In a recent article (Inquiry, Vol. 19 [1976]), J. W. Meiland addresses the issue of psychologism in logic, which holds that logic is a branch of psychology and that logical laws (such as the Principle of Non?Contradiction) are contingent upon the nature of the mind. Meiland examines Husserl's critique of psychologism, argues that Husserl is not convincing, and offers two new objections to the psychologistic thesis. In this paper I attempt to rebut those objections. In question are the acceptable criteria (...) for determining the possibility or impossibility of systems of logic significantly different from our own. I argue that a criteriological application of our accepted laws of logic to this question commits a circular fallacy. I then argue that, even if we accept logical consistency as a criterion for possibility, a plausible argument for the possibility of valid alternative logics can be constructed by using the functionalist analogy between minds and automata. Finally, I attempt to rebut the claim that in logic the only changes possible are conceptual changes that would not permit a proposition to be both true and false. (shrink)

The objective of this research study was to determine if psychological distress, anxiety, and academic self-efficacy predict satisfaction with studies in Peruvian university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional and predictive design was used, in which 582 Peruvian university students participated, 243 men and 339 women, between the ages of 16 and 41. Student’s t-statistics were used to analyze the differences in scores of psychological distress, anxiety, academic self-efficacy, and satisfaction with studies based on the sex of the participants, (...) Pearson’s R was used for the analysis of correlations between variables, and multiple linear regressions were used to evaluate the predictive model. In the analyses, the significance level was set at 0.05. The results show that men have higher levels of psychological distress, anxiety, and academic self-efficacy than women do ; high levels of psychological distress correlate with high levels of anxiety and low levels of satisfaction with studies and academic self-efficacy ; high levels of anxiety correlate with low levels of satisfaction with studies and academic self-efficacy ; and high levels of academic self-efficacy correlate with high levels of satisfaction with studies. Academic self-efficacy was also found to predict satisfaction with studies. This concludes that, although there are significant correlations between psychological distress, anxiety, academic self-efficacy, and satisfaction with studies, academic self-efficacy is the variable that most predicts satisfaction with studies in Peruvian university students. (shrink)

It is time for a reconsideration of the dating and interpretation of the Middle English narrative work in rhyming couplets known as The Prophecy of the Six Kings to Follow John . It has hitherto been confidently given a rough date of composition and a particular political role. Its only editor, Joseph Hall, says that “it was most probably written with a view to discredit Henry the Fourth.” He continues: “the poem says he is the Mole cursed from God's mouth, (...) in whose days terrible evils must come on England. It is a good example of the political use made of the popular belief in the ‘prophecies of Merlin.’” The notes to his text identify figures in the prophecy as representing, for example, Thomas of Woodstock, Henry Percy , Owen Glendower, and “perhaps Macmurrugh.” The only historian of the whole genre of political prophecy in medieval England, Rupert Taylor, says that the work “is very important because of its historical connections, for it is the prophecy that was used against Henry the Fourth by the Percy-Glendower faction, the ‘skimble-skamble stuff’ of Shakspere.”. (shrink)

For this year’s Virtual Issue, our guest editor, Omar W. Nasim, has collected together papers from the Aristotelian Society archives that represent a substantial part of a dispute that contributed to the emergence of analytic philosophy in Britain at the turn of the 20th Century. The dispute was primarily concerned with the problem of the external world – the nature of the sensible objects of perception, and how they relate to physical things and the perceiving subject. The participants in this (...) controversy contested the nature of the appearance-reality distinction, whether it is it is possible for a thing to instantiate contrary sensible qualities at the same place and time, the distinction between presentation and representation, the nature of knowledge by acquaintance, and the nature of sense-data – e.g., whether sense-data are psychical or physical, whether they persist unperceived, and how they give rise to knowledge of the external world. G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell were significant contributors to these debates, but so too were several philosophers whose names are now less well known: G. F. Stout, G. Dawes Hicks, Abraham Wolf, T. Percy Nunn, and S. Alexander. This Virtual Issue collects together, for the first time, the important contributions made to these debates by all of these figures. In doing so it provides a fascinating insight into the ways in which Russell’s earliest attempts to construct the external world from sense-data were influenced by the ideas and arguments of his immediate contemporaries. Omar W. Nasim’s specially commissioned introduction to the Virtual Issue sets out the historical context of these disputes about the external world, and details the prominent role played by the Aristotelian Society in making them possible. (shrink)

In "The Problem with Percy: Epistemology, Understanding and Critical Thinking," Sharon Bailin argues that critical thinking skills do not generalize because students do not understand the larger epistemological picture in which to situate the importance of arguments and reasons. More plausible explanations are: (I) instructors across the disciplines do not give assignments requiring critical thinking (CT) skills, (2) single courses in CT have little effect, (3) pragmatic arguments showing the effectiveness of CT are more effective than epistemological arguments with (...) the average student. So to achieve the generalization of the logical skills and intellectual dispositions inherent in CT courses, CT thinking cannot be departmentalized. (shrink)

Montgomery makes a retrospective journey with Walker Percy, as Percy comes to an accommodation with the modern world in company with other companionable journeymen. Percy himself enjoyed a large company of pilgrims who prove amenable to his vision of the human condition - in Percy's words, man is "in a predicament and on the move in a real world of real things, a world which is a sacrament and a mystery," words celebratively spoken of as "the (...) holiness of the ordinary," as opposed to what he called the "losangelization" of the popular spirit, a spirit which increasingly takes refuge in enclaves of "selves" in the relapse into tribalism celebrated as our "New Age." Percy's long journey from and then back to the South, his acceptance of what his Uncle Will exhibited as "Southern stoicism," had a reorientation that proved to be a "fortunate fall" very personal to him, occurring in a world far removed from the Southern Delta culture. He begins to read and read: Gabriel Marcel, Kierkegaard, St. Thomas Aquinas, Camus and Sartre and Eliot and others. And he begins distinguishing between valid science and scientism as knowing of reality, recognized as limited by the finiteness of the intellectual soul. Percy left the field of medicine to doctor to man in a different way. When Percy, recuperating with TB, understands the "holiness of the ordinary," he discovers that this world "is a sacrament," and so requires of him through his gifts a deportment to existence itself in celebration of that sacredness. Thus Percy speaks a manner, not presuming himself the agent of grace through presumption of autonomous intellect, amused and as well regretful that so many about him appear lost in the cosmos. He puts that point to a sympathetic audience, down in Louisiana not far from his comforting "place" in Covington: "Catholic or Protestant, the believing writer is usually unhappy. He feels like Lancelot in search of the Holy Grail who finds himself at the end of his quest at a Tupperware party." But not really unhappy - rather sympathetically regretful that his usual hosts at that party (his possible audience) have lost recognition of the holiness of things that requires the pilgrim intellectual soul a deportment to things in "a sacrament" of consent, before the "mystery" larger than the pretenses of scientism. The world, that is, is not a desert to be plundered to self-comfort as justified by a positivistic apotheosis of the "Self" as a sovereign autonomy desert-bound. The "making" of sacramental piety, whether as novelist or Delta planter, requires the stewardship of love to things in themselves. (shrink)

This study reexamines the existentialist nature of Walker Percy's fiction, arguing that his debt to Kierkegaard is more substantial than previously acknowledged. Others have noted his employ of Kierkegaardian stages, terminology, and artistic indirection, but they haven't revealed the extent to which his sources lie in Kierkegaard and the action of his novels occurs within the context of a "Kierkegaardian narrative." Prior critics have overstated both the role his protagonist's "searches" and the assistance of others play in their movement (...) to faith. This study rejects the Marcelian reading of Percy's endings and demonstrates that his characters follow a Kierkegaardian path toward faith; they do not move toward faith via the assistance of an other, but subjectively, by despairing of their efforts to find ontological answers in immanent sources and choosing, in the midst of that despair, a paradoxical faith. ;Chapter one pairs Kierkegaardian philosophy with views espoused by Percy in his nonfiction and interviews in order to establish their intellectual affinities: each uses art as a means of responding to the objectifying forces of rationalism and posits a movement toward self which necessitates the embrace of faith after despairing of an aesthetic existence. The second and third chapters provide extended Kierkegaardian readings of The Moviegoer and The Last Gentleman, tracing their sources to his philosophy and demonstrating how each can be read within a Kierkegaardian framework and as a tacit either/or. Percy's protagonists either "come to themselves" by despairing of their own searches and realizing a subjective faith , or they remain in Kierkegaard's aesthetic stage, separated from faith, and thus lost to themselves . Both readings of Percy's novels reveal the ways in which he continually adopts Kierkegaardian categories, images, and details as he works within the larger framework of the paradoxical movement toward faith. The study concludes by emphasizing the Christian character of the narratives of Kierkegaard and Percy and arguing that a strict Kierkegaardian reading of Percy's fiction is more illuminating than the use of multiple existentialist perspectives. (shrink)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Symbol and existence will prove fascinating to Walker Percy scholars and fans who wish to decipher Percy's authentic philosophical stance. Percy, an existentialist Catholic at his core, was also a scientist seeking an objective paradigm to portray his views. Symbol and existence demonstrates that Percy was quite methodical and logical in his thought and provides an entirely new perspective on his scholarship. Much of this book is unique and has never been published before; however, some sections (...) were revised and published as isolated journal articles or book chapters, never presented as the unified whole that Percy intended. The orderly unity of Percy's work has not previously been accessible to scholars and fans. Symbol and existences systematic presentation and its new material offer fresh insight and a more accurate view of Percy's ideas. His early philosophical writings were often revised and significantly modified by outside editorial intent to conform to prevailing intellectual currents of the time. Readers of some published articles with corresponding passages in Symbol and Existence will be surprised to discover major changes in meaning from Percy's initial writing due to editorial intrusion and loss of context upon their removal from Symbol and existence. As the only known systematic representation of Percy's general working theory, Symbol and existence gives an important framework for his diverse intellectual background--philosophy and psychology, medicine and anthropology, semiotic and zoology--creating a coherent view of Percy's "radical anthropology. (shrink)