Online research in philosophy

Herbert McCabe, OP (d. 2001), was a significant theological figure in England in the last century. A scholar of Aquinas, he was also influenced by Wittgenstein and Marx, his reading of whom helped him articulate a distinctive Thomistic account of human embodiment that serves as a critique of other dominant approaches in ethics. This article shows McCabe's contribution to moral theology by placing his work in conversation with other important approaches, namely, situation ethics, proportionalism, and the New Natural Law (...) Theory. (shrink)

This early essay of Spencer's was originally published anonymously in The Leader for March 20 1852. It was the second contribution in a regular series entitled "The Haythorne Papers". Spencer's identity was revealed some while after. It is reproduced in Herbert Spencer, Essays Scientific, Political & Speculative, Williams and Norgate (3 vols 1891) pp.1 7]; and here in full. David Clifford, Ph.D., Cambridge University, prepared the html text in 1997; George P. Landow reformatted it in 2008.

Herbert Spencer was the most influential Anglophone sociologist of the nineteenth century, but his contributions are now largely forgotten. It is argued, however, that the clarity of his understanding of the use of biological metaphors in sociology gives his work a power which is worth rediscovering. This proposition is pursued through a discussion of his treatment of the professions and their role in industrial societies. His approach is compared with the "ecological" perspective of sociologists in the Chicago tradition, notably (...) Andrew Abbott. It is suggested that Spencer's work rests on an alternative interpretation of the ecological model; this opens the way to an understanding of the regulative structures of "the system of the profession," which fills a major gap in Abbott's account. (shrink)

I. Growing up zigzag: -- Art is my vocation -- Newport and the Jameses -- The father -- Harvard, 1861 -- Science and the Civil War -- Comparative anatomy and medical school -- The gulls at the mouth of the Amazon -- Tea squalls and a life according to nature -- We must be our own providence -- A dead and drifting life -- Minnie Temple -- William James, M.D. -- Treading water -- The end of youth -- II. The (...) action of consciousness: Hitting bottom -- Turning to physiology -- The Metaphysical Club and Chauncey Wright -- Charles Pierce -- Cambridge and Harvard, 1872 -- Teaching -- To Europe and back -- Emerson, Mill, and Blood -- From physiology to physiological psychology -- Days of rapture and heartbreak -- The trouble with Herbert Spencer -- The action of consciousness -- III. The principles of Psychology: Spaces -- The heart wants its chance -- The feeling of effort -- Hegel in Cambridge -- Death of a mother -- Goodbye, my sacred old father -- The wonderful stream of our consciousness -- Not a simple temperament -- What is an emotion? -- The literary remains of Henry James Sr. -- The death of Herman -- Mrs. Leonora Piper -- My only absolutely satisfying companion (Alice) -- Hypnotism and summers at Chocorua -- Instinct and will -- Santayana at Harvard -- The psychology of belief -- Reunion with Alice: the hidden self --. (shrink)

This article reviews John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect, A Critical Engagement with Dewey's Democracy and Education, edited and spearheaded by David T. Hansen, with contributions by Gert Biesta, Reba N. Page, Larry A. Hickman, Naoko Saito, Gary D. Fenstermacher, Herbert M. Kliebard, Sharon Fieman-Nemser and Elizabeth Minnich. This review will not only praise and evaluate the merits of this book, but will also attempt to frame this new study of Dewey within the challenges that continue to engage education (...) in the realms of democracy, as the latter continues to strive for its own survival. While highlighting salient aspects of Hansen et al.'s rereading of Dewey's great work, this review seeks to frame both Dewey's text and this Deweyan study within the breadth of those other challenges by which education—and in turn philosophy of education—has come to take on issues such as: the nexus between theory and practice, the prevalent domination of the social scientific paradigm in education and the continuous threat of the standardisation and institutionalisation of human learning. It will be argued that, to meet this challenge, philosophy of education must sustain a continuous engagement with Dewey's work. A rereading of Dewey also involves a revaluation of his pragmatic theory of education and its lineage, moving from Emerson's metaphilosophy to Cavell's ethics. As Hansen et al. invariably engage with the latter, this review will question, through Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of pragmatisation, whether Deweyan pragmatism can still challenge the current state of affairs by which education is not only systematised away from learning, but also subsumed into a more institutionalised state—a condition that immediately jars with Dewey's own philosophical instincts and pedagogical labours. (shrink)

This paper argues that econometricians' explicit adoption of identification conditions in structural equation modelling commits them to read the functional form of their equations in a strong, nonmathematical way. This content, which is implicitly attributed to the functional form of structural equations, is part of what makes equation structural. Unfortunately, econometricians are not explicit about the role functional form plays in signifying structural content. In order to remedy this, the second part of this paper presents an interpretation of the functional (...) form based on Herbert Simon's definition of causal order. This begins to set out just what the functional form of structural equations represents. ‡I would like to thank Nancy Cartwright and attendants at UCSD Graduate Seminar 2006 for helpful comments. I also want to thank the AHRC for supporting the research for this paper. †To contact the author, please write to: Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom; e-mail: d.j.fennell@lse.ac.uk. (shrink)

Asset egalitarianism is a new agenda but an old idea. At its root is the notion that every citizen should be able to have an individual property stake, and it has recently been revived in Britain and in the U.S. in a number of proposals aimed at countering the huge and growing inequality in the distribution of assets. Such asset egalitarianism is fed from many streams; it has a long history in civic republican thought, beginning with Thomas Paine and Thomas (...) Jefferson, but has also featured in the distributist theories of G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc; the guild socialism of G.D.H. Cole and the ethical socialism of R.H. Tawney; the market liberalism of the Ordo Liberals and some of the Austrian School, particularly F.A. Hayek; and more recently the market socialism of James Meade, A.B. Atkinson and Julian Le Grand, and the market egalitarianism of Michael Sherraden, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Richard Freeman and Bruce Ackerman. There are also important links to the proponents of a citizens' income as a different approach to the welfare state (White 2002) as well as to the ideas of stakeholding (Dowding et al. 2003). (shrink)

Davidson, Donald (Herbert) (b. 1917, d. 2003; American), Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor, University of California at Berkeley (1986–2003). Previously Instructor then Professor in Philosophy at: Queens College New York (1947–1950), Stanford University, California (1950–1967), Princeton University (1967–1969), Rockefeller University, New York City (1970–1976), University of Chicago (1976–1981), University of California at Berkeley (1981–2003). John Locke Lecturer, University of Oxford (1970).

Abstract Kohlberg's theory of moral development draws a distinction between content and structure of moral thought. An inference based on this distinction is that content and structure are independent. To investigate this inference, we studied fourth?and eighth?grade students in two distinct educational settings in the United States. Sample 1 contained 83 students attending a church?sponsored, evangelical Christian school. Sample 2 contained 60 students attending government?supported public schools. Students were administered Kohlberg's moral dilemmas of life versus law, punishment versus conscience, and (...) authority versus contract. Christian school students made more religious references in resolving dilemmas. More Christian than public school students favoured law, punishment and authority. More importantly, regardless of the school attended, students who used religious terminology to resolve dilemmas were less likely to reason in Kohlberg's Stage 2 than those who did not. Grade differences emerged. Regardless of terminology, most fourth?grade students used some Stage 2 reasoning. However, among eighth?grade students, using religious terminology correlated with less Stage 2 reasoning. The results of our study raise doubts as to the independence of structure and content. (shrink)

Louis Agassiz.--Address at the Emerson Centenary in Concord.--Robert Gould Shaw.--Francis Boott.--Thomas Davidson: a knight-errant of the intellectual life.--Herbert Spencer's autobiography.--Frederick Myers' services to psychology.--Final impressions of a psychical researcher.--On some mental effects of the earthquake.--The energies of men.--The moral equivalent of war.--Remarks at the peace banquet.--The social value of the college-bred.--The university and the individual: The Ph.D. octopus. The true Harvard. Stanford's ideal destiny.--A pluralistic mystic.

To be human is to humanize; a radically empirical aesthetic, by J. J. McDermott.--Dream and nightmare; the future as revolution, by R. C. Pollock.--William James and metaphysical risk, by P. M. Van Buren.--Knowing as a passionate and personal quest; C. S. Peirce, by D. B. Burrell.--The fox alone is death; Whitehead and speculative philosophy, by A. J. Reck.--A man and a city; George Herbert Mead in Chicago, by R. M. Barry.--Royce; analyst of religion as community, by J. Collins.--Human experience (...) and God; Brightman's personalistic theism, by D. Callahan.--William James and the phenomenology of religious experience, by J. M. Edie.--Pragmatism, religion, and experienceable difference, by R. W. Sleeper.--How is religious talk justifiable, by J. W. McClendon, Jr. (shrink)

IN HIS ESSAY IN VOLUME 11 OF "RELIGIOUS STUDIES", CHRYSSIDES MAINTAINS THAT OUR USUAL CONCEPT OF MIRACLE IS INCOHERENT BECAUSE AN EVENT CANNOT BOTH VIOLATE A SCIENTIFIC LAW AND BE ATTRIBUTED TO AN AGENT. AGAINST THIS VIEW IT IS ARGUED THAT WE DISTINGUISH A MIRACLE FROM A MERE CURIOSITY AND ALSO ATTRIBUTE THE MIRACLE TO AN AGENT NOT ON THE BASIS OF A CAUSAL ANALYSIS OF THE EVENT BUT RATHER BY ASKING WHAT PURPOSE THE EVENT MIGHT SERVE.

Boyers, R. and Orrill, R. Preface.--Rieff, P. The impoverishment of Western culture.--Rieff, P. Observations on the therapeutic.--Kolakowski, L. The psychoanalytic theory of culture.--Jones, J. Five versions of psychological man.--Cioran, E. M. Civilized man.--Jameson, F. Herbert Marcuse.--Beldoch, M. The therapeutic as narcissist.--Huizinga, J. Puerilism.--Brown, N. O. Rieff's "fellow teachers."--Nelson, B. and Wrong, D. Perspectives on the therapeutic in the context of contemporary sociology.--Sedgwick, P. Mental illness is illness.--Foucoult, M. History, discourse and discontinuity.

Who am I, and what am I? The question is one asked through the ages, answered in various ways in different disciplines. Identity is a matter of intellectual interest but also of personal and practical interest, attracting attention and stimulating controversy outside the ranks of the specialists. This volume offers a comparison and cross-fertilization of insights and theories from various disciplines in which identity is a key concept. -/- Identity contains essays by six internationally famous contributors, focusing on different facets (...) of identity from the viewpoint of their various disciplines. Two philosophers, Bernard Williams and Derek Parfit, discuss, respectively, numerical identity (when can we say that two phenomena observed at different times are one and the same thing?) and personal identity (how far can the concept of `I' be stretched, and does it always matter whether we can say if that would still be me?). Henry Harris looks at philosophical discussions of identity from the persopective of an experimentalist, and discusses whether philosophical thought-experiments have any basis in scientific reality. -/- The essays that follow offer perspectives from outside philosophy: Michael Ruse considers homosexual identity and to what extent it is reasonable to claim that homosexuality is a social construct. Terence Cave looks at personal identity through the eye of literature and fiction, and portrays idetnity as generated through the narratives that one weaves about oneself or about other people. Finally, Anthony D Smith looks at national identities and how they are formed, analysing how this process is shaped by the interplay of cultural inheritance, political expediency, and myth. (shrink)

This important book brings together in one volume a collection of illuminating encounters with some of the most important philosophers of our age-by one of its most incisive and innovative critics.For more than twenty years, Richard Kearney has been in conversation with leading philosophers, literary theorists, anthropologists, and religious scholars. His gift is eliciting memorably clear statements about their work from thinkers whose writings can often be challenging in their complexity. Here, he brings together twenty-one originally published extraordinary conversations-his 1984 (...) collection Dialogues: The Phenomenological Heritage, his 1992 Visions of Europe: Conversations on the Legacy and Future of Europe, and his 1995 States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers. Featured interviewees include Stanislas Breton, Umberto Eco, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Herbert Marcus, George Steiner, Julia Kristeva, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard. To this classic core, he adds recent interviews, previously unpublished, with Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Jacques Derrida, and George Dum�zil, as well as six colloquies about his own work.Wide-ranging and accessible, these interviews provide a fascinating guide to the ideas, concerns, and personalities of thinkers who have shaped modern intellec-tual life. This book will be an essential point of entry for students, teachers, scholars, and anyone seeking to understand contemporary culture.ContentsPrefacePart One: Recent DebatesJacques Derrida: Terror, Religion, and the New PoliticsJean-Luc Marion: The Hermeneutics of RevelationPaul Ric�ur: (a) On Life Stories (b) On The Crisis of Authority (c) The Power of the Possible (d) Imagination, Testimony, and TrustGeorges Dum�zil: Myth, Ideology, SovereigntyPart Two: From Dialogues: The Phenomenological Heritage, 1984Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics of the InfiniteHerbert Marcuse: The Philosophy of Art and PoliticsPaul Ric�ur: (a) The Creativity of Language (b) Myth as the Bearer of Possible WorldsStanislas Breton: Being, God, and the Poetics of RelationJacques Derrida: Deconstruction and the OtherPart Three: From States of Mind, 1995Julia Kristeva: Strangers to Ourselves: The Hope of the SingularHans Georg Gadamer: Text MattersJean-Fran�ois Lyotard: What Is Just?George Steiner: Culture-The Price You PayPaul Ric�ur: Universality and the Power of DifferenceUmberto Eco: Chaosmos: The Return to the Middle AgesPart Four: Colloquies with Richard KearneyVillanova Colloquy: Against OmnipotenceAthens Colloquy: Between Selves and OthersHalifax Colloquy: Between Being and God Stony Brook Colloquy: Confronting ImaginationBoston Colloquy: Theorizing the GiftDublin Colloquy: Thinking Is DangerousAppendix: Philosophy as Dialogue. (shrink)

In the first three decades of the twentieth century, two groups of radical political theorists-one American and one British-were bound together in a unique ideological relationship. Pluralists, Progressives, and the Problems of the State provides the first comprehensive examination of the intellectual dialogue that constituted that bond. Drawing on extensive original archival research and employing conceptual, institutional and historical analysis, the book examines the efforts of these two initially distinctive political movements to forge a single ideology capable of motivating far-reaching (...) reform in both of their countries. In so doing it challenges traditional narratives emphasizing the exceptional development of American progressivism and British socialism, arguing instead that the intellectual aspirations and political programmes of both were constantly shaped and reshaped by international ideological exchange. Such an analysis transforms our understanding of the complex political demands of these movements and enables the works of their leading protagonists, including G.D. H. Cole, Herbert Croly, Harold Laski, and Walter Lippmann, to emerge as rich and sophisticated contributions to modern political thought. (shrink)

Russell’s elimination of basic particulars, in An lnquiry into Meaning and Truth and Human Knowledge: lts Scope and Limits, by purportedly construing them as “bundles” or “complexes” of universal qualities has been attacked over the years by A. J. Ayer, M. Black, D. M. Armstrong, M. Loux, and others. These criticisms of Russell’s ontological assay of “particularity” have been based on misconstruals of his analysis. The present paper interprets Russell’s analysis, rebuts arguments of his critics, and sets out a different (...) criticism of “bundle” analyses of particulars of the Russellian kind. (shrink)

This essay explicates the role of countersystem analysis as an essential mode of social inquiry. In the process, particular attention is given to the place of negation and the future. One underlying theme is the asymmetry between the negative and the positive features of social activities, the negative being more readily identifiable empirically than the positive. A corollary theme, building on the observations of George Herbert Mead, is: one engages the present through experience; one engages the future through ideas. (...) Furthermore, as Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, and Niklas Luhmann suggest, we in late modernity seem to be facing a future that is more contingent than it was in early modernity. After articulating the foundations of the mode of inquiry we term "countersystem analysis," we employ Karl Mannheim as a point of departure for critically surveying a constellation of scholars-conservatives as well as reformers-who have relied upon some version of countersystem analysis in addressing the future. Such an orientation serves to advance not only theoretical inquiry but empirical investigation as well. (shrink)

The paper addresses the integration of ethics into professional education related to the disciplines responsible for the conception and creation of the artificial (artefactual or technology). The ontological-epistemological paradigm of those disciplines is understood within the frame of the sciences of the artificial as established by Herbert Simon (1969). According to that paradigm, those sciences include disciplines not only related to the production of artefacts (technology), such as engineering, architecture, industrial design, etc, but also disciplines related to devised courses (...) of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones, like medicine, law, education, etc. They are centered on intentional action and at their core is the activity of design, which is their common foundation and attitude, or their common culture. The science of design becomes the broader foundational discipline for any professions engaged in the intentional transformation of the world. The main distinction between design disciplines and scientific ones rests on the object-project dichotomy. Indeed, contrary to Science that sees the world as an object to be observed, Design sees the world as a project and acts upon the world through projects, which are grounded in intentions, ends, and values. Design disciplines are meant to transform the world, or part of it, and are teleological. Being so, they are embodied in an act that is ethical and their ontology-epistemology must be addressed also through practical reason to resituate all professional disciplines according to their involved nature. (shrink)

A Boolean product construction is used to give examples of existentially closed algebras in the universal Horn class ISP(K) generated by a universal class K of finitely subdirectly irreducible algebras such that Γ a (K) has the Fraser-Horn property. If $\lbrack a \neq b\rbrack \cap \lbrack c \neq d\rbrack = \varnothing$ is definable in K and K has a model companion of K-simple algebras, then it is shown that ISP(K) has a model companion. Conversely, a sufficient condition is given for (...) ISP(K) to have no model companion. (shrink)

Bringing together major writings on a wide range of conceptual issues underlying the theory and practice of journalism, this unique anthology covers topics such as what makes a story newsworthy, journalism and professional ethics, the right of free speech, privacy and news sources, politics and the power of the press, objectivity and bias, and the education of journalists. Including papers by key contemporary and classical authors such as Walter Lippmann, Joshua Halberstam, Tom L. Beauchamp, Fred Smoller, Edward J. Epstein, (...) class='Hi'>Herbert Gans, John Stuart Mill, Philip Meyer, and Theodore L. Glasser, this book introduces provocative issues in press ethics and philosophy that color or determine much of what we see and hear in today's media. (shrink)