Various facets of the MBI are discussed, and how it can be used in connection with experimental philosophy, experimental psychology and neuroscience. Brief historical references are given. The large implications of the MBI with regards to McTaggart's paradox and the resolution of the difficulties with quantum mechanics is mentioned. Later sections deal with the mereological fallacy, multiple universes, teletransportation, mind cloning and mind splitting. Dreamwork is chosen as a prime example of the use of the MBI and recent work by (...) Tononi and Baars is referred to. (shrink)
McTaggart's ideas on the unreality of time as expressed in "The Nature of Existence" have retained great interest for many years for scholars, academics and other philosophers. In this essay, there is a brief discussion which mentions some of the high points of this philosophical interest, and goes on to apply his ideas to modern physics and neuroscience. It does not discuss McTaggart's C and D series, but does emphasise how the use of derived versions of both his A and (...) B series can be of great virtue in discussing both the abstract physics of time, and the present and future importance of McTaggart's ideas to the subject of time. Indeed an experiment using human volunteers and dynamic systems modelling which was carried out is described, which illustrates this fact. The Many Bubble Interpretation, which also derives from McTaggart's ideas, is discussed and various examples of its use and effectiveness are referred to. The Schrodinger Cat paradox is essentially resolved in principle, the quantum Zeno effect interpretable, Kwiat's recent result referred to, and the newly discovered reverse Stickgold effect described. (shrink)
A school of idealism: meditatio laici, by J. Cappon.--Beati possidentes, by R. M. Wenley.--Moral validity: a study in Platonism, by R. C. Lodge.--Plato and the poet's eidōla, by A. S. Ferguson.--Some reflections on Aristotle's theory of tragedy, by G. S. Brett.--The function of the phantasm in St. Thomas Aquinas, by H. Carr.--The development of the psychology of Maine de Biran, by N. J. Symons.--A plea for eclecticism, by H. W. Wright.--Some present-day tendencies in philosophy, by J. M. MacEachran.--Evolution and personality, (...) J. G. Hume.--Emergent realism, by J. Muirhead.--Bibliography of publications by Dr. John Watson (p. 343-346). (shrink)
John C. Fletcher, a pioneer in the field of bioethics and friend and mentor to many generations of bioethicists, died tragically on May 27th at the age of 72. The son of an Episcopal priest from Bryan, TX, Fletcher graduated in 1953 with a degree in English Literature from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. After completing a Masters in Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary and a stint as a Fulbright scholar at the University of (...) Heidelberg in 1956, he was ordained in the Episcopal Church and received a doctorate in Christian ethics from the Union Theological Seminary in New York. After ordination, Fletcher worked in various Episcopal churches and founded the Interfaith Metropolitan Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. However, despite his religious faith, he was also a skeptic, and renounced his ordination in the mid-1990s due to his need for ?intellectual honesty.? Fletcher began his bioethics contributions in the early 1970's, when he became a founding Fellow of the Hastings Center and eventually the first Chief of the Bioethics Program at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he was the Founding Director of the Center for Bioethics and a professor of biomedical ethics at the medical school, and became the Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics until his retirement in 1999. Fletcher was a prominent authority and voice in the national and international bioethical dialogue through his talks, his testimonies before scientific and congressional panels, his many articles, and his bioethical and religiously-orientated books, including: An Introduction to Clinical Ethics (1997), Coping with Genetic Disorders: a Guide for Clergy and Parents (1982), Ethics and Human Genetics: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (1989), which he wrote with sociologist Dorothy C. Wertz. Dr. Fletcher received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities in 2000. With the passing of Dr. John C. Fletcher, bioethics has lost one of its great voices, a dedicated teacher and mentor, and a friend and colleague to scholars in bioethics and a host of other fields. Below is a touching tribute from one of his former students. (shrink)
“One should always cherish some ambition to do something in the world. They alone rise who strive.” is the great wording of Dr.Ambedkar. There are two fundamental types of human nature. Creative and possessive. Creative humans use human intellect for creative endeavors which enriches human thought; knowledge and wealth thereby contribute to the development of human heritage for the posterity. Possessive people, on the other hand do not believe in the use of human intellect for creative purpose. Gautam Buddha, Jesus (...) Christ, Guru Nanak, Kabeer, Ravidas, Tukarama, Krantiba Jotirao Phoolay, Periyar and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar they all belong to the great class of Ceative humans called as Humanists in Indian context. Here we studies Ambedkar’s views related to humanism and Buddhism. (shrink)
The present education does riot yield required results mainly because it is divorced from the real social content and social goals. We as the citizens of the republic are constitutionally committed to democracy, social justice, equality of opportunity, secularism and above all to a welfare state. Educational policy and educational programmes should not merely equip an individual to adjust with society to its customs and conventions, but it should enable him to bring desirable changes in the society. Every educational institute (...) from secondary school to University College should be developed to become an agency of change, it is the dream of Dr. B.R .Ambedkar. (shrink)
In this paper, I compare John Locke’s “memory theory” of personal identity and Memento (directed by Christopher Nolan). I argue that the plot of Memento is ambiguous, in that the main character (Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce) seems to have two histories. As such, Memento is but a series of puzzle cases that intend to illustrate that, although our memories may not be chronologically related to one another, and may even be fused with the memories of other persons, (...) those memories still constitute personal identity. Just as Derek Parfit argues, perhaps there is no personal identity as such, since only survival (in some degree) matters to us. In Memento, Leonard Shelby is not identity to his former self, but survives to some extent. (shrink)
John Campbell argues that visual attention to objects is the means by which we can refer to objects, and that this is so because conscious visual attention enables us to retrieve information about a location. It is argued here that while Campbell is right to think that we visually attend to objects, he does not give us sufficient ground for thinking that consciousness is involved, and is wrong to assign an intermediary role to location. Campbell’s view on sortals is (...) also queried, as is his espousal of the so-called Referential View of Experience. (shrink)
Vol. 13 of John Dewey, The Later Works, brings this edition of Dewey's Collected Works to the fateful years 1938-1939. It contains three main texts Experience and Education, Freedom and Culture, and Theory of Valuation, plus essays and miscellany. The editors, Jo Ann Boydston and Barabara Levine, provide twenty-five pages of Appendices, and Steven M. Cahn has written and excellent Introduction. The hardback version includes a scholarly apparatus featured in each of the volumes of the series.
n 1909, the 50th anniversary of both the publication of Origin of the Species and his own birth, John Dewey published "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy." This optimistic essay saw Darwin's advance not only as one of empirical or theoretical biology, but a logical and conceptual revolution that would shake every corner of philosophy. Dewey tells us less about the influence that Darwin exerted over philosophy over the past 50 years and instead prophesied the influence it would (or (...) should) take in the future. I will discuss this landmark paper and the key lessons Dewey draws from Darwinism for philosophy, and give a preliminary assessment of how well we've done so far. (Dewey would be largely disappointed.). (shrink)
In recent years, pragmatism in general and John Dewey in particular have been of increasing interest to philosophers of science. Dewey's work provides an interesting alternative package of views to those which derive from the logical empiricists and their critics, on problems of both traditional and more recent vintage. Dewey's work ought to be of special interest to recent philosophers of science committed to the program of analyzing ``science in practice.'' The core of Dewey's philosophy of science is his (...) theory of inquiry---what he called ``logic.'' There is a major lacuna in the literature on this point, however: no contemporary philosophers of science have engaged with Dewey's logical theory, and scholars of Dewey's logic have rarely made connections with philosophy of science. This paper aims to fill this gap, to correct some significant errors in the interpretation of key ideas in Dewey's logical theory, and to show how Dewey's logic provides resources for a philosophy of science. (shrink)
Some argue that humans should enhance their moral capacities by adopting institutions that facilitate morally good motives and behaviour. I have defended a parallel claim: that we could permissibly use biomedical technologies to enhance our moral capacities, for example by attenuating certain counter-moral emotions. John Harris has recently responded to my argument by raising three concerns about the direct modulation of emotions as a means to moral enhancement. He argues (1) that such means will be relatively ineffective in bringing (...) about moral improvements, (2) that direct modulation of emotions would invariably come at an unacceptable cost to our freedom, and (3) that we might end up modulating emotions in ways that actually lead to moral decline. In this article I outline some counter-intuitive potential implications of Harris' claims. I then respond individually to his three concerns, arguing that they license only the very weak conclusion that moral enhancement via direct emotion modulation is sometimes impermissible. However I acknowledge that his third concern might, with further argument, be developed into a more troubling objection to such enhancements. (shrink)
John Bickle's new book on philosophy and neuroscience is aptly subtitled 'a ruthlessly reductive account'. His 'new wave metascience' is a massive attack on the relative autonomy that psychology enjoyed until recently, and goes even beyond his previous (Bickle, J. (1998). Psychoneural reduction: The new wave. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) new wave reductionsism. Reduction of functional psychology to (cognitive) neuroscience is no longer ruthless enough; we should now look rather to cellular or molecular neuroscience at the lowest possible level (...) for explanations of memory, consciousness and attention. Bickle presents a fascinating set of experimental cases of such molecule-to-mind explanations. This book qualifies as a showcase of naturalism in the philosophy of mind. Naturally, many of the traditional conceptual approaches in the philosophy of mind are given short shrift, but - in Bickle's metascientific scheme - the role of philosophy of science also seems reduced to explicating laboratory findings. The present reviewers think that this reductionism suffers from overstretching; in particular, the idea of 'explanation in a single bound' from molecule to mind is a bit too ruthless. Still, Bickle's arguments are worth serious attention. (shrink)
This is a review of Peter Anstey's John Locke and Natural Philosophy, which is a masterful and well-argued study of Locke's philosophy of science that shall become both the standard and starting place, for scholars and students alike, for decades to come. Anstey's meticulous and thorough research, combined with his comprehensive knowledge of the history of natural philosophy, make this work a must-read for all who are interested in Locke, early modern philosophy, the history of the philosophy of science, (...) or early modern philosophy of science. His characteristically rigorous analysis and argumentation coupled with his easy and clear prose make this a highly readable and accessible work of scholarship. (shrink)
Newly re-printed, Sydney Hook’s classic (1939) work on Dewey appears with an Introduction by Richard Rorty. Hook may help us see how Dewey fit into his own time. That story is important. The new printing may also help us see how Dewey fits into our time. Rorty lauds more recent treatments of Dewey’s work, especially Robert Westbrook’s intellectual biography John Dewey and American Democracy (1991), and Steven Rockefeller’s John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (1991) gets honorable mention. (...) Specific comments focus on Alan Ryan’s John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (1995). “It may be that Dewey and Hook witnessed, as Alan Ryan suggests, ... ‘the high tide of American liberalism,’ but if this is so, then America has lost its soul.”1 Even future-focused pragmatists need to look back to Dewey and Hook. They were “Americans” who, in the final words of the Hook volume, “still had hope for what America may yet be.”. (shrink)
"When John Dewey died in 1952, he was memorialized as America's most famous philosopher, revered by liberal educators and deplored by conservatives, but universally acknowledged as his country's intellectual voice. Many things conspired to give Dewey an extraordinary intellectual eminence: He was immensely long-lived and immensely prolific; he died in his ninety-third year, and his intellectual productivity hardly slackened until his eighties." "Professor Alan Ryan offers new insights into Dewey's many achievements, his character, and the era in which his (...) scholarship had a remarkable impact. He investigates the question of what an American audience wanted from a public philosopher - from an intellectual figure whose credentials came from his academic standing as a philosopher, but whose audience was much wider than an academic one." "Ryan argues that Dewey's "religious" outlook illuminates his politics much more vividly than it does the politics of religion as ordinarily conceived. He examines how Dewey fit into the American radical tradition, how he was and was not like his transatlantic contemporaries, why he could for so long practice a form of philosophical inquiry that became unfashionable in England after 1914 at the latest."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)
The political and philosophical problems John Rawls set out to solve arise out of the identity and conflicts of interests between citizens. There is identity of interests because social cooperation makes possible for everyone a life that is much better than one outside of society. There is a conflict of interests because people all prefer a larger to a smaller share of the benefits of social cooperation, and people have ideological differences. The problem a theory of justice has to (...) solve is how, in the face of these conflicts, effective social cooperation can come about on terms that are justifiable to all. (shrink)
The project method became a famous teaching method when William Heard Kilpatrick published his article ‘Project Method’ in 1918. The key idea in Kilpatrick's project method is to try to explain how pupils learn things when they work in projects toward different common objects. The same idea of pupils learning by work or action in an environment with objects also belongs to John Dewey's problem-solving method. Are Kilpatrick's project method and Dewey's problem-solving method the same thing? The aim of (...) this article is to analyze and prove that Kilpatrick's project method differs radically from Dewey's problem-solving method. (shrink)
John R. Searle is one of the world's leading philosophers. During his long and outstanding career, he has made groundbreaking and lasting contributions to the philosophy of language, to the philosophy of mind, as well as to the nature, structure, and functioning of social reality. This volume documents the 13th Münster Lectures on Philosophy with John R. Searle. It includes not only 11 critical papers on Searle's philosophy and Searle's replies to the papers, but also an original article (...) by John R. Searle on his overall philosophical enterprise entitled "The Basic Reality and the Human Reality". -/- "I think Münster is probably unique among contemporary universities in its ability to produce such a high level of philosophical production from their philosophy students." - John R. Searle. (shrink)
This is a classic volume in the "library of Living Philosophers" and includes a collection of essays on Dewey's work by his contemporaries at the time of the volume's publication. It also includes a biographical essay on Dewey and his replies to the assembled essays.
James Campbell's Understanding John Dewey represents the latest of his series of recent books, focused on the classical pragmatist tradition. In The Community Reconstructs. Campbell capably explored the meaning and relevance of pragmatic social thought, urging that the social pragmatists combined 'the inquiring and critical spirit of Peirce' with 'issues of general and direct human concern that interested James. Dewey is 'the most important figure of this movement' and the "primary figure' for the earlier book. Campbell now engages Dewey (...) more fully. (shrink)
John Searle zählt zweifellos zu den weltweit wichtigsten und einflussreichsten Denkern der Gegenwart. Seine grundlegenden und nachhaltigen Beiträge zur Sprachphilosophie, zur Philosophie des Geistes, zur Handlungstheorie und zur Sozialphilosophie werden weit über die Grenzen des Fachs Philosophie hinaus wahrgenommen und gehören vielfach zum Standardrepertoire wissenschaftlicher Forschung und Lehre. -/- Michael Kober und Jan G. Michel bieten in diesem Buch eine übersichtliche sowie gut verständliche, aber auch kritische Einführung in das Gesamtwerk John Searles: Neben einer sehr persönlichen biographischen Notiz (...) und einem kurzen Überblick über seine Leitfragen und Positionen wird jeder der genannten Arbeitsbereiche John Searles in seinen wesentlichen Grundzügen historisch wie systematisch eingeordnet, dargestellt und diskutiert. Indem Kober und Michel dabei nicht chronologisch, sondern inhaltlich systematisch vorgehen, treten außerdem die Zusammenhänge innerhalb des Gesamtwerks John Searles deutlich hervor, so dass dieses schließlich im Lichte der heutigen Philosophie bewertet werden kann. (shrink)
In this paper I argue that the requirement for the qualitative is theory-dependent, determined by the fundamental assumptions built into the ontology. John Heil’s qualitative, in its role as individuator of objects and powers, is required only by a theory that posits a world of distinct objects or powers. Does Heil’s ‘deep’ view of the world, such that there is only one powerful object (e.g. a field containing modes or properties which we perceive as manifest everyday objects) require the (...) qualitative as individuator of objects and powers? The answer depends on whether it is possible to account for the manifest objects and the ostensible spatial primacy of our perceived world without recourse to the qualitative. In this paper I outline just such an account with the intention of extending Heil’s efforts to incorporate fundamental power in the world while providing a coherent explanation for our strong intuition of spatial, as against relational, priority. (shrink)
In The Grace and the Severity of the Ideal, Victor Kestenbaum swims against the current of Dewey scholarship. He declares for and gives close articulation to the importance of transcendence in the philosophy of John Dewey. The guiding thread of the book is "the proposal that Dewey never outgrew his idealistic period. His philosophical achievement is not to be located in his naturalism but in the frontiers along which the natural and the transcendental touch" (137). Kestenbaum does not argue (...) that Dewey defends a supernatural sense of transcendence; instead, he documents the modes of transcendence that, for Dewey, reveal themselves within the flow of experience. This is a learned and carefully developed book, one that will provoke pragmatists to think carefully about how growth, self-revision, and... (shrink)
James K.A. Smith argues that the ontology of participation associated with Radical Orthodoxy is incompatible with a Christian affirmation of the intrinsic being and goodness of creatures. In response, he proposes a Leibnizian view in which things are endowed with the innate dynamism of ‘force’. Creatures have a certain depth of being, and are intrinsically good, just because they each have an inner virtuality that they bring into expression. Such force is said to be a metaphysical component of the agent. (...) In this paper it is asked whether John Milbank's ontology of participation can be defended by distinguishing between two senses of being a subject. Perhaps it is possible for a creature to bring into expression what is an infused ‘alien’ gift rather than a metaphysical component – to be expressive subject, but not ontic subject, for divine power. However, while this distinction promises to make sense of the reception of an indwelling ‘other’ in grace, knowledge and love, neither proper substance nor proper existence can be received in this way. A creature must be the ontic subject for its being, after all. Still, divine being might proceed from God as radical indwelling gift, as non-ontic ground for ontic being. (shrink)
Reviews a collection of John Deely's articles. Deely is interested in the relationship between semiotics on the one hand, and the realism of Thomas Aquinas and John Poinsot on the other.
During the 2007–2008 global food crisis, the prices of primary foods, in particular, peaked. Subsequently, governments concerned about food security and investors keen to capitalize on profit-maximizing opportunities undertook large-scale land acquisitions (LASLA) in, predominantly, least developed countries (LDCs). Economically speaking, this market reaction is highly welcome, as it should (1) improve food security and lower prices through more efficient food production while (2) host countries benefit from development opportunities. However, our assessment of the debate on the issues indicates critical (...) voices in both the media and academic discourse. This article aims to provide a philosophical law and economics analysis. We draw on John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, focusing on Rawls’s background institutions for distributive justice (§43) to evaluate LASLA form an ethical angle. Approaching LASLA into Sub Saharan LDCs as a socio-economic reform redistributing land from the local population of LDCs to investors, we acknowledge that they bear a highly desirable potential. Often, though, they cannot be regarded as ethically correct in practice as the insignificant improvements for local populations and sometimes even human rights violations contradict Rawls’s principles of justice. Then investigating whether and how international law can help overcome the shortcomings, we conclude that even though respective mechanisms exist in the current state of international law, it is hardly possible that it will produce more just outcomes in the near future. (shrink)
This review of John Russon's Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life focuses on Russon's position that experience is open (having a developmental, situated and dynamic, rather than fixed, structure) and figured (having a structure inseparable from forms of bodily function), and that mind is something learned in the process of working out experience as figured and open. These themes are drawn together in relation to recent scientific discussions (e.g., of bodily dynamics, mirror neurons, robotic systems (...) and thermodynamics), to show how Russon's view challenges deep philosophical assumptions in prevailing accounts of mind, body and experience. (shrink)
Historical research on John Dalton has been dominated by an attempt to reconstruct the origins of his so-called "chemical atomic theory". I show that Dalton's theory is difficult to define in any concise manner, and that there has been no consensus as to its unique content among his contemporaries, later chemists, and modern historians. I propose an approach which, instead of attempting to work backward from Dalton's theory, works forward, by identifying the research questions that Dalton posed to himself (...) and attempting to understand how his hypotheses served as answers to these questions. I describe Dalton's scientific work as an evolving set of puzzles about natural phenomena. I show how an early interest in meteorology led Dalton to see the constitution of the atmosphere as a puzzle. In working on this great puzzle, he gradually turned his interest to specifically chemical questions. In the end, the web of puzzles that he worked on required him to create his own novel philosophy of chemistry for which he is known today. (shrink)
Commonsense says we are isolated. After all, our bodies are physically separate. But Seneca’s colamus humanitatem, and John Donne’s observation that “no man is an island” suggests we are neither entirely isolated nor separate. A recent discovery in neuroscience—that of mirror neurons—argues that the brain and the mind is neither built nor functions remote from what happens in other individuals. What are mirror neurons? They are brain cells that process both what happens to or is done by an individual, (...) and, as it were, its perceived “refl ection,” when that same thing happens or is done by another individual. Thus, mirror neurons are both activated when an individual does a particular action, and when that individual perceives that same action done by another. The discovery of mirror neurons suggests we need to radically revise our notions of human nature since they offer a means by which we may not be so separated as we think. Humans unlike other apes are adapted to mirror interact nonverbally when together. Notably, our faces have been evolved to display agile and nimble movements. While this is usually explained as enabling nonverbal communication, a better description would be nonverbal commune based upon mirror neurons. I argue we cherish humanity, colamus humanitatem, because mirror neurons and our adapted mirror interpersonal interface blur the physical boundaries that separate us. (shrink)
I'm an experimental physicist. The basic physics research I do is funded primarily by the U. S. Government. As I write this, it is less than two weeks before the 1993 Presidential Inauguration. The new Clinton Administration is still of an unknown quantity. A new Presidential Science Advisor with excellent qualifications, Dr. John H. Gibbons, has just been appointed, but little is know about the science policies of the new administration.
In 1911, Drs John Freeman and Leonard Noon published an account of a novel treatment for hay fever. Their method of desensitisation consisted of injecting increasing doses of an extract of pollen subcutaneously until the hypersensitivity reaction was diminished or abolished. Over subsequent decades, desensitisation established itself as the cornerstone of clinical allergy in both England and the United States, at least until the advent of novel pharmaceutical agents in the 1950s and 1960s. Although British allergists such as Noon (...) and Freeman were aware of conceptual developments within European immunology and pathology (such as the identification of anaphylaxis by Richet and Portier or von Pirquet's coining of the term allergy), their approach to hay fever was driven by more immediate pragmatic, and indeed financial, considerations. Freeman's immersion in the problems of hay fever and asthma and his pioneering use of allergen desensitisation or immunotherapy were shaped by his adherence to the convictions and bacteriological practices of his principal at St Mary's Hospital, Almroth Wright, and by the drive to produce commercial vaccines which would help to subsidise the experimental and therapeutic work at St Mary's. The aim of this paper is to explore early twentieth-century approaches to hay fever and other allergic diseases by tracing the intellectual and institutional origins of clinical allergy in Britain. (shrink)
Rawls in his later philosophy claims that it is sufficient to accept political conception as true or right, depending on what one's worldview allows, on the basis of whatever reasons one can muster, given one's worldview (doctrine). What political liberalism is interested in is a practical agreement on the political conception and not in our reasons for accepting it. There are deep issues (regarding deep values, purpose of life, metaphysics etc.) which cannot be resolved through invoking common reasons (this is (...) the fact of free reason itself), and trying to resolve them would involve us in interminable debates and would hamper the practical task of agreement on the political conception. Given the absolute necessity of a political society which is stable and enduring, it is thus wise to avoid these issues in founding a political society and choosing its basic principles - this is the pragmatic part of Rawls's position. In this paper I argue that this strategy leads Rawls into a paradox: (i) although the intention is to stay independent of comprehensive doctrines, the political conception is in fact totally (and precariously) dependent on comprehensive doctrines (not just on one doctrine but on each and every major doctrine in society). It is dependent on them: for its conceptualisation as an independent idea, for its justification, for the check of its reasonability in relation to the external world, for the formation of identities and value inculcation and hence for the formation of its model citizen; (ii) the very search for independence makes the political conception more dependent on comprehensive doctrines, and by extension makes it potentially more prone to intervention in and tampering with comprehensive doctrines (it is enough to show that it is a strong conceptual possibility to cast doubt on the whole strategy). Thus, for example, the political conception relies on the hope that “firmly held convictions gradually change” and that it would “in fact . . . have the capacity to shape those doctrines toward itself”. The purpose of the Rawlsian conjecture is to give these “hopes” a concrete, practical form by giving advice to proponents of the comprehensive doctrine on how they can do all this and “try to show them that, despite what they might think, they can still endorse a reasonable political conception”. I further argue that this paradox can be overcome by making the core of political liberalism more flexible. (shrink)
John Searle begins his (1990) ``Consciousness, Explanatory Inversion and Cognitive Science'' with
``Ten years ago in this journal I published an article (Searle, 1980a and 1980b) criticising what I call Strong AI, the view that for a system to have mental states it is sufficient for the system to implement the right sort of program with right inputs and outputs. Strong AI is rather easy to refute and the basic argument can be summarized in one sentence: {it a (...) system, me for example, could implement a program for understanding Chinese, for example, without understanding any Chinese at all.} This idea, when developed, became known as the Chinese Room Argument.''
The Chinese Room Argument can be refuted in one sentence. (shrink)
It was in the Oxford of Austin, Ryle and Strawson that John Searle was shaped as a philosopher. It was in Oxford, not least through Austin’s influence and example, that the seeds of the book Speech Acts, Searle’s inaugural opus magnum , were planted. And it was in Oxford that Searle acquired many of the characteristic traits that have marked his thinking ever since. These are traits shared by many analytic philosophers of his generation: the idea of the centrality (...) of language to philosophy; the adoption of a philosophical method centred on (in Searle’s case a mainly informal type of) logical analysis; the respect for common sense and for the results of modern science as constraints on philosophical theorizing; and the reverence for Frege, and for the sort of stylistic clarity which marked Frege’s writings. (shrink)
This study provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of the meaning of Locke's political thought. John Dunn restores Locke's ideas to their exact context, and so stresses the historical question of what Locke in the Two Treatises of Government was intending to claim. By adopting this approach, he reveals the predominantly theological character of all Locke's thinking about politics and provides a convincing analysis of the development of Locke's thought. In a polemical concluding section, John Dunn argues that liberal and (...) Marxist interpretations of Locke's politics have failed to grasp his meaning. Locke emerges as not merely a contributor to the development of English constitutional thought, or as a reflector of socio-economic change in seventeenth-century England, but as essentially a Calvinist natural theologian. (shrink)
The essays in this volume offer an approach to the history of moral and political philosophy that takes its inspiration from John Rawls. All the contributors are philosophers who have studied with Rawls and they offer this collection in his honor. The distinctive feature of this approach is to address substantive normative questions in moral and political philosophy through an analysis of the texts and theories of major figures in the history of the subject: Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, (...) and Marx. By reconstructing the core of these theories in a way that is informed by contemporary theoretical concerns, the contributors show how the history of the subject is a resource for understanding present and perennial problems in moral and political philosophy. This outstanding collection will be of particular interest to historians of moral and political philosophy, historians of ideas, and political scientists. (shrink)
John Searle : Le courant analytique, dans lequel je me situe, est pour une large part un ensemble de réactions à l’oeuvre de Gottlob Frege. Nous ne faisons que commencer à prendre la mesure de l’importance considérable de Frege, non seulement pour ce qui est de ses propres théories, mais aussi des directions de recherches qu’il a fourni à Russell, à Wittgenstein, et à Austin, qui fut mon professeur à Oxford.1 Donc, en un sens, j’appartiens à la révolution fregéenne. (...) A première vue, cette révolution consiste en la réinvention de la logique : Frege a créé.. (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)
We assemble here in this time and place to discuss the thesis that conscious attention can provide knowledge of reference of perceptual demonstratives. I shall focus my commentary on what this claim means, and on the main argument for it found in the first five chapters of Reference and Consciousness. The middle term of that argument is an account of what attention does: what its job or function is. There is much that is admirable in this account, and I am (...) confident that it will be the foundation, the launching-pad, for much future work on the subject. But in the end I will argue that Campbell’s picture makes the mechanisms of attention too smart: smarter than they are, smarter than they could be. If we come to a more realistic appraisal of the skills and capacities of our sub-personal minions, the “knowledge of reference” which they yield will have to be taken down a notch or two. (shrink)
[John Dupré] This paper attacks some prominent contemporary attempts to provide reductive accounts of ever wider areas of human behaviour. In particular, I shall address the claims of sociobiology (or evolutionary psychology) to provide a universal account of human nature, and attempts to subsume ever wider domains of behaviour within the scope of economics. I shall also consider some recent suggestions as to how these approaches might be integrated. Having rejected the imperialistic ambitions of these approaches, I shall briefly (...) advocate a more pluralistic approach to the understanding of human behaviour, and one which leaves some space for the possibility of genuine human autonomy. /// [John O'Neill] One response to Dupré's criticism of rational choice theory's unifying aspirations is that it is aimed at over-ambitious versions of the theory. Immodesty about the scope of rational choice theory may look more plausible given suitable modesty in assumptions about the rational agent. The paper examines problems with one immodest version of the theory-public choice theory-and show how these shed light on problems in modest versions employing minimal assumptions about the preference structure of rational agents. However, while rational choice theory may fail in its unifying ambitions, I argue those aspirations are defensible. (shrink)
John Maynard Smith was the founder of evolutionary game theory. He has also been the major influence on the direction of this field, which now pervades behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology. In its original formulation the theory had three components: a set of strategies, a payoff structure, and a concept of evolutionary stability. These three key components are still the basis of the theory, but what is assumed about each component is often different to the original assumptions. We review (...) modern approaches to these components. We emphasis that if a game is considered in isolation, and arbitrary payoffs are assumed, then the payoffs may not be consistent with other components of the system which are not modelled. Modelling the whole system, including not only the focal game, but also the future behaviour of the players and the behaviour of other population members, allows a consistent model to be constructed. We illustrate this in the case of two models of parental care, showing how linking a focal game to other aspects of the system alters what is predicted. (shrink)
Dewey's project -- Cultural and intellectual background -- Rehabilitating Dewey's psychology -- The nature of knowledge -- What we know -- Feeling, will, and self-realization -- Beyond modernist culture -- A new idealism.
John E. Smith has contributed to contemporary philosophy in primarily four distinct capacities; first, as a philosopher of religion and God; second, as an indefatigable defender of philosophical reflection in its classical sense ( a sense inclusive of, but not limited to, metaphysics); third, as a participant in the reconstruction of experience and reason so boldly inaugurated by Hegel then redically transformed by the classical American pragmatists, and significantly augmented by such thinkers as Josiah Royce, william Earnest Hocking, and (...) Alfred North Whitehead; fourth, as an interpreter of philosophical texts and traditions (Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche no less than Charles Peirce, WIlliam James and John Dewey; German idealism as well as American; the Augustinian tradition no less than the pragmatic). Reason, Experience, and God provides an important and comprehensive look at the work of John E. Smith by collected essays which each address aspects of his life-long work. A response by John E. Smith himself draws a line of continuity between the pieces. (shrink)
In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts themselves compile career- long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces-extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and/practical contributions-so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field. Emeritus Professor John White has spent the last 35 years researching, thinking and (...) writing about some of the key and enduring issues in education. In this book, he brings together 16 key writings in one place. Starting with a specially written Introduction, which gives an overview of John's career and conceptualizes his selection within the development of the field, the chapters cover: · Mind · State and Curriculum · Well-being · Politics · Curriculum subjects. This book not only shows how John's thinking developed during his long and distinguished career; it also gives an insight into the development of the fields to which he contributed. (shrink)
Education, Religion and Society celebrates the career of Professor John Hull of the University of Birmingham, UK, the internationally renowned religious educationist who has also achieved worldwide fame for his brilliant writings on his experience, mid-career, of total blindness. In his outstanding career he has been a leading figure in the transformation of religious education in English and Welsh state schools from Christian instruction to multi-faith religious education and was the co-founder of the International Seminar on Religious Education and (...) values. John Hull has also made major contributions to the theology of disability and the theological critique of the "money culture." This volume brings together leading international scholars to honour John Hull's contribution, with a focus on furthering scholarship in the areas where he has been active as a thinker. The book offers a critical appreciation of his contribution to religious education and practical theology, and goes on to explore the continuing debate about the role of religious education in promoting international understanding, intercultural education and human rights education. A possible basis for integrating Islamic education into Western education is suggested and the contribution of the philosophy of religion to pluralistic religious education is outlined. The contributors also deal with issues relating to indoctrination, racism and relationship in Christian religious aspects, and examines aspects of the the theology of social exclusion and disability. (shrink)
The apparent tension between the moral codes of the Old and New Testaments constitutes a perennial problem for Christian ethics. Scholars who have taken this problem seriously have often done so in ways that presume sharp discontinuity between the Testaments. They then proceed to devise a system for identifying what is or is not relevant today, or what pertains to this or that particular social sphere. John Howard Yoder brings fresh perspectives to this perennial problem by refuting the presumption (...) of intratestamental discontinuity. Throughout multiple scattered works on the Old Testament, Yoder offers a coherent and provocative narration that culminates in the way of Christ and establishes the ethical continuity of the entire biblical canon. This essay presents the basic parameters of Yoder's Old Testament narration, suggests points where revision is needed, and highlights several implications for social ethics. (shrink)
Dewey's enduring insights into democratic politics are still relevant today. Dewey grounded his political ideals historically within the American democratic experience and sought to adapt Jeffersonian idealism to the corporate-industrial age. Like Jefferson, Dewey maintained that the roots of the American political tradition are moral, not merely a means to material gain. Dewey's theory of democracy was designed to reconcile freedom with authority, social stability with the need for reform, and universal standards with specific circumstances.
Even if the "ill−defined 'animal spirits'" (Porter 1987:177) were too charged with imaginary values to achieve "the specificity of a true scientific concept" (Starobinski 1966:179), their usage has its patterns and constraints. "These quick and nimble spirits", as the Cambridge Platonist JohnSmith called them (1660/1979:116), were meshed in a "lush jungle of metaphor" (Rousseau 1989:41). They failed "to satisfy the spirit [l'esprit]" of one of their historians, Dr Maurice Mignon (1934:12): but, as their study proves, there is (...) more than one style of spirit. (shrink)
Jacques Maritain tells us that, apart from St. Thomas himself, his “principal teacher” in Thomism was John Poinsot. Poinsot, like Maritain and Thomas, expressly teaches that the basis of “Thomist realism” lies in the distinction between sentire, which makes no use of concepts, and phantasiari and intelligere, which together depend essentially on concepts. O’Callaghan makes no discussion of this point, resting his notion of realism rather on the widespread quo/quod fallacy, that is, the misinterpretation of concepts as the id (...) quo of knowing. Poinsot demonstrates that this view conflates the distinct notions of species expressae and species impressae, demonstrating further that concepts as such cannot provide the cognitive basis of realism. O’Callaghan in effect suppresses the distinction betweenobjects and things in his effort to achieve the impossible. In this review, I show that it is a question of semantics vs. semiotics over which O’Callaghan stumblesin misrepresenting “Thomist realism.”. (shrink)
This study is the first modern account of the development of philosophy during the Carolingian Renaissance. In the late eighth century, Dr Marenbon argues, theologians were led by their enthusiasm for logic to pose themselves truly philosophical questions. The central themes of ninth-century philosophy - essence, the Aristotelian Categories, the problem of Universals - were to preoccupy thinkers throughout the Middle Ages. The earliest period of medieval philosophy was thus a formative one. This work is based on a fresh study (...) of the manuscript sources. The thoughts of scholars such as Alcuin, Candidus, Fredegisus, Ratramnus of Corbie, John Scottus Eriugena and Heiric of Auxerre is examined in detail and compared with their sources; and a wide variety of evidence is used to throw light on the milieu in which these thinkers flourished. Full critical editions of an important body of early medieval philosophical material, much of it never before published, are included. (shrink)
Using his intimate knowledge of John Locke's writings, John W. Yolton shows that Locke comprehends 'human understanding' as a subset of a larger understanding ...
In this first paperback edition, a new introduction by Tom Burke establishes the ongoing importance of Sleeper's analysis of the integrity of Dewey's work and ...
This is the correspondence (1959–1969), on the nature of the evolutionary process, between the biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky and the historian John C. Greene.
John Pollock (1940?2009) was an influential American philosopher who made important contributions to various fields, including epistemology and cognitive science. In the last 25 years of his life, he also contributed to the computational study of defeasible reasoning and practical cognition in artificial intelligence. He developed one of the first formal systems for argumentation-based inference and he put many issues on the research agenda that are still relevant for the argumentation community today. This paper presents an appreciation of Pollock's (...) work on defeasible reasoning and its relevance for the computational study of argument. In our opinion, Pollock deserves to be remembered as one of the founding fathers of the field of computational argument, while, moreover, his work contains important lessons for current research in this field, reminding us of the richness of its object of study. (shrink)
Dewey and Russell's debate over the status of logic in the twentieth-century is, by now, well-trodden ground for scholarly inquiry. However, Dewey's novel theory of propositions, first articulated in his 1938 Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, has received comparatively less attention than the debate that touched upon it. The paucity of interest among philosophers of language is probably due to a variety of reasons, such as the theory's unorthodox character and, what at least appears to be, its naive simplicity when (...) compared to other more common (syntactic and pragmatic) theories of propositions. In this paper, I would like to examine the three most extensive treatments, one by the late H.S. Thayer, another by Tom Burke, and the most recent exposition by Larry Hickman, with the intention of reviving scholarly interest in Dewey's theory of propositional form. Another objective of the present project is to situate Dewey's theory relative to more contemporary theories and debates about propositional form in the philosophy of language literature. (shrink)
Although Symons' recent book, On Dennett (Wadsworth, 2002), provides scientists with ahelpful, general introduction to Dennett'sthought, it presents a skewed version of the history of the philosophy of mind. In particular, the continental tradition is almost entirely ignored, if not glibly dismissed. As aresult, the unwary reader of this book wouldnever realize that Dilthey, Sartre and Husserl,like Dennett, offer a ``middle ground'' between naturalistic realism and naturalistic eliminativism. However, unlike Dennett, the respective positions of Dilthey, Sartre and Husserl are not (...) ontologically indifferent, but instead, present a non-naturalistic form of realism that does not simultaneously invoke Cartesian dualism. (shrink)
This special focus of the "Journal of Religious Ethics" begins with the mixture of admiration and apprehension that John Milbank's use of historical materials so often inspires and moves to specific reflection on specific figures and texts that appear in his grand story of secular modernity. Throughout, the focus is not on his moral theology per se, but rather on the way he treats certain figures, how he constructs his historical tale, and how his critical enterprise and his normative (...) proposals depend upon his historical efforts. This introduction considers the difficulties of constructing and assessing a Geistesgeschichte, the genre of historical writing that Milbank prefers. (shrink)
While historians of scientific method have recently called attention to the views of many of John Stuart Mill's contemporaries on the relation between probability and inductive inference, little if any note has been taken of Mill's own vigorous attack on the received "Laplacean" interpretation of probability in the first (1843) edition of the System of Logic. This paper examines the place of Mill's critique, both in the overall framework of his philosophy, and in the tradition of assessing the (...) so-called "probability of causes". It also offers an account of why, in later editions of the work, Mill appears to adopt a much more sympathetic stance toward the received view. (shrink)
John Searle first made his name with his work in the philosophy of language on speech acts, but cemented his place at the centre of contemporary philosophy with his arguments against computational theories of mind. A rare academic, who writes original work for both general and specialist readers, he has more recently focused on the construction of social reality. He is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.
"This is one of the most interesting texts I have read for many years ... It is authoritative and clearly written. It provides a rich set of examples of teaching, and a reflective discourse." Professor George Brown "...succeeds in inspiring the reader by making the process of reflective learning interesting and thought provoking ... has a narrative drive which makes it a book too good to put down." Dr Mary Thorpe "...a delightful and unusual reflective journey...the whole book is driven (...) by a cycle of questions, examples, strategies and generalizations from the examples. In all, it is the clearest example of practise-what-you-preach that I have seen." Professor John Biggs This unusual, accessible and significant book begins each chapter by posing a question with which college and university teachers can be expected to identify; and then goes on to answer the question by presenting a series of examples; finally, each chapter closes with 'second thoughts', presenting a viewpoint somewhat distinct from that taken by John Cowan. This book will assist university teachers to plan and run innovative activities to enable their students to engage in effective reflective learning; it will help them adapt other teachers' work for use with their own students; and will give them a rationale for the place of reflective teaching and learning in higher education. (shrink)
Abstract John Wilson's work as moral educator is summarized and evaluated. His rationalist humanistic approach is based on a componential characterization of the morally educated person. Such a person consistently manifests a unity of reflection, feeling, belief, and acting under the logically structured rubrics of PHIL, EMP, GIG and KRAT, and exemplifying the formal features of ?moral opinion?. The rationale and conceptual status of the components is discussed, as is the view that the concept of education entails that teachers (...) be moral educators. This involves cultivating autonomous rationality with respect to the unconscious, motivation, day?to?day moral decision?making, and the emotions; in the latter case there are extensive applications in religious education. Finally, certain weaknesses and pre?eminent strengths of Wilson's position are indicated, and comparisons briefly made with the views of McPhail, Peters, Frankena and Kohlberg. (shrink)
This unique collection of letters portrays the life and times of John of Salisbury, the devoted secretary of Archbishop Theobald, the faithful friend and ...
I draw on earlier research to develop contrasts between interpreting the conception of God in the Divine Names in terms of Neoplatonic, Latin Scholastic(specifically Albertinian and Thomistic), and Byzantine / Eastern Christian frameworks. Based on these contrasts, I then explore whether Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas were influenced, and possibly led astray, by John Sarracen’s translation of key terms and phrases in the Divine Names such as (Greek), (Greek)and its cognates, (Greek), (Greek), and (Greek). I conclude that Sarracen’s (...) mistranslation of (Greek) by essentia clearly reinforces an essentialist interpretation of God in the Divine Names—that is, the view that God is an absolutely simple being identical to its essence. It is not clear that his translations of the other terms do the same, although they are most often read in an essentialist fashion by Albert and Aquinas. (shrink)
Stemming from two conferences, held in 1994, and 1996, Prophecy and Diplomacy: The Moral Doctrine of John Paul II explores the general orientations and the specific applications of the moral teaching of Pope John Paul II. The first part of the book places the Pope's moral theory within a broader theological framework, attempting to identify the overarching philosophical and theological attitudes that shape the Pope's fundamental moral perspective. In part two, the work studies the Pope's teaching in the (...) areas of applied ethics. Both the major lecturers and the respondents focus upon those areas of applied ethics that have provoked the greatest tension between the magisterium and the academy and between the Church and the state in the West. The volume concludes by presenting a homily that places the ethics of John Paul II within a spiritual framework of repentance and redemption. The Pope's moral teaching is not an academic survey of ethical themes. Nor is it a Pelagian call to human self-regeneration. The ultimate truth concerning human conduct and moral judgement emerges only with the proclamation of God's grace. (shrink)
Few contemporary philosophers have made as wide-ranging and insightful a contribution to philosophical debate as John Cottingham. This collection brings together friends, colleagues and former students of Cottingham, to discuss major themes of his work on moral philosophy. Presented in three parts the collection focuses on the debate on partiality, impartiality and character; the role of emotions and reason in the good life; the meaning of a worthwhile life and the place of theistic considerations in it. The original contributions (...) to this volume celebrate Cottingham’s work by embracing and furthering his arguments and, at times, in the best spirit of philosophical engagement, challenging and confronting them. The volume concludes with Cottingham’s specially commissioned responses to the contributions. (shrink)
Founders of Modern Political and Social Thought -/- Series Editor: Dr Mark Philp, Oriel College, University of Oxford -/- Founders of Modern Political and Social Thought present critical examinations of the work of major political philosophers and social theorists, assessing both their initial contribution and continuing relevance to politics and society. Each volume provides a clear, accessible, historically-informed account of each thinker's work, focusing on a re-assessment of their central ideas and arguments. Founders encourage scholars and students to link their (...) study of classic texts to current debates in political philosophy and social theory. -/- This launch volume in the Founders of Modern Political and Social Thought series presents a critical examination of Aquinas' thought, combining an accessible, historically-informed account of his work with a re-assessment of his central ideas and arguments. John Finnis presents a richly-documented review of Aquinas's ideas on morality, politics, law, and method in social science, using the philosopher's own long-neglected distinctions between types of order and types of theory. Unique in his coverage of Aquinas's primary and secondary texts and his own vigorous argumentation on many themes, the author focuses on the Aquinas's philosophy while also demonstrating how this interconnects with the theological elements. In his fresh, far-reaching re-reading of Aquinas, John Finnis argues out such questions as: Is egoism rational? Why is Aristotle's paternalism wrong? Has sexual morality any reasonable principle? What's wrong with lying and usury? Why are democracy and the rule of law aspects of the best polity? -/- Drawing on over 60 of Aquinas's works, the author shows how, despite some medieval limitations, Aquinas makes profound, powerful contributions to present debates. (shrink)
For over forty years John Finnis has pioneered the development of a new classical theory of natural law, a systematic philosophical explanation of human life that offers an integrated account of personal identity, practical reason, morality, political community, and law. The core of Finnis' theory, articulated in his seminal work Natural Law and Natural Rights, has profoundly influenced later work in the philosophy of law and practical reason, while his contributions to the ethical debates surrounding nuclear deterrence, abortion, and (...) sexual morality have been a powerful, and controversial exposition of the practical implications of his theory of natural law. -/- The Collected Essays of John Finnis brings together 106 papers, including nearly two dozen previously unpublished works. Thematically arranged, the five volumes provide ready access to his contributions across central areas of modern practical philosophy - the philosophy of practical reason; the philosophy of personal identity and intention; political philosophy; the philosophy of law; and the philosophy of revelation and the role of religion in public life. Fully cross-referenced, cross-indexed, and introduced by the author, the Collected Essays reveal the connections and coherence of the different branches of Finnis' work, showing the full picture of his philosophical contribution for the first time. -/- Covering topics from self-refutation and discourse ethics to evolution and religion, and the adoption of Bills of Rights, the work in these volumes offer a unique insight into the intellectual currents and political debates that have transformed major areas of public morality and law over the last half century. Together with the new edition of Natural Law and Natural Rights, they will be an essential resource for all those engaged with the philosophy of law and broader questions in practical philosophy. (shrink)
