William Desmond’s ongoing contribution to metaphysics encompasses both an innovative construction of a metaphysical perspective (“metaxological metaphysics”) and a thorough criticism of prior metaphysics. Consideration of seven distinct but related criticisms of other metaphysical theories reveals much of Desmond’s own view. What seems to be missing in Desmond’s works is thorough-going use of Neoplatonic thinkers. This absence is telling insofar as classical Neoplatonists not only avoid many of the criticisms that Desmond directs against “forgetful” metaphysicians but actually articulate a metaphysics (...) that would often confirm Desmond’s own. A clear example of this is found in Plotinus’s view of determination and excess in the individual, a metaphysical topic of great importance for Desmond himself. From this, one may conclude that Desmond’s already rich metaphysical thinking may be further enriched through closer consideration of Neoplatonism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: God and the primordial causes God and the world: theophany “Man: how great a thing and great a name, the image of divine nature” (V, 821C) Last things Eriugena in his time and beyond.

Human aesthetic experiences are pervasive; they are triggered by faces, art, natural scenery, foods, ideas, theories, and decision-making situations, among many sources, and seem to be a distinctive trait of our species. Our moral sense, understood as our capacity to judge events, actions, or people as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, also seems to be an exclusively human endowment (Ayala 2010). As part of the scientific efforts to characterize the biological foundations of our human uniqueness, recently there has been (...) interest in the brain’s underpinnings of aesthetic reactions to art on the one hand, and in the neural correlates of moral judgment and decision-making on the other (Greene and Paxton .. (shrink)

It is through our actions that we affect the way the world goes. Whenever we face a choice of what to do, we also face a choice of which of various possible worlds to actualize. Moreover, whenever we act intentionally, we act with the aim of making the world go a certain way. It is only natural, then, to suppose that an agent's reasons for action are a function of her reasons for preferring some of these possible worlds to others, (...) such that what she has most reason to do is to bring about the possible world which, of all those available to her, is the one that she has most reason to want to obtain. This is what is known as the `teleological conception of practical reasons'. Whether this is the correct conception of practical reasons is important not only in its own right, but also in virtue of its potential implications for what sort of moral theory we should accept. Below, I argue that the teleological conception is indeed the correct conception of practical reasons. (shrink)

López-Escobar, E. G. K. Introduction.--Kueker, D. W. Back-and-forth arguments and infinitary logics.--Green, J. Consistency properties for finite quantifier languages.--Cunningham, E. Chain models.--Gregory, J. On a finiteness condition for infinitary languages.

The book attempts, in as comprehensive a way as possible, to make clear the central issues for the theory of knowledge, so as to provide a framework for that subject and also to indicate something of the way in which, as the author believes, the issues should be faced.

There has been a good deal of interest in recent years in what Franz Brentano had to say about the notion of ‘intentional objects’ and about intentionality as a criterion of the mental. There has been less interest in his classification of mental phenomena. In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint Brentano asserts and argues for the thesis that mental phenomena can be classified in terms of three kinds of mental act or activity, all of which are directed towards an (...) immanent object. These are, respectively, presentation, judgment and what he calls the phenomena of love and hate. Once again, less interest has been shown in what he has to say about the last of these three than in what he says about the others. I wish to take Brentano's views as the point of departure for a discussion of love and hate, since these notions seem to me to have a good deal of philosophical interest, for at least two main reasons. First, I have recently had some concern with the part that personal relations play in our understanding of others and of ourselves, and love and hate seem to be very important elements in such relations. Second, love and hate have long seemed to me to provide important counter-examples to some prevalent philosophical theories about the emotions. I shall take this issue first. (shrink)

Special issue in honour of Landon Rabern. This special issue of Discrete Mathematics is dedicated to his memory, as a tribute to his many research achievements. It contains 10 new articles written by his collaborators, friends, and colleagues that showcase his interests.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

OBJECTIVES: To study empirically whether ethical theory (from the mainstream principles-based, virtue-based, and feminist schools) usefully describes the approaches doctors and nurses take in everyday patient care. DESIGN: Ethnographic methods: participant observation and interviews, the transcripts of which were analysed to identify themes in ethical approaches. SETTING: A British old-age psychiatry ward. PARTICIPANTS: The more than 20 doctors and nurses on the ward. RESULTS: Doctors and nurses on the ward differed in their conceptions of the principles of beneficence and respect (...) for patient autonomy. Nurses shared with doctors a commitment to liberal and utilitarian conceptions of these principles, but also placed much greater weight on relationships and character virtues when expressing the same principles. Nurses also emphasised patient autonomy, while doctors were more likely to advocate beneficence, when the two principles conflicted. CONCLUSION: The study indicates that ethical theory can, contrary to the charges of certain critics, be relevant to everyday health care-if it (a) attends to social context and (b) is flexible enough to draw on various schools of theory. (shrink)

Central to Elements is an assay of the attributional union properties and relations have with their subjects, a topic historically left metaphorical. The work critiques eight Aristotelian assumptions concerning attribute dependence and ‘inherence’, per se subjects, attributes as agent-organizers, and unity-by-a-shared-one. Groups of these assumptions are seen to yield contradiction, vicious regress, or other problems. This analysis, joined with insights from an assay of ubiquitous structure, motivate ten theses explicating attribution and its primary ontic status. The theses detail: attributes proper (...) as individuated instances, structure as instance-generated facts and their two forms of composition, the conditioning role and universal nature of instances’ component intensions, the primacy of attribute instances for generating all forms of composition and complex entities, and identity and indiscernibility criteria for the latter. Principal is the insight that attribution is intension-determined combinatorial agency. It is its systematizing implications that provide solutions to classic problems, e.g., Composition, Individuation, and Universals, and in net generate a comprehensive one-category structuralist ontology. (shrink)

A model of spontaneous collapse of fermionic degrees of freedom in a quantum field is presented which has the advantages that it explicitly maintains energy conservation and gives results in agreement with an existing numerical method for calculating quantum state evolution, namely the quantum trajectories model.

In a recent article [Mertz 2001] in this journal I argued for the virtues of a realist ontology of relation instances (unit attributes). A major strength of this ontology is an assay of ontic ('material') predication that yields an account of individuation without the necessity of positing and defending 'bare particulars'. The crucial insight is that it is the unifying agency or combinatorial aspect of a relation instance as predicable that is for ontology the principium individuationis [Mertz 2002; 1996]. Or (...) in short, what is ontically predicable, precisely as such, is the cause of individuation. As a preface to this positive doctrine I offered arguments against the coherence of bare particulars as defended in an article by J. P. Moreland [1998]. In a reply contained in this issue Moreland and Timothy Pickavance (hereafter M/P) propose to answer my objections [2002]. The response that follows provides reasons why, I contend, M/P have not succeeded in parrying my objections to bare particulars. (shrink)

There have in recent years been at least two important attempts to get to grips with Aristotle's conception of dialectic. I have in mind those by Martha C. Nussbaum in ‘Saving Aristotle's appearances’, which is chapter 8 of her The Fragility of Goodness, and by Terence H. Irwin in his important, though in my opinion somewhat misguided, book Aristotle's First Principles. There is a sense in which both of these writers are reacting to the work of G. E. L. Owen (...) on cognate matters, particularly his well-known paper ‘Tithenai ta phainomena’. Owen himself was in part reacting to what I suppose is the traditional view of how Aristotle regarded dialectic, as revealed in Topics I. 1. On that view dialectic is for Aristotle a lesser way of proceeding than is demonstration, the method of science. For demonstration proceeds from premises which are accepted as true in themselves and moves from them to conclusions which follow necessarily from those premises; and the middle term of such a demonstrative syllogism then provides the ‘reason why’ for the truth of the conclusion. Dialectic proceeds from premises which are accepted on a lesser basis ‘by everyone or by the majority or by the wise, i.e. by all, or by the majority, or by the most notable and reputable of them’, and proceeds deductively from them to further conclusions. (shrink)

Social scientists could learn some useful things from philosophy. Here I shall discuss what I take to be one such thing: a better understanding of the concept of utility. There are several reasons why a better understanding may be useful. First, this concept is commonly found in the writings of social scientists, especially economists. Second, utility is the main ingredient in utilitarianism, a perspective on morality that, traditionally, has been very influential among social scientists. Third, and most important, with a (...) better understanding of utility comes, as I shall try to show here, a better understanding of “personal welfare”. or, in other words, of what may be said to be in people's best interests. Such an understanding is useful to social scientists and philosophers alike, whether for utilitarian purposes or not. (shrink)

In these prefatory remarks, which are designed to locate my topic within the complex and wide-stretching field of Popper's thought and writings, I shall not say anything that those familiar with his work will not already know. Moreover, what I do say will take as understood many of the problems and theories, not to mention the terminology, that I shall later be doing my best to make understandable. My apologies are therefore due equally to those who know something about Popper's (...) discussions of indeterminism and of the propensity interpretation of probability, and to those who know nothing. (shrink)