A collection of Plato's work showing the unsurpassed power of his writing, which ultimately lies in the fact that he was as much a literary as a philosophic genius.

There has always been much controversy surrounding property rights in legal and political philosophy. Thinkers such as Plato, Locke, Kant, Hegel and Marx have all offered different views on the idea of property. This collection of essays, written by some of the most eminent scholars in the field, examines the most central issues of property theory from a variety of perspectives. The essays discuss whether property may be dissipated or used imprudently with impunity, and analyse how a person's property (...) should be distributed after death. They survey the economic landscape of intellectual property and show that Locke's celebrated justification for private property falters when it comes to copyrights and patents. They also demonstrate how important it is that institutions of property be carefully justified. The variety and originality of these essays are evidence that the theory of property is one of the most exciting areas of intellectual inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

I consider reasons for questioning ‘the laws of logic’, and suggest that these laws do not accord with everyday reality. Either they are rhetorical tools rather than absolute truths, or else Plato and his successors were right to think that they identify a reality distinct from the ordinary world of experience, and also from the ultimate source of reality.

When we speak of philosophy and therapy, or of philosophy as therapy, the usual intent is to suggest that ‘philosophizing’ is or should be a way to clarify the mind or purify the soul. While there may be little point in arguing with psychoses or deeply-embedded neuroses our more ordinary misjudgements, biases and obsessions may be alleviated, at least, by trying to ‘see things clearly and to see them whole’, by carefully identifying premises and seeing what they – rationally – (...) support, and by seeking to eliminate the residual influence of premises that we have long since, rationally, dismissed. I don't intend to argue with this account – though of course it may be as well to remember that ‘philosophizing’ may have more dangerous effects. It is not obvious that philosophical argument will always help us ‘see things straight’, and the Athenian democracy was not altogether wrong to think that some of Socrates' followers or pupils learnt quite the wrong things from him. (shrink)

Resumo O autor começará por examinar a noção de participação, tal como é aplicada por Platão, primeiro à distinção gramatical entre identidade e predicação e depois às questões metafísicas acerca de sujeitos reais, sendo eles indivíduos contáveis, de um “material” subjacente, ou Formas que aparecem mais ou menos reconhecíveis na nossa experiência. Mesmo os materialistas modernos admitem uma distinção entre a realidade tal como ela “é” e tal como “aparece”. Surge então a questão, mais ainda para os modernos do que (...) para Platão, sobre a possibilidade de conhecer algo do mundo “tal como ele é” além de como “aparece”. O autor conclui, sugerindo a hipótese de um conhecimento “participativo”, de um tipo agora associado ao pensamento “right brain” em vez de “left brain”. Termina reiterando que podemos conhecer a realidade como ela é “a partir do interior”, uma vez que nela estamos inseridos. Palavras-chave: formas, matéria, participação, Plotino, predicaçãoA brief examination of the notion of participation, as it is applied by Plato first to the grammatical distinction between identity and predication, and then to metaphysical questions about the real subjects, whether these are countable individuals, an underlying “stuff”, or the Forms that appear more or less recognizably in our experience. Even modern materialists admit a distinction between the world as it appears, very variously, to us, and the world “as it is”. The question then arises, for moderns even more than for Plato, how we could hope to know anything of the world “as it is”, apart from its appearance to us and others. I conclude by gesturing toward the possibility of “participatory” knowledge, of a kind now associated with “right brain” rather than “left brain” thinking. We can know what reality is “from the inside”, since we ourselves are inside it. Keywords : Participation, predication, Forms, Matter, Plotinus. (shrink)

This chapter reviews classical accounts of natural theology. These include accounts by Hesiod of Boeotia in the late 8th century BC, Parmenides of Elea, Empedocles of Acragas, Aristotle, Plato, and the Roman senator Boethius.

An inquiry into the possibility that life?after?death be understood as waking from a shared dream into the real world. Attempts to outlaw the possibility that ?really? we are, e.g., vat?brains are shown to lead to unwelcome, anti?realist conclusions about either the world or consciousness. The unsatisfactory nature of empirically observable (Humean) causal connections suggests that real causes may be found beyond the world of our present experience. Though such a story cannot now be proved to be true, we are entitled (...) to entertain it as a serious possibility. An attempt is made to say what life is like in the ?Real World?, whether this be a spatial world like our present one or not, and what moral it holds for our present life. I suggest (like Plato) that there are many levels of waking, and that our ?Real Self should not be identified simply with our present egos. (shrink)

Maclntyre's claim that contemporary moral language is, by traditional standards, merely chaotic somewhat exaggerates our chaos, and traditional order. He accuses. Moore and his disciples in particular of using moral language merely as propaganda, failing, like other critics, to reckon with the Platonic context of Moore's argument and the reasons why Goodness is an idea that rational inquiry should not abandon. Genuine moral action is done as the right thing, that produces more that is good than any alternative. Plato's (...) model of the threefold structure of human motivation, and his image of the cave, locates moral action at a higher level than action from desire or social prejudice. We discover our real selves, distinct from our physical and social natures, in seeing what Goodness requires. This neo?Platonism is a better bet than Maclntyre allows, and an answer to the barbarian puppeteers he rightly condemns. (shrink)

I consider reasons for questioning ‘the laws of logic’, and suggest that these laws do not accord with everyday reality. Either they are rhetorical tools rather than absolute truths, or else Plato and his successors were right to think that they identify a reality distinct from the ordinary world of experience, and also from the ultimate source of reality.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

The contributors cover a wide range of philosophical writers and texts to which the label “idealism” has been or might reasonably be attached. These include Plato, the Roman Stoics, the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Augustinian Neoplatonism, Johannes Scottus Eriugena, the Arabic _Book of Causes_, George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, and classical German idealism. "This is a rich, subtle, thought-provoking collection on central, though neglected topics in idealism and its history, offering fresh and important insights into both familiar and less familiar major (...) figures, views, and issues. Most important, perhaps, are its presentation and assessment of non-subjective forms of idealism, as well as mind-dependence forms of idealism prior to Descartes. Contemporary philosophers have become sophisticated about various forms of realism, anti-realism and irrealism. Such discussions, among others, will benefit significantly by accepting this volume’s invitation to become more sophisticated about idealism as well. This very welcome contribution to the literature should find a broad readership." —_Kenneth R. Westphal, University of East Anglia_ "If it is true—as Hegel and his followers have claimed—that being and truth are indissociable from history, then philosophy cannot be successful if it limits itself exclusively to investigations of individual thinkers and periods. What is at stake, ultimately, is the development of Western thought as a whole. In this volume, a fine international group of scholars investigate the meaning of idealism across the ages. Without sacrificing nuance, their contributions show that a core of shared assumptions characterizes idealist philosophies. The historical dialogue which this volume advances emphasizes the relevance of ancient and medieval thinkers for the current debate, but it also challenges us to place modern representatives of idealism—such as Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel—in historical perspective." —_Philipp W. Rosemann, University of Dallas_. (shrink)

Oxford Studies vol. XIV contains five free-standing articles (on Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics), an exchange between Job van Eck and Christopher Rowe about a key passage in the Phaedo, and three lengthy review articles: Michael Wedin on David Bostock's Aristotle: Metaphysics Z and ; Gail Fine on R.J. Hankinson's The Sceptics ; and Anne Sheppard on John Dillon's Alcinous. Only the briefest sketch of the volume is possible.

William Frankena has several times discussed, in his usual cautious and judicious manner, a contrast between two types of normative ethics: an ethics of “duty” and an ethics of “virtue.” Without claiming that actual philosophers have been pure exemplars of either type, he has tried to give a clear statement of these two possible and contrasting types of theory, and to expose their problems. His final view seems to be that a complete normative theory will combine elements of both, but (...) that an ethics of “duty” in some sense is more fundamental. Plato and Aristotle seem to differ from him in being more sympathetic to a “virtue-ethics.” Leslie Stephen went so far as to claim that satisfactory principles of duty cannot even be stated and that a moral philosopher spends his time better formulating an ideal of virtue. James Martineau is another classical figure more sympathetic to “virtue-ethics.”. (shrink)

This essay deals with property rights in body parts that can be exchanged in a market. The inquiry arises in the following context. With some exceptions, the laws of many countries permit only the donation, not the sale, of body parts. Yet for some years there has existed a shortage of body parts for transplantation and other medical uses. It might then appear that if more sales were legally permitted, the supply of body parts would increase, because people would have (...) more incentive to sell than they currently have to donate. To allow sales is to recognize property rights in body parts. To allow sales, however, makes body parts into “commodities”—that is, things that can be bought and sold in a market. And some view it as morally objectionable to treat body parts as commodities. (shrink)

One of the largest ongoing debates in scholarship on Avicenna concerns his epistemology of the first acquisition of intelligible forms or concepts. “Emanationists” hold that intelligibles are emanated by the separate Active Intellect directly into human minds. “ionists” hold that intelligibles are abstracted by the human intellect from sensory images. Neither of these positions has a satisfactory grip on Avicenna’s philosophy. I propose that the two positions can be reconciled because Avicenna states in many texts that what the AI emanates (...) is a power, and not the various intelligible forms. I argue that this can only be the power of abstraction itself. This new interpretation does greater justice to Avicenna’s system and reveals his unique place in the history of epistemology. (shrink)

Averroes on Intellect provides a detailed analysis of the Muslim philosopher Averroes 's notorious unicity thesis -- the view that there is only one separate and eternal intellect for all human beings. It focuses directly on Averroes' arguments, both from the text of Aristotle's De Anima and, more importantly, his own philosophical arguments in the Long Commentary on the De Anima. Stephen Ogden defends Averroes' interpretation of De Anima using a combination of Greek, Arabic, Latin, and contemporary sources. Yet, (...) Ogden also insists that Averroes is not merely a 'commentator' but an incisive philosopher in his own right. The author thus reconstructs and analyzes Averroes' two most significant independent philosophical arguments, the Determinate Particular Argument and the Unity Argument. Alternative ancient and medieval views are also considered throughout, especially from two important foils before and after Averroes, namely, Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas' most famous and penetrating arguments against the unicity thesis are also addressed. Finally, Ogden considers Averroes' own objections to broader metaphysical views of the soul like Avicenna's and Aquinas', which agree with him on several key points including the immateriality of the intellect and the individuation of human souls by matter, while still diverging on the number and substantial nature of the intellect. The central goal of this book is to provide readers with a single study of Averroes' most pivotal arguments on intellect, consolidating and building on recent scholarship and offering a comprehensive case for his unicity thesis in the wider context of Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

In this foundational work on the theory of linguistic and mental representation, Stephen Schiffer surveys all the leading theories of meaning and content in the philosophy of language and finds them lacking. He concludes that there can be no correct, positive philosophical theory or linguistic or mental representation and, accordingly advocates the deflationary "no-theory theory of meaning and content." Along the way he takes up functionalism, the nature of propositions and their suitability as contents, the language of thought and (...) other sententialist theories of belief, intention based semantics, and related issues in ontology. Stephen Schiffer is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

We agree with Nielsen Busch and Mjaaland’s (2023) assessment that the Dead Donor Rule (DDR) should be viewed as an essential requirement of the organ donation process, and that the essence of the r...

Words have determinable sense only within a complex of unstated assumptions, and all interpretation must therefore go beyond the given material. This book addresses what is man's place in the Aristotelian world. It also describes man's abilities and prospects in managing his life, and considers how far Aristotle's treatment of time and history licenses the sort of dynamic interpretation of his doctrines that have been given. The ontological model that explains much of Aristotle's conclusions and methods is one of life-worlds, (...) in which the material universe of scientific myth is no more than an abstraction from lived reality, not its transcendent ground. (shrink)

What is it for marks or sounds to have meaning, and what is it for someone to mean something in producing them? Answering these and related questions, Schiffer explores communication, speech acts, convention, and the meaning of linguistic items in this reissue of a seminal work on the foundations of meaning. A new introduction takes account of recent developments and places his theory in a broader context.

After summarizing the content of Philip Rossi’s book, The Ethical Commonwealth in History: Peace-Making as the Moral Vocation of Humanity, I pose two main questions. First, does politics or religion play a more important role in Kant’s philosophy when it comes to the task of ushering humanity to the realization of its ultimate vocation, the establishment of a lasting peace for human society? I argue that Kant portrays politics as a means to a religious end, whereas Rossi tends to reverse (...) their Kantian order of priority. Second, what concrete details does Kant give in defense of his theory that establishing an ethical community is a universal duty of humankind? As Rossi tends to overlook Kant’s details, I provide an overview. Kant argues that the ethical community can only be established in the form of a church and that the rational content constituting the core of the true church consists of four requirements: universality, integrity, freedom, and unchangeableness. After challenging Rossi’s claim that Kantian hope is necessarily social, I conclude with two minor questions: Is Kant’s theory of human nature dualist or monist? and Must the church create a political form of peace that applies to all human beings? (shrink)

I defend the claim that understanding is the goal of explanation against various persistent criticisms, especially the criticism that understanding is not truth-connected in the appropriate way, and hence is a merely psychological state. Part of the reason why understanding has been dismissed as the goal of explanation, I suggest, is because the psychological dimension of the goal of explanation has itself been almost entirely neglected. In turn, the psychological dimension of understanding—the Aha! experience, the sense that a certain explanation (...) “feels right”, and so on—has been conspicuously overemphasized. I try to correct for both of these exaggerations. Just as the goal of explanation includes a richer psychological—including phenomenological—dimension than is generally acknowledged, so too understanding has a stronger truth connection than is generally acknowledged.Keywords: Understanding; Explanation; Philosophy of science; Epistemology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.1 (2004) 72-91 [Access article in PDF] Passing Theories through Topical Heuristics: Donald Davidson, Aristotle, and the Conditions of Discursive Competence Stephen R. Yarbrough Department of English The University of North Carolina at Greensboro What are the conditions of discursive competence? In "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" Donald Davidson explains how it is possible that in practice we can, with little effort, understand and appropriately (...) respond to linguistic anomalies such as the malapropism—anomalies because, by definition, the "language" cannot account for how we understand them. Such anomalies, Davidson concludes, are the exceptions that do not prove but refute the traditional rule that antecedent linguistic systems govern discursive meaning. If that is so, then meanings are not a property of a linguistic system and are not "governed by learned conventions or regularities" (1986, 436); therefore, learning and sharing such conventions, what we traditionally call "language," is not a necessary condition of successful communication. He shows this by arguing that two conditions must be met for successful interlocution and that meeting these sufficiently allows successful interlocution to take place. A third condition—that the interlocutors share a language, an organized set of learned conventions or regularities "learned in advance of occasions of interpretation" (436) for which phenomena such as malapropisms would be anomalous—is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of discursive competence.What I hope to show in this paper is that the two conditions Davidson argues interlocution must meet in order to succeed both involve the interlocutor's implicit knowledge of what since Aristotle the rhetorical tradition has called topical heuristics. Although Davidson himself seems unaware of it, his philosophy places invention in a new light, one that allows us to understand that the invention process is not merely a supplement to discourse, useful only for professional speakers and writers, but intrinsic to all intercourse, and that the topics are not merely formal but pragmatic relations that develop from the processes of our interactions with others and with objects of our common concern in a world we can come to share. [End Page 72] Inferential method Davidson argues that the first condition necessary for successful interlocution is that "the interpreter can learn the semantic role of each of a finite number of words or phrases and can learn the semantic consequences of a finite number of modes of expression" (1986, 437). "For this to be possible," says Davidson, "there must be systematic relations between the meanings of utterances" (436). Here he is not talking about grammatical systems but about systematic relations between and among the interlocutors' discursive actions and the world with its objects to which their actions refer. As I'll explain more fully shortly, these are topical relations. What makes these relations possible, Davidson argues, is that the interlocutors share, not a set of learned conventions, but a "recursive characterization of the truth conditions of all possible utterances of the speaker" (437).Such a theory of truth can be something like a Tarski truth definition, the explanation of which can be extremely convoluted (see Davidson 1984), but it boils down to saying that an utterance is true if the anticipations raised by a belief in an interpreted utterance are met by the consequences of believing the utterance; or, to put it another way, if the utterance is an answer to the question that solicited it or a solution to the problem to which it responds. Thus, an example of such a truth definition would be "The grass is green (an utterance made by someone, somewhere, somewhen, under certain conditions) is true if and only if the grass is green (to that person, at that place, at that time, under those conditions)." The force of a Tarski truth definition is that to understand what an utterance means is to understand the conditions that make it true (to the speaker). This, in turn, implies that in order for the interpreter to learn the semantic roles of the speaker's words and phrases and the semantic consequences of her modes of expression, the... (shrink)

Object files (OFs) are hypothesized mid-level representations which mediate our conscious perception of persisting objects—e.g. telling us ‘which went where’. Despite the appeal of the OF framework, not previous research has directly explored whether OFs do indeed correspond to conscious percepts. Here we present at least one case wherein conscious percepts of ‘which went where’ in dynamic ambiguous displays diverge from the analogous correspondence computed by the OF system. Observers viewed a ‘bouncing/streaming’ display in which two identical objects moved such (...) that they could have either bounced off or streamed past each other. We measured two dependent variables: (1) an explicit report of perceived bouncing or streaming; and (2) an implicit ‘object-specific preview benefit’ (OSPB), wherein a ‘preview’ of information on a specific object speeds the recognition of that information at a later point when it appears again on the same object (compared to when it reappears on a different object), beyond display-wide priming. When the displays were manipulated such that observers had a strong bias to perceive streaming (on over 95% of the trials), there was nevertheless a strong OSPB in the opposite direction—such that the object files appeared to have ‘bounced’ even though the percept ‘streamed’. Given that OSPBs have been taken as a hallmark of the operation of object files, the five experiments reported here suggest that in at least some specialized (and perhaps ecologically invalid) cases, conscious percepts of ‘which went where’ in dynamic ambiguous displays can diverge from the mapping computed by the object-file system. (shrink)

I explore the extent to which the epistemic state of understanding is transparent to the one who understands. Against several contemporary epistemologists, I argue that it is not transparent in the way that many have claimed, drawing on results from developmental psychology, animal cognition, and other fields.

Averroes is well-known for his controversial thesis that there is only one separate intellect for all humankind. This article provides a detailed analysis of Averroes’s Unity Argument from his Long Commentary on De Anima, which argues from unified intelligible concepts to a single transcendent intellect. I set out the Unity Argument in its textual and philosophical context, explain exactly how the argument works on a new interpretation of its infinite regress, and offer some brief suggestions as to how it might (...) be further evaluated in light of alternative ancient and medieval theories. Ultimately, I demonstrate that the Unity Argument is Averroes’s most important philosophical argument for his distinctive view of intellect. (shrink)

Averroes held the controversial thesis that there is only one separate material or possible intellect for all humans. This paper analyzes a passage from his Long Commentary on the De Anima which has been thought to constitute a primary philosophical argument for the view. It is called the Determinate Particular Argument, because it contends that the material intellect cannot be a determinate particular if it is to be the ontological receptacle of universal intelligible forms. After defending one crucial premise, it (...) will be shown how the key term “determinate particular” must be qualified to avoid an inconsistency with Averroes’s metaphysics and his position on the species membership of separate substances. Given this qualification in the face of competing views, the paper concludes that the Determinate Particular Argument should not be taken as a sufficient and independent argument for Averroes’s full thesis on the intellect. (shrink)

Explanatory inquiry characteristically begins with a certain puzzlement about the world. But why do certain situations elicit our puzzlement while others leave us, in some epistemically relevant sense, cold? Moreover, what exactly is involved in the move from a state of puzzlement to a state where one's puzzlement is satisfied? In this paper I try to answer both of these questions. I also suggest ways in which our account of scientific rationality might benefit from having a better sense of the (...) kind of epistemic goal we are trying to realize, when we engage in our explanatory inquiries. Two Senses The Need for Explanation An Example Proto-understanding Conclusion CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

A study of Plotinus's use of myth and metaphor, with special attention to the historical context and therapeutic use of his work.

These two companion volumes provide a comprehensive review and critical evaluation of the major DSM-III and DSM-III-R child disorders. Their major goal is to provide diagnostic and assessment guidelines that are based on scientific literature in specific clinical domains. Each chapter contains a discussion of the historical background of a particular diagnosis, definitional issues, a critical but selective review of the literature addressing the diagnosis in question, proposed changes in the diagnostic criteria based on the available literature, and proposed assessment (...) models and methods based on the designated criteria. Given the scientific bases for many of these discussions of diagnostic criteria, these two volumes will serve professionals and graduate students in a wide variety of fields: clinical child psychology, child psychiatry, pediatrics, pediatric and school psychology, special education, social work, and other child mental health specialties. (shrink)

This is the third in a series of articles that correlates Kant's architectonic with the Yijing's sixty-four hexagrams. Previous articles explained “architectonic” reasoning, introduced four levels of the “Compound Yijing,” consisting of 0 + 4 + 12 + gua, and suggested correlating the fourth level's four sets of twelve to the four “faculties” in Kant's model of the university. This third paper examines the philosophy faculty, assessing whether the twelve proposed gua meaningfully correlate with twelve basic philosophical concepts that Kant (...) introduces in his three Critiques. A key difference emerges: Kant's architectonic method aims to produce synthetic a priori knowledge, while the Yijing's architectonic method aims to produce analytic a posteriori belief. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Minds, Memes, and MultiplesStephen R. L. Clark (bio)AbstractMultiple Personality Disorder is sometimes interpreted as evidence for a radically pluralistic theory of the human mind, judged to be at odds with an older, monistic theory. Older philosophy, on the contrary, suggests that the mind is both plural (in its sub-systems or personalities) and unitary (in that there is only one light over all those lesser parts). Talk of gods and (...) demons has been a way of arranging elements of human mind and motivation. The one light, or center, is something which requires mental discipline to discover rather than being immediately obvious. This indeed is what even Descartes (sometimes blamed for introducing the notion of a simple, transparent self) really intended. Discovering or uncovering the Self is a psychotherapeutic as well as a philosophical imperative.Keywordsconsciousness, gods, Multiple Personality Disorder, passivity, thought alienationMultiple Personality 1The phenomena popularly identified as evidence of “multiple personality disorder” are strangely attractive. The stories suggest that those who provide, who are, the evidence for this disorder are usually in acute distress, but those who wish to believe in it find the idea almost exhilarating. Most of us would rather wish to think that we had undeveloped possibilities, that it would be exciting to be a married academic today, a celibate bus-driver tomorrow and a teenage hooligan on Sundays. The impulse to put aside our duties, or our habits, can be a powerful one, and only the sober thought that we would not, after all, succeed in keeping our lives separate keeps us single. The notion that there are people who take the risk, that our bodies could house a multitude, is one we would wish to believe. At the same time, we wish to remember that such divisions bring their own problems, and as easily suspect that those who apparently succeed in dividing themselves up must have suffered serious trauma in the past, and be plagued by missed appointments and self-hatred in the present. Some of us believe that “multiple personality” reveals a truth about us all, that none of us is actually the simple, heroic self that we pretend: “the self” is only an occasionally concordant swarm of impulses, easily divided. Others of us suspect that it is a wish to avoid responsibility, and guilt, that causes some of us to pretend not to be the selves that actually we are (see Rycroft 1987).On earlier occasions (notably Clark 1991b), I have myself expressed some doubt about reports of Multiple Personality Disorder, and suggested that they should be seen as fictions or dramatic representations (whether by the patient or the reporter) which should not be judged as “true” or “false,” but rather as “interesting” or “pernicious.” Stephen Braude, in a recent excellent book, seems at first to side with the true believers: it is absurd, he suggests, not to believe the many reports of fugue, discordance and fully developed multiples (Braude 1991; see also Wilkes 1984, [End Page 21] Brennan 1990). Maybe a few such reports are over-credulous: it would not be surprising that the occasional clever criminal successfully pretended not to know what an alien other did with his body. But there are, he says, too many independent records to disbelieve, and not only the distant stories of Miss Beauchamp (Prince 1908) or Eve (Thigpen & Cleckley 1954, 1957). Since the 1970s the number of reported cases has been rising again. It may be that some, many, or all the cases are artifacts, in the sense that the doctor’s expectations helped to produce or develop the varied personalities: “when a client walks into the therapist’s office and sits down, the expectation framework of the therapist immediately comes into play” (Crabtree 1985, 211; see also Hawthorn 1983). But the evidence is also compatible with the thought that psychotherapeutic fashion now allows the therapist to notice, rather than invent, the phenomena. Multiples often wish to conceal their condition, it is said, and only observers alerted to the possibility will notice them. Conscious or half-conscious role-playing, which would perhaps be less philosophically interesting, cannot explain more than a few of the cruder cases.In short... (shrink)

The notion that metaphorical statements are strictly false suggests that all statements, even those that seemed ‘literal’, are false, as none can ‘literally’ reflect reality. Statements about what we perceive or could perceive rely on evoking sensory images of such ‘visibles’, even though we have no direct access to what others, may perceive. In addition to what is visible, we must also deal with ‘invisibilia’ (both the fantasms that respectable moderns now reject and the realities that lie beyond or before (...) all sentient experience). Talking about such distant or long-ago realities must always be ‘metaphorical’, as they cannot have any of the merely ‘subjective’ properties of experience, nor do they explain those latter properties. Is there some way of confirming the brute conviction that there is a ‘real and intelligible world’, and that we can find it out or describe it ‘literally’? May ‘Reason’ be a route to understanding? But this too is an illusion: we seem never in practice to escape contradictions and had perhaps better turn again to consider the worlds of experience to which we are confined. What we experience is conditioned by our imagination: whether that metaphorical imagination points beyond experience remains uncertain. (shrink)

Immortality is a subject which has long been explored and imagined by science fiction writers. In his intriguing new study, Stephen R.L.Clark argues that the genre of science fiction writing allows investigation of philosophical questions about immortality without the constraints of academic philosophy. He reveals how fantasy accounts of issues such as resurrection, disembodied survival, reincarnation and devices or drugs for preserving life can be used as an important resource for philosophical inquiry and examines how a society of immortals (...) might function through a reading of the vampire myth. _How to Live Forever_ is a compelling study which introduces students and professional philosophers to the possibilities of using science fiction in their work. It includes extensive suggestions for further reading, both fictional and philosophical, and examines the work of such major science fiction authors as _Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, William Gibson_, and _Colin Wilson_. (shrink)

Pro-life and pro-choice advocates battle for rational dominance in abortion debates. Yet, public polling (and general legal opinion) demonstrates the public’s preference for the middle ground: that abortions are acceptable in certain circumstances and during early pregnancy. Implicit in this, are two contradictory intuitions: (1) that we were all early fetuses, and (2) abortion kills no one. To hold these positions together, Harman and Räsänen have argued for the Actual Future Principle (AFP) which distinguishes between fetuses that will develop into (...) persons and those that will never develop into persons. However intellectually ingenious their solutions are, they fail to account for a third intuition: that the death of a wanted fetus – e.g. through termination or miscarriage – is of moral significance. Not only is this practically important, but it is also supported by public opinion. The authors of this paper argue that relational ontology can modify the AFP to better account for all three intuitions. Furthermore, it further emphasizes the pivotal role of the pregnant person who relates to their own fetus in either personal or impersonal ways. Addressing the fundamental challenges of relational ontology, the authors defend the position that human personal identity is ultimately relational. (shrink)

Kant’s theory of religion has often been portrayed as leaving no room for grace. Even recent interpreters seeking to affirm Kantian religion find his appeal to grace unconvincing, because they assume the relevant section of Religion (Second Piece, Section One, Subsection C) is an attempt to construct a theology of divine assistance. Yet Kant’s goal in attempting to solve the three "difficulties" with belief in grace is to defend an ethics of grace – i.e., an account of how someone can (...) believe in grace without succumbing to the tendency to become morally lazy. After introducing the three difficulties and offering a perspectival interpretation of how Kant intends to solve each one, this paper interprets Kant’s phenomenon-noumenon distinction in a way that clarifies how his solutions to these difficulties all focus on the believer’s ethical state, not on transcendent theological constructions. (shrink)