Existentialism, by A. Macintyre.--Sartre the philosopher, by S. Hampshire.--The phenomenological philosophy in France, by I.W. Alexander.--Imagination, by H. Ishiguro.--Authenticity and obligation, by F.A. Olafson.--Pessimism and optimism in Sartre's thought, by F. Jeanson.--Sartre as critic, by H. Wardman.--Sartre's literary criticism, by O. Hahn.--Sartre as a playwright: The flies and Dirty hands, by W. Kaufmann.--Sartre as dramatist, by D. Bradby.--The existentialist rediscovery of Hegel and Marx, by G.L. Kline.--Sartre's ideal of social unity, by H.R. Burkel.--Praxis and dialectic in Sartre's critique, by A. (...) Manser.--Sartre and the humanist tradition in sociology, by M.A. and D. Weinstein.--Bibliography (p. [387]-390). (shrink)

On 18–19 May 2018, a symposium was held in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Ronald W. Hepburn (1927–2008). The speakers at this event discussed Hepburn’s oeuvre from several perspectives. For this book, the collection of the revised versions of their talks has been supplemented by the papers of other scholars who were unable to attend the symposium itself. Thus this volume contains contributions from (...) eighteen notable scholars of different disciplines, ranging from contemporary aesthetics and art theory through to philosophical approaches to religion, education and social anthropology. It also includes a bibliography of Hepburn’s writings. The essays were first published in two special issues of the Journal of Scottish Thought, vols. 10–11 (2018–2019). -/- Ronald William Hepburn was born in Aberdeen on 16 March 1927. He went to Aberdeen Grammar School, then he graduated with an M.A. in Philosophy (1951) and obtained his doctorate from the University of Aberdeen (1955). His tutor at Aberdeen was Donald MacKinnon (1913– 1994), a Scottish philosopher and theologian, the author of A Study in Ethical Theory (1957) and The Problem of Metaphysics (1974). Hepburn taught as Lecturer at the Department of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen (1956–60), and he was also Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy at New York University (1959–60). He returned from the United States as Professor of Philosophy at Nottingham University. In 1964, he was appointed as a Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and between 1965 and 1968 he was also Stanton Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. From 1975 until his retirement in 1996, he held the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. He died in Edinburgh on 23 December 2008. His philosophical interests ranged from theology and the philosophy of religion through moral philosophy and the philosophy of education to art theory and aesthetics. Notably, Hepburn is widely regarded as the founder of modern environmental and everyday aesthetics as a result of the influence of papers in the 1960s which pioneered a new approach to the aesthetics of the natural world. (shrink)

This collection examines prevalent assumptions in moral reasoning which are often accepted uncritically in medical ethics. It introduces a range of perspectives from philosophy and medicine on the nature of moral reasoning and relates these to illustrative problems, such as New Reproductive Technologies, the treatment of sick children, the assessment of quality of life, genetics, involuntary psychiatric treatment and abortion. In each case, the contributors address the nature and worth of the moral theories involved in discussions of the relevant issues, (...) and focus on the types of reasoning which are employed. 'Medical ethics is in danger of becoming a subject kept afloat by a series of platitudes about respect for persons or the importance of autonomy. This book is a bold and imaginative attempt to break away from such rhetoric into genuine informative dialogue between philosophers and doctors, with no search after consensus.' Mary Warnock. (shrink)

Interest in imagination dates back to Plato and Aristotle, but full-length works have been devoted to it only relatively recently by Sartre, McKellar, Furlong, Casey, Johnson, Warnock, Brann, and others. Despite their length and variety, however, these current theories take overly narrow views of this complex phenomenon. Their definitions of “imagination” neglect the multiplicity of its meanings and tend to focus narrowly on the power of imaging alone. But imagination in the fullest, most encompassing sense centers instead on creativity, (...) which involves both imaging and reasoning powers. Current accounts of the operations of imagination narrowly construe it in fixed, immutable terms. But it’s instead a dynamic, evolving synergy of its psychological roots and sociobiological roots. This synergy has transformed the roles of images and symbols in imagination. For example, in the shift from mytheopic to scientific imagination, literacy and formal education fostered abstract symbolic thinking, which differs from mytheopic thinking based on richly concrete associations. The result was “more than cool reason”, but experimental studies show that it’s also more than just dreamy imagery. It’s a dynamic synergy of the two that has transformed both. Current evaluations of imagination’s potentials are also narrow. They tend to focus on its role in mental life while ignoring social and political life. Also, they tend to follow romantic and existentialist customs of extolling imagination’s virtues without soberly critiquing its limitations. Again, they ignore the synergy of psychological, sociological and biological forces that shape mental and social evolution, and promote and constrain imagination in complex ways. For example, Sartre surreally asks us to choose our own nature with an imagination emancipated from institutional and instinctual strictures. Yet making intelligible choices depends on these strictures. In conclusion, current theories define imagination narrowly in terms of imaging, they describe its operations in fixed and immutable terms, and they evaluate its potentials without examining the full interplay of forces shaping it. These shortcomings are remedied by a broader perspective that defines imagination more adequately and comprehensively, and that recognizes it’s complex roots, dynamic operations, and evolving potentials. This paper is based on my 1994 work, The Roots of Imagination, which can be downloaded in full here in PhilPapers. (shrink)

These twelve articles consider central issues in the philosophy of education, particularly the concept of education, the content of education, teaching and learning, and justification of education. Contributors include John Woods, W.H. Dray, I. Scheffler, P.H. Hirst, P. Herbst, Mary Warnock, R. Pring, D.W. Hamlyn, and Mrs. P.A. White.

In his Carus Lectures, given in 1974 and printed in this journal in January 1980, W. K. Frankena attacks a number of philosophers who belong, he says, to a recent ‘Movement’ in moral philosophy. As there are many of us in the Movement, as e.g., Elizabeth Anscombe, Geoffrey Warnock, Anthony Quinton and myself, I shall not try to unravel the complications of our similarities and differences. No doubt others will be answering for themselves, and I shall deal only with (...) arguments particularly directed against me. It goes without saying that I am grateful to Frankena for giving my work a good deal of attention. Moreover, at certain points I share his uneasiness about theses that I have put forward, and especially about some of the things that I said in an article called ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives’ published in the Philosophical Review in 1972. I am sure that there is something wrong with that article, and my only doubt is as to whether Frankena’s own moral theories can help us to put it right. (shrink)

Empiricism, semantics, and ontology, by R. Carnap.--Decision and belief in science, by A. Wedberg.--On what there is, by W.V.O. Quine.--Metaphysics in logic, by G.J. Warnock.--Propositions, sentences, and the semantic definition of truth, by A. Pap.--Bertrand Russell's doubts about induction, by P. Edwards.--The logic of explanation, by C.G. Hempel and P. Oppenheim.--One's knowledge of other minds, by A.J. Ayer.--On the interpretation of philosophical texts, by G. Aspelin.--The Cartesian doubt and the Cogito, ergo sum, by K. Marc-Wogau.--Metaphysics, logic and theology, by (...) J.J.C. Smart. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 551 Human Embryo Research: Yes or No?. By CIBA FOUNDATION. London: Tavistock: 1987. Pp. xv + 232. $39.95 (cloth). In 1984 a governmental commission formed under the directorship of Dame Mary Warnock studied proposed legislation for experimentation on human embryos for research purposes. It concluded that such experimentation should not be permitted ·after the fourteenth day of gestation. This book records a symposium conducted under the (...) sponsorship of the CIBA foundation, an international scientific and educational organization which promotes research into biomedical and chemical research. The purpose of the symposium was to determine whether the guidelines set forth by the Warnock commission were legitimate and whether new criteria for allowing embryo r.esearch should be established. The book consists of eleven papers presented at a symposium on the ethics of embryo research along with panel discussions about the papers. Technically, embryo research only concerns experimentation with human products of conception after the fourteenth gestational day. The first seven papers describe contemporary embryo research dealing with the diagnosis and mechanisms of infertility, its ti;eatment by in vitro fertilization, the diagnosis of genetic disease, the causes and avoidance of congenital malformations, and the improvement of contraception. The final four papers deal with the issues of the status of the human embryo in d:ffierent world religions, the moral arguments against human embryo research, and public attitudes on human embryo research. The scientific papers are quite detailed, and they provided a good deal of information about the contemporary state of embryo research. But the papers on the ethics of human embryo research are rather partisan, and they do not adequately approach the difficult human and ethical issues involved in embryo research. One gains the impression from this book that the conference was heavily weighted in favor of those who sought virtually unqualified and unrestricted moral and legal permission for human.embryo research. The scientific papers seemed to go out of their way to argue that there was an unbreakable continuum in the process of transmitting life such that it could not be determined when human life began. For example, Professor Teresa Iglesias's suggestion that a new and distinct human life began when the process of fertilization began, and when the newly formed genetic material came to govern the development of the organism, rceeived little acknowledgment. No papers were presented rejecting nontherapeutic research on human embryos, and.the papers presented by J. W. Bowker and by Bernard Williams argued in behalf of the moral licitness of unspecified forms of embryo research. Bowker claimed that there was no consensus to be found 55~ BOOK REVIEWS among the various world religions on the moral status of the human embryo. He surveyed various religions such as Buddhism and concluded that the arguments in favor of the humanity or personhood of the embryo were not strong or persuasive. His point should not be accepted without caution, however, for he did not consider the claims made by western traditions such as Catholicism in behalf of the personhood of the embryo. 'F:or the claims of an oriental religion such as Buddhism are not as persuasive with Western, rationalist, liberal minds as they are with orientals. Bowker argues that religious claims about the personhood of the unborn ';are weak since we do not claim that larvae are full grown fish or that acorns are oak trees. This is true, but on the other hand, we do not say that horse embryos are vegteables or pigs. Implied in Bowker's claim that the embryo is not a human being or a human person is the assumption that at some point in the gestation process the embryo undergoes a "species-transfer" or "class-transfer" from the biological category of non-human or non-personal to human and personal. This is difficult to accept as there is no precedent in other mammals for such a species or class transfer. Equine, bovine, and canine embryos are not considered to be anything than other than of the species of horse, pig, or dog, and there is no reason to believe that they engage in some sort of species transfer. And he does not explain why the human case alone exhibits this... (shrink)

Part I: WHAT IS ETHICS? Plato: Socratic Morality: Crito. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part II: ETHICAL RELATIVISM VERSUS ETHICAL OBJECTIVISM. Herodotus: Custom is King. Thomas Aquinas: Objectivism: Natural Law. Ruth Benedict: A Defense of Ethical Relativism. Louis Pojman: A Critique of Ethical Relativism. Gilbert Harman: Moral Relativism Defended. Alan Gewirth: The Objective Status of Human Rights. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part III: MORALITY, SELF-INTEREST AND FUTURE SELVES. Plato: Why Be Moral? Richard Taylor: On the Socratic Dilemma. David Gauthier: Morality and (...) Advantage. Gregory Kavka: A Reconciliation Project. Derek Parfit: Later Selves and Moral Principles. Bernard Williams: Persons, Character, and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IV: VALUE. Jeremy Bentham: Classical Hedonism. Robert Nozick: The Experience Machine. Richard Taylor: Value and the Origin of Right and Wrong. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Transvaluation of Values. Derek Parfit: What Makes Someone’s Life Go Best? Thomas Nagel: Value: The View from Nowhere. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part V: UTILITARIANISM AND CONSEQUENTIALISM. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism. J.J.C. Smart: Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism. Kai Nielsen: Against Moral Conservatism. Bernard Williams: Against Utilitarianism. John Hospers: Rule-Utilitarianism. Robert Nozick: Side Constraints. Peter Singer: Famine, Affluence and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VI: KANTIAN AND DEONTOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. Immanuel Kant: Foundation for the Metaphysic of Morals. W. D. Ross: What Makes Right Acts Right? Onora O’Neill: Kantian Formula of the End in Itself and World Hunger. Thomas Nagel: Moral Luck. Philippa Foot: Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives. Judith Jarvis Thomson: Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VII: CONTRACTARIAN ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Thomas Hobbes: The Leviathan. David Gauthier: Why Contractarianism? John Rawls: Contractualism: Justice as Fairness. T.M. Scanlon: Contractualism and Utilitarianism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VIII: VIRTUE-BASED ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Aristotle: The Ethics of Virtue. Bernard Mayo: Virtue and the Moral Life. William Frankena: A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics. Walter Schaller: Are Virtues No More than Dispositions to Obey Moral Rules? Alasdair MacIntyre: The Nature of the Virtues. Susan Wolf: Moral Saints. Louis P. Pojman: In Defense of Moral Saints. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IX: THE FACT/VALUE PROBLEM: METAETHICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. David Hume: On Reason and the Emotions: The Fact/Value Distinction. G. E. Moore: Non-Naturalism. A. J. Ayer: Emotivism. R. M. Hare: Prescriptivism: The Structure of Ethics and Morals. Geoffrey Warnock: The Object of Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part X: MORAL REALISM AND THE CHALLENGE OF SKEPTICISM. J.L. Mackie: The Subjectivity of Values. Jonathan Harrison: A Critique of Mackie’s Error Theory. Gilbert Harman: Moral Nihilism. Nicholas Sturgeon: Moral Explanations. Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Bruce Russell: Two Forms of Ethical Skepticism. Michael Smith: A Defense of Moral Realism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XI: RELIGION AND ETHICS. Plato: Morality and Religion. Immanuel Kant: God and Immortality as Necessary Postulates of Morality. George Mavrodes: Religious and the Queerness of Morality. Kai Nielson: Ethics Without God. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XII: CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES TO CLASSICAL ETHICAL THEORY. Part A. Sociobiology and the Question of Moral Responsibility. Charles Darwin: Ethics and the Descent of Man. E.O.Wilson: Sociobiology and Ethics. Michael Ruse: Evolution and Ethics: The Sociobiological Approach. Elliot Sober: Prospects for an Evolutionary Ethics. J.L. Mackie: The Law of the Jungle, Evolution and Morality. Suggestions for Further Readingon Sociobiology. Part B. The Challenge of Determinism to Moral Responsibility and Desert. Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility. Louis Pojman: Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility:A Response to Galen Strawson. Richard Taylor: A Libertarian Defense of Free Will and Responsibility. Suggestions for Further Reading on Moral Responsibility. Glossary of Ethical Terms. (shrink)

Key Philosophers in Conversation is a fascinating collection of interviews presenting the ideas of some of the worlds leading contemporary philosophers. Each interview features a discussion with a key philosopher looking at philosophical issues such as; the philosophy of mind, ethics, science, political philosophy and the history of philosophy. Those interviewed are; W.V.O Quine, Michael Dummet, Mary Warnock, Hilary Putnam, Alasdair MacIntyre, Daniel Dennett, Martha Nussbaum, Roger Scruton, Bernard Williams, Jean Hampton, Richard Dawkins, Derek Parfit, Peter Strawson, David Gauthier, (...) Hugh Mellor, John Cottingham, Adam Morton, Stefan Korner, Richard Sorabji and Nancy Cartwright. This book offers an excellent insight to contemporary philosophy and is ideal for anyone seeking an introduction to what is happening in Philosophy today. (shrink)

This work should be quite useful as a problem guide to phenomenalist and dualist metaphysics. Professor Yolton is concerned that any system be read both from an internal and an external perspective keeping them as separate and distinct as possible. He also cautions that the external perspective should not presuppose another metaphysic for that has often resulted in gross misreadings of earlier authors. In the first section of the book, phenomenalism, he shows how, for example, D. M. Armstrong and G. (...) Warnock have misread Berkeley and attacks G. Warnock and J. Austin's principle which rules out use of a technical irreducible language by philosophers. Solipsism and idealism as well as Berkeley's sensory phenomenalism are treated. In the second section of the book, dualism, Professor Yolton argues that some "transcendent Meaning Principle" is necessary to make the non-sensual side of dualism intelligible, outlines Plato's dualism as against Protagorian monism, indicates what he considers B. Russell's dualism and tries to show that Russell's treatment of one side is partially completed by C. I. Lewis' treatment of what Professor Yolton considers the other side. In the third section on meaning and truth he tries to establish 1) that there is a large measure of intranslatability between philosophical systems; 2) that meaning involves referrent necessarily; 3) that truth is defined by ontological rules; and 4) that correspondence is the basic truth-relation. Brief discussion is given of certain aspects of the works of P. Strawson, B. Russell, J. S. Mill, G. Ryle, W. V. O. Quine, Meinong, and Eric Tom. Slightly over half of this book is comprised of papers, some slightly modified, published from 1949 to 1961.--J. B. L. (shrink)

In An Ethic of Trust: Mutual Autonomy and the Common Will to Live, W. Royce Clark uses the work of theologians and philosophers Albert Schweitzer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Rawls to create an inclusive ethic in which both the religious and non-religious will have equal freedom and stability.

This is the second volume in the new monograph series sponsored by the American Philosophical Quarterly and judging by the high quality of most of the essays in this collection the idea for such a series seems to be a good one. A wide variety of topics in contemporary philosophical logic are discussed in seven essays, as suggested by the following brief account of their contents: Montgomery Furth's "Two Types of Denotation" is a careful study of Frege's views of denotation, (...) function, and object which manages to make some original suggestions as well as to clear up some confusing features of Frege's discussion. Jaako Hintikka's "Language Games for Quantifiers" develops interesting connections between the uses of quantifiers and various verbs related to seeking and finding and with these connections in mind offers a game theoretic interpretation of quantifiers. J. W. Cornman's admirably clear essay "Types, Categories and Nonsense" discusses the views of Ryle, Russell, Black, Pap, and Sommers on categories and types, formulating criteria of type difference close to that of Sommers. In "A Theory of Conditionals," R. C. Stalnaker takes some clues from the semantical analysis of modal logics in order to present an analysis of 'if... then...' statements and to deal with some epistemological problems about counterfactuals. In "Goodman's Nominalism," A. Hausman and C. Echelberger discuss certain facts which, in their view, no nominalist ontology, including Goodman's can deal with. Ted Honderlich's "Truth: Austin, Strawson, Warnock" is a discussion of Austin's views on truth and some of the confusions surrounding commentary on and criticism of it. Honderlich suggests his own definition of truth in the article. Finally, Colwyn Williamson in "Propositions andPropositions" discusses the various arguments which have been put forward to show that propositions are entities of a sort distinct from sentences. He rejects all such arguments as well as their conclusion.--R. H. K. (shrink)

The principal contemporary moral views are treated under three headings: 1) Intuitionism, represented by G. E. Moore, H. A. Prichard, and W. D. Ross; 2) Emotivism, as expounded by C. L. Stevenson; and 3) Prescriptivism, R. M. Hare's view. Warnock carefully distinguishes the questions these views were designed to answer from the questions which he feels they do in fact answer. Warnock emphasizes throughout the problem of the relation between moral discourse and conduct, as well as the question (...) of the possibility of moral "argument" in the sense of giving "reasons" for a moral viewpoint. In the latter half of the volume Warnock sketches what he takes to be some of the necessary requirements for a more adequate moral theory. He discusses "Naturalism" and rejects the blanket term as misleading unless the precise view one labels "naturalistic" is spelled out. Warnock distinguishes two "anti-naturalist" views: 1) that description and evaluation are different, i.e., that evaluation is not "reducible" to description and 2) that they are logically independent. He considers 1) a platitude. He accepts 2), but rejects what might be considered a further implication of this view—that absolutely anything might be regarded as a criterion of evaluation. In conclusion Warnock suggests that it might be profitable to look for the distinctive features of moral discourse in the content rather than the form. A good introduction to critical thinking, Warnock's account raises more questions than it answers.—C. L. H. (shrink)

This volume explores worldwide developments in the field of business ethics. It studies ethical issues faced by transnational corporations, the possibilities for international cooperation after the cold war, as well as regional business ethics issues from around the world. The essays, taken from the Ninth Bentley Conference on Business Ethics sponsored by the Center for Business Ethics, include cases and regional studies from Africa, Eastern Europe, the Pacific Rim, and North and South America. Topics discussed include the BCCI scandal, the (...) IBM-Fujitsu case, land-use policies, transnational codes of business conduct, ethics and international law, business and cultural diversity, and ethics and economic development. (shrink)