery of the "argument of the action.". (shrink)

This volume is a tribute to the thought of Seth Benardete by contributors who had the rare good fortune of studying with him or those who discovered the treasure of his writings. Benardete was fully immersed in the world of the ancients, starting with Homer, but their works opened up for him a way to the fundamental questions-about justice and love, nature and law, human and divine. Finding "the problem of the human good grounded in the city, and the (...) problem of being in god," he was led to the conclusion that "Political philosophy is the eccentric core of philosophy." While Benardete wrote this statement reflecting on the theological-political issue in the work of his teacher, Leo Strauss, the paradoxical notion of an "eccentric core," in giving this volume its title, is meant to capture a characteristic of his own way of thinking. The essays in this collection-on the Bible and Homer, the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, and the Roman writers-indicate the range of Benardete's studies and teaching. The centrality of Plato is evident at the same time in those pieces as well as in the reviews of Benardete's books included here, along with three of his own previously unpublished essays. Book jacket. (shrink)

Composed of a substantial introduction, twelve original essays produced for this volume, and a new English translation of a personal, intriguing, and little ...

This is a study in the meaning of natural language probability operators, sentential operators such as probably and likely. We ask what sort of formal structure is required to model the logic and semantics of these operators. Along the way we investigate their deep connections to indicative conditionals and epistemic modals, probe their scalar structure, observe their sensitivity to contex- tually salient contrasts, and explore some of their scopal idiosyncrasies.

Although much has been written about Deleuze’s engagement with the arts, _Gilles Deleuze and the Fabulation of Philosoph_y concerns the art of his philosophy. Gregory Flaxman suggests that Deleuze’s notorious rejection of representation gives rise to a singular task—to create new concepts and invent new means of philosophical expression. Tracing this task throughout Deleuze’s vast oeuvre, Flaxman argues that Deleuze’s ambition to think and write “otherwise” constitutes the fabulation of philosophy itself. For Flaxman, Deleuze’s philosophy is organized (...) around the notion of the friend __. This book dramatizes the practice of friendship in Deleuze’s intimate affairs with philosophers—including Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, and Foucault—and close encounters with a range of writers, including Homer, More, Kafka, Woolf, and Borges. Flaxman traces Deleuze’s relationship with Nietzsche, the friend from whom he learned to write “in his own name,” to explain how apprenticeship becomes the initial condition of Deleuze’s philosophical method. Detailing the transformation of Nietzsche’s genealogy into “geophilosophy,” Flaxman goes on to show how Deleuze’s philosophy of the earth precipitates his return to ancient Greece and induces his resolution to overturn Platonism. In this spirit, the book demonstrates Deleuze’s evocation of the “powers of the false” by examining how, in his battle against representation, he makes fiction the basis for a minor philosophy. This first volume draws to a close with a timely elaboration of Deleuze’s avowed, if enigmatic, “style as politics” in an age when capitalism and communication challenge the claims of philosophy as never before. A stunning and original contribution, Flaxman’s book restores the question of aesthetics to Deleuze’s thinking and writing. _Gilles Deleuze and the Fabulation of Philosophy_ not only revitalizes our sense of the philosopher but revises the sense of his philosophy, provoking critical problems and novel possibilities with which readers will wrestle for years to come. (shrink)

Epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore's paradox. I set out the puzzling phenomena, explain why a standard relational semantics for these operators cannot handle them, and recommend an alternative semantics. A pragmatics appropriate to the semantics is developed and interactions between the semantics, the pragmatics, and the definition of consequence are investigated. The semantics is then extended to probability operators. Some problems and prospects for probabilistic representations of content and context are explored.

Plato, Allan Bloom wrote, is "the most erotic of philosophers," and his Symposium is one of the greatest works on the nature of love ever written. This new edition brings together the English translation of the renowned Plato scholar and translator, Seth Benardete, with two illuminating commentaries on it: Benardete's "On Plato's _Symposium_" and Allan Bloom's provocative essay, "The Ladder of Love." In the _Symposium,_ Plato recounts a drinking party following an evening meal, where the guests include the poet (...) Aristophanes, the drunken Alcibiades, and, of course, the wise Socrates. The revelers give their views on the timeless topics of love and desire, all the while addressing many of the major themes of Platonic philosophy: the relationship of philosophy and poetry, the good, and the beautiful. (shrink)

Optimism about our ability to enhance societal decision‐making by leaning on Machine Learning (ML) for cheap, accurate predictions has palled in recent years, as these ‘cheap’ predictions have come at significant social cost, contributing to systematic harms suffered by already disadvantaged populations. But what precisely goes wrong when ML goes wrong? We argue that, as well as more obvious concerns about the downstream effects of ML‐based decision‐making, there can be moral grounds for the criticism of these predictions themselves. We introduce (...) and defend a theory of predictive justice, according to which differential model performance for systematically disadvantaged groups can be grounds for moral criticism of the model, independently of its downstream effects. As well as helping resolve some urgent disputes around algorithmic fairness, this theory points the way to a novel dimension of epistemic ethics, related to the recently discussed category of doxastic wrong. (shrink)

"Seth examines the practical origins of much of the research undertaken by Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich, some of which addressed problems carried over from his years of teaching at an engineering school"--OCLC.

As Quine observed, the following sentence has a reading which, if true, would be of special interest to the authorities: Ralph believes that someone is a spy. This is the reading where the quantifier is naturally understood as taking wide scope relative to the attitude verb and as binding a variable within the scope of the attitude verb. This essay is interested in addressing the question what the semantic analysis of this kind of reading should look like from a Fregean (...) perspective—a perspective according to which attitude states are generally relations to structured Fregean thoughts composed of senses. The Fregean view faces a challenge of compositionality here. This essay describes the challenge and offers a response on the Fregean's behalf. (shrink)

The view that actually has a reading on which it is a two-dimensional indexical modal operator has some problems.

_The Being of the Beautiful_ collects Plato’s three dialogues, the _Theaetetus_, _Sophist_, and _Statesmen_, in which Socrates formulates his conception of philosophy while preparing for trial. Renowned classicist Seth Benardete’s careful translations clearly illuminate the dramatic and philosophical unity of these dialogues and highlight Plato’s subtle interplay of language and structure. Extensive notes and commentaries, furthermore, underscore the trilogy’s motifs and relationships. “The translations are masterpieces of literalness.... They are honest, accurate, and give the reader a wonderful sense of (...) the Greek.”—Drew A. Hyland, _Review of Metaphysics_. (shrink)

The temporal structure for motivating, monitoring, and making sense of agency depends on encoding, maintaining, and accessing the right contents at the right times. These functions are facilitated by memory. Moreover, in informing action, memory is itself often active. That remembering is essential to and an expression of agency and is often active suggests that it is a type of action. Despite this, Galen Strawson (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103, 227–257, 2003) and Alfred Mele (2009) deny that remembering is (...) an action. They claim that memory fails to admit of control. Remembering is automatic—once remembering starts, the process can neither be stopped nor intervened on. Moreover, the agent does not initiate remembering. An agent has control over an event or process if and only if she has the capacity and opportunity to initiate and intervene on that event or process. Actions are events over which an agent has control. Since it is automatic, we fail to have control over remembering. Thus, remembering is not an action. In this paper, I draw out an assumption of Strawson’s and Mele’s accounts: an event-type whose tokens exhibit automaticity cannot, for that reason, be an action (§2). Against this assumption, I draw parallels between skilled bodily action and memory. I show that memory exhibits two defining features of skill: it can be learned with practice and it admits of attributions of excellence (§3). These features reveal how intelligent control is exerted in the exercise of skill despite apparent automaticity—control is gained over time (§4). Since exercises of skill are by definition actions and since memory exemplifies the defining features of skill, memory is a skill and instances of remembering are actions too. (shrink)

In this paper, we suggest that affect meets the traditional definition of “cognition” such that the affect–cognition distinction is phenomenological, rather than ontological. We review how the affect–cognition distinction is not respected in the human brain, and discuss the neural mechanisms by which affect influences sensory processing. As a result of this sensory modulation, affect performs several basic “cognitive” functions. Affect appears to be necessary for normal conscious experience, language fluency, and memory. Finally, we suggest that understanding the differences between (...) affect and cognition will require systematic study of how the phenomenological distinction characterising the two comes about, and why such a distinction is functional. (shrink)

Despite its enduring insights, Durkheim’s theory of suicide fails to account for a significant set of cases because of its overreliance on structural forces to the detriment of other possible factors. In this paper, we develop a new theoretical framework for thinking about the role of culture in vulnerability to suicide. We argue that by focusing on the cultural dynamics of excessive regulation, particularly at the meso level, a more robust sociological model for suicide could be offered that supplements structure-heavy (...) Durkheimian theory. In essence, we argue that the relevance of cultural regulation to suicide rests on the (1) degree to which culture is coherent in sociocultural places, (2) existence of directives related to prescribing or proscribing suicide, (3) degree to which these directives translate into internalized meanings affecting social psychological processes, and (4) degree to which the social space is bounded. We then illustrate how our new theory provides useful insights into three cases of suicide largely neglected within sociology: specifically, suicide clusters in high schools, suicide in the military, and suicides of “despair” among middle-aged white men. We conclude with implications for future sociological research on suicide and suicide prevention. (shrink)

When I tell you that it’s raining, I describe a way the world is—viz., rainy. I say something whose truth turns on how things are with the weather in the world. Likewise when I tell you that the weatherman thinks that it’s raining. Here the truth of what I say turns on how things are with the weatherman’s state of mind in the world. Likewise when I tell you that I think that it’s raining. Here the truth of what I (...) say turns on how things are with my state of mind in the world. (shrink)

LUCRETIUS, AFTER HE HAS EXPOUNDED THAT NOTHING comes out of nothing and nothing goes into nothing, and there are only bodies and void, turns to three pre-Socratics: Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras. He characterizes Heraclitus, clarus ob obscuram linguam, as having a bright principle and a dark account; he says of Empedocles, than whom Sicily nil... habuisse praeclarius... videtur, that his principles are as bright as his song about them; and he says of Anaxagoras, who must resort to quaedam latitandi copia (...) tenvis, that his principles are as dark as his account. He then turns to himself; he borrows brightness from Empedocles and darkness from Anaxagoras and turns Heraclitus inside out: he has a bright song about completely dark principles : clarius audi. nec me animi fallit quam sint obscura. Without denying the difficulty of putting together Heraclitean fire and Heraclitean logos, which seems intended to formulate a problem rather than a solution—it is nothing less than a demand that the causality of things and the equations that model their motions be one and the same—I would like to bring some clarity to the Heraclitean logos and make it at least as bright as his fire. Heraclitus’s logos is nothing but his name for thinking when it is philosophic. If Heraclitus did not coin the word philosophos, he is the first we know of who used it. (shrink)

I argue in this essay that the phenomena we classify as "mental illness" result largely from the refusal of socially authorized "experts" to recognize - and thus to constitute - the Other as a subject. I suggest that Institutional Mental Health refuses to do this not merely because it seeks to aggrandize its own power but also because it fears to acknowledge that we are all participants in a process of historical development. It denies this because it is historically conditioned (...) by its own moment of origin in the project of the Enlightenment, It is conseqently wed to an ethos of rationalized order that does not accomodate, much less support, the unpredictable creative power of the Other and that sustains instead the project of mastery, of domination, of disovering eternal laws that will enable Reason to master history and to master the Other. For this reason Institutional Mental Health and its diverse ideologies, ranging from the pyschoanalytic to genetic defect models, constitute a major obstacle to the evolution of humanity. (shrink)

Retrospective issues: the discursive approach to genre and the misdirection film -- -- The truth is out there: manufacturing conspiratorial narrative coherence -- Constructing the (im)perfect cover: masculine masquerade and narrative agency -- -- Start making sense: narrative complexity, DVD, and online fandom -- The masters of misdirection: branding M. Night Shyamalan and Christopher Nolan -- Genre prestige: the misdirection film as blockbuster and middlebrow art -- Conclusion.

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) has been the dominant measure of life satisfaction since its creation more than 30 years ago. We sought to develop an improved measure that includes indirect indicators of life satisfaction (e.g., wishing to change one’s life) to increase the bandwidth of the measure and account for acquiescence bias. In 3 studies, we developed a 6-item measure of life satisfaction, the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale, and obtained reliability and validity evidence. (...) Importantly, the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale retained the high internal consistency, test– retest stability, and unidimensionality of the Satisfaction With Life Scale. In addition, the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale correlated with other well-being measures, Big Five personality traits, values, and demographic information in expected ways. Although the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale correlated highly with the Satisfaction With Life Scale, we believe it improves the Satisfaction With Life Scale by appropriately increasing construct breadth and reducing the potential for bias. (shrink)

The Pragmatism and Prejudice of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. examines the varied categories scholars have used to describe the philosophy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. These include, “Jobbist,” Nihilist, Realist, Social Darwinist, Utilitarian, Positivist, Natural Law Theorist, and Pragmatist.

_Theaetetus_, the _Sophist_, and the _Statesman_ are a trilogy of Platonic dialogues that show Socrates formulating his conception of philosophy as he prepares the defense for his trial. Originally published together as _The Being of the Beautiful_, these translations can be read separately or as a trilogy. Each includes an introduction, extensive notes, and comprehensive commentary that examines the trilogy's motifs and relationships. "Seth Benardete is one of the very few contemporary classicists who combine the highest philological competence with (...) a subtlety and taste that approximate that of the ancients. At the same time, he as set himself the entirely modern hermeneutical task of uncovering what the ancients preferred to keep veiled, of making explicit what they indicated, and hence...of showing the naked ugliness of artificial beauty."—Stanley Rose, _Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal_ Seth Benardete was professor of classics at New York University. He was the author or translator of many books, most recently _The Argument of the Action, Plato's "Laws," and Plato's "Symposium,"_ all published by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

Killing in War presents the Moral Equality of Combatants with serious, and in my view insurmountable problems. Absent some novel defense, this thesis is now very difficult to sustain. But this success is counterbalanced by the strikingly revisionist implications of McMahan’s account of the underlying morality of killing in war, which forces us into one of two unattractive positions, contingent pacifism, or near-total war. In this article, I have argued that his efforts to mitigate these controversial implications fail. The reader (...) is left stranded: to reach plausible conclusions, Walzer deployed an implausible conception of our rights to life; McMahan’s more rigorous account of those rights generates untenable conclusions. Absent new developments, it seems that the prospects for grounding the ethics of war in individual rights are poor: any theory of our rights to life that is sufficiently indiscriminate to work in the chaos of war is not discriminating enough to be a plausible theory of our rights to life. Perhaps by rejecting the ideal of the rights-respecting war altogether we might develop an alternative theory of justified warfare, which marries theoretical soundness with conclusions that we can more confidently support. (shrink)

Materialist metaphysicians want to side with physics, but not to take sides within physics.If we took literally the claim of a materialist that his position is simply belief in the claim that all is matter, as currently conceived, we would be faced with an insoluble mystery. For how would such a materialist know how to retrench when his favorite scientific hypotheses fail? How did the 18th century materialist know that gravity, or forces in general, were material? How did they know (...) in the 19th century that the electromagnetic field was material, and persisted in this conviction after the aether had been sent packing?The doctrine of physicalism casts a long shadow in contemporary philosophy, configuring all kinds of philosophical issues and projects. Unsurprisingly, its proponents argue that physicalism has all the obvious features necessary for a scientific hypothesis to be in what we will call ‘good standing,’ i.e. being worthy of serious scientific investigation. In fact, many claim much more, arguing that physicalism is a well-confirmed hypothesis and possibly amongst the best of our theories. But, as our second opening passage makes clear, a persistent worry has been that physicalism, or ‘materialism’ as van Fraassen terms it, is an edifice built on sand. For many philosophers question whether the ‘physical’ can be specified at all, or at least in a manner that will produce a physicalism that would be in good standing. (shrink)

Philosophy as criticism of categories, by A. Seth.--The relation of philosophy to science, by R. B. Haldane and J. S. Haldane.--Logic as the science of knowledge, by B. Bosanquet.--The historical method, by W. R. Sorley.--The rationality of history, by D. G. Ritchie.--The philosophy of art, W. P. Ker.--The social organism, by H. Jones.--The struggle for existence, by J. Bonar.--Pessimism and the religious consciousness, by T. B. Kilpatrick.

Cancer biology features the ascription of normal functions to parts of cancers. At least some ascriptions of function in cancer biology track local normality of parts within the global abnormality of the aberration to which those parts belong. That is, cancer biologists identify as functions activities that, in some sense, parts of cancers are supposed to perform, despite cancers themselves having no purpose. The present paper provides a theory to accommodate these normal function ascriptions—I call it the Modeling Account of (...) Normal Function (MA). MA comprises two claims. First, normal functions are activities whose performance by the function-bearing part contributes to the self-maintenance of the whole system and, thereby, results in the continued presence of that part. Second, MA holds that models of system-level activities that are (partly) constitutive of self-maintenance are improved by including a representation of the relevant function-bearing part and by making reference to the activity/activities that part performs which contribute(s) to those system-level activities. I contrast MA with two other accounts that seek to explicate the ascription of normal functions in biology, namely, the organizational account and the selected effects account. Both struggle to extend to cancer biology. However, I offer ecumenical readings which allow them to recover some ascriptions of normal function to parts of cancers. So, though I contend that MA excels in this respect, the purpose of this paper is served if it provides materials for bridging the gap between cancer biology, philosophy of cancer, and the literature on function. (shrink)