Sisenna Historiarum lib. iii: Lucium Memmium, socerum Gai Scriboni, tribunum plebis, quern Marci Livi consiliarium fuisse callebant et tune Gurionis oratorem … . Erat Hortensius in bello primo anno miles, altero tribunus militum, Sulpicius legatus; aberat etiam M. Antonius; exercebatur una lege iudicium Varia, ceteris propter bellum intermissis; cui frequens aderam, quamquam pro se ipsi dicebant oratores non illi quidem principes, L. Memmius et Q. Pompeius, sed oratores tamen, teste diserto utique [Jahn: MSS. uterque] Philippo, cuius in testimonio contentio (...) et vim accusatoris habebat et copiam. Reliqui qui turn principes numerabantur in magistratibus erant cotidieque fere a nobis in contionibus audiebantur …. (shrink)

In this book, T. L. Short corrects widespread misconceptions of Peirce's theory of signs and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary analytic philosophy of language, mind and science. Peirce's theory of mind, naturalistic but nonreductive, bears on debates of Fodor and Millikan, among others. His theory of inquiry avoids foundationalism and subjectivism, while his account of reference anticipated views of Kripke and Putnam. Peirce's realism falls between 'internal' and 'metaphysical' realism and is more satisfactory than either. His pragmatism is not verificationism; (...) rather, it identifies meaning with potential growth of knowledge. Short distinguishes Peirce's mature theory of signs from his better-known but paradoxical early theory. He develops the mature theory systematically on the basis of Peirce's phenomenological categories and concept of final causation. The latter is distinguished from recent and similar views, such as Brandon's, and is shown to be grounded in forms of explanation adopted in modern science. (shrink)

My purpose in what follows is not so much to defend the basic principle of utilitarianism as to indicate the form of it which seems most promising as a basic moral and political position. I shall take the principle of utility as offering a criterion for two different sorts of evaluation: first, the merits of acts of government, social policies, and social institutions, and secondly, the ultimate moral evaluation of the actions of individuals. I do not take it as implying (...) that the individual should live his life on the basis of constant evaluations of this sort. For there are different levels of decision making each with its appropriate criteria. For example, we each inevitably make many of our decisions from the point of view of our own personal self-fulfilment and this cannot regularly take a directly utilitarian form, nor should the utilitarian want it to do so. His claim is at most that we should sometimes review our life from the point of view of a kind of impersonal moral truth of a universalistic utilitarian character. (shrink)

In this book, T. L. Short places the notorious difficulties of Peirce's important writings in a more productive light, arguing that he wrote philosophy as a scientist, by framing conjectures intended to be refined or superseded in the inquiries they initiate. He argues also that Peirce held that the methods and metaphysics of modern science are amended as inquiry progresses, making metaphysics a branch of empirical knowledge. Additionally, Short shows that Peirce's scientific work expanded empiricism on empirical grounds, grounding his (...) phenomenology and subverting the fact/value dichotomy, and that he understood statistical explanations in nineteenth-century science as reintroducing the idea of final causation, now made empirical. Those innovations underlie Peirce's late ideas of a normative science and of philosophy as a branch of science. Short's rich and original study shows us how to read Peirce's writings and why they are worth reading. (shrink)

T.L.S. Sprigge; VIII*—Intrinsic Connectedness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 129–146, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

This chapter examines the philosophy of T. H. Green, the initial leading figure among the absolute idealists who dominated British philosophy in the late 19th century. Green sought to establish that the existence and nature of human beings, especially of the human mind, was not susceptible of a purely empirical or scientific explanation. He claimed that the only possible explanation involved reference to the existence of an Eternal Consciousness, which was gradually realizing itself in the temporal world, more especially in (...) the life of human beings. Further issues in his philosophy are examined, such as that things count as real only if they are in unchanging relations to each other, the difference between negative and positive freedom, the nature of moral choice, the superiority of a virtue ethic to a utilitarian one. (shrink)

The four principles approach to medical ethics plus specification is used in this paper. Specification is defined as a process of reducing the indeterminateness of general norms to give them increased action guiding capacity, while retaining the moral commitments in the original norm. Since questions of method are central to the symposium, the paper begins with four observations about method in moral reasoning and case analysis. Three of the four scenarios are dealt with. It is concluded in the “standard” Jehovah’s (...) Witness case that having autonomously chosen the authority of his religious institution, a Jehovah’s Witness has a reasonable basis on which to refuse a recommended blood transfusion. The author’s view of the child of a Jehovah’s Witness scenario is that it is morally required—not merely permitted—to overrule this parental refusal of treatment. It is argued in the selling kidneys for transplantation scenario that a fair system of regulating and monitoring would be better than the present system which the author believes to be a shameful failure. (shrink)

As the editor noted in the last number Freddie Ayer, or Professor Sir Alfred Ayer, played a considerable part in launching the vast enterprise of the Bentham edition. It is fitting, therefore, that something be said in Utilitas about his achievement as a philosopher and the extent to which he falls within the same broad empiricist and utilitarian tradition to which Bentham and J. S. Mill belonged.

The relationship between Bentham's ‘enunciative principle’ and his ‘censorial principle’ is famously problematic. The problem's solution is that each person has an overwhelming interest in living in a community in which they, like others, are liable to punishment for behaviour condemned by the censorial principle either by the institutions of the state or by the tribunal of public opinion. The senses in which Bentham did and did not think everyone selfish are examined, and a less problematic form of psychological hedonism (...) than Bentham's is proposed. (shrink)

It is questioned whether Dreyfus and Spinosa's essay faces the real issue of things-inthemselves. The importance of distinguishing three interconnected problems deserving to come under Dreyfus and Spinosa's title, 'Coping with Things-in-themselves', is stressed. These are (1) What is the real nature of the world in the midst of which we, whatever we really are, exist?; (2) Can the properties of things (or even of types of things) be distinguished into two types, those which belong to them necessarily (with a (...) de re necessity) and those which belong to them only contingently?; and (3) Which are the properties of things to which reference would have to be made in an ideally correct formulation of the laws which govern change as opposed to descriptions of their results in particular actual circumstances? (shrink)

Graham Bird’s ‘A Comment on Timothy Sprigge’s Account of William James’, in the last issue of Bradley Studies might have better been called ‘A Comment on Timothy Sprigge’s Account of Graham Bird on William James’ True, that would identify its topic as a somewhat limited one as, if the index is correct, there are just nine sentences on this topic in my book James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality. But it appears to be the matter which has mainly (...) fired Bird’s article. Bird believes that I have read his own book, William James, carelessly and misrepresent what he said, claiming to illustrate this with copious quotations from his own book. He dismisses ‘the unworthy thought that one who treats my [Bird’s] text so carelessly might not be a very reliable guide to James’s’. My own view is that ‘unworthy thoughts’ are better not expressed and I shall keep quiet about any of mine which might be deemed such. I don’t think that I read either Bird or James himself carelessly. If I was at all misleading, by failing to emphasise that Bird’s position was that James was attempting to unite the cognitive and the affective, I apologize; the offending remark was my response to his presupposing throughout his commentary the prima facie relevance of this distinction to the interpretation of James’s pragmatism. As for my not having read James carefully, his work has been my favourite philosophical reading for more than forty years, and I have puzzled endlessly over parts of it which I found problematic. I read Bird’s book thoroughly when I reviewed it, and my copy of it is covered in detailed pencil comments. (shrink)

A theory of punishment should tell us not only when punishment is permissible but also when it is a duty. It is not clear whether McCloskey's retributivism is supposed to do this. His arguments against utilitarianism consist largely in examples of punishments unacceptable to the common moral consciousness but supposedly approved of by the consistent utilitarian. We remain unpersuaded to abandon our utilitarianism. The examples are often fanciful in character, a point which (pace McCloskey) does rob them of much of (...) their force. If there was no tension between utilitarian precepts and those which come naturally to plain men, utilitarianism could have no claim to provide a critique of moralities. The utilitarian's attitude to such tensions is somewhat complicated, but what is certain is that there is more room in his system for the sentiments to which McCloskey appeals against him than McCloskey realizes. We agree with McCloskey, however, on the absurdity of substituting rule?utilitarianism for act?utilitarianism as an answer to his attacks. The distinction itself may represent a conceptual confusion. In our view, indeed, unmodified act?utilitarianism provides the best moral basis for thought about punishment. (shrink)

This paper examines a model of income and quality of life that controls the love of money, job satisfaction, gender, and marital status and treats employment status (full-time versus part-time), income level, and gender as moderators. For the whole sample, income was not significantly related to quality of life when this path was examined alone. When all variables were controlled, income was negatively related to quality of life. When (1) the love of money was negatively correlated to job satisfaction and (...) (2) job satisfaction was positively related to both income and quality of life, income was negatively related to quality of life for full-time, high-income, and male employees. When these two conditions failed to exist, income was not related to quality of life for part-time, median- or low-income, and female employees. This model provides new insights regarding the impact of the love of money and job satisfaction on the income–quality of life relationship. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Language, Truth and Logic Later positions Notes Bibliography.

This paper falls into two main parts. In the first I shall review some of the things Bradley said about Christianity as he conceived it. In the second I shall use this review to spell out more formally the logical relations between some main doctrines of Christianity and Bradley’s mature philosophy.

This chapter begins with an account of the life of Spinoza. It then discusses his great work, the Ethics, and the proof of its fundamental claim that there is just one substance, and that everything else which in any manner exists is a mode of it. There follows an account of Spinoza’s form of determinism and its ethical and religious significance and of his distinction between rational and irrational action. Finally there is a discussion of Spinoza’s views on institutionalized religion, (...) and on Jesus. The chapter ends by asking whether Spinozism offers a ‘personal religion’. (shrink)

Empiricism in philosophy is either a method or a theory. The two are separable: one might hold that all knowledge is empirical but that philosophy does something other than add to our knowledge, e.g., that it clarifies concepts; or one might hold that philosophy’s method is empirical and that one of the things known in that way is that not all knowledge is empirical, e.g., mathematics. And what is the empirical? If it is knowledge based on observation, then what is (...) it that can be observed? If philosophy is in method empirical, the range of the observable must be broad, perhaps including mental processes, human history, social institutions such as language, and even the difference between good and evil.In Peirce’s... (shrink)

Peirce persistently proclaimed both idealism and realism, terms that in philosophy's history have had varied meanings, in some of which they designate opposed doctrines; his use of them also varied in meaning. The aim of Robert Lane's important new book is to trace the evolution of Peirce's idealism and realism and to show that, in the end, whatever misadventures occur en route, these doctrines, in Peirce's version of them, are not opposed. Lane explores connections to other Peircean topics: truth, pragmatism, (...) modality, generality, vagueness, continuity. However, he retains his focus, which enables him to examine Peirce's idealism and realism with extraordinary care and thoroughness.Lane's method is, in the first... (shrink)

If there is such a thing as a genuine property appropriately called "intrinsic value" this property must be such that recognition that something does, or would, possess it, has a necessary tendency to motivate towards sustaining that thing in existence or producing it (if possible). There is just one thing which possesses that property and that is the property of being pleasurable (properly conceived) which, therefore, is the same as intrinsic value. (The same, mutatis mutandis, applies to intrinsic disvalue and (...) painfulness.) Why this seems not to be so is explained. (shrink)

In 1952, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) system of creating, validating, studying and employing a diagnostic system in clinical psychiatric practice was introduced. There have been several updates and revisions to this manual and, regardless of its a theoretical framework, it actually does have a framework and presupposition. Essentially the DSM dictates that all psychiatric disorders are syndromes, or a collection of symptoms that commonly occur together and impair psychosocial functioning. These syndromes allow for homogenous groups (...) of patients to be studied and psychotherapies and pharmacotherapies to be developed. This editorial will examine the DSM system with regards to its applicability to central nervous system dysfunction where psychiatric disorders are concerned. Specifically, the brain does not follow categorical, or syndromal, constructs. In fact, the psychiatric patient likely inherits several risk genes that promote abnormal proteins along several neuropathways in the brain. These abnormalities create dysfunctional neurocircuits which create individual psychiatric symptoms, but not a categorical syndrome or diagnosis. The concept that the DSM may be excellent for clinical diagnostic purposes, but less correct in its assumptions for a psychopharmacologist's treatment approaches will be discussed. (shrink)

Since the 1950s we have had the same three neurotransmitters to work with to treat depression, one transmitter for psychoses, three for anxiety. We have developed newer drugs that are more tolerable, but we have not developed drugs that are better in efficacy. The last 50-60 years should be considered the decades that allowed us to treat a greater number of patients with safer and more tolerable drugs. We have also decreased stigma and allowed primary care clinicians to become more (...) comfortable treating the mentally ill. We clearly treat more patients than before, and sometimes are now accused of over-prescribing wantonly as our drugs are safer. Without any clear blockbuster new drug ready to be added to our armamentarium, what can we do as psychopharmacologists today, and tomorrow, to obtain better results? This introductory manuscript will attempt to provide an overview of ideas so that an adept, well-rounded clinician might be able to obtain better outcomes despite using neurotransmitter pharmacodynamics that have been around since the 1950s. Finally, I will comment on the psychotropic pipeline, which may be added to our armamentarium in the future. (shrink)

Many thinkers have said that a God whose existence is argued for metaphysically would have no religious significance even if he existed. This book examines the God or Absolute which emerges in various metaphysical systems and asks whether he, she, or it could figure in any genuinely religious outlook. The systems studied are those of Spinoza, Hegel, T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley (very briefly), Bernard Bosanquet, Josiah Royce, A. N. Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne. There is also a chapter on Kierkegaard (...) as the most important critic of metaphysical religion (especially Hegelian Christianity). The book ends with a statement of a form of absolute or pantheistic idealism espoused by the author and an indication of what religious significance it may have. (shrink)

This passage has caused much discussion and much variety of opinion, and it still remains doubtful whether the later commentators in their efforts at exact interpretation have been more successful than the earlier ones. The general sense is sufficiently clear. Medea is making an apology to the Chorus of sympathizing Corinthian ladies for her delay in appearing before them. So far all are agreed. The difficulties, real or unreal, arise when we begin to inquire what form the apology actually takes. (...) First of all there are doubts as to the meaning of το ς μ μᾂπο. in the Scholia. we have a gloss μῂ όρώμνο είνα. and the explanation το Xωρίςεσθα καì ᾂτν ποθεν μμάτων είνα. Many scholars have taken exception to this view on two grounds, as stated by Verrall ad loc, because ‘the sense of motion is not there, and there is no reference to any eyes in particular.’ He requires either authority or analogy for this. As far as the absence of motion is concerned, it is sufficient to refer to Thuc. 1, 7 αί δ παλααί ᾀπθαλσσης μλλον ῲκίσθησαν id I, 99ναμῄ ᾀπ οκου σ,γ. Il. B 292 μένεν ᾀπ ᾑς ᾀλòΧοο. Then there is the analogous expression αί γàρ δῂ μοᾀπ οὒατος ώδε γένοτο . As to the second objection, why is it necessary that the eyes of anyone in particular should be referred to ? There is no more ambiguity here than there is in Il Ψ 53 θâσσον ᾀπ θαλμν, where the meaning is ‘so as to be out of sight, not of me or you, but of everybody.’ In fact, it could not be maintained with any show of reason that ᾀπθαλμνand ᾀποὒατς could not mean ‘out of sight’ and ‘out of hearing’. (shrink)