We describe a simple, flexible exercise that can be implemented in the philosophy of science classroom: students are asked to determine the contents of a closed container without opening it. This exercise has revealed itself as a useful platform from which to examine a wide range of issues in the philosophy of science and may, we suggest, even help us think about improving the public understanding of science.

We describe a simple, flexible exercise that can be implemented in the philosophy of science classroom: students are asked to determine the contents of a closed container, over the course of a semester, without opening it. This exercise has proved a useful platform from which to examine a wide range of issues in the philosophy of science and may, we suggest, even help us think about improving the public understanding of science.

The work develops resources in the work of Charles S. Pierce for the purposes of contemporary philosophy. It articulates 'a nested continua model' for theological interpretation, which is indebted to Pierce's creation of 'Existential Graphs', a system of diagrams designed to provide visual representation of the process of human reasoning. Gary Slater investigates how the model can be applied by looking at recent debates in historiography and concludes with an assessment of the model's theological implications.

What does it mean to understand religious traditions most fundamentally as communities of inquiry? This is the question raised by Brandon Daniel-Hughes' Pragmatic Inquiry and Religious Communities, which uses Peirce's writings on inquiry to frame religious traditions as "large-scale hypotheses, expressed in religious symbols, narratives, and rituals that work to signify reality…by cultivating beliefs and rules for action that may truly indicate the real world and orient believers with it by guiding them into more harmonious relations with one another and (...) their environments". Academic interest in Peirce and religion has been steady for several decades, and has perhaps even grown in recent years. Such... (shrink)

American democracy is in trouble. Ours is a time of "post-truth politics," "alternative facts," and "fake news," and one could be forgiven for expressing a sense of alarm at the fraught state of the body politic. Without even touching on any deeper philosophical or spiritual causes, the reasons for this disquieting situation are surely manifold. They encompass such factors as rising economic inequality, unregulated cash in politics, and the echo-chamber effect of media consumption in a post-Internet age.Yet a general diagnosis (...) of our political crisis is not what this essay seeks to provide. Rather, my focus is more specific: the logical and interpretive problems displayed when citizens debate with one another... (shrink)

This book is not much of a forest, but its trees are quite lovely. The book comprises fifteen essays across two overall parts. The two parts are asymmetrical in length, with part one comprising three essays and part two twelve essays; section two is itself divided into two respective sections of five and seven essays. Aside from some very brief prefatory remarks before each section, everything in the book has been selected or adapted from a disparate set of previous publications (...) and conference presentations drawn from across several decades of Nagl's career. As with the book's sections, its essays also vary widely in length, ranging from five pages (for chapter 2.1.2, "A Brief Glance at Deconstruction: Derrida's... (shrink)

Although there are distinctly American artists-Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Grandma Moses, Thomas Hart Benton, and Andy Warhol, for example-very little attention has been devoted to formulating any distinctively American characteristics of aesthetic judgment and practice. This volume takes a step in this direction, presenting an introductory essay on the possibility of such a distinctly American tradition, and a collection of essays exploring particular examples from a variety of angles. Some of the essays in this collection extend pragmatist and process insights (...) about the important place aesthetics has in molding and assessing experience. Other essays examine the place of American aesthetics in relation to such particular forms of art as painting, literature, music, and film. Three essays attend to the aesthetic aspects of a flourishing life. In each of the essays, American aesthetics is understood to arise out of deeply felt personal, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, not only are such relatively abstract notions as harmony, fit, elegance, proportion, and the like involved in aesthetic judgment, but also religious, political, and social factors become embroiled in aesthetic discernment. Thus the ongoing pattern of American aesthetics is shown to be distinguishable from such other varieties of aesthetic thought as analytic aesthetics, New Criticism, and postmodern approaches to aesthetics. (shrink)

The evolutionary debunking argument advanced by Sharon Street, Michael Ruse, and Richard Joyce employs the logic of Paul Griffiths and John Wilkins to contend that humans cannot have knowledge of moral truths, since the evolutionary process that has produced our basic moral intuitions lacks causal connections to those (putative) truths. Yet this argument is self-defeating, because its aim is the categorical, normative claim that we should suspend our moral beliefs in light of the discoveries about their non-truth-tracking origins, when it (...) is precisely this claim that relies upon the normativity under attack. This article cites Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) to argue that such self-defeat can be avoided by expanding upon the basic structure of the argument put forth by Griffiths and Wilkins, provided that one embraces a version of realism that corresponds with Peirce's doctrine of final causation. So construed, final causation reconciles real generals (including real moral values) with natural selection and undergirds further speculation of moral facts within values per se. (shrink)

It speaks to the illogic of our public life that the slogan “All Lives Matter” has come to stand directly against “Black Lives Matter” within contemporary discourse on race. Carol Wayne White’s Black Lives and Sacred Humanity, among its other achievements, confirms the absurdity of such an opposition. White shows how historic efforts to defend and define the humanity of African Americans offer a vision in which all human lives do not simply matter but are in fact sacred within nature. (...) White’s effort to marshal elements within the black tradition to develop her notion of sacred humanity succeeds; in fact, the entailments of her arguments go further still. In addition to undermining the binary of black lives/all... (shrink)

Marcel Proust once wrote: “truth will be attained . . . when [the writer] takes two different objects, states the connection between them . . . and encloses them in the necessary links of a well-wrought style . . . within a metaphor.” Inspired in part by Henri Bergson (1859–1941), whom Megan Craig’s Levinas and James identifies as the primary link between William James (1842–1910) and Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), Proust’s words might well apply to Craig’s own book, which employs a (...) well-wrought style to bring into conversation its titular thinkers, and, in turn, the respective traditions of American pragmatism and French phenomenology with which they are associated. Aiming to “show the expansive space for new work .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rethinking Cooperation with Evil: A Virtue-Based Approach by Ryan ConnorsGary AtkinsonCONNORS, Ryan. Rethinking Cooperation with Evil: A Virtue-Based Approach. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. xiii + 313 pp. Paper, $34.95The author adheres closely to the recommendation to tell his reader what he intends to do, tell him what he is doing while doing it, and having finished, tell him what he’s done, a recommendation (...) worth following for a work as tightly structured and complex as this one. It is clear, irenic, and shows extensive research: nearly 1,000 footnotes in its 275 pages of text offering many avenues for further exploration including numerous references to “alternative” accounts. It is far more than an analysis of cooperation, for it exposes the reader to a universe of concepts, many of which are seldom introduced in studies on the topic. It is also bracing, an elixir likely to incite (and likely intended to incite) the reader to a deeper commitment to careful moral thought and conscientious moral action. Few readers will close this book with a feeling of time unprofitably spent.The introduction makes clear the book’s two central claims: (i) that an adequate analysis of the topic of cooperation with evil has yet to be provided and (ii) that a virtue-based approach stemming from St. Thomas Aquinas contains the elements for its provision. In support of these claims the book is organized into five chapters, the first three foundational and the last two matters of application.Chapter 1, “The Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas: Received and Jettisoned,” begins with a presentation of St. Thomas’s treatment of five topics—borrowing money from known usurers, scandal, restitution for [End Page 709] crimes committed by agents working together, exacting oaths from known perjurers, production of objects used for sinful purposes. This first section is followed by an examination of three theologians in the tradition of Thomistic analysis, Jean Capreolus (d. 1444), Giacomo de Vio Cajetan (d. 1534), and John of St. Thomas (d. 1644). Following this section is a third containing an account of the departure from the Thomistic mode of analysis represented by Thomas Sanchez (d. 1610) and St. Alphonsus Liguori (d. 1787). The first chapter provides a nice introduction and solid grounding for what is to come.Chapter 2, “A Broad Sampling of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Casuist Authors,” explores in its first section the manuals of nine figures: Aloysius Sabetti, Thomas Slater, Dominicus Prümmer, Benoit-Henri Merkelbach, Noldin-Schmitt, Jone-Adelman, McHugh-Callan, Henri Davis, and Bernhard Häring. The second and third sections highlight the lack of consensus among the authors and the consequent perplexity encountered by a conscientious moral agent regarding what counts as a “sufficient, proportionate, serious, or grave” reason for cooperation with evil. At several points throughout this book the author acknowledges the good sense of the casuists and the careful articulation of their judgments, but he finds their general approach to be wanting for several reasons, including their tendency to neglect consideration of the moral virtues and the nature of the act of cooperation itself.The extensive historical grounding provided by chapters 1 and 2 prepares the reader for chapter 3, “The Renewal of Theology: A Return to Virtue,” the focal chapter of the book. The first section concerns the thought of Servais Pinckaers, who “initiated a revival of St. Thomas’s moral theory that continues to the present day.” This is followed by a section treating of magisterial documents adopting St. Thomas’s and Pinckaers’s approach: Veritatis splendor, Evangelium vitae, Declaration on Euthanasia (1980), Vademecum for Confessors Concerning Some Aspects of Conjugal Life (1997), Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (2009). The third section considers the work of three twenty-first-century moralists who apply Thomistic methods to the topic of cooperation with evil: Steven Long, Archbishop Anthony Fisher, and Andrew McLean Cummings.Chapter 4, “A New Way Forward: the Virtuous Person Faces a Moral Dilemma,” is the first of two chapters showing St. Thomas’s approach at work. The author calls this approach both “object based” and “virtue based,” marking the two features receiving... (shrink)

Gary Kemp defends Realist approaches to the paradox of analysis. Other, prima facie equally viable approaches to this problem are the Nominalist one of Langford and Camap and the Conceptualist one of Prior and Stalnaker. In the context of a fuller survey focus is set on the realist attempt. This puts one in a better position to arbitrate between these approaches and give a more final assessment of the realist one, including an assessment of Kemp's defence of it. The (...) Conceptualist one, as it turns out, triumphs over the others, and is the basis for a Wittgensteinian vie w of the a priori which is analyzed in the second part of the paper. (shrink)

Gary Kemp defends Realist approaches to the paradox of analysis. Other, prima facie equally viable approaches to this problem are the Nominalist one of Langford and Camap and the Conceptualist one of Prior and Stalnaker. In the context of a fuller survey focus is set on the realist attempt. This puts one in a better position to arbitrate between these approaches and give a more final assessment of the realist one, including an assessment of Kemp's defence of it. The (...) Conceptualist one, as it turns out, triumphs over the others, and is the basis for a Wittgensteinian vie w of the a priori which is analyzed in the second part of the paper. (shrink)

The impact of Peirce's philosophy of religion on subsequent religious thinkers was almost immediate. Within five years of the appearance of Peirce's "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God," in 1913, Josiah Royce published his brilliant Hibbert Lectures on The Problem of Christianity, delivered at Oxford earlier that year. It was the first—and in many respects remains the most impressive—attempt to adapt Peirce's ideas for the purposes of articulating a comprehensive philosophical theology. During the last 100 years, only a (...) handful of thinkers have followed Royce's lead, first Charles Hartshorne, more recently Robert Corrington, Hermann Deuser, Robert Neville and Peter Ochs. (Other scholars have set about the... (shrink)

Gary S. Slater's C. S. Peirce & Nested Continua Model of Religious Interpretation comes to readers in the Oxford University Press series Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs. Before I say more about Slater's complex book, a story: Much philosophical scholarship on C. S. Peirce tends either to neglect the religious dimensions of his work or to secularize, demystify, and detheologize it. These secularized interpretations alienate those who read Peirce within the Christian and Jewish theological traditions and estrange (...) the Transcendentalists within American Philosophy who rely on religious language to talk and think about the natural world and personhood.There are significant divisions among Peirce scholars: the... (shrink)

The first part of the essay explores the relations between the will and practical reason or judgement. The second part takes up decision in the realm of belief, i.e. deciding that such and such is so. This phenomenon raises two questions. Since we decide that as well as to, should we speak of a doxastic will? Secondly, should we regard ourselves as active in the formation of our judgements as in the formation of our intentions? The author's answer to these (...) two further questions is ‘no’ and ‘yes’, respectively: the boundaries between the active and the passive are not marked by the will. (shrink)

The new edition of this highly successful text will once again provide the ideal introduction to free will. This volume brings together some of the most influential contributions to the topic of free will during the past 50 years, as well as some notable recent work.

L’Homme presents what has been termed Descartes’ “physiological psychology”. It envisions and seeks to explain how the brain and nerves might yield situationally appropriate behavior through mechanical means. On occasion in the past 150 years, this aim has been recognized, described, and praised. Still, acknowledgement of this aspect of Descartes’ writing has been spotty in histories of neuroscience and histories of psychology. In recent years, there has been something of a resurgence. This chapter argues that, in seeking to explain psychological (...) functions such as sense perception, attention, memory, and emotional response, Descartes ascribed a range of active functions to the brain acting on its own (independently of mind). (shrink)

In the subsequent pages, I want to develop a distinction between wanting and valuing which will enable the familiar view of freedom to make sense of the notion of an unfree action. The contention will be that, in the case of actions that are unfree, the agent is unable to get what he most wants, or values, and this inability is due to his own "motivational system." In this case the obstruction to the action that he most wants to do (...) is his own will. It is in this respect that the action is unfree: the agent is obstructed in and by the very performance of the action. (shrink)

Political liberalism has increasingly come under fire from both the right and the left, in politics as well as in philosophy. In this new study, G.B. Madison offers a systematic rebuttal to these contemporary critics, attempting to demonstrate that the basic principles of classical liberal philosophy are not only internally valid and coherent but also directly relevant to the problems faced by society in the post-industrial age. Building on the theory of Frank H. Knight and other liberal tinkers, Madison outlines (...) the postmodern theory of reason that is presupposed within classical liberal theory and makes the case that as a political philosophy liberalism can be justified entirely within its own terms, without reference to arbitrary or absolute values. (shrink)

My concern in this paper will be to explore and develop a version of nonsocratic skepticism about weakness of will. In my view, socratism is incorrect, but like Socrates, I think that the common understanding of weakness of will raises serious problems. Contrary to socratism, it is possible for a person knowingly to act contrary to his or her better judgment. But this description does not exhaust the common view of weakness. Also implicit in this view is the belief that (...) actions which are contrary to one's better judgment are free in the sense that the agent could have done otherwise. To take seriously the possibility of acting contrary to one's better judgment is at the same time to raise problems about the distinction between weakness and compulsion. I argue that the common view, according to which the differentiating feature is that the weak are able to conform their behavior to their practical judgments, is unjustified. Instead, I have proposed that weakness of will involves the failure to develop certain normal capacities of self-control, whereas compulsion involves desires which even the possession of such capacities would not enable one to resist. (shrink)

Do the laws of nature supervene on ordinary, non-nomic matters of fact? Lange's criticism of Humean supervenience (HS) plays a key role in his account of natural laws. Though we are sympathetic to his account, we remain unconvinced by his criticism. We focus on his thought experiment involving a world containing nothing but a lone proton and argue that it does not cast sufficient doubt on HS. In addition, we express some concern about locating the lawmakers in an ontology of (...) primitive subjunctive facts and suggest that a 'mixed' metaphysics to the lawmaker question might be attractive. (shrink)

Drawing heavily on recent empirical research to update R.M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism and expand Hare's treatment of "intuitive level rules," Gary Varner considers in detail the theory's application to animals while arguing that Hare should have recognized a hierarchy of persons, near-persons, & the merely sentient.

Joe Campbell has identified an apparent flaw in van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument. It apparently derives a metaphysically necessary conclusion from what Campbell argues is a contingent premise: that the past is in some sense necessary. I criticise Campbell’s examples attempting to show that this is not the case (in the requisite sense) and suggest some directions along which an incompatibilist could reconstruct her argument so as to remain immune to Campbell’s worries.

Achille Varzi [2000] has suggested a nice response to the familiar argument purporting to establish the existence of perfectly coinciding objects ‐ objects which, if they existed, would trouble mereological extensionality and the “Minimalist View” of ontology. The trick is to defend Minimalism without tarnishing its status as a meta‐principle: that is, without making any first‐ order ontological claims. Varzi's response, though seeming to allow for a comfortable indifference about metaphysical matters peripheral to Minimalism, is not general enough to stave (...) off attacks on extensionality from more sophisticated corners. However, Varzi's argument bears a kinship with a more general argument against coincident objects. I consider how such an argument sits with the meta‐doctrinal status of Minimalism. (shrink)

This book offers a powerful response to what Varner calls the "two dogmas of environmental ethics"--the assumptions that animal rights philosophies and anthropocentric views are each antithetical to sound environmental policy. Allowing that every living organism has interests which ought, other things being equal, to be protected, Varner contends that some interests take priority over others. He defends both a sentientist principle giving priority to the lives of organisms with conscious desires and an anthropocentric principle giving priority to certain very (...) inclusive interests which only humans have. He then shows that these principles not only comport with but provide significant support for environmental goals. (shrink)

The conundrum of the unconstitutional constitution -- The quest for a compelling unity -- The permeability of constitutional borders -- The sounds of silence : militant and acquiescent constitutionalism -- "The first page of the constitution" : family, state, and identity.

With its unique combination of depth, clarity, and humor that has enchanted millions, this beloved classic by bestselling author Gary Zukav opens the fascinating world of quantum physics to readers with no mathematical or technical background. "Wu Li" is the Chinese phrase for physics. It means "patterns of organic energy," but it also means "nonsense," "my way," "I clutch my ideas," and "enlightenment." These captivating ideas frame Zukav's evocative exploration of quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Delightfully easy to read, (...) The Dancing Wu Li Masters illuminates the compelling powers at the core of all we know. (shrink)

Considers the ways in which alternative moral positions—consequentialism, natural law theory (adjusted to incorporate recognition of non-human animals' moral standing), and Stephen Clark's version of Aristotelian virtue ethics—respond to the question whether a boycott of the meat industry is morally obligatory. Investigates the likely responses of the various positions to a range of casuistic concerns.

Made-Up Minds addresses fundamental questions of learning and concept invention by means of an innovative computer program that is based on the cognitive ...

Development of a vaccine for schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease currently affecting over 200 million people worldwide, has been targeted as a priority by the World Health Organisation. Research demonstrating the ability of humans to acquire natural immunity to schistosome infection, together with the successful use of attenuated vaccines in animals both under laboratory and field conditions, suggest that development of a human vaccine is feasible. Attenuated vaccines for schistosomiasis are considered neither safe nor practicable for human use, however, and therefore (...) other approaches must be considered. This review examines progress currently being undertaken in a number of different areas towards achieving the goal of a safe and effective human vaccine for schistosomiasis. (shrink)

The rise of multi-stakeholder institutions (MIs) involving the ultra-processed food (UPF) industry has raised concerns among food and public health scholars, especially with regards to enhancing the legitimacy and influence of transnational food corporations in global food governance (GFG) spaces. However, few studies have investigated the governance composition and characteristics of MIs involving the UPF industry, nor considered the implications for organizing global responses to UPFs and other major food systems challenges. We address this gap by conducting a network analysis (...) to map global MIs involving the UPF industry, drawing data from web sources, company reports, business and market research databases, and academic and grey literature. We identified 45 such global food system MIs. Of these, executives from the UPF industry or affiliated interest groups held almost half (_n_ = 263, or 43.8%) of the total 601 board seat positions. Executives from a small number of corporations, especially Unilever (_n_ = 20), Nestlé (_n_ = 17), PepsiCo Inc (_n_ = 14), and The Coca-Cola Company (_n_ = 13) held the most board seat positions, indicating centrality to the network. Board seats of these MIs are dominated by executives from transnational corporations (_n_ = 431, or 71.7%), high-income countries (_n_ = 495, or 82.4%), and four countries (United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) (_n_ = 350, or 58.2%) in particular. This study shows that MIs involving the UPF industry privilege the interests of corporations located near exclusively in the Global North, draw legitimacy through affiliations with multi-lateral agencies, civil society groups and research institutions, and represent diverse corporate interests involved in UPF supply chains. Corporate-anchored multi-stakeholderism, as a form of GFG governance, raises challenges for achieving food systems transformation, including the control and reduction of UPFs in human diets. (shrink)