(1980). Jewish theologies of space in the scientific revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and their predecessors. Annals of Science: Vol. 37, No. 5, pp. 489-548.

The story of the beliefs and practices called 'magic' starts in ancient Iran, Greece, and Rome, before entering its crucial Christian phase in the Middle Ages. Centering on the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino - whose work on magic was the most influential account written in premodern times - this groundbreaking book treats magic as a classical tradition with foundations that were distinctly philosophical. Besides Ficino, the premodern story of magic also features Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Aquinas, Agrippa, Pomponazzi, Porta, Bruno, Campanella, (...) Descartes, Boyle, Leibniz, and Newton, to name only a few of the prominent thinkers discussed in this book. Because pictures play a key role in the story of magic, this book is richly illustrated. (shrink)

For nearly four centuries Peter of Spain's influential Summaries of Logic was the basis for teaching logic; few university texts were read by more people. This new translation presents the Latin and English on facing pages, and comes with an extensive introduction, chapter-by-chapter analysis, notes, and a full bibliography.

The Renaissance has long been recognized as a brilliant moment in the development of Western civilization. Little attention has been devoted, however, to the distinct contribution of philosophy to Renaissance culture. This volume introduces the reader to the philosophy written, read, taught, and debated during the period traditionally credited with the "revival of learning." Beginning with original sources still largely inaccessible to most readers, and drawing on a wide range of secondary studies, the author examines the relation of Renaissance philosophy (...) to humanism and the universities, the impact of rediscovered ancient sources, the recovery of Plato and the Neoplatonists, and the evolving ascendancy of Aristotle. Renaissance Philosophy also explores the original contributions of major figures including Bruni, Valla, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Pomponazzi, Machiavelli, More, Vitoria, Montaigne, Bruno, and Camapanella. (shrink)

00 Students of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and literature will welcome this collection of original essays on self-deception and related phenomena such as ...

Pico della Mirandola, one of the most remarkable thinkers of the Renaissance, has become known as a founder of humanism and a supporter of secular rationality. Brian Copenhaver upends this understanding of Pico, unearthing the magic and mysticism in the most famous work attributed to him, The Oration on the Dignity of Man.

The paper offers a partial, broad-stroke sketch of visual perception, and argues that certain kinds of normal visual misperceptions are systematic and widespread.

The Hermetica are a body of mystical texts written in late antiquity, but believed during the Renaissance (when they became well known) to be much older. Their supposed author, a mythical figure named Hermes Trismegistus, was thought to be a contemporary of Moses. The Hermetic philosophy was regarded as an ancient theology, parallel to the revealed wisdom of the Bible, supporting Biblical revelation and culminating in the Platonic philosophical tradition. This new translation is the only English version based on reliable (...) texts, and Professor Copenhaver's introduction and notes make this accessible and up-to-date edition an indispensable resource to scholars. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker has proposed a new definition of `realization’ and used it to try to explain how mental events can be causes within the framework of a non-reductive physicalism. I argue that it is not actually his notion of realization that is doing the work in his account of mental causation, but rather the assumption that certain physical properties entail mental properties that do not entail them. I also point out how his account relies on certain other controversial assumptions, including (...) analytical filler-functionalism for mental properties, and the assumption that causes must be proportional to their effects. I conclude by pointing out that Shoemaker has provided no explanation of why, on his view, certain physical properties entail mental properties. (shrink)

This article seeks to situate pharmacological cognitive enhancement as part of a broader relationship between cultural understandings of the body-brain and the political economy. It is the body of the worker that forms the intersection of this relationship and through which it comes to be enacted and experienced. In this article, we investigate the imaginaries that both inform and are reproduced by representations of pharmacological cognitive enhancement, drawing on cultural sources such as newspaper articles and films, policy documents, and pharmaceutical (...) marketing material to illustrate our argument. Through analysis of these diverse cultural sources, we argue that the use of pharmaceuticals has come to be seen not only as a way to manage our brains, but through this as a means to manage our productive selves, and thereby to better manage the economy. We develop three analytical themes. First, we consider the cultural representations of the brain in connection with the idea of plasticity – captured most graphically in images of morphing – and the representation of enhancement as a desirable, inevitable, and almost painless process in which the mind-brain realizes its full potential and asserts its will over matter. Following this, we explore the social value accorded to productive employment and the contemporary ethos of working on or managing oneself, particularly in respect of improving one’s productive performance through cognitive enhancement. Developing this, we elaborate a third theme by looking at the moulding of the worker’s productive body-brain in relation to the demands of the economic system. (shrink)

Frederick Dretske′s views on the nature of seeing, the possibility of knowledge, the nature of content or non-natural meaning, the nature of behavior, and the role of content in teh causal explanation of behavior have been profoundly important. Dretske and His Critics contains original discussions of these issues by Joh Heil, Stuart Cohen, David H Sanford, Jaegwon Kim, Fred Adams, Daniel Dennett, Robert Cummins, Terence Horgan and Brian McLaughlin. Each chapter is responded to by Dretske himslef.

The view that phenomenally conscious robots are on the horizon often rests on a certain philosophical view about consciousness, one we call “nomological behaviorism.” The view entails that, as a matter of nomological necessity, if a robot had exactly the same patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior as a phenomenally conscious being, then the robot would be phenomenally conscious; indeed it would have all and only the states of phenomenal consciousness that the phenomenally conscious being in question has. We experimentally (...) investigate whether the folk think that certain (hypothetical) robots made of silicon and steel would have the same conscious states as certain familiar biological beings with the same patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior as the robots. Our findings provide evidence that the folk largely reject the view that silicon-based robots would have the sensations that they, the folk, attribute to the biological beings in question. (shrink)

Psychologists are increasingly interested in embodiment based on the assumption that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are grounded in bodily interaction with the environment. We examine how embodiment is used in social psychology, and we explore the ways in which embodied approaches enrich traditional theories. Although research in this area is burgeoning, much of it has been more descriptive than explanatory. We provide a critical discussion of the trajectory of embodiment research in social psychology. We contend that future researchers should engage (...) in a phenomenon-based approach, highlight the theoretical boundary conditions and mediators involved, explore novel action-relevant outcome measures, and address the role of individual differences broadly defined. Such research will likely provide a more explanatory account of the role of embodiment in general terms as well as how it expands the knowledge base in social psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Myrmidon vs. the AbbessHow Contrasting Mechanisms to Resolve Mimetic Contagion in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and Comedy of Errors Stand as a Warning Against the Rejection of Christianity in Favor of Resurgent Homeric EthosBrian P. Quaranta (bio)This investigation started with a question: Why does Shakespeare hate the Iliad?The question arose after first reading Troilus and Cressida (T&C), Shakespeare's play set during the Trojan War. In his retelling, all (...) claims to glory for Homer's heroes are undermined; a world that is presented by Homer as brutal but honorable is replaced, by Shakespeare, with one that is rife with social and physical disease. As I continued to consider why Shakespeare displayed such hostility toward the Iliad, I found myself recognizing multiple, much more subtle, allusions to the Trojan War in another of his plays set in ancient Greece, The Comedy of Errors (COE). In time, it became apparent that the connection of these two plays with each other, and with the Iliad, was deliberate; through this comparison, Shakespeare rejects the Homeric ethos in favor of a Christian one. A consideration of René Girard's work on Shakespeare helps to bring home the connection between the plays and the concern that they illuminate.In his Theatre of Envy, Girard famously claimed that Shakespeare was consciously familiar with the concepts of mimetic desire and its relationship [End Page 183] to collective violence.1 He drew upon T&C and COE for examples: T&C for its explication of the importance of degree, its employment of collective murder, and the association of mimetic contagion with disease,2 and COE primarily for its emphasis on the special role of twins in mimetic theory as exemplars of identical rivals.3 Girard, I believe, is correct that Shakespeare understood the mechanisms and implications of mimetic theory, and he demonstrates how in these plays its consequences play out in a purely pagan world, and then in another in which there is a saving Christian intervention.The intellectual current of Shakespeare's time has been characterized by two primary themes: Reformation and Renaissance. The use of the word reformation, when taken on its own terms, suggests a benign and necessary process. But for an Englishman in the late 16th century, reformation also would have meant violence, displacement, fracture, war, and the disintegration of a once-unified Christendom. This crumbling of the ancient universal catholic church was accompanied by the Renaissance, a term used to refer to the rebirth of interest in, and progressive obsession with, the culture and literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans.4 My argument is that the two plays discussed here can be read as Shakespeare's response to these developments, demonstrating an anxiety over the threat of resurgent pagan values to a troubled Christianity, with T&C's ending standing as a warning of the danger of a return to the scapegoat mechanism, and COE reminding the reader of the power of the Christian alternative.The essay begins with a brief reminder of the depth of the enthusiasm for the classical era that emerged in Europe in the century leading up to, and including, the life of Shakespeare. I then detail the surprising ways in which Shakespeare thoroughly upends expectations in his retelling of the Trojan War story, discrediting the original tale. Next, the similarities of the Comedy of Errors to Troilus and Cressida, and to the Iliad, are documented. Because this area has received little previous scholarly attention, and because it is crucial to the argument, the inversions of the Trojan War in COE are meticulously detailed. Once it has been established that the two plays both respond to the Iliad, Girard's mimetic theory is brought to bear to explain the very different endings of the plays and to reveal Shakespeare's underlying concern about the Homeric ethos.THE RENAISSANCE AND SHAKESPEARE'S RESPONSE TO THE CLASSICSThe emerging triumph of the Greco-Roman pagan world over the renaissance mind, and its intrusion into the Christian realm, are evident in the development [End Page 184] of visual art in the decades preceding Shakespeare's work. Works by Michelangelo, Raphael, and Giulio Romano, depicting... (shrink)

Role-functionalism for mental events attempts to avoid epiphenomenalism without psychophysical identities. The paper addresses the question of whether it can succeed. It is argued that there is considerable reason to believe it cannot avoid epiphenomenalism, and that if it cannot, then it is untenable. It is pointed out, however, that even if role- functionalism is indeed an untenable theory of mental events, a role-functionalism account of mental dispositions has some intuitive plausibility.

The paper is divided into two parts, each with subsections. In the first part, I shall discuss some matters that have been extensively examined by Kim, namely what the basic types of supervenience are and how they are pairwise logically related; in the course of this discussion, I shall distinguish a weak from a strong notion of global supervenience. In the second part, I shall examine supervenience in a context in which Kim has not: I shall attempt to solve a (...) puzzle that arises when we consider supervenience relations involving vague properties and/or predicates. This is, of course, not a special case of property/predicate supervenience, but the typical one: for virtually all properties/predicates are vague. The two parts of the paper stand independently of each other. Of the discussion in the first part, essentially all that is presupposed in the second is the notion of “world strong supervenience” defined in section 1 of part I. (shrink)

The article presents an analysis and critique of Milton Friedman’s argument that the social responsibility of business is merely to increase its profits. The analysis uncovers a central claim that Friedman implies, but does not explicitly defend, namely that the shareholders of a corporation have no duty to direct that corporation’s management to exercise social responsibility. An argument against this claim is then advanced by way of a convergence strategy, whereby multiple influential moral approaches are shown to align themselves against (...) Friedman. The convergence strategy shows that Friedman’s position lies on the lonely fringes of Western moral thought, and that at least some of Friedman’s professed adherents appear to offer incoherent moral views. The convergence strategy is shown to suggest, but not entail, a stakeholder model of the corporation. The article concludes by considering two objections. (shrink)

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind showcases the leading contributors to the field, debating the major questions in philosophy of mind today. Comprises 20 newly commissioned essays on hotly debated issues in the philosophy of mind Written by a cast of leading experts in their fields, essays take opposing views on 10 central contemporary debates A thorough introduction provides a comprehensive background to the issues explored Organized into three sections which explore the ontology of the mental, nature of the mental (...) content, and the nature of consciousness. (shrink)

I perform an economic and ethical analysis on wealth and income inequality. Economists have performed many statistical studies that reveal a number of, often contradictory, findings in connection with the distribution of wealth and income. Hence, the statistical findings leave us with no better knowledge of the effects that inequality has on economic progress. At the same time, the existing theoretical results have not provided us with a definitive answer concerning the effects of inequality on progress. By gaining knowledge of (...) the nature of inequality, and bringing basic economic principles to bear on the subject, we can come to an understanding of what the causal relationship is between inequality and economic progress. Furthermore, I apply a new theory of ethics – rational egoism – to assess economic inequality. I show that, in the right context, economic inequality is both economically and morally desirable. (shrink)