The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers reveals how great philosophers of the past sought to answer the question of the meaning of life. This edited collection includes thirty-five chapters which each focus on a major figure, from Confucius to Rorty, and that imaginatively engage with the topic from their perspective. This volume also contains a Postscript on the historical origins and original significance of the phrase 'the meaning of life'.

The problem that Tallis attempts to address in Freedom: An Impossible Reality is that science appears to describe the entire world deterministically and that this seems to leave no room for free will. In the face of this threat, Tallis defends the existence of free will by arguing that science does not explain our intentional awareness of the world; and it is our intentional awareness that makes both science and free will possible. Against Tallis, it is here argued that his (...) argument is vulnerable to two criticisms. Firstly, his characterisation of science as apparently deterministic is inaccurate. Secondly, he has not solved the problem he has set himself but rather recast it, so that his conclusion leaves us having to account for free will, not in a deterministic universe, but either as a product of chance or as a miracle. It is here suggested that when we set aside the illusory threat of scientific determinism, we also set aside the temptation of free will. That done, we may better focus upon agent’s freedom of action – as discussed by philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke and Hume – the rational capability of an agent to act upon their wishes, given the constraints under which they find themselves. (shrink)

Consciousness and the Great Philosophers addresses the question of how the great philosophers of the past might have reacted to the contemporary problem of consciousness. Each of the thirty two chapters within this edited collection focuses on a major philosophical figure from the history of philosophy, from Anscombe to Xuanzang, and imaginatively engages with the problem from their perspective. Written by leading experts in the field this exciting and engaging book explores the relevance of the history of philosophy to contemporary (...) debates and therefore is essential reading for students and scholars studying the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness, or both. ". (shrink)

Against Tartaglia, I argue (1) that life is not necessarily meaningless but it is absurd. It is absurd because our possible disappointment at death is not a disappointment we shall ever actually experience but it is a disappointment we yet fear, now, in life. (2) Tartaglia's idea is that life is meaningless whether we realise it or not but we are better able to realise it when we are bored. Against Tartaglia, it might be argued that the idea is itself (...) a symptom of boredom, ie part of boredom itself. He has isolated meaninglessness in life but not the meaninglessness of life. (shrink)

'Roman England': R.G. Collingwood's Correspondence with Harold Bruff, compiled and introduced by Stephen Leach.

Leach asks, what would Collingwood have thought of archaeological theory, a sub-discipline of archaeology that has developed since the 1960s? He argues that Collingwood would have welcomed it for it has developed out of respect for the principle that in any investigation, in examining the evidence, one must always have some question in mind. Nonetheless, although Collingwood would have welcomed recent developments in archaeological theory, and would have urged metaphysicians to take notice of such developments, he is not himself (...) an archaeological theorist: he is, primarily, a metaphysician. (shrink)

Moore argues as follows: (1) "Metaphysics is the most general attempt to make sense of things." (1) (2) "Because of its generality, metaphysics is the one branch of philosophy that is not the philosophy of this or that specific area of human thought or experience. It is 'pure' philosophy." (8) (3) It is "a fundamentally creative exercise." (17) Against Moore, I argue that it is rather philosophy that is the most general attempt to make sense of things. Alternatively, and in (...) my view preferably, Moore might have argued as follows: (1) 'Pure' philosophy is the most general attempt to make sense of things. (2) Because of its generality, it is not concerned with this or that area of human thought or experience. (3) It is a fundamentally uncreative exercise. (shrink)

On January 11 1951 Chadbourne Gilpatric met with Wittgenstein to offer him, on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation, funding for any forthcoming publications. Wittgenstein politely declined the offer as he did not believe his health would permit him to bring any projects to completion. The meeting is referred to in a letter from Wittgenstein to Norman Malcolm and is also recalled by O.K. Bouwsma. Bouwsma learned of it from conversations with Wittgenstein and by Gilpatric. However, it is also recounted in (...) Gilpatric’s diary. Gilpatric’s account comprises the fullest account of the meeting. It has remained unedited, until now, and is here transcribed for the first time. Five years later on February 1 1956 Gilpatric submitted a report, entitled ‘Logician and Mystic’, to the Rockefeller Foundation This report adds detail to his original account and summarises the Rockefeller’s financial support of the posthumous publication of Wittgenstein’s work. It also sketches Gilpatric’s view of Wittgenstein’s work. (shrink)

The author examines Williams' appraisal of Collingwood both in his eponymous essay on Collingwood, in the posthumously published Sense of the Past , and elsewhere in his work. The similarities and differences between their philosophies are explored: in particular, with regard to the relationship between philosophy and history and the relationship between the study of history and our present-day moral attitudes. It is argued that, despite Williams usually being classified as an analytic philosopher and Collingwood being classified as an idealist, (...) there is substantial common ground between them. Williams was aware of this and made clear his sympathy for Collingwood; but, nonetheless, the relationship between Williams and Collingwood has not previously been explored in any detail. After establishing the common ground between these philosophers, and the areas of disagreement, the author suggests that both may have something to gain from the other. (shrink)

In Philosophy in a Technological World Tartaglia argues that humanity can decide its own future, or at least try to, but that this distinctive...

For Richard Rorty the autonomy of philosophy and the idea of an ahistorical criterion of truth are ideas that stand or fall together. This article challenges that assumption. However, before proceeding to this criticism, it is necessary in this section of the article to provide some rudimentary exposition of Rorty's position.Richard Rorty wished to subjugate philosophy to history. He announced this position in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), and his opinion on this matter did not change substantially in (...) any subsequent work. He argued that although it might be interesting to read the great philosophical texts of the past as having something to say to us directly (as proposed by Ryle and Austin), or .. (shrink)

The roots of Rorty’s mature philosophy are explored in a discussion of his early philosophical papers and reviews. His lifelong interest in metaphilosophy is traced to the influence of Richard McKeon. The crucial influence of Sellars, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kuhn are also explored, as is his long-standing interest in pragmatism. It is explained how Rorty took something from all of these influences so as, cautiously, to arrive at an entirely new metaphilosophical position of his own.

This article examines the distinction that Russell drew between his work as a philosopher and his work as a journalist. It explains why, when warning against the threat posed by a nuclear arms race, Russell thought it better to write as a journalist (speaking on behalf of common sense) rather than as a philosopher. It is argued that to put aside philosophy in favour of common sense is, in this instance, a mistake.

An introduction to the role of U. T. Place in the development of modern physicalism.Export citation.

ABSTRACT A commitment to receive input from stakeholders is often obligatory in the crafting of environmental policies. This requirement is presumed to satisfy certain conditions of democracy. In this article, by drawing from pragmatism, we examine the logic of participation and prerequisites of the meaningful game of asking for and giving reasons. We elaborate the nature and significance of three components—the game, the pleadings, and the reasons. We conclude by offering the conditions under which the stakeholder game might be considered (...) legitimate. (shrink)

In Philosophy in a Technological World Tartaglia argues that humanity can decide its own future, or at least try to, but that this distinctive...

Is philosophy continuous with science or does it have a distinctive domain of inquiry that differs from that of the special sciences? Collingwood claimed that philosophy has a distinctive subject matter and a distinctive method. Its distinctive subject matter is what he called the “absolute presuppositions” that govern the special sciences and its method consists in making these presuppositions explicit by showing that they are entailed by the questions asked in the special sciences. In this chapter the editors seek to (...) provide a guide to the diverging interpretations of Collingwood’s claim that metaphysics is not the study of pure being but of the presuppositions that govern knowledge of reality. They argue that a reassessment of his contribution to philosophical methodology is timely in the light of the recent revival of interest in second-order questions concerning the role and character of philosophical analysis. (shrink)

De-Signing Design: Cartographies of Theory and Practice throws new light on the terrain between theory and practice in transdisciplinary discourses of design and art. The collection brings together a selection of essays on spatiality, difference, cultural aesthetics, and identity in the expanded field of place-making and being.

This book discusses Collingwood's conception of the role and character of philosophical analysis. It explores questions, such as, is there anything distinctive about the activity of philosophizing? If so, what distinguishes philosophy from other forms of inquiry? What is the relation between philosophy and science and between philosophy and history? For much of the twentieth century, philosophers philosophized with little self-awareness; Collingwood was exceptional in the attention he paid to the activity of philosophizing. This book will be of interest both (...) to those who are interested in Collingwood’s philosophy and, more generally, to all who are interested in the question ‘what is philosophy?’. (shrink)

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a popular-science book on cosmology (the study of the origin and evolution of the universe) by British physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who have no prior knowledge of the universe and people who are interested in learning.

A comprehensive reassessment of the concept of mimesis in the history of ancient Greek aesthetics and philosophy of art, with particular attention to Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, and neoplatonism. There is also a wide-ranging review of arguments pro and contra the idea of artistic mimesis from the Renaissance to modern literar theory. The book challenges standard accounts in numerous respects and builds a new dialectical model with which to make sense of the entire history of mimeticist thinking in aesthetics.

In this paper, I present a class of ‘structural’ abstraction principles, and describe how they are suggested by some features of Cantor's and Dedekind's approach to abstraction. Structural abstraction is a promising source of mathematically tractable new axioms for the neo-logicist. I illustrate this by showing, first, how a theorem of Shelah gives a sufficient condition for consistency in the structural setting, solving what neo-logicists call the ‘bad company’ problem for structural abstraction. Second, I show how, in the structural setting, (...) we can measure the logical strength of abstraction principles using categories of interpretations between theories. (shrink)

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness-features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. But it has played no real role in philosophical semantics. This is surprising; sentences have aboutness-properties if anything does. Aboutness is the first book to examine through (...) a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth-conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection--about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. Stephen Yablo maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results--directed content--is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. Written by one of today's leading philosophers, Aboutness represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

In Return to Reason, Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of ...

Stephen Hetherington's prominent career within epistemology has been a series of distinctive, bold, varied and provocative arguments and ideas. Bringing together Hetherington's unique body of writing for the first time, this collection features previously published as well as new material that link his approaches to key issues including knowledge, justification, fallibility, scepticism and the Gettier Problem. Advancing our understanding of the systemic nature of Hetherington's thinking, Stephen Hetherington on Epistemology presents his distinctive perspective on some of philosophy's central (...) questions about knowledge - an inviting blend of forensic detail and 'big picture' proposals. (shrink)