Scholars have remained undecided how much the British Idealists owe to Hegel, how much to Kant, and how much they may be credited with minting a new intellectual coinage of their own. By way of a detailed examination of T. H. Green’s metaphysics of free will and how it stands to both its Kantian and its Hegelian predecessors, this paper attempts to make some headway on that longstanding question of pedigree. It is argued that by translating previously naturalistic considerations (...) about free will into Kantian or atemporalist terms, Green makes some useful and important advances. But he still remains subject to the tension between libertarian and autonomous approaches to the issue. It might be wondered whether any theory could ever reconcile these two approaches, but it is argued that by filtering his Kantianism through a more Hegelian lens, Green manages somewhat to reduce the friction between these two perspectives and to get closer to his ideal of a unified theory of human free will. (shrink)

We have long been taught that the Enlightenment was an attempt to free the world from the clutches of Christian civilization and make it safe for philosophy. The lesson has been well learned. In today's culture wars, both liberals and their conservative enemies, inside and outside the academy, rest their claims about the present on the notion that the Enlightenment was a secularist movement of philosophically driven emancipation. Historians have had doubts about the accuracy of this portrait for some (...) time, but they have never managed to furnish a viable alternative to it-for themselves, for scholars interested in matters of church and state, or for the public at large.In this book, William J. Bulman and Robert G. Ingram bring together recent scholarship from distinguished experts in history, theology, and literature to make clear that God not only survived the Enlightenment but thrived within it as well. The Enlightenment was not a radical break from the past in which Europeans jettisoned their intellectual and institutional inheritance. It was, to be sure, a moment of great change, but one in which the characteristic convictions and traditions of the Renaissance and Reformation were perpetuated to the point of transformation, in the wake of the Wars of Religion and during the early phases of globalization. The Enlightenment's primary imperatives were not freedom and irreligion but peace and prosperity. As a result, Enlightenment could be Christian, communitarian, or authoritarian as easily as it could be atheistic, individualistic, or libertarian.Honing in on the intellectual crisis of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries while moving from Spinoza to Kant and from India to Peru, God in the Enlightenment takes a prism to the age of lights. (shrink)

This chapter provides an historical explanation of the epistemological basis for autonomy rights. The history begins with Mill’s revolutionary social process epistemology in On Liberty. On Mill’s account, to attain rational beliefs and to approach true beliefs, we depend on being part of a process of free give-and-take of opinion. The chapter contrasts Mill’s account based on this real-world process with Habermas’s account of normative validity based on an ideal process of rational discourse. The chapter criticizes Rawls’s move from (...) metaphysical to political liberalism, which led Rawls to dispense with truth and to replace it with a relativized version of reasonableness. The chapter endorses Habermas’s insistence that engaging in normative inquiry commits us to standards of validity that transcend our particular life world. However, the chapter criticizes Habermas for a move that parallels Rawls’s: Habermas’s decision to understand our normative commitments as factual rather than metaphysical. Finally, the chapter reverses the order of explanation in Habermas’s theory of normative validity. It is not by reference to an ideal process of rational discourse that the results of our real-world process of free give-and-take of opinion attain whatever validity they might have; it is the real-world process that provides the grounding for our beliefs about what an ideal process would be like. (shrink)

Rowe argues that if for every good world there is a better, then God is not morally perfect since no matter what world God were to create he could have done better than he did. I contend that Rowe’s argument doesn’t do justice to the role grace plays in the theist’s doctrine of creation, and respond to five new criticisms of my position that Rowe offers in Can God be Free?

This chapter contrasts his consequentialist account of democratic rights with prominent nonconsequentialist accounts, including those of Rawls, Habermas, Barry, and Waldron. He explains why majority rule itself requires a consequentialist rationale. To illustrate that the rationale for democratic rights is consequentialist, the chapter proposes an alternative to democratic rights, election by deliberative poll, that would be an improvement under the main principle, were it not for the potential for abuse. Democratic rights are a solution to a CAP. To be endorsed (...) by the main principle, democratic rights must equitably promote the life prospects of all compliers and nonresponsible noncompliers. The chapter argues that group rights or cultural rights are not fundamental rights, but rather rights that are instrumental to protecting the individual rights of members of minorities against majorities. The chapter shows that the main principle can explain why human rights, including democratic rights, should be inalienable. This is a puzzle on many nonconsequentialist views. The chapter describes one kind of problem that no form of government, not even democracy, is very good at solving, the time lag problem. Finally, the chapter discusses the inappropriateness of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning campaign finance reform laws on free speech grounds. (shrink)

This chapter applies the Millian epistemology to ground a robust, inalienable right to freedom of expression and to ground the other autonomy rights, as necessary for the process of the social process of the free give-and-take of opinion. The chapter considers a variety of exceptions to freedom of expression, including product advertising and political advertising. He uses the examples of Google and Wikipedia to provide empirical confirmation for Mill’s claims about the social process of the free give-and-take of (...) opinion. He also shows how the Millian case for freedom of propositional expression can be extended to cover nonpropositional expression in art and literature. The chapter shows that the Millian argument does not limit freedom of expression to reasonable views. The chapter argues that the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable comprehensive views, which plays a large role in Rawls’s theory and in contemporary discussions of human rights, cannot support the weight that it is intended to bear. This leads to an extended discussion of intolerant subversive advocacy, in which the chapter argues that neither Habermas’s nor Rawls’s theory can explain why the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the Smith Act in Dennis v. U.S. was erroneous. The chapter also explains why Mill’s social process epistemology does not undermine his political philosophy. The author concludes by explaining why the main principle would endorse a human right to freedom of expression. (shrink)

Theism maintains that God is a moralagent. Classical Christian theism also maintains that God is unable tosin. The latter claim is entailed by the proposition that the being whois God is essentially God, and this proposition is one which would beendorsed by all or most classical theologians. It would thus appearthat the claim that God is unable to sin is an important, if notfundamental, part of classical Christian theism. It follows that, at acrucial point, classical Christian theism is incompatible with (...) theassumption that moral agency logically involves the ability to sin -an assumption which is an essential part of the free will defense asthat defense is normally presented. Since (as I suggested earlier) theuse of the free will defense also plays a very important role in clas-sical Christian theism, classical Christian theism would appear toexhibit a major incoherance. While the difficulty can be overcome byemploying a modified version of the free will defense, the modifiedversion is not as attractive as the original. (shrink)

During the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries interpretations of the British Industrial Revolution became embedded within debates over competing systems of political economy, primarily liberal democracy (free trade) versus socialism (state regulation). At the heart of this contest was also the question of epistemology. A picture emerged of the Industrial Revolution that reflected such contrasting perspectives; for those with a Western liberal bent Britain industrialized first due to a weak state, an emphasis upon individual liberty, the right institutions and culture (...) of creativity born of free minds and free markets. At the heart of this was the emergence of science; objectivity and Western democracy became a key cornerstone of this perspective. This view was first especially spearheaded by the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) and, slightly later, Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992). The debate subsequently became particularly fierce during the Cold War, and since the fall of the Berlin Wall the role of the state and protectionism within Britain’s industrial history has greatly diminished. Indeed today’s dominant historiography continues to erase Britain’s actual industrial experience and, instead, reflect entrenched liberal and neoliberal prescriptions. A major axiom of this ideological viewpoint is the centrality of science and its history. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There is a fierce debate about nonsmokers-only hiring policies, also referred to as no-nicotine hiring policies and “tobacco free” hiring policies. The favorable outcomes of no-nicotine hiring policies include reduced health costs, improved worker productivity, enhanced organizational image, and symbolic messaging. The unfavorable consequences of such policies include violating personal liberty, risking a “slippery slope” to other health-compromising behaviors, exacerbating socio-economic disparities, and discriminating against smokers. No-nicotine hiring policies have not been adequately evaluated and a new approach is (...) warranted. The new conditional employment policy for smokers is described with stipulations for the probationary period. Autonomy and fairness are frequently cited as ethical principles to analyze no-nicotine hiring policies. An analysis of ethical principles is presented for no-nicotine hiring policies and the new conditional employment policy. The ethical principle of fairness is rooted in the effectiveness of any policy. Therefore, an evaluation plan is described for the conditional employment policy to assess effectiveness and efficiency. The proposed policy provides a powerful incentive to overcome smoking addictions, preserve the ethical principles of autonomy and fairness, as well as bridge the divide between personal liberty and personal responsibility. (shrink)

Despite the salient experience of encoding threatening events, these memories are prone to distortions and often non-veridical from encoding to recall. Further, threat has been shown to preferentially disrupt the binding of event details and enhance goal-relevant information. While extensive work has characterised distinctive features of emotional memory, research has not fully explored the influence threat has on temporal memory, a process putatively supported by the binding of event details into a temporal context. Two primary competing hypotheses have been proposed; (...) that threat can impair or enhance temporal memory. We analysed two datasets to assess temporal memory for an in-person haunted house experience. In study 1, we examined the temporal structure of memory by characterising memory contiguity in free recall as a function of individual levels of heart rate as a proxy of threat. In study 2, we replicated marginal findings of threat-related increases in memory contiguity found in study 1. We extended these findings by showing threat-related increases in recency discriminations, an explicit test of temporal memory. Together, these findings demonstrate that threat enhances temporal memory regarding free recall structure and during explicit memory judgments. (shrink)

This is a brief review of Silverman's study of Plato's ontology, in particular his theory of Forms. Silverman writes from an analytic viewpoint. He accepts the developmentalist picture of Plato's thought, but holds that the development is gradual. He focuses on the issue of predication, and especially self-predication. He tends to treat Plato's ontology as a free-standing subject. All of these features are controversial. I wondered in particular whether the analytic approach required more precision than can be found in (...) the dialogues. (shrink)

It seems impossible to foresee man's future. However, we do see clearly that the past determines our present in many realms : language, concept of the world, religion, science, law. Moreover, certain biological and physiological conditions appear to be so characteristic of the human species that we would not really be concerned with humanity if men managed to free themselves of these conditions.

The harmonious free play of the imagination and understanding is at the heart of Kant’s account of beauty in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, but interpreters have long struggled to determine what Kant means when he claims the faculties are in a state of free play. In this article, I develop an interpretation of the free play of the faculties in terms of the freedom of attention. By appealing to the different way that we attend (...) to objects in aesthetic experience, we can explain how the faculties are free, even when the subject already possesses a concept of the object and is bound to the determinate form of the object in perception. (shrink)

Research in education and cognitive development suggests that explaining plays a key role in learning and generalization: When learners provide explanations—even to themselves—they learn more effectively and generalize more readily to novel situations. This paper proposes and tests a subsumptive constraints account of this effect. Motivated by philosophical theories of explanation, this account predicts that explaining guides learners to interpret what they are learning in terms of unifying patterns or regularities, which promotes the discovery of broad generalizations. Three experiments provide (...) evidence for the subsumptive constraints account: prompting participants to explain while learning artificial categories promotes the induction of a broad generalization underlying category membership, relative to describing items (Exp. 1), thinking aloud (Exp. 2), or free study (Exp. 3). Although explaining facilitates discovery, Experiment 1 finds that description is more beneficial for learning item details. Experiment 2 additionally suggests that explaining anomalous observations may play a special role in belief revision. The findings provide insight into explanation’s role in discovery and generalization. (shrink)

The first look at the philosophy behind Stephenie Meyer's bestselling Twilight series Bella and Edward, and their family and friends, have faced countless dangers and philosophical dilemmas in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels. This book is the first to explore them, drawing on the wisdom of philosophical heavyweights to answer essential questions such as: What do the struggles of "vegetarian" vampires who control their biological urge for human blood say about free will? Are vampires morally absolved if they kill only (...) animals and not people? From a feminist perspective, is Edward a romantic hero or is he just a stalker? Is Jacob "better" for Bella than Edward? As absorbing as the Meyer novels themselves, Twilight and Philosophy: Gives you a new perspective on Twilight characters, storylines, and themes Helps you gain fresh insights into the Twilight novels and movies Features an irresistible combination of vampires, romance, and philosophy Twilight and Philosophy is a must-have companion for every Twilight fan, whether you're new to the series or have followed it since the beginning. (shrink)

We introduce the $\Sigma _1$ -definable universal finite sequence and prove that it exhibits the universal extension property amongst the countable models of set theory under end-extension. That is, the sequence is $\Sigma _1$ -definable and provably finite; the sequence is empty in transitive models; and if M is a countable model of set theory in which the sequence is s and t is any finite extension of s in this model, then there is an end-extension of M to a (...) model in which the sequence is t. Our proof method grows out of a new infinitary-logic-free proof of the Barwise extension theorem, by which any countable model of set theory is end-extended to a model of $V=L$ or indeed any theory true in a suitable submodel of the original model. The main theorem settles the modal logic of end-extensional potentialism, showing that the potentialist validities of the models of set theory under end-extensions are exactly the assertions of S4. Finally, we introduce the end-extensional maximality principle, which asserts that every possibly necessary sentence is already true, and show that every countable model extends to a model satisfying it. (shrink)

The concepts of freedom and equality lie at the heart of much contemporary political debate. But how, exactly, are these concepts to be understood? And do they really represent desirable political values? Norman begins from the premise that freedom and equality are rooted in human experience, and thus have a real and objective content. He then argues that the attempt to clarify these concepts is therefore not just a matter of idle philosophical speculation, but also a matter of practical politics, (...) for the philosophical conclusions we reach also have important implications for the day-to-day world of political action. Touching on the work of such influential thinkers as Mill, Berlin, Hayek, Nozick, Rawls, and Williams, this book serves as a valuable introduction to the central issues in political philosophy. (shrink)

Own Yourself is "hands-on" course in ethics and morality. Its goal is to assist students to come to know who they genuinely are and who they want to become as they move into adulthood.

It is now well-known that Newton–Cartan theory is the correct geometrical setting for modelling the quantum Hall effect. In addition, in recent years edge modes for the Newton–Cartan quantum Hall effect have been derived. However, the existence of these edge modes has, as of yet, been derived using only orthodox methodologies involving the breaking of gauge-invariance; it would be preferable to derive the existence of such edge modes in a gauge-invariant manner. In this article, we employ recent work by Donnelly (...) and Freidel in order to accomplish exactly this task. Our results agree with known physics, but afford greater conceptual insight into the existence of these edge modes: in particular, they connect them to subtle aspects of Newton–Cartan geometry and pave the way for further applications of Newton–Cartan theory in condensed matter physics. (shrink)

In this reply to James H. Fetzer’s “Minds and Machines: Limits to Simulations of Thought and Action”, I argue that computationalism should not be the view that (human) cognition is computation, but that it should be the view that cognition (simpliciter) is computable. It follows that computationalism can be true even if (human) cognition is not the result of computations in the brain. I also argue that, if semiotic systems are systems that interpret signs, then both humans and computers are (...) semiotic systems. Finally, I suggest that minds can be considered as virtual machines implemented in certain semiotic systems, primarily the brain, but also AI computers. In doing so, I take issue with Fetzer’s arguments to the contrary. (shrink)

A significant number of inmates with mental illness reside within the New York State Department of Corrections (NYSDOCS). New York State has taken the initiative to provide mentally ill inmates with necessary services through a collaboration of the New York State Department of Correctional Services and the New York State Office of Mental Health (NYSOMH). The collaboration results in a mental health delivery system that provides many essential services to mentally ill inmates. This paper focuses on the organization of mental (...) health services within NYSDOCS, best practices, past and current litigation, and staff responsibilities. As the population of mentally ill inmates continues to grow, implications for the Human Services professions of OMH and DOCS needs to continue to address and provide adequate mental health care and resources for this special population. (shrink)

Critical Review of Searle's Minds, Brains and Science.

A computer can come to understand natural language the same way Helen Keller did: by using “syntactic semantics”—a theory of how syntax can suffice for semantics, i.e., how semantics for natural language can be provided by means of computational symbol manipulation. This essay considers real-life approximations of Chinese Rooms, focusing on Helen Keller’s experiences growing up deaf and blind, locked in a sort of Chinese Room yet learning how to communicate with the outside world. Using the SNePS computational knowledge-representation system, (...) the essay analyzes Keller’s belief that learning that “everything has a name” was the key to her success, enabling her to “partition” her mental concepts into mental representations of: words, objects, and the naming relations between them. It next looks at Herbert Terrace’s theory of naming, which is akin to Keller’s, and which only humans are supposed to be capable of. The essay suggests that computers at least, and perhaps non-human primates, are also capable of this kind of naming. (shrink)

This book is unified by three broad concerns: the rationality of belief in God, the relation between religion and morality, and the explication of the concept of God. The essays are, however, marked by diversity. Some focus on historical figures, such as Aquinas and Locke; others bring recent epistemological and metaphysical developments to bear on problems of religious belief. Some of the papers explore neglected issues central to religious practice, such as the question of how total devotion to God can (...) permit other deep commitments; others apply philosophical distinctions from within a religious tradition, for example, in setting out a Christian approach to the problem of evil. (shrink)

“Contextual” vocabulary acquisition is the active, deliberate acquisition of a meaning for a word in a text by reasoning from textual clues and prior knowledge, including language knowledge and hypotheses developed from prior encounters with the word, but without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people. But what is “context”? Is it just the surrounding text? Does it include the reader’s background knowledge? I argue that the appropriate context for contextual vocabulary acquisition is the reader’s “internalization” of the (...) text “integrated” into the reader’s “prior” knowledge via belief revision. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Search for the Absent God: Tradition and Modernity in Religious Understanding. By WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P., MARY CATHERINE HILKERT, 0.P., ed. New York: Crossroad, 1992. Pp. 224. $27.50 (cloth). In presenting the fruit of a lifetime of exploration on the part of this theological craftsman of the highest merit, the editor has performed an unparalleled service. For William Hill is a clear and courageous thinker, (...) and one whose selfless editorial duties have perhaps curtailed his own writing over the years. Yet these essays make up for that, and afford younger students of theology a starting point for their reflections beyond the fads of the moment, yet seizing the challenge of contemporary proposals. His grasp of classical and of modern idiom, together with his range of reading, make him a theologians' theologian par excellence. For with his classical mentors he is concerned with conceptual coherence, yet equally anxious to respond to the anthropological perspectives of contemporary theological inquiry. Briefly characterized, the work brings Thomas Aquinas into dialogue with Heidegger and with Whitehead, using each of the latter figures to challenge an earlier " Thomistic" synthesis of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, and highlight dimensions of his theology hitherto left quite implicit. This creative recovery of medieval thought begins with an established interpretation of Aquinas's metaphysical transformation of the neoplatonized Aristotle of Avicenna: his insistence that esse {existing ) precedes essence (or possibility). The identification of God as that One in whom essence and existing are identical sets the stage for Hill's explicitly theological treatment of free persons, by analogy with the " persons " of the divine triunity: " each divine person ' posits ' the others as over and against himself and thereby posits himself in his hypostatic identity. What all this bases itself upon is the understanding that the Christian revelation of freedom as radically constituting personhood enables it to function as a category which surmounts the Greek dichotomizing of reality into contingency and necessity " (117). If the identification of existing with essence in God confronts Heidegger's critique of " ontology," Hill's use of classical trinitarian thought to suggest a fruitful distinction in human creatures between nature and freedom allows him at once to correct the caricature of Aquinas proffered by process theologians as "classical theism," and 521 522 BOOK REVIEWS also to profit by their criticisms of the use of hellenistic categories like impassibility in divinity. "The key... lies in the mystery of freedom. Abstractly, freedom is a property of nature, but its exercise is the pre· rogative of person as the existential instantiation of nature. The person viewed ontologically (as subject of the act of existing) thus determines itself though its nature to be the sort of person it is, viewed psychologi· cally and historically" (127). Finite natures need to negotiate all sorts of causal influences in effecting such a determination of themselves; not so " an infinite nature whose freedom is transcendent." Yet when that One freely determines itself to be source and goal of all, and espe· cially of rational creatures (cf. Summa Theologiae 1.2 Prol.), then " that choice is one of willing to be constituted, personally and so relationally, and in this sense to be determined, by other free beings" (127). So the God who (in Aquinas' idiom) is not "really related" to the world in the sense of enduring (in Hill's words) "passive influx," nonetheless freely relates to intentional creatures in such a way as to be responsive to their freedom. So his response to Moltmann's conten· tion that God suffers " in his very deity " is an explicitly Christological one: "first, that God remains immutable and impassible in his own intrinsic godhead, so that his genuine love for creatures cannot entail suffering within divinity as such; but second, that God does choose to enter personally and relationally into the heart of humankind's suffering in his transcendentally free and loving response to it. God truly suffers... in and through his humanity which is one with the humanity of all men and women" (162). If this resolution sounds "classical," it is, both in its concern for conceptual coherence and for bringing out the radical implications of doctrines like that of Chalcedon... (shrink)

Ford’s Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room claims that my argument in How Helen Keller Used Syntactic Semantics to Escape from a Chinese Room fails because Searle and I use the terms ‘syntax’ and ‘semantics’ differently, hence are at cross purposes. Ford has misunderstood me; this reply clarifies my theory.

We discuss a research project that develops and applies algorithms for computational contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA): learning the meaning of unknown words from context. We try to unify a disparate literature on the topic of CVA from psychology, first- and secondlanguage acquisition, and reading science, in order to help develop these algorithms: We use the knowledge gained from the computational CVA system to build an educational curriculum for enhancing students’ abilities to use CVA strategies in their reading of science texts (...) at the middle-school and college undergraduate levels. The knowledge gained from case studies of students using our CVA techniques feeds back into further development of our computational theory. Keywords: artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, reading, reasoning, science education, vocabulary acquisition. (shrink)

This project continues our interdisciplinary research into computational and cognitive aspects of narrative comprehension. Our ultimate goal is the development of a computational theory of how humans understand narrative texts. The theory will be informed by joint research from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, the study of language acquisition, literary theory, geography, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. The linguists, literary theorists, and geographers in our group are developing theories of narrative language and spatial understanding that are being tested by the (...) cognitive psychologists and language researchers in our group, and a computational model of a reader of narrative text is being developed by the AI researchers, based in part on these theories and results and in part on research on knowledge representation and reasoning. This proposal describes the knowledge-representation and natural-language-processing issues involved in the computational implementation of the theory; discusses a contrast between communicative and narrative uses of language and of the relation of the narrative text to the story world it describes; investigates linguistic, literary, and hermeneutic dimensions of our research; presents a computational investigation of subjective sentences and reference in narrative; studies children’s acquisition of the ability to take third-person perspective in their own storytelling; describes the psychological validation of various linguistic devices; and examines how readers develop an understanding of the geographical space of a story. This report is a longer version of a project description submitted to NSF. This document, produced in May 2007, is a L ATEX version of Technical Report 89-07 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, August 1989), with slightly.. (shrink)

In an adaptive clinical trial , key trial characteristics may be altered during the course of the trial according to predefined rules in response to information that accumulates within the trial itself. In addition to having distinguishing scientific features, adaptive trials also may involve ethical considerations that differ from more traditional randomized trials. Better understanding of clinical trial experts’ views about the ethical aspects of adaptive designs could assist those planning ACTs. Our aim was to elucidate the opinions of clinical (...) trial experts regarding their beliefs about ethical aspects of ACTs. (shrink)

Contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is the deliberate acquisition of a meaning for a word in a text by reasoning from context, where “context” includes: (1) the reader’s “internalization” of the surrounding text, i.e., the reader’s “mental model” of the word’s “textual context” (hereafter, “co-text” [3]) integrated with (2) the reader’s prior knowledge (PK), but it excludes (3) external sources such as dictionaries or people. CVA is what you do when you come across an unfamiliar word in your reading, realize that (...) you don’t know what it means, decide that you need to know what it means in order to understand the passage, but there is no one around to ask, and it is not in the dictionary (or you are too lazy to look it up). In such a case, you can try to figure out its meaning “from context”, i.e., from clues in the co-text together with your prior knowledge. Our computational theory of CVA—implemented in a the SNePS knowledge representation and reasoning system [28]—begins with a stored knowledge base containing SNePS representations of relevant PK, inputs SNePS representations of a passage containing an unfamiliar word, and draws inferences from these two (integrated) information sources. When asked to define the word, definition algorithms deductively search the resulting network for information of the sort that might be found in a dictionary definition, outputting a definition frame whose slots are the kinds of features that a definition might contain (e.g., class membership, properties, actions, spatio-temporal information, etc.) and whose slot-fillers contain information gleaned from the network [6–8,20,23,24]. We are investigating ways to make our system more robust, to embed it in a naturallanguage-processing system, and to incorporate morphological information. Our research group, including reading educators, is also applying our methods to the develop-. (shrink)

Alexius Meinong developed a notion of defective objects in order to account for various logical and psychological paradoxes. The notion is of historical interest, since it presages recent work on the logical paradoxes by Herzberger and Kripke. But it fails to do the job it was designed for. However, a technique implicit in Meinong's investigation is more successful and can be adapted to resolve a similar paradox discovered by Romane Clark in a revised version of Meinong's Theory of Objects due (...) to Rapaport. One family of paradoxes remains, but it is argued that they are unavoidable and relatively harmless. (shrink)

The philosophy of religion as a distinct discipline is an innovation of the last two hundred years, but its central topics--the existence and nature of the divine, humankind's relation to it, the nature of religion and its place in human life--have been with us since the inception of philosophy. Philosophers have long critically examined the truth of (and rational justification for) religious claims, and have explored such philosophically interesting phenomena as faith, religious experience and the distinctive features of religious discourse. (...) The second half of the twentieth-century has been an especially fruitful period, with philosophers using new developments in logic and epistemology to mount both sophisticated defenses of, and attacks on, religious claims. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion contains newly commissioned chapters by 21 prominent experts who cover the field in a comprehensive but accessible manner. Each chapter is expository, critical, and representative of a distinctive viewpoint. The Handbook is divided into two sections. The first, "Problems," covers the most frequently discussed topics, among them arguments for God's existence, the problem of evil, and religious epistemology. The second is called "Approaches" and contains four essays assessing the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of practicing philosophy of religion. The Handbook offers contributors of high stature who present substantive and in-depth treatment of the most central topics. It is a must-have reference for anyone with an interest in philosophy and religion. (shrink)

This essay examines the role of non-existent objects in "epistemological ontology"--the study of the entities that make thinking possible. An earlier revision of Meinong's Theory of Objects is reviewed, Meinong's notions of Quasisein and Aussersein are discussed, and a theory of Meinongian objects as "combinatorially possible" entities is presented.

This article presents evidence supporting the claim that ethical reasoning is a skill that can be taught and assessed. We propose a working definition of ethical reasoning as 1) the ability to identify, analyze, and weigh moral aspects of a particular situation, and 2) to make decisions that are informed and warranted by the moral investigation. The evidence consists of a description of an ethical reasoning education program—Ethical Reasoning in Action —designed to increase ethical reasoning skills in a variety of (...) situations and areas of life. ERiA is housed at a public, major comprehensive U.S. university—James Madison University—and assessment of the program focuses on interventions delivered prior to and during orientation for incoming first-year students. Findings indicate that the interventions measurably enhance the ability of undergraduate students to reason ethically. ERiA’s competency-targeted program and positive student learning outcomes offers a promising model for higher education ethics programs seeking to connect classroom learning in ethics to decision-making in everyday life. (shrink)

This essay presents and defends a triage theory of grading: An item to be graded should get full credit if and only if it is clearly or substantially correct, minimal credit if and only if it is clearly or substantially incorrect, and partial credit if and only if it is neither of the above; no other (intermediate) grades should be given. Details on how to implement this are provided, and further issues in the philosophy of grading (reasons for and against (...) grading, grading on a curve, and the subjectivity of grading) are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The True Purpose of Religion in a Processive Naturalistic UniverseJ. Edward HackettMan's value experiences are certainly no mere subjective creations of his fancy or his mores; beauty, order, cooperation, adaptation, have their objective grounds. There are axiogenetic processes in nature, and religion is an attitude of respect for and trust in those processes.1—Edgar S. Brightman, A Philosophy of ReligionSome rationality certainly does characterize our universe.2—William James, A Pluralistic (...) Universelet us start our meditation on science and religion by first thinking about what assumptions scientists are committed to in practice. Science is an attempt to know nature through four assumptions: (1) All things are physical; (2) physical relationships are cause and effect relationships; (3) by assuming all things are physical, then a scientist can systematically test various experimental findings in the hopes of those findings becoming theories and generalized laws; and finally (4) scientific inquiry may embrace (1)–(3) as an ontological limit to conceive of the whole. In acting in accordance with (1)–(4), scientists simply do science in their respective regions of inquiry. Biologists inquire into the region of living things and chemists investigate the chemical composition of matter. Scientists operate under these assumptions, and scientists may proceed under these assumptions for their entire lifetime without ever moving beyond them. The reader shall notice that I worded the fourth assumption as scientific inquiry may embrace (1)–(3) as an ontological limit to conceive of the whole because scientists may assume their methodological assumptions hold for all inquiry. They may uncritically assume such a powerful stance, and yet a scientist does not have to embrace the fourth assumption. Any methodological naturalist may be fine assuming (1)–(3) without the need to do metaphysics. At the same time, if a scientist wants to move past the methodological naturalism of (1)–(3) and not be so [End Page 22] dogmatic regarding (4), then science may be a springboard to another form of inquiry either into philosophical or theological speculation. Here, I mean speculation as Alfred North Whitehead described the term as speculative philosophy. "Speculative philosophy is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, and necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted."3 For me, William James's radical empiricism united with his pragmatism succeeds in providing a necessary system of general ideas wherein all elements of experience can be interpreted.4 In agreement with Whitehead, James thinks speculative philosophy to be possible by incorporating religion and scientific elements as components of a speculative philosophy. Whitehead states:Philosophy frees itself from the taint of ineffectiveness by its close relations with religion and with science, natural and sociological. It attains its chief importance by fusing the two, namely, religion and science, into one rational scheme of thought. Religion should connect the rational generality of philosophy with the emotions and purposes springing out of existence in a particular society, in a particular epoch, and conditioned by particular antecedents. Religion is the translation of general ideas into particular thoughts, particular emotions, and particular purposes; it is directed to the end of stretching individual interest beyond its self-defeating particularity. Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it; and conversely religion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own scheme.5In this passage, one already sees one aspect of radical empiricism, namely, that we first experience elements in qualitative immediacy as particulars. What's more, in the explanation to follow, like Whitehead, experience is the ground in which the purposes of both religion and science are integrated. Science, for Whitehead, and for our purposes here, is only "concerned with the harmony of rational thought with the percepta [what we call percepts in James] themselves."6 Religion concerns a more intimate awareness with oneself and the cosmos and, very much like James, Whitehead returns to experience.Recall the four assumptions mentioned above. If we transgress the fourth assumption while keeping in mind (1)–(3), then we might be tempted to say that the final act of bringing science to completion is to interpret science in relationship to the very whole to which the scientist, being... (shrink)

Socrates is one the most important thinkers in western philosophy, yet he remains enigmatic, having left behind no works of his own. Instead, his thought is understood primarily through the work of his followers. In this accessible introduction, William Prior assesses Socrates the man, his famous trial, and the nature of his philosophy.