Events between which we have no epistemic reason to discriminate have equal epistemic probabilities. Bertrand’s chord paradox, however, appears to show this to be false, and thereby poses a general threat to probabilities for continuum sized state spaces. Articulating the nature of such spaces involves some deep mathematics and that is perhaps why the recent literature on Bertrand’s Paradox has been almost entirely from mathematicians and physicists, who have often deployed elegant mathematics of considerable sophistication. At the same time, the (...) philosophy of probability has been left out. In particular, left out entirely are the philosophical ground of the principle of indifference, the nature of the principle itself, the stringent constraint this places on the mathematical representation of the principle needed for its application to continuum sized event spaces, and what these entail for rigour in developing the paradox itself. This book puts the philosophy and its entailments back in and in so doing casts a new light on the paradox, giving original analyses of the paradox, its possible solutions, the source of the paradox, the philosophical errors we make in attempting to solve it and what the paradox proves for the philosophy of probability. The book finishes with the author’s proposed solution—a solution in the spirit of Bertrand’s, indeed—in which an epistemic principle more general than the principle of indifference offers a principled restriction of the domain of the principle of indifference. (shrink)

_Examines the implications of Aristotle’s political thought for contemporary political theory._.

The concept of leisure found in Aristotle’s corpus is both elusive and challenging. It eludes categorization into our current understandings of work and play while at the same time challenging those very conceptions. Here, I attempt to come to grips with Aristotelian leisure by demonstrating its centrality in Aristotle’s thought, explaining leisure as primarily a ‘way of being’ rather than merely the absence of occupation or one of several preconditions to the virtues, and exploring what leisure might mean to liberal (...) democracy. As a ‘way of being’, Aristotelian leisure is more than an absence of work, but is a positive comportment that itself requires virtues, material means, and an education. (shrink)

Carnes Lord is an eminent Aristotelian scholar who has since the mid-1970s intermittently occupied positions within the United States government. This article considers the linkages between his writings on Aristotle and the standpoints he has adopted when in government, with particular reference to the period in the early 1980s when he fulfilled an important role in developing a public diplomacy and information strategy against the Soviet Union. Attention is given to Lord’s interpretation and application, in both his writings and his (...) policy-making, of several key aspects of Aristotle’s political thought, such as rhetoric, regimes, and education. The influence of Leo Strauss on Lord’s thinking is also taken into account. (shrink)

En el pasaje 1147b6-9 de la Ética Nicomáquea, Aristóteles subraya que el akratḗs es capaz de arrepentimiento sin indicar cómo, pues ello debe ser escuchado de los fisiólogos. Este trabajo, no obstante, sostiene que Aristóteles no deja este problema sin respuesta: dado que la educación es el marco en el que el hombre se ejercita, a lo largo de su vida, en el buen vivir, la construcción de la acción trágica en la Poética puede verse como una herramienta pedagógica que (...) permite una profundización en el conflicto entre la razón y las pasiones del akratḗs, y cuyo genuino aporte estriba en su capacidad de explotar sus páthē para él y encauzarlas hacia una reflexión, a través de un ejercicio deductivo, sobre su propia condición. (shrink)

(2004). Is There a History of Educational Philosophy? John White vs the historical evidence. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 35-56.

In the last two books of the Politics, Aristotle articulates an education program for his best regime in contrast to what he takes to be the goal and practices of Sparta’s educational system. Although Aristotle never refers to his program as liberal education, clearly he takes its goal to be the production of free male and female citizens. By contrast, he characterizes the results of the Spartan system as ‘crude’, ‘slavish’, and ‘servile’. I argue that Aristotle’s criticisms of Spartan education (...) elucidate his general understanding of Sparta and provide an interpretative key to understanding Politics 7–8. But although Aristotle contrasts the goals and methods of Spartan education with that of his own best regime, the citizens of his best regime are more like Spartan citizen-soldiers than Athenian participatory-citizens. (shrink)

Recently, scholars have disagreed over how to understand the telos, or goal, of citizen life in Aristotle’s Politics. In Book VII, Aristotle claims that philosophy is a virtue necessary for a life of leisure. But the sketch of the educational programme that we get in Book VIII does not include philosophy; it is focused almost entirely on music. This has led some scholars to argue that a life of leisure spent appreciating music and the other arts is the telos of (...) citizen life. This paper argues that although we do not have a programme for philosophical education in the Politics Book VIII as we have it, the telos of citizen life is philosophical activity in its narrowest sense of theoria. (shrink)

This paper explores the normative implications of Aristotle's concept of politikē and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary debates on legitimate political authority. Section one of the paper provides historical and interpretative background on Aristotle's conception of politikē. The second section examines the central normative role that the common good plays in Aristotle's account of politikē and claims that its capacity to play this role points in the direction of a less exclusionary politics than is suggested by Book 1 of the (...) Politics. Finally, in the third section, with reference to work by Andres Rosler and David Estlund, I consider what Aristotle's account can tell us about contemporary debates on the relationship between political authority, legitimacy and expertise. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation and analysis of the arguments for public education which open Book VIII of Aristotle's Politics , drawing on both the wider Aristotelian corpus and on examination of continuities with Plato's Laws . Part III : Sections VIII-XI examine the two arguments which Aristotle adduces in support of the claim that education should be provided through a public system. The first of these arguments concerns the need to unify society through education for friendship and the sharing (...) of a common end. Several versions of his second argument are considered, and the most promising of them is elaborated in connection with an examination of the links between instruction and legislation in the Laws . This yields what is probably the most compelling argument there is for the claim that public supervision of education is a necessary condition for a just society. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation and analysis of the arguments for public education which open Book VIII of Aristotle's Politics, drawing on both the wider Aristotelian corpus and on examination of continuities with Plato's Laws. Part I: The paper opens with the question of why Aristotle would say that no one will doubt that education should be the concern of the legislator, and Sections I–III identify the nature of his enterprise in the Politics, the audience he wishes to address, the (...) conclusions he seeks to establish in VIII. 1, and what public education would amount to for him. An important conclusion reached is that the first of Aristotle's two conclusions in VIII.1 has been routinely misidentified. (shrink)

Plato’s attitude towards drunkenness (μέθη) is surprisingly positive in the Laws, especially as compared to his negative treatment of intoxication in the Republic. In the Republic, Plato maintains that intoxication causes cowardice and intemperance (3.398e-399e, 3.403e, and 9.571c-573b), while in the Laws, Plato holds that it can produce courage and temperance (1.635b, 1.645d-650a, and 2.665c-672d). This raises the question: Did Plato change his mind, and if he did, why? Ultimately, this paper answers affirmatively and argues that this marks a substantive (...) shift in Plato’s attitude towards anti-rational desires. More precisely, this paper argues that in the Republic, Plato holds that anti-rational desires are always detrimental to health and virtue, while in the Laws, Plato maintains that anti-rational desires can be instrumental to health and virtue. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconcile two apparently opposed ways of thinking about the imagination and its relationship to literature, one which casts it as essentially concerned with fiction-making and the other with culture-making. The literary imagination’s power to create fictions is what gives it its most obvious claim to “autonomy”, as Kant would have it: its freedom to venture out in often wild and spectacular excess of reality. The argument of this paper is that we can locate the literary imagination’s (...) complementary power of cultural articulation in this fictional activity. The suggestion is that we should conceive of the literary imagination as expressing its interests in culture not mimetically but by producing a certain kind of meaning. This meaning is irreducibly narratological, and understanding it helps us to see the role of narrative in bringing into harmony the literary imagination’s interests in both the imaginary and the real. (shrink)