"Uprightness" was termed the "leitmotiv in the formation of the human organism" by Erwin Straus (1966, p. 139). He felt that without it the human being was certainly doomed to die. Yet, what happens with those who are deprived of their "uprightness" in either the literal or moral sense (as in "not to stoop to anything"), through becoming Dis-abled? Getting up, rising in opposition to the "other" (Allon) implies a moral dimension in the case of human Dis-ability which is tied (...) to the leitmotiv established by the upright posture of anthropos . The suggestion that there is a moral dimension to Disability is a radical notion in a culture whose health professionals have become very sensitive to any idea that suggests we are blaming those who through no fault of their own have become in some way disadvantaged as compared to the mainstream of society. Although the importance of rising in opposition to the world (Allon) was perhaps originally established upon the upright posture quite literally, because man is a sense-making and sense-giving creature, this primordial act which establishes our full humanity may itself be represented and re-enacted in a variety of ways which can and should become the central project of rehabilitation of the body, as opposed to the current emphasis on technique and technological innovation. It is in the changing physiognomy of the Dis-abled person's ruptured world that we may discover the phenomenological sense of Dis-ability. Keywords: Dis-Ability, Uprightness, Rehabilitation CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Initiated by Robert Wesson, Evolution and Human Values is a collection of newly written essays designed to bring interdisciplinary insight to that area of thought where human evolution intersects with human values. The disciplines brought to bear on the subject are diverse - philosophy, psychiatry, behavioral science, biology, anthropology, psychology, biochemistry, and sociology. Yet, as organized by co-editor Patricia A. Williams, the volume falls coherently into three related sections. Entitled Evolutionary Ethics, the first section brings contemporary research to an (...) area first explored by Herbert Spencer. Evolutionary ethics looks to the theory of evolution by natural selection to find values for human living. The second section, Evolved Ethics, discusses the evolution of language and religion and their impact on moral thought and feeling. Evolved ethics was partly Charles Darwin's subject in The Descent of Man. The last section bears the title Scientific Ethics. A nascent field, scientific ethics asks about the evolution of human nature and the implications of that nature for ethical theory and social policy. Together, the essays collected here provide important contemporary insights into what it is - and what it may be - to be human. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato's Political Analogy: Fallacy or Analogy? ROBERT W. HALL THE INTERPRETATIONOf the familiar political analogy between the state and the soul is crucial to a proper understanding of Plato's conception of the individual and his relation to the polls. Interpretations which, consciously or not, tend to identify the justice of the individual with that of the state result either in a subordination of justice of the individual to (...) that of the state, or in endowing the ordinary citizen with an inferior justice. These interpretations of the political analogy have beert adequately dealt with? Recently, Vlastos has stressed what he considers to be the logical or deductive character of the analogy." He finds defects or fallacies in Plato's logic, which, while not necessarily fatal to the significance of the analogy, seriously impair its cogency. What is of particular interest is Vlastos' claim that the primary goal of the analogy is a demonstration, unknown to most scholars, albeit an unsuccessful one, that the justice of the individual necessarily instantiates or entails ordinary acts of justice,a Vlastos has thus raised the question of what kind of approach is most fruitful in unlocking the meaning of the political analogy. My own conviction is that the political analogy can best be understood through a careful examination or observation of the two wholes, the state and the individual, and the character of their relationship. A consideration of the essentials of Vlastos' outlook on the analogy will be a useful introduction to what may be termed a "phenomenological" approach. Such a perspective may provide a better understanding of what Plato is attempting to establish in the analogy, and of how he goes about it. Vlastos' interpretation of the political analogy is strongly colored by his assessment of the central concern of the Republic, the proof that justice "pays." By this Vlastos means that what he terms "psychological justice," the correct, hierarchical arrangement of the three parts or aspects of the soul, must be proven to result in acts of external justice. It is this relationship between psychological justice and ordinary or social justice which sets the problem of logical consistency in Vlastos' account of the political analogy. As the definition of justice of the individual or psychological justice, Vlastos offers Socrates' statement, "In the case of each one of us, whoever is such that each of the three [psychic elements] in him does its own, he is a just man." The social description of justice is: What we laid down at the start as a general requirement when we were founding the polls this, or some form of it, is justice. We did lay down, and often stated, if you recall, that every single person ought to engage in the social function.., for which his own nature is I For exponents of these positions and their critics, cf. my "Plato's Theory of Justice in the Republic," Bucknell Review, XV, 2 (May, 1967), 60, n. I. G. Vlastos, "Justice and Psychic Harmony in the Republic," The 1ournal of Philosophy, LXVI, 16 (August 21, 1969), 505-521. All further references to this article will be by page number. s 506, 515. [419] 420 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY best fitted.uWe did say this.--And indeed that to do one's own and not to be meddlesome is justice, this we have often heard from many others, and have often said ourselves.-Wc have said it.--This, then, my friend, if taken in a certain way, appears to be justice: to do one's own. (433A-B) 4 Vlastos admits that this social description is not really a definition of the justice of the individual, "that 'doing one's own' was not meant to constitute a definition of the justice of an individual person.''~ Nonetheless, this social description functions for him as a definition of the individual's justice, and plays a prominent role in the supposed fallacy of equivocation in the meaning of justice. Vlastos argues for this social description on the grounds that "/or Plato every just man must have the disposition named by the 'doing one's own' formula.''e The basis for this claim is Socrates' declaration that "the same (moral) characters... (shrink)

In this study of Plato's theory of the individual, I propose to show that Plato is deeply concerned with the achievement by each person of the moral excellence appropriate to man. Plato exhibits profound interest in the moral well being of each individual, not merely those who are philosophically gifted. Obviously my study is in opposition with a traditional line of interpretation which holds that Plato evinces small concern for the ordinary individual, the "common man" of today. According to this (...) interpretation Plato's chief interest, shown especially in the Republic, is with the philosophically endowed, whose knowledge penetrates to and embraces the realm of forms; this is a world which must remain for the common man an unfathomable mystery in its totality. Although he is unable to grasp the knowledge of the forms necessary for genuine morality, the ordinary individual may, if he is fortunate enough to live in a polis ruled by philosophers, gain a sort of secondary or "demotic" morality. Through the mechanical development of the right kind of habits, through faithful obedience to the decrees of the rulers and the laws of the polis, the many who are incapable of comprehending the true bases of morality will attain a second best, unreflective morality accompanied by happiness. (shrink)

This collection reflects the extraordinary career of the man it honors in its variety of subjects and range of scholarship. Mortimer Adler proposes six amendments to the Constitution. Paul Eidelberg surveys the rise of secularism from Socrates to Machiavelli. Hellmut Fritzsche, a physicist, catalogs some famous scientific mistakes. David Grene (Anastaplo's dissertation advisor) looks at Shakespeare's Measure for Measure as "mythological history." Harry V. Jaffa continues a running debate with Anastaplo on how to read the Constitution, James Lehrberger examines Aquinas's (...) views on natural law, Harry Newman argues "The Case Against Politics." Studs Terkel interviews Anastaplo on his encounter with the Illinois bar, and John Van Doren and others contribute a selection of poems. George Anastaplo turned to an academic career when he was denied admission to the bar in 1950 because, on principle, he affirmed the right of revolution and refused to say whether he was a Communist. In this age of academic specialization, Anastaplo's career has been distinguished by a remarkable versatility of thought. Author of five books, including The Artist as Thinker: From Shakespeare to Joyce (Swallow Press, 1983), Human Being and Citizen: Essays on Virtue, Freedom and the Common Good (Swallow Press, 1986), The Constitution of 1787: A Commentary (1989), and The American Moralist: On Law, Ethics, and Government (Ohio University Press, 1992), Anastaplo has also, for the past three decades, produced a steady stream of essays, articles, and papers on subjects from baseball to the Koran, from Socrates to Freud. Volume 2 of Law and Philosophy includes a complete bibliography of his works. (shrink)

We discuss a case where clinical genomic investigation of muscle weakness unexpectedly found a genetic variant that might (or might not) predispose to kidney cancer. We argue that despite its off-target and uncertain nature, this variant should be discussed with the man who had the test, not because it is medical information, but because this discussion would allow the further clinical evaluation that might lead it to becoming so. We argue that while prominent ethical debates around genomics often take ‘results’ (...) as a starting point and ask questions as to whether to look for and how to react to them, the construction of genomic results is fraught with ethical complexity, although often couched as a primarily technical problem. We highlight the need for greater focus on, and appreciation of, the ethical work undertaken daily by scientists and clinicians working in genomic medicine and discuss how public conversations around genomics need to adapt to prepare future patients for potentially uncertain and unexpected outcomes from clinical genomic tests. (shrink)

The notion of emergence has received much renewed attention recently. Most of the authors I review (§ II), including most notably Robert Batterman (2002, 2003, 2004) share the common aim of providing accounts for emergence which offer fresh insights from highly articulated and nuanced views reflecting recent developments in applied physics. Moreover, the authors present such accounts to reveal what they consider as misrepresentative and oversimplified abstractions often depicted in standard philosophical accounts. With primary focus on Batterman, however, I (...) show (in § III), that despite (or perhaps because of) such novel and compelling insights; underlying thematic tensions and ambiguities persist nevertheless, due to subtle reifications made of particular (albeit central) mathematical methods employed in asymptotic analysis. I offer a potential candidate (in § IV), for regularization advanced by the theoretical physicist David Finkelstein (1996, 2002, 2004). The richly characterized multilinear algebraic theories employed by Finkelstein would, for instance, serve the two-fold purpose of clearing up much of the inevitably “epistemological emergence” accompanying divergent limiting cases treated in the standard approaches, while at the same time characterize in relatively greater detail the “ontological emergence” of particular quantum phenomena under study. Among other things, this suggests that the some of the structures suggested by Batterman as essentially involving the superseded theory are better understood as regular algebraic contraction (Finkelstein). Because of the regularization latent in such powerful multilinear algebraic methods, among other things this calls into question Batterman’s claims that explanation and reduction should be kept separate, in instances involving singular limits. (§ V). (shrink)

Biographer Richardson has written a moving portrait of James--pivotal member of the Metaphysical Club and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience. The biography, ten years in the making, draws on unpublished letters, journals, and family records. Richardson paints extraordinary scenes from what James himself called the "buzzing blooming confusion" of his life, beginning with childhood, as he struggled to achieve amid the domestic chaos and intellectual brilliance of Father, brother Henry, and sister Alice. James was a beloved teacher who (...) taught courage and risk-taking, and served as mentor to W.E.B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, and many other Harvard outsiders. Richardson also illuminates James's hugely influential works. One of the great figures in mysticism here brought richly to life, James is a man "whose leading ideas are still so fresh and challenging that they are not yet fully assimilated by the modern world they helped to bring about."--From publisher description. (shrink)

In a recent issue of Religious Studies , G. G. O'Collins concludes his essay with a question which in his view states ‘the classic problem of Christology’: ‘What is the ontological connection between the Logos and the human existence of Jesus of Nazareth?’ In another recent issue C. J. F. Williams poses the question, ‘What sort of union is a hypostatic union?’ In the literature grown up around Kierkegaard's pronouncements on the notion of the God-man, the following question is discussed: (...) Did Kierkegaard mean to say that the very notion of the God-man is incoherent? Some hold that he did, some that he did not. Yet, however important it is to establish what Kierkegaard himself held concerning this question, there is the far more important question for Christian doctrine of whether the notion of the God-man is incoherent. (shrink)

Material evidence: learning from archaeological practice / Alison Wylie and Robert Chapman -- Part I. Fieldwork and recording conventions -- Repeating the unrepeatable experiment / Richard Bradley -- Experimental archaeology at the cross roads: a contribution to interpretation or evidence of xeroxing / Martin Bell -- Proportional representation: multiple voices in archaeological interpretation at çatalhöyük / Shahina Farid -- Integrating database design and use into recording methodologies / Michael J. Rains -- The tyranny of typologies: evidential reasoning in romano-egyptian (...) domestic archaeology / Anna Lucille Boozer -- Part II. Cross-field trade: archaeological applications of external expertise and technologies -- The archaeological bazaar: scientific methods for sale? or: putting the "arch" back into archaeometry / A. M. Pollard and P. Bray -- Radiocarbon dating and archaeology: history, progress and present status / Sturt W. Manning -- Using evidence from natural sciences in archaeology / David Killick -- Working the digital: some thoughts from landscape archaeology / Marcos Llobera -- Crafting knowledge with (digital) visual media in archaeology / Sara Perry -- Part III. Multiple working hypotheses, strategies of elimination, and triangulation -- Uncertain on principle: combining lines of archaeological evidence to create chronologies / Alex Bayliss and Alasdair Whittle -- Lessons from modelling neolithic farming practice: methods of elimination / Amy Bogaard -- Evidence, archaeology and law: an initial exploration / Roger M. Thomas -- Law and archaeology: modified wigmorean analysis / Terence Anderson and William Twining -- Traditional knowledge, archaeological evidence, and other ways of knowing / George Nicholas and Nola Markey -- Part IV. Broader perspectives: material culture as object and evidence -- Evidence of what? on the possibilities of archaeological interpretation / Gavin Lucas -- Meeting pasts halfway: a consideration of the ontology of material evidence in archaeology / Andrew Meirion Jones -- Matter and facts: material culture and the history of science / Simon Werrett. (shrink)

William Ophuls has argued that the sources of and solutions for present scarcity conditions are to be found in Western political philosophy. I clarify various theoretical issues raised by Ophuls’ work and offer conceptual alternatives regarding some of the more basic issues. Specifically, I critique the Lockean and Hobbesian elements in Ophuls’ treatment of the role of liberal democracy, with special attention to abundance assumptions and Lockean individualism. I also argue that he fails to deal adequately with resource distribution (...) in his treatment of resource scarcity, that he improperly removes man from nature, that he misunderstands the relationship of technology and politics, and that he encounters other difficulties in terms of the public/private distinction and in integrating micro and macro issues. Ironically, Ophuls’ admirable attempt to shed light on the critical relationship between scarcity conditions and political philosophy may have created a new and disorienting set of shadows. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DOES SCIENCE SAY THAT HUMAN EXISTENCE IS POINTLESS? ROBERT M. AUGROS St. Anselm College Manchester, New Hampshire I N AN ARTICLE published by Marine Biological Laboratory, historian of science William Provine claims that contemporary science imposes on us the view that human existence is meaningless: "Modern science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with mechanistic principles. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in (...) nature. There are no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable.... Modern science directly implies that there are no inherent moral or ethical laws, no absolute guiding principles for human society.... When I die I shall rot and that is the end of me. There is no hope of life everlasting.... Free will as it is traditionally conceived, the freedom to make uncoerced unpredictable choices among alternative possible courses of action, simply does not exist.... There is no ultimate meaning for humans."1 Provine's position can be reduced to five denials: no purposefulness in nature, no God, no ethical principles, no immortality, no free will. Are these denials scientific as Provine contends? No one would maintain that they are scientific in the sense of being proven. No experimental science claims to prove any of them. One occasionally finds one of the five denials, simply asserted without evidence, in the introduction to a textbook or in the popular writings of a scientist, but no scientific proofs are ever offered. Provine himself, in the article proclaiming these denials, neither offers nor refers to any such proofs. He seems to 1 William Provine, "Evolution and The Foundation of Ethics," MBL Science 3 (1988): 27-28. 577 578 ROBERT M. AUGROS concede that there are none when he says "modern science directly implies," not proves. If the five denials are not scientific in the sense of being proven, perhaps they are nevertheless indispensable as background assumptions to make the scientific method work properly. Must the working scientist adopt Provine's five denials to make discoveries or to explain phenomena? The founders of modern science did not think so, and did not assume the five denials in their work. On the contrary, they integrated into their scientific work the existence of God, purpose in the universe, free choice, the immortality of the human soul, and the reality of ethics. For instance, Copernicus argued that the cosmos must be harmonious because' it is made by the "best and most orderly Workman of all."2 By explicitly following the principle that nature is purposeful, William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood.3 Seventeenth-century chemist Robert Boyle wrote: "When I consider the rational soul as an immaterial and immortal being, that bears the image of its divine maker, being endowed with a capacious intellect, and a will, that no creature can force: I am by these considerations disposed to think the soul of man a nobler and more valuable being, than the whole corporeal world."4 It was the passion of Kepler's life to investigate the deeper harmonies of the heavens, for, in his words, the "fuller knowledge of God through nature."5 "Galileo never thought of denying an ultimately religious answer to the problems of the universe," writes E. A. Burtt.6 Galileo repudiated Aristotle's physics but praised and extolled his ethics. Isaac Newton con2 Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions ofthe HemJenly Spheres, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis, vol. 16 of Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 508. 3 William Harvey, "An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals," vol. 26 of Great Books of the Western World, ed. Philip Goetz (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990), 285. 4 Robert Boyle, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1672) vol. 4, 19. sJoannis Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia, ed. Ch. Frisch (Frankfurt and Erlangen, 1858), vol. 8, 688. 6 Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950), 93. IS HUMAN EXISTENCE POINTLESS? 579 sidered his Principia to be one great proof for the existence of God whom he describes in his famous General Scholium as living, intelligent, perfect, eternal, omniscient, and omnipresent.7 If the founding fathers of modern... (shrink)

This edition, with translation and notes, by an outstanding historian of medieval optics, should serve to make Roger Bacon better understood and appreciated by those interested in the history of Western thought. Some time ago Bacon was lauded as a precursor of modern science, as an inventor, an innovator in the use of experimental and mathematical methods, a man ahead of his time whose genius went unnoticed by his contemporaries. Then a reaction set in, and the claim was made that (...) his results were all anticipated by others, especially by Robert Grosseteste, and that he had really contributed little to the advance of scientific knowledge. Lindberg sets the record straight in his careful and documented study of these seminal writings. As he notes in summary: "[T]his work did not foreshadow the science of subsequent ages...; rather, it represents an intelligent and creative response to a variety of ancient traditions. Bacon did not possess a seventeenth-century or twentieth-century mind, but a very good thirteenth-century one; and there is no possibility of understanding his achievement unless we view it in medieval context". (shrink)

It weighs in at a bit more than five pounds; its dimensions demand a cradle. Yet this book is a handsome and welcome achievement despite its bulk. Its reproduction of the 1922 text, its maps and photos of 1904 Dublin; its list of minor characters in Ulysses; its bibliography of scholarship, both old and new; its timeline of Joyce's life, and its exemplary detailed annotations of the text: everything, harvested from the best sources, has been brought together to create the (...) largest volume dedicated to Joyce scholarship ever produced—a book that celebrates the first printing of Joyce's masterpiece. Given its weight and size, its classroom utility is likely limited; given its monumentality, it is a proper hundred-year tribute.What is wholly original about the book's contents are the essays that preface each of the eighteen episodes of the masterpiece. That Joycean scholarship grows upon itself is amply demonstrated by the sophistication and weight of learning the eighteen writers can now display. Almost fifty years have passed since Clive Hart and David Hayman edited a volume with a similar aim. Each of the new essays reveals just how much more there is now to know and say about Ulysses, how much more there is to praise in how Joyce conceived the book, how much more there is to teach, and how unlikely it is that Joycean scholarship will ever be diminished in either its curiosity or its energy. Given the increasing complexity and density of such accumulated knowledge, it is a pleasure to witness the economy and precision shown by so many of the writers. In particular, Robert Spoo's writing about “Nestor,” Maud Ellmann's writing about “Lotus Eaters,” and Vicki Mahaffey's writing about “Nausicaa” demonstrate how concision can make for valuable illumination.But there is a problem with where these essays are positioned. Coming before each of the episodes they introduce, they might condition the mind of a reader new to Ulysses to look upon those episodes as no more than demonstrations of what the scholars think. Catherine Flynn, the book's editor, emphasizes the need of such professional interpretation when she describes the plight of anyone “struggling through Ulysses” and “the key challenges facing the reader.” She is right about how hard it is for any new reader to “get” the book, but the placement of the essays is at odds with her claim that “grappling with the novel's challenges, the reader is pushed toward one of the most important rewards of reading Ulysses: thinking independently.” The prefaces may well impede the reader from thinking independently.Professor Flynn's focus on challenge and difficulty is widely shared throughout the Joycean community and has become a fundamental preoccupation in Joyce scholarship. Taking Joyce's mastery as a given, many Joyceans assume a Talmudic stance in believing, to quote Spinoza, that “the intellectual love of a thing consists in understanding its perfections.” Facing the formidable Joyce, they turn and turn again to explication. They subscribe to the dictum that the youthful Joyce himself, perhaps self-mockingly, set down: “A man of genius makes no mistake. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” But is Ulysses free of error?Fritz Senn, writing about “Ithaca,” does not put himself in opposition to Joyce but in opposition to the presumed inerrancy of Joyce. He argues that the episode displays a troubling disjunction between what Joyce intended to do in the episode and what he did. Joyce told his friend Frank Budgen that in the episode “not only will the reader know everything and know it in the baldest and coldest way, but Bloom and Stephen thereby become heavenly bodies, wanderers like the stars at which they gaze.” But readers do not, indeed, get to know all they should, or see all they should see. Senn notes that they “learn next to nothing about Bloom's mother, his birthday, or the exact nature of his father's suicide, although they do learn a lot about such things as the junk in a drawer, the Dublin water supply system, and the addresses of Dublin shops.” Senn asks: “What does the meeting of the two characters amount to? Will it change Stephen so that he might become the author of the book he is in? Does Bloom find a son? Does he become the father that Stephen is supposed to be looking for? The impassive episode does not seem to answer, or to care.” But these are questions about which many a reader might care.Joyce named “Ithaca” as his favorite among the episodes. Senn demonstrates by his care and attentiveness that he too admires it. But by not limiting himself to dutiful reverence, he instead critically examines the Joycean text. His tribute to Joyce is both unsparing and generous.Equally attentive and yet incisive is Katherine O'Callaghan in her examination of “Sirens.” She recognizes the experimental daring of Joyce's strategy of “conveying music through language” in that episode. But her analysis, as penetrating as it is learned, does not leave the reader persuaded that the episode is entirely successful. As she observes, “the reluctance of the musical art to bend to the critical written voice” is a “stumbling block.”Another problematic experiment, “Oxen of the Sun,” which Joyce himself described as “the most difficult episode... both to interpret and to execute,” presents its commentator, Sarah Davison, with the task of explaining how its grandiose mixture of parody, plagiarism, and sheer celebration of myriad English prose styles over the centuries can function without, as she says, “wrongfooting and dissatisfying readers” who assume that the episode “enacts a historical progression only to find themselves disorientated by so many different echoes and cadences.”Were Joycean scholars more devoted to critical judgment than to explication—even when they are faced with the spectacular imposition of genius—the common reader would more likely find fellowship, and less intimidation, when reading a book that is not a sacred text but a human document, written with the extraordinary self-imposed challenges, as well as the problematic results, that only a most extraordinary human could make. 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British Library MS Harley 7368 or The Book of Sir Thomas More presents a play by five hands in various states of revision. Scholars have identified Anthony Munday as the principal playwright and William Shakespeare as the author of three pages that portray Thomas More quelling a Mayday London riot against foreigners. Its manifold uncertainties notwithstanding, the playscript teaches us some things about Shakespeare and about Thomas More. It enables us to see the Bard in the act of creating (...) and revising, participating fully in the processes of collaboration typical in his time. Moreover, it presents More as a heroic wise man whom Protestants and Catholics can admire for his resolution, mirth and compassion, qualities that transcend confessional dispute. (shrink)

How do thought and language manage to be 'about' aspects of the world? J. Robert G. Williams investigates how representation arises out of a fundamentally non-representational world, showing the explanatory relations between the representational properties of language, of thought, and of perception and intention.

Is our ego but an illusion, a mere appearance produced by a reality that is foreign to us? Is it the main source of violence and injustice? Jacob Rogozinski calls into question these prejudices that dominate current philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the human sciences. Arguing that we must distinguish the true ego from the alienated and narcissistic construct, he calls for an end to egicide, or the destruction of the ego. _Ego and the Flesh_ offers a critique of the two masters (...) of egicide, Heidegger and Lacan, along with a rereading of Descartes, who was the first to discover the absolute truth of "I am." The book's main purpose, however, is to provide an entirely new theory of the self, _egoanalysis_, which reveals a divided ego-flesh. Constantly striving to attain unity, the ego-flesh is haunted by a _remainder_, whose role sheds light on various enigmas: the encounter with the other, the passage from hate to love, the death and the resurrection of the I. For ego-analysis is no mere theory: it opens the way to our deliverance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern PhilosophyJean-Robert ArmogatheRiccardo Pozzo, editor. The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004. Pp. xvi + 336. Cloth, $69.95.The status of a "great" philosopher is to stand out for centuries, asking questions in such a way that the answers can never be definitive. Not so many of them are able to stand such a (...) severe proof. Aristotle phrased some questions we are still groping to answer. It was a very good idea to ask thirteen scholars to deliver a lecture series at the Catholic University of America during the Fall 1999 about the reception of Aristotle's theory of intellectual virtues (Nich. Ethics VI). The speakers did not stick to this issue, and enlarged their purpose to a general approach of Aristotle's receptions in various moments of Western modern philosophy.Edward Mahoney complements Charles Schmitt's basic introduction to Aristotle and the Renaissance, with some very valuable pages about Cardinal Bessarion's contribution to the Byzantine debate aroused in 1439 by Plethon's comparison between Plato and Aristotle (in favor of the former). Along with Charles Schmitt, Antonino Poppi is the best specialist of the Paduan tradition, and wrote a very qualified paper about Zabarella (1533-89), who shaped Aristotelianism into the rigorous science of the schoolbooks: for centuries, Aristotle is read through Zabarella's glasses. Apart from a bird's view on recent Galilean studies (where Alistair Crombie is not mentioned), William A. Wallace makes his point about Aristotle's influence on Galilean logics, linking Galileo's 1640 letter to Liceti (where he states that, in matters of logic, he has been an Aristotelian all his life) to the scientist's deep knowledge as revealed by the logical questions in one of the juvenile treatises (ms 27 in Florence, more thoroughly studied in Wallace's book, Galileo's Logic of Discovery and Proof [Dordrecht, 1992]). John Doyle, a specialist of Late Scholastic Philosophy, figures out a [End Page 209] strange character, the French Jesuit André Semery (1630-1717), who taught for thirty years at the Collegium romanum. In a very anti-Aristotelian way, he holds a definite belief in metaphysical beings of reason. The boundary between what we can think and say is quietly stepped over, when Semery and other Jesuits begin to think about thinking, opening a very modern path which leads to Brentano and Quine. Christia Mercer states that Leibniz's combination of a Platonist epistemology with an Aristotelian conception of nature brings a very innovative view in ethics. A very forceful paper by Richard L. Velkley compares Rousseau's politics to Aristotle's view of man (the paper became a chapter of his 2002 impressive book Being after Rousseau), while Riccardo Pozzo gives a short presentation of Aristotle's reception in modern Germany, and an elaborate analysis of Kant's debt to Aristotle for the intellectual virtues. Hegel's appropriation of Aristotelian intellect is presented by Alfredo Ferrarin, while Michael Davis reconstructs Nietzsche's path from Aristotle to the tragedy and back, in a very convincing way. Husserl (Richard Cobb-Stevens), Heidegger (Stanley Rosen), Wittgenstein (Daniel Dahlstrom) and Gadamer (Enrico Berti) conclude brilliantly the series, showing how the thought of the Stagirite fertilized contemporary philosophers, in a permanent dialogue of disagreement or borrowing, never at rest, and never leaving anyone indifferent. The old Greek man remains a vivid debater for our age of anxiety.Jean-Robert ArmogatheThe University of Paris-SorbonneCopyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern PhilosophyJean-Robert ArmogatheRiccardo Pozzo, editor. The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004. Pp. xvi + 336. Cloth, $69.95.The status of a "great" philosopher is to stand out for centuries, asking questions in such a way that the answers can never be definitive. Not so many of them are able to stand such a (...) severe proof. Aristotle phrased some questions we are still groping to answer. It was a very good idea to ask thirteen scholars to deliver a lecture series at the Catholic University of America during the Fall 1999 about the reception of Aristotle's theory of intellectual virtues (Nich. Ethics VI). The speakers did not stick to this issue, and enlarged their purpose to a general approach of Aristotle's receptions in various moments of Western modern philosophy.Edward Mahoney complements Charles Schmitt's basic introduction to Aristotle and the Renaissance, with some very valuable pages about Cardinal Bessarion's contribution to the Byzantine debate aroused in 1439 by Plethon's comparison between Plato and Aristotle (in favor of the former). Along with Charles Schmitt, Antonino Poppi is the best specialist of the Paduan tradition, and wrote a very qualified paper about Zabarella (1533-89), who shaped Aristotelianism into the rigorous science of the schoolbooks: for centuries, Aristotle is read through Zabarella's glasses. Apart from a bird's view on recent Galilean studies (where Alistair Crombie is not mentioned), William A. Wallace makes his point about Aristotle's influence on Galilean logics, linking Galileo's 1640 letter to Liceti (where he states that, in matters of logic, he has been an Aristotelian all his life) to the scientist's deep knowledge as revealed by the logical questions in one of the juvenile treatises (ms 27 in Florence, more thoroughly studied in Wallace's book, Galileo's Logic of Discovery and Proof [Dordrecht, 1992]). John Doyle, a specialist of Late Scholastic Philosophy, figures out a [End Page 209] strange character, the French Jesuit André Semery (1630-1717), who taught for thirty years at the Collegium romanum. In a very anti-Aristotelian way, he holds a definite belief in metaphysical beings of reason. The boundary between what we can think and say is quietly stepped over, when Semery and other Jesuits begin to think about thinking, opening a very modern path which leads to Brentano and Quine. Christia Mercer states that Leibniz's combination of a Platonist epistemology with an Aristotelian conception of nature brings a very innovative view in ethics. A very forceful paper by Richard L. Velkley compares Rousseau's politics to Aristotle's view of man (the paper became a chapter of his 2002 impressive book Being after Rousseau), while Riccardo Pozzo gives a short presentation of Aristotle's reception in modern Germany, and an elaborate analysis of Kant's debt to Aristotle for the intellectual virtues. Hegel's appropriation of Aristotelian intellect is presented by Alfredo Ferrarin, while Michael Davis reconstructs Nietzsche's path from Aristotle to the tragedy and back, in a very convincing way. Husserl (Richard Cobb-Stevens), Heidegger (Stanley Rosen), Wittgenstein (Daniel Dahlstrom) and Gadamer (Enrico Berti) conclude brilliantly the series, showing how the thought of the Stagirite fertilized contemporary philosophers, in a permanent dialogue of disagreement or borrowing, never at rest, and never leaving anyone indifferent. The old Greek man remains a vivid debater for our age of anxiety.Jean-Robert ArmogatheThe University of Paris-SorbonneCopyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 450-451 [Access article in PDF] Simon May. Nietzsche's Ethics and His War on 'Morality.' New York: Oxford University, The Clarendon Press, 1999. Pp. xi + 212. Cloth, $45.00. When Friedrich Nietzsche reviewed his career during his final year of intellectual activity, he wrote in Ecce Homo (1888) that his "campaign against morality" began with the publication of Daybreak (1880) eight years (...) earlier. With this autobiographical remark in mind, Simon May appropriately develops his study of Nietzsche's ethics, Nietzsche's Ethics and His War on "Morality," by attending to Nietzsche's writings of the 1880's, using the relatively late On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) as his textual keystone.For the sake of his English-speaking readers' convenience, May reiterates Walter Kaufmann's familiar translations of Nietzsche's works in all of his book's citations, and keeps a relatively tight leash on his references to Nietzsche's pre-1880 works and unpublished notebooks. Historical guideposts to authors within Nietzsche's surrounding cultural context are also limited, and the book unfolds around May's reflections on Nietzsche's publications, supplemented by contemporary references to the works of Bernard Williams in matters concerning ethics, and by references to a substantial number of English-speaking Nietzsche scholars in matters concerning Nietzsche's valuation of truth. Such are the book's methodological contours, which are defensible, but which will probably disappoint those who have philosophical sensibilities that are more philologically and historically pronounced.May divides his book in half, the first segment of which reviews a series of familiar Nietzschean thematics, Nietzsche's conception of values, his distinction between master and slave moralities, his analysis of guilt and bad conscience, his conception of life enhancement, and his conception of the ascetic ideal, all with the prospect of suggesting that Nietzsche's ethical ideal is best encapsulated by the phrase, "become what one is." This ideal, as May understands it, is to develop oneself maximally in a life-enhancing way, given the parameters of one's natural capacities. Although one would expect May to associate this prescription with Nietzsche's conception of the "superhuman" (Übermensch), he thought-provokingly sets the ideal of "becoming what one is" directly against Nietzsche's Übermensch, arguing that the latter is, in fact, "unattainable and undesirable." According to May, Nietzsche's discussion of the superhuman type is distractingly unrealistic, chiefly because a perfectly sovereign individual, unlike us, would be an infallible "man-god" (117) and would have nothing left to overcome.The second half of May's study concentrates on Nietzsche's crucial revaluation of the value of truth. May argues that although Nietzsche rejects an unconditional value for truth and its associated ascetic ideal, it is nonetheless consistent to "passionately" value truth and remain a Nietzschean life-enhancer. May respects Nietzsche's perspectivism, but his interpretation clearly runs against the grain of the more extremely relativistic, "anti-truth," readings of Nietzsche.May's short volume contains plenty of food for disagreement. To cite one notable example, May maintains that "with Nietzsche there is not even an attempt to produce a systematic safety net against cruelty... and, to this extent, his philosophy licenses the atrocities of a Hitler" (132). May's fundamental reason is that since unfettered cruelty is consistent with what he understands to be Nietzsche's radically individualist [End Page 450] principle of life-enhancement, the Nietzschean conception of life-enhancement is ethically deficient. Some of Nietzsche's remarks do provoke May's criticism, but common knowledge also tells us that unfettered cruelty often backfires into either physical or spiritual self-destruction. So a wise Nietzschean would not "license" brutality. Neither, however, would such a Nietzschean seek to erect an absolute barrier against unfettered brutality, but would more discriminatingly consider what wisdom dictates in each circumstance, given the interests of life.May's study intends to exclude from the philosophically best interpretation of Nietzsche, what are recognized by most people as ethically undesirable qualities. His study also renders Nietzsche's key ideas workable, accessible, and palatable... (shrink)

I suspect that my idea of what it would be like to take a course given by William Barrett is fairly accurate. The flyleaf of his new book reports that Barrett, now Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Pace University, received the Great Teacher Award at New York University. That note and a reading of Barrett's books, the classic Irrational Man, The Illusion of Technique, The Truants, and especially Death of the Soul, lead me to suspect that in the classroom (...) Barrett is as marvelous a communicator as he is on the written page. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 117 of both. He is free to turn from things to their ideas, from objects to concepts. This turn is the soul's movement towards itself and the noetic. It is free from empirical reality; its reflections start from hypotheses making use of the sensible as symbol only. In this way it links the sensible to the intelligible and forces, so to speak, their relation to each other. (...) This type of life is conscious of itself as its own inner activity but it suffers from the dualities of its world and does not make the effort to transcend them. Thus it is "mixed," torn between good and bad and remains in time. To reach the "pure life" or consciousness of being, man has to abandon any relation to the sensible world. For man, as Plotinus says, participates in being, he is being. Real life is the life of the loges and of eternity and the noetic part of his soul reawakens his consciousness of these. When all "outer voices" are stilled, freed from the elements of perception, belief and reflection (dianoia), the soul follows the loges. In its ascent to Nous and the One dialectics is its helper and leads it to the insight that thought, life, and being are identical and that this identity is the lifegiving force to all else. The final aim and the highest experience of the soul is its union with the One. The means towards this are the soul's catharsis through the virtues, its fulfillment through science and knowledge, and its striving (eros) toward the beautiful and the Good. The wise man is the one who travels this, of necessity, solitary road. He alone has the strength and the will to turn all the powers of his soul into such intense noetic activity that what his soul once knew and forgot is restored to it in the vision of the identity of subject and object, of the beholder and what he beholds, of itself with the One. This is the mystic ecstasy, the unity of the human with the divine, which Plotinus describes as the "flight of the alone to the alone." It is life in truth and its highest bliss. Mr. Kostaras' look at the last of the great classical thinkers is a fruitful and refreshing one. By placing the concept of life at the center of Plotinus' thought, it seems to me, that he places man there also. All great philosophy starts from the life of man and after all its meanderings comes back to where it began. And since all systems are relative to certain purposes, is Plotinus' metaphysics a means towards helping man to find his true being? Is it a framework within which man is able to reach a degree of awareness undreamed of before in Greek philosophy, making it possible for him to experience the "eternal Now" within the succession of fleeting moments, to have an unclouded vision (theoria) of being in the midst of becoming, of the divine at the heart of the human? Once man has reached this experience, he is no longer in need of the metaphysical framework and the question of its objective validity becomes quite irrelevant. Mr. Kostaras does not commit himself to this view, but this reader wishes that he had. RIA STAVRIDES Temple Buell College Themes of Islamic Civilization. By John Alden Williams. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971. Pp. viii+382. $11.75) There are few published anthologies on Islamic civilization. Most of the available books on this topic are straightforward descriptive analyses of the intellectual development of Islam; the majority of these books tend to be repetitious in content. What is unique, however, about J. A. Williams' Themes of Islamic Civilization is the methodological approach adopted by the author. The editor has compiled for the reader a number of essays, drawn from various Islamic writings such as history, philosophy, 118 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY jurisprudence, ethics, poetry. Most of the compiled essays have been carefully edited and well translated from Arabic into English for the first time. Also included in this reader are the editor's numerous commentaries which help to shed much light... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880Robert GrudinThe Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880, by D. G. Myers; 224 pp. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996, $30.40 paper.D. G. Myers opens his history of creating writing instruction in America with an anecdote: When Vladimir Nabokov was proposed for a chair in literature at Harvard, Roman Jakobson objected. “What’s next?” he said. “Shall we appoint [End Page 529] (...) elephants to teach zoology?” This question not only provides Myers’s book with its title but also suggests a major issue of literary pedagogy: is the teaching of literature the province of philologists and theorists who interpret books, or is it the province of authors who write them? Jakobson the philologist implies that writers, who just produce the stuff, lack knowledge of interpretive method and thus have little business in the classroom. Others—writers and teachers alike—have thought differently and have over the past century fostered the growth of creative writing at American colleges and high schools.The Elephants Teach is a comprehensive and coherent effort to deal with a ponderous mass of history and discourse: the development of writing curricula since 1880 and the ongoing professional dialogue about the proper relationship between writing and teaching. The first four of his seven chapters deal with roots and preliminaries: the rise of literature instruction as philology after the Civil War, the inception of English composition at Harvard (championed by Adams Sherman Hill, Barrett Wendell, Dean Le Baron Briggs, and Charles Townsend Copeland), and the professional, cultural, and financial forces drawing writers to campuses in the early twentieth century. These chapters establish three major forces leading to the rise of the creative writing curriculum: the consensus that writing experience is of value to the individual and society, the reiterated conviction that literary instruction should consider the perspective of the writer, and the broad recognition by “serious” writers, who had little or no access to the mass market, that they could agreeably support themselves in the classroom. These forces would lead to what Myers correctly sees as a massive compromise: a complex of writing programs simultaneously satisfying students’ needs and allowing thousands of writers to pursue, if only by fits and starts, their professional calling.Myers then serves up the main course: a three-chapter narrative, stretching from the 1920s down to the present, of the history of creative writing as a so-named and self-conscious institution in American education. The opening of this section is not only informative but characteristic of the overall lucidity of Myers’s style: “Creative writing was first taught under its own name in the 1920s. It began in junior high school where it was originally conducted as an experiment to replace traditional English—grammar, spelling, penmanship, even literature classes—with something more appealing to young people. As such it was part of a broader movement to reform American education in the first half of the twentieth century. The cry was that subjects should not be taught, students should; the reform movement called itself progressive education. Creative writing was invented to transport progressive methods and materials into a junior-high-school English classroom. The man who invented it was a progressive educator—once well known, now largely forgotten—named Hughes Mearns” (p. 101). William Hughes Mearns (1875–1965) was himself a disciple of John Dewey, whose ideas formed the basis for progressive education in general. Adapting the Deweyan concept of learning as a spur to personal [End Page 530] development, Mearns saw writing “as the efficient cause of an education in which the final cause was personal growth” (pp. 104–11).After Mearns, Myers considers a somewhat more familiar chapter in history: the appearance of creative writing as a self-contained discipline on the college campus. Credit for the original initiative goes to Norman Foerster (1887–1972), who in 1930 took over the newly-founded School of Letters at the University of Iowa. A follower of Irving Babbitt and the “new humanism,” Foerster set out (in his own words) “to give all types of literary students a rigorous and appropriate discipline” (p. 126). Foerster’s “discipline” was a varied curriculum including... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Lewis E. HahnGeorge C. H. Sun, President, John Howie, Professor Emeritus, Thomas Alexander, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kenneth W. Stikkers, Professor and Chair, Randall Auxier, Professor, Robert Hahn, Professor, Joseph Wu, Professor Emeritus, Elizabeth R. Eames, Professor Emeritus, Martin Lu, Professor of Philosophy, George Kimball Plochmann, Professor Emeritus, Matt Sronkoski, Philosophy Graduate and Academic Adviser, Dave Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Professor Emerita, Hans H. (...) Rudnick, Professor Emeritus, Stephen Bickham, Professor EmeritusPresident, and Don Mikula (bio)The following testimonials were offered on the occasion of a memorial gathering for Dr. Lewis E. Hahn held on February 19, 2005, and were compiled for presentation here by Sharon (Hahn) Crowell.A Tribute to Dr. Lewis E. Hahn (1908-2004) from a Global PerspectiveGeorge C. H. Sun President, Thomé H. Fang Institute, Inc., Mobile, AlabamaAmong the philosophical community in both the East and the West, no word of introduction is needed for our beloved Master, who was the recipient of numerous distinctions and honors, with titles that included "Man of the Year in Philosophy" and "Award of Lifetime Achievement." The very name "Lewis E. Hahn" itself already stands now for genuineness, dedication, and fulfillment.A great work is a dialogue with eternity; a great person is such a work. In less than thirty years he succeeded in developing Carbondale from what had been a small college town in the Midwest into the Mecca of American philosophy. His most important achievements were the Dewey Center and the Pepper Archives that he helped install at SIUC These, among other such institutions, will remain a unique contribution, a glory of American philosophy, and a monument in the history of human thought.For posterity Lewis E. Hahn will remain an object of wonder and amazement. How is it possible for one human being to have accomplished so much, so well, and in so short a span of time—less than one century—in breadth, depth, and diversity? Some one hundred years ago, by bridging the gap between the New World and the Old, William James was hailed as the great genius of international friendship among philosophical thinkers, but we now find a greater genius in Lewis E. Hahn, who succeeded in bringing together the peoples of East and West from at least four continents: Europe, Australia, America (both North and Latin America), and Asia. To my knowledge, few of his predecessors and contemporaries have been half so widely read and liberal-minded as he was, in view of the range and scope of the Library of Living Philosophers that he helped continue after the passing of its founder, Dr. Paul A. Schilpp.What type of man was Hahn, our younger generation will wonder? Only a pluralist approach can help us understand the true character of such a legendary pluralist-contextualist. In short, he was "a full personality." As I recall, while working on my dissertation with him in the 1970s, we had a brief discussion on Confucius, the sage of ancient China. "A full personality!" was his laconic assessment. Suddenly I realized, to quote the Analects: "The Master is talking about himself!" For, as the Buddhists put it, only a Buddha can understand a Buddha. Or, as William James put it, only one who has philosophy can appreciate philosophy. Many friends [End Page 1] of my generation admire him so much; Te Chen of Hong Kong calls him "a great Confucian in America." Those who regret the loss of many precious Confucian virtues in China today have now rediscovered them in the person of Lewis E. Hahn! If Nietzsche called Kant "a great Chinese in Königsberg," it is simply because he had not encountered our own Master.A paradigm of academic leadership, Dr. Hahn is simply irreplaceable—this is a tribute I personally heard in Carbondale in the late 1960s. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was a superb administrator, and he could have been the best Secretary of the State we ever had, for he possessed more in the way of philosophical wisdom than all his predecessors put together! As a great teacher, he was no less "serene, good, learned, wise, and ardent" than... (shrink)

Collected here are the written traces of courses on the concept of nature given by Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the Collège de France in the 1950s-notes that provide a window on the thinking of one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. In two courses distilled by a student and in a third composed of Merleau-Ponty's own notes, the ideas that animated the philosopher's lectures and that informed his later publications emerge in an early, fluid form in the process (...) of being elaborated, negotiated, critiqued, and reconsidered. Merleau-Ponty's project in these courses is an interrogation of nature, a task at the center of his investigation of perception, truth, and subjectivity. The first course, a survey of the historical elements in our concept of nature, examines first the Cartesian concept of nature and then historical and contemporary responses to Descartes, all with an eye toward developing a vision of nature more consistent with the findings of contemporary science. In the second course, Merleau-Ponty takes up the problem of the relation of nature to ontology in general. Here, the key question is how the animal finds itself in its world. Because the human body is ultimately "an animal of movements and perceptions," humanity is intertwined with animality. In the third course, "Nature and Logos: The Human Body," Merleau-Ponty assesses his previous findings and examines the emergence of the human body at the intersection of nature and Logos. This course, contemporaneous with the working notes for The Visible and the Invisible, allows us to observe the evolution of that work as well as to revisit the research he had begun in Primacy of Perception. In these traces: a new reading of Descartes; a measured appreciation of Schelling; an assessment of recent developments in the sciences that leads to the notion of the body as a "system of equivalencies"; and an examination of the phenomenon of life. We have a wealth of material that allows us to reconsider Merleau-Ponty's thinking and to engage his philosophical project anew. Before his death in 1961, Maurice Merleau-Ponty was chair in philosophy at the Collège de France. Robert Vallier is completing his doctoral work on Merleau-Ponty and Schelling at DePaul University. He has also taught at the Universite de Paris-X and at the College Internationale de Philosophie. (shrink)

A major philosophical mind in his day, William Paley wrote in a lucid style that made complex ideas more accessible to a wide readership. This work, first published in 1785, was based on the lectures he gave on moral philosophy at Christ's College, Cambridge. Cited in parliamentary debates and remaining on the syllabus at Cambridge into the twentieth century, it stands as one of the most influential texts to emerge from the Enlightenment period in Britain. An orthodox theologian, grounding (...) his utilitarian ethics in strong religious faith, Paley held notably progressive views on issues of toleration and the slave trade. His perspicuity prompted one contemporary to remark that the book 'presents a subject which has always been considered as harsh and difficult, in the most agreeable and intelligible form … we sit down to be informed of our duty, and are surprised to meet with amusement'. (shrink)

Bryne & Hajek (1997) argue that Lewis’s (1988; 1996) objections to identifying desire with belief do not go through if our notion of desire is ‘causalized’ (characterized by causal, rather than evidential, decision theory). I argue that versions of the argument go through on certain assumptions about the formulation of decision theory. There is one version of causal decision theory where the original arguments cannot be formulated—the ‘imaging’ formulation that Joyce (1999) advocates. But I argue this formulation is independently objectionable. (...) If we want to maintain the desire as belief thesis, there’s no shortcut through causalization. (shrink)

Decisions are made under uncertainty when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and one is uncertain to which the act will lead. Decisions are made under indeterminacy when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and it is indeterminate to which the act will lead. This paper develops a theory of (synchronic and diachronic) decision-making under indeterminacy that portrays the rational response to such situations as inconstant. Rational agents have to capriciously and randomly choose how to resolve (...) the indeterminacy relevant to a given choice-situation, but such capricious choices once made constrain how they will choose in the future. The account is illustrated by the case of self-interested action in situations where it is indeterminate whether you yourself will survive to benefit or suffer the consequences. The conclusion emphasizes some distinctive anti-hedging predictions of the account. (shrink)

Jeff Paris proves a generalized Dutch Book theorem. If a belief state is not a generalized probability then one faces ‘sure loss’ books of bets. In Williams I showed that Joyce’s accuracy-domination theorem applies to the same set of generalized probabilities. What is the relationship between these two results? This note shows that both results are easy corollaries of the core result that Paris appeals to in proving his dutch book theorem. We see that every point of accuracy-domination defines a (...) dutch book, but we only have a partial converse. (shrink)

Why should we be means-end rational? Why care whether someone’s mental states exhibit certain formal patterns, like the ones formalized in causal decision theory? This paper establishes a dominance argument for these constraints in a finite setting. If you violate the norms of causal decision theory, then your desires will be aptness dominated. That is, there will be some alternative set of desires that you could have had, which would be more apt (closer to the actual values fixed by your (...) sensibility/ what you intrinsically care about) no matter which world is actual. If we care about having apt desires, then, we should never let ourselves violate these norms of means-end rationality. This argument shares a form with now-standard accuracy arguments for probabilism, opening up a new terrain for that discussion. I show that the foundational assumptions about the shape of accuracy and of aptness required to run the arguments for means-end rationality and for probabilism run closely parallel. I show the argument is robust under different theories of subjective actual value, including nonclassical treatments of indeterminacy in actual value; I show the argument may (but need not!) be generalized to objective theories of value. The upshot is that aptness-domination arguments for decision theories should be added to the philosophical playbook. (shrink)

An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result (...) in divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993. (shrink)