It is becoming increasingly apparent that Elizabeth Anscombe, long known as a student, friend and translator of Wittgenstein, was herself one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. No Morality, No Self examines her two best-known papers, in which she advanced her most amazing theses. In 'Modern Moral Philosophy', she claimed that the term moral, understood as picking out a special, sui generis category, is literally senseless and should therefore be abandoned. In 'The First Person', she maintained that (...) the word 'I' is not a referring expression: in other words, its function in the language is not to pick out the speaker, or 'the self' - or any entity whatsoever. Both papers are considered influential, and are frequently cited; but their main claims, and many of their arguments, have been widely misunderstood. In this book James Doyle shows that once various errors of interpretation have been cleared away, the claims can be seen to be far more plausible, and the arguments far more compelling, than even her defenders have realized. Philosophers often seek attention by making startling claims which are subsequently revealed as little more than commonplaces wrapped in hyperbole. Doyle's book makes it clear that here, in her greatest papers, Anscombe achieves something vanishingly rare in philosophy: a persuasive case for genuinely unsettling and profound conclusions. The two lines of argument, seemingly so disparate, are also shown to be connected by Anscombe's deep opposition to the Cartesian picture of the mind.--. (shrink)

In this paper I try to solve some problems concerning the interpretation of Socrates' conversation with Gorgias about the nature of rhetoric in Plato's Gorgias (448e6-461b2). I begin by clarifying what, ethically, is at stake in the conversation (section 2). In the main body of the paper (sections 3-6) I address the question of what we are to understand Gorgias as believing about the nature of rhetoric: I criticise accounts given by Charles Kahn and John Cooper, and suggest an alternative (...) account of my own. In the final section I spell out some of the implications of my account for the interpretation of the Gorgias, and of Plato more generally. (shrink)

Well-organized and highly readable Sex and Gender: The Human Experience provides a current, multicultural analysis of gender-related issues, theories, and research. The authors' clear presentation of the perspectives and issues related to sex and gender studies enables students to easily comprehend the material. Further, a highly practical approach prompts students to examine their self-awareness and social tolerance. Sex and Gender: The Human Experience is appropriate as a primary or supplementary text in Psychology, Family Studies, or Women's Studies curricula.

educational judgments Education, like art, politics, science, and other activities on which men pinned their highest hopes, has become the object of heated ...

Moral rationalism is identified as the view that moral constraints are rational constraints. This view seems implausible to many because it seems to involve belief in the fantastic-sounding possibility of egoist-conversion: that, in principle, an argument for moral constraints could be produced which would motivate a rational person who does not yet accept those constraints to observe them. Furthermore, the Humean want-belief model of motivation---the view that beliefs alone are incapable of motivating---seems to provide a good explanation for the impossibility (...) of egoist-conversion. I argue that the moral rationalist is not in fact committed to the possibility of egoist-conversion, and that an explanation of its impossibility can be given which is compatible with rationalism; so this impossibility counts neither against rationalism nor for the want-belief model. I consider a number of apparent objections to my position and rebut them. (shrink)

Moral rationalism is identified as the view that moral constraints are rational constraints. This view seems implausible to many because it seems to involve belief in the fantastic-sounding possibility of egoist-conversion: that, in principle, an argument for moral constraints could be produced which would motivate a rational person who does not yet accept those constraints (i.e., an egoist) to observe them. Furthermore, the Humean want-belief model of motivation---the view that beliefs alone are incapable of motivating---seems to provide a good explanation (...) for the impossibility of egoist-conversion. I argue that the moral rationalist is not in fact committed to the possibility of egoist-conversion, and that an explanation of its impossibility can be given which is compatible with rationalism; so this impossibility counts neither against rationalism nor for the want-belief model. I consider a number of apparent objections to my position and rebut them. (shrink)

I here adapt some ideas of Prior’s 1967 paper ‘On spurious egocentricity’ in the interest of seeing how much sense can be made of the doctrine that ‘I’ is not a referring-expression. I suggest how an account of ‘I’ might draw upon both Prior’s treatment of the operator ‘I believe that’ and of operators like ‘it is true that’ and ‘it is now the case that’, which Prior argues are logically very different from ‘I believe that’. In the final section (...) I present some objections to Prior’s account of ‘now’, and try to give a more adequate account of the analogy between ‘now’ and ‘I’. (shrink)

This portrait of Hume as an ironist is offered as a supplement to recent historical and biographical studies, and especially to Mossner's The Life o] David Hume. While others have commented on the irony in Hume's writings, Price goes further and suggests that irony is a key with which to unlock Hume's philosophical attitudes and beliefs. Since ap- preciation of irony depends on an awareness of context, Price interprets this to mean that Hume's writings must be read against the background (...) of his life and intellectual milieu. He traces the development of Hume's use of irony through four successive stages, beginning with the formative influences on the early writings and concluding with the culmination of Hume's ironic style in the last works -- principally the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. (shrink)

T he Question of punishment and its justification has been a major preoccupation in recent philosophy of law. The reasons for this growing concern are not difficult to discover. Both philosophers and jurists have become increasingly sceptical of traditional theories of legal punishment. Each of these inherited theories was designed to establish criteria for the recognition and appraisal of punishment as a legal institution. However, alternative theories emphasised different and often conflicting criteria. Some theories emphasised moral desert and retribution, while (...) others appealed to the social utilities of punishment. Failure to reconcile these diverse philosophical viewpoints, through sustained debate over two centuries, has been a major source of intellectual dissatisfaction. (shrink)