The founders and 19th-Century leaders of the American democratic experiment sought to base their institution on a rationalist and individualist model of political reality. As characterized by D. M. Levitan, they distrusted representative government and powerful executives, subscribing to a laissez-faire philosophy: he governs best who governs least. Levitan goes on to accentuate the intimate relationship of the political system to its philosophical foundation. While he notes that Liberal ideas were well adapted to the needs of the plutocracy, he does (...) not play down the importance of Liberalism to the particular form taken by political institutions in democracy. A paradigm of this Liberal doctrine is John Stuart Mill's famous Principle: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will is to prevent harm to others.” This Principle, if not the source, can certainly qualify as a rationalization for a great part of what passes for “policy” in a democracy. (shrink)

Contemporary philosopher Alvin Plantinga is best known for tackling the problem of evil and rationality of belief in God from a Calvinist perspective. Welty provides a Reformed intro and analysis.

In this paper we offer a new argument for the existence of God. We contend that the laws of logic are metaphysically dependent on the existence of God, understood as a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being; thus anyone who grants that there are laws of logic should also accept that there is a God. We argue that if our most natural intuitions about them are correct, and if they are to play the role in our intellectual activities that we take (...) them to play, then the laws of logic are best construed as necessarily existent thoughts -- more specifically, as divine thoughts about divine thoughts. We conclude by highlighting some implications for both theistic arguments and antitheistic arguments. (shrink)

This collection of chapters, from an international group of theologians and scripture scholars, engages the hermeneutical insights of Bernard Lonergan and those influenced by him to both advance theoretical discussions concerning the interpretation of Christian Scripture and to demonstrate the usefulness of such hermeneutical insights through applied readings of specific biblical texts.

While interest in Kant's philosophy has increased in recent years, very little of it has focused on his theory of science. This book gives a general account of that theory, of its motives and implications, and of the way it brought forth a new conception of the nature of philosophical thought. To reconstruct Kant's theory of science, the author identifies unifying themes of his philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of physics, both undergirded by his distinctive logical doctrines, and shows how (...) they come together to form a relatively consistent system of ideas. A new analysis of the structure of central arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena draws on recent developments in logic and the philosophy of science. Professor Brittan's unified account of the philosophies of mathematics and physics explores the nature of Kant's commitment to Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics as well as providing an integrated reading of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Contemporary ideas help both to illuminate Kant's position and to show how that position, in turn, illuminates contemporary problems in the philosophy of science. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason was written late in his career. It presents a theory of 'radical evil' in human nature, touches on the issue of divine grace, develops a Christology, and takes a seemingly strong interest in the issue of scriptural interpretation. The essays in this Critical Guide explore the reasons why this is so, and offer careful and illuminating interpretations of the themes of the work. The relationship of Kant's Religion to his other writings is (...) discussed in ways that underscore the importance of this work for the entire critical philosophy, and provide a broad perspective on his moral thought; connections are also drawn between religion, history, and politics in Kant's later thinking. Together the essays offer a rich exploration of the work which will be of great interest to those involved in Kant studies and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Researchers in areas such as artificial intelligence, formal and computational linguistics, biomedical informatics, conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering and information retrieval have come to realise that a solid foundation for their research calls for serious work in ontology, understood as a general theory of the types of entities and relations that make up their respective domains of inquiry. In all these areas, attention is now being focused on the content of information rather than on just the formats and languages used to (...) represent information. The clearest example of this development is provided by the many initiatives growing up around the project of the Semantic Web. And, as the need for integrating research in these different fields arises, so does the realisation that strong principles for building well-founded ontologies might provide significant advantages over ad hoc, case-based solutions. The tools of formal ontology address precisely these needs, but a real effort is required in order to apply such philosophical tools to the domain of information systems. Reciprocally, research in the information sciences raises specific ontological questions which call for further philosophical investigations. The purpose of FOIS is to provide a forum for genuine interdisciplinary exchange in the spirit of a unified effort towards solving the problems of ontology, with an eye to both theoretical issues and concrete applications. This book contains a wide range of areas, all of which are important to the development of formal ontologies. (shrink)

Embryos start out as tiny globes, on which many important events occur, including cell divisions, shape changes and changes of neighbors, waves of contraction and expansion, motion of cell sheets, extension of filopodia, shearing of cell connections, and differentiation and morphogenesis of tissues such as skin and brain. I propose to build a robotic microscope that would enable a new way to look at embryos: Google Embryo. This is akin to sending a space probe to Jupiter and its moons, sending (...) back spectacular new visions of their complexity, activity, and beauty. (shrink)

What if you're not who you think you are? What if you don't really know the people closest to you? And what if your most deeply-held beliefs turn out to be. wrong? In Stop Being Reasonable, philosopher Eleanor Gordon-Smith tells gripping true stories that show the limits of human reason. Susie realises her husband harbours a terrible secret, Dylan leaves the cult he's been raised in since birth, Alex discovers he can no longer return to his former identity after (...) impersonating someone else on reality TV. All of them radically alter their beliefs about the things that matter most. What makes them change course? What does this say about our own beliefs? And, in an increasingly divided world, what does it teach us about how we might change the minds of others? Stop Being Reasonable is a mind-changing exploration of the murky place where philosophy and real life meet. (shrink)

This chapter is intended to provide the reader with a brief biographical overview of Adorno's life and thought, with an emphasis on the key turning points in his career. It discusses his childhood, his education in Frankfurt, his musical studies, his emigration first to Oxford and then to the United States, his return to Germany after World War Two, his tenure as professor at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt and his prominence as a public intellectual, and his confrontation with students. Together (...) with biographical details the chapter also offers a simple overview of Adorno's major concerns as a philosopher. (shrink)

This essay examines Adorno's notoriously puzzling concept of metaphysical experience with special attention to Adorno's remarks on the concept in his 1965 lecture‐course, “Metaphysics: Concepts and Problems.” The essay argues that the concept of metaphysical experience is best understood in the light of Adorno's philosophical critique of metaphysics in the traditional sense. It was Adorno's view that in the age of modern catastrophe, the category of traditional metaphysics (as theorized chiefly by Aristotle, Plato, and Empedocles) could no longer retain its (...) validity, and the notion of “experience” itself was withering away. Adorno concluded that metaphysics in the modern era would have to be reconceived as a category of loss that reflected the damage that had been done to human life. “Metaphysical experience” attached itself especially to special places or childhood memories, even while such privileged experiences also reflected the disappointment and imperfection that marks all experiences today. (shrink)

This chapter is intended to provide the reader with a brief biographical overview of Adorno's life and thought, with an emphasis on the key turning points in his career. It discusses his childhood, his education in Frankfurt, his musical studies, his emigration first to Oxford and then to the United States, his return to Germany after the Second World War, his tenure as professor at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt and his prominence as a public intellectual, and his confrontation with students. (...) Together with biographical details the chapter also offers a simple overview of Adorno's major concerns as a philosopher. (shrink)

In the article ‘Equality and Desert,’ Shelly Kagan rejects the principle of equality as an arbiter of distributive justice. He claims instead that all of our intuitions about distributive justice that are thought to support some principle of equality can be captured under the principle of desert. I argue that Kagan's claim fails because, in cashing out his notion of desert, Kagan makes tacit appeal to the principle of equality.

RésuméPlusieurs pensent qu'on devrait comprendre la personne qui fait le mal plutôt que la condamner. Le present article suggère que les écrits de Sartre seraient en désaccord avec une telle approche. Lorsqu'on combat le mal, selon ce qu'indiquent ces écrits, il n'y a aucun besoin, si l'on sait qu'une personne fait le mal, d'essayer de la comprendre. La distinction de Sartre entre comprendre une personne et savoir quelque chose est présentée en détail, à partir surtout de ses écrits de fiction (...) et de sa biographie de Gustave Flaubert. En exploitant cette distinction, on arrive à la conclusion qu'il est superflu d'essayer de comprendre la personne quifait le mal. Lorsque nous savons qu'une personne fait le mal, nous devons la combattre, directement et avec force. (shrink)

The notion of economic violence has long been recognized in the work of Johan Galtung and others. The work of Thomas Pogge and the field of global justice have addressed the impact of economic disparities between the Global North and the Global South, and their impact on human well-being, and social and economic development more broadly. Patents, publication in scholarly journals, academic collaborations, access to academic journals, and so forth do not on their face seem to be closely tied to (...) indicators of human well-being. However, disparities in knowledge production, including access to academic resources and publication venues, are tied directly or indirectly to infrastructure, food security, health and mortality rates, employment, and gender equity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The School in the Garden Prehistory and the Rise of Cities The Locus Amoenus and the Origins of Agriculture Diogenes of Oinoanda and the Future Epicurean Golden Age Notes.

The unmatched technological achievements in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, computer science, and related fields over the last few decades can be considered a success story. The technological sophistication has been so groundbreaking in various types of applications that many experts believe that we will see, at some point or another, the emergence of general AI (AGI) and, eventually, superintelligence. This book examines the impact of AI on human rights by focusing on potential risks and human rights legislation and proposes creating (...) a Universal Convention for the Rights of AI Systems (AI Convention). (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen has been for decades one of the leading ontologists in the world, and reading Being makes it easy to see a reason why this is so. He insists o.

The edited volume _Future Law, Ethics, and Smart Technologies_ is a comprehensive interdisciplinary textbook for students, particularly law students, who want to become familiar with the complex issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and smart technologies.

Hearing, Sound, and the Auditory in Ancient Greece represents the first comprehensive study of the role of sound and hearing in the ancient Greek world. While our modern western culture is almost an entirely visual one, hearing and sound were central to ancient Greeks. The fifteen chapters of this edited volume explore "hearing" as being philosophically significant across numerous texts and figures in ancient Greek philosophy. Through close analysis of the philosophy of such figures as Heraclitus, Sophocles, Plato, Socrates, and (...) Aristotle, Hearing, Sound, and Auditory in Ancient Greece presents new and unique research from philosophers and classicists that aims to redirect us to the ways in which sound, hearing, music, listening, voice, and even silence shaped and reflected the worldview of ancient Greece. (shrink)

Science and the humanities share the same kit of working tools, called the world's literature. While the author of this article deals mainly with the scientific and mathematical literature, the reader probably gravitates towards some other branches, but such distinctions were hardly made in the Middle Ages. The American philosopher, Wallace Stevens, in his book The Necessary Angel remarks that at the time of Aristotle, the Greek language had no word to signify literature. The reason is surely that literature had (...) long since been too universal an element in Greece to require a name. We have no name for the smell of air. This all-pervading power of literature is apparent already two generations before Aristotle, when Socrates made his defence against leading the youth of Athens towards atheism. Plato's Apology tells us how Socrates taunted his accuser: “Have you such a low opinion of the judges, that you fancy them so illiterate as not to know these doctrines are found in the books of Anaxagoras which are full of them? And so, my word, the youth are said to be taught them by Socrates, when they can be bought in the book-market for one drachma at most…” (a coin today worth 1.4 pence!). (shrink)

Spätestens mit dem Aufkommen der modernen Naturwissenschaften im 19. Jahrhundert wird die Rolle der Metaphysik für die naturwissenschaftliche Begriffsbildung in Frage gestellt. Bereits Kant identifiziert die Schwächen einer Metaphysik, die in ihren wesentlichen Begriffen allein dem aristotelischen Vorbild treu geblieben ist. Das heißt aber nicht, dass bewährte traditionelle metaphysische Begriffe völlig aufgegeben werden müssen. Gerade in den modernen Naturwissenschaften gibt es Fragen, die aus der einzelnen Wissenschaft heraus nicht beantwortet werden können, ohne begriffliche Anleihen bei traditionellen metaphysischen Konzepten zu nehmen. (...) Anhand der metaphysischen und naturphilosophischen Konzeptionen Kants und Whiteheads untersucht Gordon Seitz den von Whitehead behaupteten Gegensatz zwischen Prozess- und Transzendentalphilosophie im Hinblick auf die Idee einer Einheit der Natur und unter Berücksichtigung moderner naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien. (shrink)