In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:275 DAVID HUME AND THE CONCEPT OF VOLITION Introduction The following two papers, though separately authored, belong together, not only because we, the authors, shared our views during the writing, but also because they are excerpts from a single story we are interested in telling. This is the story of a particular insight into the conceptual structure of human volition — the will. The insight is that volition — (...) or, more precisely, intention — is (or presupposes) a kind of knowledge, practical knowledge. Our larger goal is to show how this insight was developed from the time of Aristotle into the Middle Ages, and then fell into obscurity in modern philosophy until quite recently. This insight became especially clear in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. The epistemological development which obscured it was most powerfully furthered by David Hume. The recovery of the insight was initially the work of the later Wittgenstein. The first paper deals with Aquinas; the second with Wittgenstein; and both with Hume.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:276 THE WILL AS IMPRESSION Hume writes, in the Treatise: Let no one, therefore, put an invidious construction on my words, by saying simply, that I assert the necessity of human actions, and place them on the same footing with the operations of senseless matter. I do not ascribe to the will that unintelligible necessity, which is suppos'd to lie in matter. But I ascribe to matter, that intelligible (...) quality, call it necessity or not, which the most rigorous orthodoxy does or must allow to belong to the will. I^ change, therefore, nothing in the receiv'd systems, with regard to the will, but only with regard to material objects. It is surely false that Hume changed "nothing in the receiv'd systems, with regard to the will." In one such "receiv'd system," that of Thomas Aquinas, the concept of will or volition is presented as internally related to two further concepts: that of the "final cause" or goal of the action, and that of "practical intellect," a form of cognition which is productive of its object. Will is always the will to something, a goal to be reached or a product to be produced. Thus will and final cause are concepts which presuppose one another. The mark, however, of the fact that someone wills to do something, i.e., that s/he in fact has some goal, is precisely that that agent knows, non-inductively and without observation, what s/he is doing or will do. The basis of this knowledge is neither evidence nor proof, but rather what Aristotle called "the practical syllogism." We will ask below what it means to describe the relationships among will, final cause, and practical knowledge as 'internal.' 277 The question to be explored here is this: what in fact becomes of the 'receiv'd concept of will' when one contends, in the empiricist spirit common to both Locke and Hume, that all of our knowledge about matters of fact is based on observation and induction? The answer to this question will turn out to be that, in the absence of a notion of "practical knowledge," the concept of final cause becomes unintelligible (since the final cause is precisely the object of practical knowledge); and thus the notion of will must be reconstrued, for Hume as an impression. As an impression it is a brute given, one that is furthermore mute (or lacking in propositional content). Hume views volition as an event, that object of inner experience which is the (Humean) cause of our voluntary actions. In what follows I shall first of all sketch Thomas Aquinas' view of the will (section I), following this with a discussion of the important hybrid view in Locke's Essay, where older notions of volition are presented within an incompatible epistemological framework. In section III we look at Hume's sharp response to Locke, and in section IV at his own doctrine of the will as impression. In the final section I attempt to distinguish two strands of causality in Hume's philosophy of human action, drawing at the same time a moral for the contemporary dispute about reasons and causes. One of the most fully developed of the "receiv'd systems with regard to the will" was that of St. Thomas Aquinas, who combined Neo-Platonist, Patristic, and Aristotelian sources into an 2 impressive and influential synthesis. Thomas' 278 doctrine on the will is guided by a Grand Analogy, one inspired by the Creation story in Genesis. He writes, at the beginning of the second main part of his Summa : Man is made to God's image, and since this implies... that he is intelligent and free to judge and master of himself, so then, now that we have agreed [in part one of the Summa] that God is the exemplar cause of things and that they issue from his power through his will, we go on to look at this image, that is to say, at man as the source of actions which are his own and fall under his responsibility and control. The analogy is this: God, the Divine Craf tsperson, is to the Creation as human agents are to their... (shrink)

"Live without why!" advised Meister Eckhart . Arguing from classical philosophy and the Christian tradition, he opposed the views of Augustine and Aquinas. Connolly's book, the first to deal fully with the topic, discusses what Eckhart meant, how he justified it, and why it was condemned.

Recent interest among both philosophers and the wider public in the tradition of virtue ethics often takes its inspiration from Aristotle or from Thomas Aquinas. In this essay I briefly outline the ethical approaches of these two towering figures, and then describe more fully the virtue ethics of Meister Eckhart, a medieval thinker who admired, though critically, both Aristotle and Aquinas. His related but distinctively original approach to the virtuous life is marked by a striking and seemingly paradoxical injunction to (...) “live without why.”. (shrink)

Recent work in the theory of action by analytical philosophers has focused on explaining actions by citing the agent's motivating reason(s). But this ignores a pattern of explanation typical in the social sciences, i.e. situating the agent in a reference group whose members typically manifest that behavior. In some cases the behavior of such groups can itself be shown to be the product of social forces. Two extended examples of this explanatory pattern are studied. In each case the motivating reasons (...) of the agents concerned can scarcely be understood apart from reference to the groups of which the agents are members and the social forces which work on those groups. However, attention to the agent's own reasons for action remains important, in part because of action theory's critical potential to help liberate people from arbitrary, hypostasized social forces. (shrink)

There is a question over whether or not Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), contended that the rich devise structures of authority (especially civil government) to protect their wealth. At issue is whether significant, private wealth can exist prior to forms of authority. Smith seems to me not to have thought so. It is true that he asserts that, "antecedent to any civil institutions", superiority of fortune can "give some men superiority over the greater part of their brethren" (...) (p.670). However, I argue that there is strong reason not to take the word "antecedent" here in a temporal sense. In numerous and important examples Smith depicts the relationship between wealth and authority as non-empirical (or at least not simply empirical). This connection flows naturally from Smith's epoch-making redefinition of wealth as the productive capacity which a society can command within its given social and political framework. Appreciating this point leads one to see Smith as developing an early form of historical materialism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:306 THE WILL AS WISH Hume's theory of action — that the will is the cause of voluntary action — is still one of the main accounts about the relationship of will and action in current discussion. In the following I will first show that Wittgenstein revived Hume's theory in his early philosophy. I will argue that wishing is taken as a model for willing in both Hume's and (...) the early Wittgenstein's theories. I am therefore speaking of a 'wish-theory of will'. In his middle and later philosophy, however, Wittgenstein presents a completely different point of view. He acknowledges the deep difference between wishing and willing. In willing, but not in wishing, we do have knowledge, namely we can predict our future voluntary actions. This knowledge is to be distinguished from our knowledge of future events in nature. I believe that the wish-model of willing can be regarded as 'philosophically confused' in Wittgenstein's sense: he who says that we cannot know what our future voluntary actions will be, is in fact only attacking our linguistic conventions regarding the meaning of 'will' or 'intention,' though he thinks he is defending an empirical claim. In conclusion it is claimed that the adherents of Hume's theory of action and also most of Wittgenstein's followers have not been aware of the consequences of Wittgenstein's conceptual criticism. So the discussion turns still (once again) around Hume's question: whether the relationship of willing and acting is a causal one or one "of logical compulsion. " [10.248.208.35] Project MUSE (2024-02-19 15:08 GMT) JHU Libraries 307 1. Pavid Hume's Theory of Action In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sect. VII, Part I, Hume gives several arguments in favour of the thesis that, "like all other natural events," the influence of volition over the organs of the body can only be known by experience. His second argument here is from the comparison of voluntary with involuntary movements. He is arguing against the thesis that the relationship between the will and voluntary movement might be that of logical necessity. If that were the case, then by inspecting the cause we would be aware of a certain power producing the effect. But we are not conscious of such a power in distinguishing this relationship from the one between will and involuntary movements. So we can only conclude that in most cases, when we have willed certain (namely voluntary) movements, the movement has followed upon our will, and that we must 2 infer the necessity of this relationship. His first argument backs up the second: the relationship between will and voluntary movement, between soul and body, is a completely mysterious one: "were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit: this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension." (E 65) Now, without wanting to milk too much out of this remark, I take it in fact to give Hume's model for his account of willing: If the influence of volition over the organs of the body in voluntary movement is known only by experience, volition is nothing but a wish. We normally would distinguish between wishing and willing in using 'wishing' where we at least believe that the wish will not come true. And this is just what follows from Hume's description 308 of the will: that we don't know and cannot know if the execution of the will will come true. An example is his distinction of voluntary and involuntary movement: if we don't know that our volition (of a voluntary movement) will come true, then will is perfectly equal in this respect to our wish (of an involuntary movement, or some other event). So Hume points to a man, suddenly struck with palsy in a leg, who wills to move his leg: Hume's volition is logically independent of its execution. But his denial of knowledge in will blurs the distinction between willing and wishing. I will argue that there is an epistemic difference between willing and wishing, in spite of the logical independence of both from what... (shrink)

The problem of ‘wayward causal chains’ threatens any causal analysis of the concept of intentional human action. For such chains show that the mere causation of an action by the right sort of belief and/or desire does not make the action intentional, i.e. one done in order to attain the object of desire. Now if the ‘because’ in ‘wayward’ action-explanations is straightforwardly causal, that might be argued to indicate by contrast that the different ‘because’ of reasons-explanations (which both explain and (...) justify) is non-causal. Myles Brand, in Intending and Acting (1984), resists this conclusion, but argues that waywardness shows that philosophers must ‘naturalize’ action theory by drawing on contemporary work in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. I argue that this is a misconceived response to the problem of waywardness: in Brand’s work action theory itself has gone astray, unsure which way to tum next. (shrink)

The problem of ‘wayward causal chains’ threatens any causal analysis of the concept of intentional human action. For such chains show that the mere causation of an action by the right sort of belief and/or desire does not make the action intentional, i.e. one done in order to attain the object of desire. Now if the ‘because’ in ‘wayward’ action-explanations is straightforwardly causal, that might be argued to indicate by contrast that the different ‘because’ of reasons-explanations (which both explain and (...) justify) is non-causal. Myles Brand, in Intending and Acting (1984), resists this conclusion, but argues that waywardness shows that philosophers must ‘naturalize’ action theory by drawing on contemporary work in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. I argue that this is a misconceived response to the problem of waywardness: in Brand’s work action theory itself has gone astray, unsure which way to tum next. (shrink)

Although there are various studies comparing Greek and Indian philosophy and religion, and Chinese and Western philosophy and religion, Brahman and Dao: Comparatives Studies in Indian and Chinese Philosophy and Religion is a first of its kind that brings together Indian and Chinese philosophies and religions. Brahman and Dao helps close the gap on a much needed examination on the rich history of Buddhist transmission to China, and the many generations of Indian Buddhist missionaries to China and Chinese Buddhist pilgrims (...) to India, including the legendary Bodhidharma, and Faxian and Xuanzang. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How do we recognize distinct types of emotion in music?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What counts as cognitive penetration?

This report highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012: 1. How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development? 2. What are the origins of multimodal associations? 3. Does our representation of time provide an amodal framework for multi-sensory integration? 4. What counts as cognitive penetration? 5. How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: Does our representation of time provide and amodal framework for multi-sensory integration?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What are the origins of multimodal associations?

With an inside view from an expert in the field and a clear and engaging writing style, Asian Philosophies, Seventh Edition invites students and professors to think along with the great minds of the Asian traditions. Eminent scholar and teacher John M. Koller has devoted his life to understanding and explaining Asian thought and practice. He wrote this text to give students access to the rich philosophical and religious ideas of both South and East Asia. New to this seventh (...) edition: Added material on Confucianism, including focused coverage of (1) the Analects and society and (2) ren and nature; Additional information on Theravada Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism as well as new in-depth coverage of ecological attitudes in Buddhism; Expanded coverage of ecological attitudes in all of the Asian traditions; Brief excerpts from primary sources to help better explain the key concepts; Added timelines for essential texts in each tradition; Improved Glossary and Pronunciation Guide; Additional text boxes, to help students quickly understand key ideas, texts, and concepts; Updated Further Reading sections. (shrink)

While nothing justifies atrocity, many perpetrators manifest cognitive impairments that profoundly degrade their capacity for moral judgment, and such impairments, we shall argue, preclude the attribution of moral responsibility.

In Faculty Misconduct in Collegiate Teaching, higher education researchers John Braxton and Alan Bayer address issues of impropriety and misconduct in the teaching role at the postsecondary level. Braxton and Bayer define and examine norms of teaching behavior: what they are, how they come to exist, and how transgressions are detected and addressed. Do faculty members across various collegiate settings, for example, share views about appropriate and inappropriate teaching behaviors, as they share expectations regarding actions related to research? And (...) what mechanisms are utilized to correct inappropriate behavior on the part of college and university teachers? The authors' work is based on survey results obtained from faculty members at research universities, liberal arts colleges, and two-year community, junior, and technical colleges. Braxton and Bayer's focus is on undergraduate teaching in four disciplines: biology, history, mathematics, and psychology. In their analyses, the authors examine how individual, disciplinary, and institutional differences influence professorial behavior. In contrast to the more explicitly understood and enforced rules of conduct in research, the authors find that teaching norms are informally defined and observed. They argue that a formal code of ethics for undergraduate teaching would serve the dual purpose of improving undergraduate education and elevating the status of college teaching. A groundbreaking study of contemporary academe, Faculty Misconduct in Collegiate Teaching is required reading for all university and college instructors and administrators. (shrink)

What is everything made of? -- Do I have free will? -- Can I know the world? -- Does God exist? -- How shall I live? -- What are my rights? -- How can I be saved? -- Appendix: Letters on philosophical topics.

In this volume, John Warner grapples with one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s chief preoccupations: the problem of self-interest implicit in all social relationships. Not only did Rousseau never solve this problem, Warner argues, but he also believed it was fundamentally unsolvable—that social relationships could never restore wholeness to a self-interested human being. This engaging study is founded on two basic but important questions: what do we want out of human relationships, and are we able to achieve what we are after? (...) Warner traces his answers through the contours of Rousseau’s thought on three distinct types of relationships—sexual love, friendship, and civil or political association—as well as alternate interpretations of Rousseau, such as that of the neo-Kantian Rawlsian school. The result is an insightful exploration of the way Rousseau inspires readers to imbue social relations with purpose and meaning, only to show the impossibility of reaching wholeness through such relationships. While Rousseau may raise our hopes only to dash them, Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations demonstrates that his ambitious failure offers unexpected insight into the human condition and into the limits of Rousseau’s critical act. (shrink)

How does a school of thought, in the area of philosophy, or indeed of religion, from roots that may be initially open-ended and largely informal, come to take on the features that later mark it out as distinctive, and even exclusive? That is the theme which is explored in this book in respect of the philosophical movement known as Platonism, stemming as it does from the essentially open-ended and informal atmosphere of Plato's Academy. John Dillon focuses on a number (...) of key issues, such as monism versus dualism, the metaphysical underpinnings of ethical theory, the theory of Forms, and the reaction to the Sceptical 'deviation' represented by the so-called 'New Academy'. The book is written in the lively and accessible style of the lecture series in Beijing from which it originates. (shrink)

Temporal externalism (TE) is the thesis (defended by Jackman (1999)) that the contents of some of an individual’s thoughts and utterances at time t may be determined by linguistic developments subsequent to t. TE has received little discussion so far, Brown 2000 and Stoneham 2002 being exceptions. I defend TE by arguing that it solves several related problems concerning the extension of natural kind terms in scientifically ignorant communities. Gary Ebbs (2000) argues that no theory can reconcile our ordinary, practical (...) judgments of sameness of extension over time with the claim that linguistic usage determines word extensions. I argue that Ebbs shows at most that no theory other than TE can effect this reconciliation. Furthermore, while Ebbs’ argument undermines Jessica Brown’s solutions to two closely related problems about natural kind term extensions (Brown 1998), TE can solve both problems without difficulty. Some criticisms of TE are briefly addressed as well. (shrink)

What's a one-time bishop of Hippo got to do with the third millennium? -- The foundations of Augustine's moral Empiricism: truth, love and sin -- Scientific philosophy and first-person confession -- Against autonomy: ought and can -- The state: persecution, war, justice and regret -- Against political panaceas -- Utilitarians and Kantians: a parallel journey to triviality -- Rights theory -- The inevitable irrelevance of most contemporary theology -- Austin's brag: conventional relativism, nihilism or the Catholic tradition -- Transcript of (...) a radio interview with Bishop Austin Redivivus: 1.4.2016. (shrink)

Scientists and 'anti-scientists' alike need a more realistic image of science. The traditional mode of research, academic science, is not just a 'method': it is a distinctive culture, whose members win esteem and employment by making public their findings. Fierce competition for credibility is strictly regulated by established practices such as peer review. Highly specialized international communities of independent experts form spontaneously and generate the type of knowledge we call 'scientific' - systematic, theoretical, empirically-tested, quantitative, and so on. Ziman shows (...) that these familiar 'philosophical' features of scientific knowledge are inseparable from the ordinary cognitive capabilities and peculiar social relationships of its producers. This wide-angled close-up of the natural and human sciences recognizes their unique value, whilst revealing the limits of their rationality, reliability, and universal applicability. It also shows how, for better or worse, the new 'post-academic' research culture of teamwork, accountability, etc. is changing these supposedly eternal philosophical characteristics. (shrink)

The SIMPOL Solution, spearheaded by the Simultaneous Policy (SIMPOL) Organization, gives voters around the world a new way to pressure their leaders to address global problems ranging from climate change to mass immigration and gross income disparities. Blending politics and psychology, The SIMPOL Solution shows how through simultaneous action--through cooperation--we can overcome the problems we face today and our children will face tomorrow.The authors argue that the chief barrier to tackling pressing international issues is a vicious circle of destructive global (...) competition, in which nations, corporations, and citizens are helplessly caught. Our current economic system--which rewards corporations and nations that offer the greatest profits no matter what the social costs--has the effect of hollowing out national politics and encouraging either voter apathy or populism championed by the Far Right.The good news is that it doesn't take masses of people to break this vicious circle and initiate lasting change. In fact, key transitions in human history were initiated by small numbers of activists. Already endorsed by leading policy-makers, visionaries, and public figures, this exciting book offers everyone a way to become a part of this important worldwide movement for change. (shrink)

John Frame gives us an accessible introduction to "triperspectival" study-where theological issues are fruitfully viewed from multiple perspectives without compromise to their unity and truth. Book jacket.

Why believe in the findings of science? John Ziman argues that scientific knowledge is not uniformly reliable, but rather like a map representing a country we cannot visit. He shows how science has many elements, including alongside its experiments and formulae the language and logic, patterns and preconceptions, facts and fantasies used to illustrate and express its findings. These elements are variously combined by scientists in their explanations of the material world as it lies outside our everyday experience. (...) class='Hi'>John Ziman’s book offers at once a valuably clear account and a radically challenging investigation of the credibility of scientific knowledge, searching widely across a range of disciplines for evidence about the perceptions, paradigms and analogies on which all our understanding depends. (shrink)

In this 1976 volume, Professor Ziman paints a broad picture of science, and of its relations to the world in general. He sets the scene by the historical development of scientific research as a profession, the growth of scientific technologies out of the useful arts, the sources of invention and technical innovation, and the advent of Big Science. He then discusses the economics of research and development, the connections between science and war, the nature of science policy and the moral (...) dilemmas of social responsibility in science. Each topic is introduced by reference to easily understandable particular examples, with a large number of illustrations chosen to bring out the concreteness and reality of science as a human activity. Professor Ziman gives a chapter-by-chapter list of suggested topics for oral and written discussion, intended to provoke critical, sceptical attitudes to simplified solutions to real issues, and comments briefly on relevant books and other sources. (shrink)

Creating Public Value in Practice: Advancing the Common Good in a Multi-Sector, Shared-Power, No-One-Wholly-in-Charge World brings together a stellar cast of thinkers to explore issues of public and cross-sector decision-making within a framework of democratic civic engagement. It offers an integrative approach to understanding and applying the concepts of creating public value, public values, and the public sphere. It presents a framework and language for opening a constructive conversation on what governments, businesses, nonprofits, and citizens can achieve in a democracy (...) that honors a broad range of public values. Public officials, scholars, and citizens alike are engaged in an intense debate about the proper purpose, role, and size of government. In the midst of this debate is a growing concern that important public values are ignored by government reform efforts. This book explores the different definitions of public value and approaches to public value creation, discernment, measurement, and assessment. The text helps clarify the issues and demonstrates how the meaning of public value is intimately related to how it is theorized, operationalized, and measured. The book examines the many alternatives for recognizing, measuring, and assessing public value and addresses the pros and cons of each approach. The result is a contribution to the ongoing dialogue about the virtues and limitations of a focus on the public sphere, public values, and how to create public value in the context of developing and implementing policies, programs, projects, and plans that ideally boost confidence in public institutions. (shrink)

This book is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character that date back to Aristotle. John Doris draws on behavioral science, especially social psychology, to argue that we misattribute the causes of behavior to personality traits and other fixed aspects of character rather than to the situational context. More often than not it is the situation not the nature of the personality that really counts. The author elaborates the philosophical consequences of this research for (...) a whole array of ethical theories and shows that, once rid of the misleading conception of motivation, moral psychology can support more robust ethical theories and more humane ethical practices. (shrink)

A History of Western Philosophy and Theology is the fruit of John Frame's forty-five years of teaching philosophical subjects. No other survey of the history of Western thought offers the same invigorating blend of expositional clarity, critical insight, and biblical wisdom. The supplemental study questions, bibliographies, links to audio lectures, quotes from influential thinkers, twenty appendices, and indexed glossary make this an excellent main textbook choice for seminary- and college-level courses and for personal study. Book jacket.

Introduction -- Paradoxes -- Scientism -- Logic and meaning -- Initiate learning -- The self and I -- Trust and wonder.