It is said of St. Thomas Aquinas’ teacher, St. Albert the Great, that he grew forgetful towards the end of his life and began to say mass for himself as though he were dead: quasi defunctus est. The fact that he was one of the most learned persons of Western Europe during his life-time did not save him from a pathetic loss of memory. The story illustrates a bitter knowledge known from time immemorial: that age may steal away one’s innermost (...) possessions. Of course, it has always been known too that a blow upon the head in the prime of life may rob a person of consciousness and leave him or her permanently impaired. To this general wisdom about the fragility of conscious life, researchers have lately added an increasingly complex and precise knowledge of just how the brain and its various regions participate in our conscious life. So that this new detailed knowledge fills out the ancient recognition of the soul’s reliance upon its physical base; it gives new weight to that dependence, and confirms the human spirit’s immersion in matter. And if it does not quite overwhelm us with the intimacy of the alliance between soul and body, it bids fair to change the tone and degree of our awareness of that connection, so that the claim to the soul’s immortality is likely nowadays to fall upon less receptive ears. Indeed, talk about the soul sounds strange to the ears of many present-day psychologists and philosophers. And even Christian theologians write copiously today about the resurrection of Christ and of the dead, but little about the immortality of the soul. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Lewis E. HahnGeorge C. H. Sun, President, John Howie, Professor Emeritus, Thomas Alexander, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kenneth W. Stikkers, Professor and Chair, Randall Auxier, Professor, Robert Hahn, Professor, Joseph Wu, Professor Emeritus, Elizabeth R. Eames, Professor Emeritus, Martin Lu, Professor of Philosophy, George Kimball Plochmann, Professor Emeritus, Matt Sronkoski, Philosophy Graduate and Academic Adviser, Dave Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Professor Emerita, Hans H. (...) Rudnick, Professor Emeritus, Stephen Bickham, Professor EmeritusPresident, and Don Mikula (bio)The following testimonials were offered on the occasion of a memorial gathering for Dr. Lewis E. Hahn held on February 19, 2005, and were compiled for presentation here by Sharon (Hahn) Crowell.A Tribute to Dr. Lewis E. Hahn (1908-2004) from a Global PerspectiveGeorge C. H. Sun President, Thomé H. Fang Institute, Inc., Mobile, AlabamaAmong the philosophical community in both the East and the West, no word of introduction is needed for our beloved Master, who was the recipient of numerous distinctions and honors, with titles that included "Man of the Year in Philosophy" and "Award of Lifetime Achievement." The very name "Lewis E. Hahn" itself already stands now for genuineness, dedication, and fulfillment.A great work is a dialogue with eternity; a great person is such a work. In less than thirty years he succeeded in developing Carbondale from what had been a small college town in the Midwest into the Mecca of American philosophy. His most important achievements were the Dewey Center and the Pepper Archives that he helped install at SIUC These, among other such institutions, will remain a unique contribution, a glory of American philosophy, and a monument in the history of human thought.For posterity Lewis E. Hahn will remain an object of wonder and amazement. How is it possible for one human being to have accomplished so much, so well, and in so short a span of time—less than one century—in breadth, depth, and diversity? Some one hundred years ago, by bridging the gap between the New World and the Old, William James was hailed as the great genius of international friendship among philosophical thinkers, but we now find a greater genius in Lewis E. Hahn, who succeeded in bringing together the peoples of East and West from at least four continents: Europe, Australia, America (both North and Latin America), and Asia. To my knowledge, few of his predecessors and contemporaries have been half so widely read and liberal-minded as he was, in view of the range and scope of the Library of Living Philosophers that he helped continue after the passing of its founder, Dr. Paul A. Schilpp.What type of man was Hahn, our younger generation will wonder? Only a pluralist approach can help us understand the true character of such a legendary pluralist-contextualist. In short, he was "a full personality." As I recall, while working on my dissertation with him in the 1970s, we had a brief discussion on Confucius, the sage of ancient China. "A full personality!" was his laconic assessment. Suddenly I realized, to quote the Analects: "The Master is talking about himself!" For, as the Buddhists put it, only a Buddha can understand a Buddha. Or, as William James put it, only one who has philosophy can appreciate philosophy. Many friends [End Page 1] of my generation admire him so much; Te Chen of Hong Kong calls him "a great Confucian in America." Those who regret the loss of many precious Confucian virtues in China today have now rediscovered them in the person of Lewis E. Hahn! If Nietzsche called Kant "a great Chinese in Königsberg," it is simply because he had not encountered our own Master.A paradigm of academic leadership, Dr. Hahn is simply irreplaceable—this is a tribute I personally heard in Carbondale in the late 1960s. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was a superb administrator, and he could have been the best Secretary of the State we ever had, for he possessed more in the way of philosophical wisdom than all his predecessors put together! As a great teacher, he was no less "serene, good, learned, wise, and ardent" than... (shrink)

In a fictional conversation designed to appeal to both working teachers and social philosophers, three educators take up the question of whether critical thinking itself can, or should, be taught independently of an explicit consideration of issues related to social justice. One, a thoughtful but somewhat traditional Enlightenment rationalist, sees critical thinking as a neutral set of skills and dispositions, essentially unrelated to the conclusions of morality, problems of social organization, or the content of any particular academic discipline. A second (...) interlocutor, steeped in “critical” pedagogy of Paulo Freire, insists that the problem is the pose of neutrality itself. On this view, all honest and effective approaches to teaching must confront the hegemony of unjust relationships, institutions, and conceptual schemes. The third character attempts to resolve the tension between these two opposed camps. (shrink)

In a fictional conversation designed to appeal to both working teachers and social philosophers, three educators take up the question of whether critical thinking itself can, or should, be taught independently of an explicit consideration of issues related to social justice. One, a thoughtful but somewhat traditional Enlightenment rationalist, sees critical thinking as a neutral set of skills and dispositions, essentially unrelated to the conclusions of morality, problems of social organization, or the content of any particular academic discipline. A second (...) interlocutor, steeped in “critical” pedagogy of Paulo Freire, insists that the problem is the pose of neutrality itself. On this view, all honest and effective approaches to teaching must confront the hegemony of unjust relationships, institutions, and conceptual schemes. The third character attempts to resolve the tension between these two opposed camps. (shrink)

‘Twelve Step' recovery programmes such as Alcoholics Anonymous teach that an alcoholic, or other addict, has a disease, and needs to accept that she is ‘powerless' over her addiction before recovery can begin. However, the disease model of addiction has been criticised on the grounds that some addicts recover without external intervention. This critique is questionable, not because such recovery does not occur, but because many genuine diseases are self-limiting. However, the disease model is better criticised on other grounds. Central (...) here is the idea of powerlessness. This article explores various supposed instances of powerlessness, including that induced by extreme fear, provocation and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is argued that while addiction is a genuine phenomenon, it is strictly inaccurate to describe it as a lack of power. However, there is a deeper sense in which the autonomy of addicts is compromised, although this does not show that addiction is a disease. (shrink)

The selectionsfrom the work of fourteen contemporary philosophers not only display the multiplicity of approachesbeing pursued since the breakup of any consensus on what philosophy is, but also help to clarifythis proliferation of views and ...

This book is a comparative study of Kant, Rawls, and Habermas and a critical survey of recent theories of justice. It defends the thesis that the normative ground or basis of social criticism is found in a concept of the person as a free and equal moral being.

What do we mean when we say we "know" something? What is this knowledge and how do we come by it? What exactly counts as an object of knowledge? And on what basis do we defend our claims to know against thosethe skepticswho deny that knowledge is possible or that our criteria for knowing can ever be satisfied? These questions and many others are addressed in this fascinating collection of essays by leading philosophers, who discuss the nature, meaning, and extent (...) of human knowledge. Included are works by Robert Almeder, William P. Alston, Robert P. Amico, Roderick M. Chisholm, Edmund L. Gettier, Richard Feldman, Peter D. Klein, Keith Lehrer, Kenneth G. Lucey, John Pollock, and others. Several essays are original to this collection and break new ground on such issues as the Problem of the Criterion. (shrink)

Philosophers are divided over moral internalism, the claim that moral judgement entails some motivation to comply with that judgement. Against moral internalism, externalists defend the conceptual coherence of scenarios in which an individual makes genuine moral judgements but is entirely unmoved by them. This is amoralist skepticism and these scenarios can be called amoralist scenarios. While the coherence of amoralist scenarios is disputed, philosophers seem to agree that the coherence of amoralist scenarios is not affected by whether the amoralist is (...) described as having moral knowledge or mere belief. But recent experimental research challenges this assumption. When evaluating amoralist scenarios, people’s intuitions lean towards externalism when the amoralist is described as knowing that X is morally wrong, whereas people’s intuitions lean towards internalism when the amoralist is described as believing that X is morally wrong. Call this the factivity effect. In this paper, I argue that the factivity effect is unlikely to be explained as an experimental artifact and that as a consequence, the traditional dispute over moral internalism and amoralist skepticism may need a major overhaul. The results of three studies testing the factivity effect provide support for this thesis. Implications of these results for the traditional debate over moral internalism are discussed. (shrink)

Behavior, language, development, identity, and science—all of these phenomena are commonly characterized as 'social' in nature. But what does it mean to be 'social'? Is there any intrinsic 'mark' of the social shared by these phenomena? In the first book to shed light on this foundational question, twelve distinguished philosophers and social scientists from several disciplines debate the mark of the social. Their varied answers will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, psychologists, and anyone interested in the theoretical foundations (...) of the social sciences. (shrink)

Human rights have become a wider and more visible feature of our political discourse, yet many have also noted the great discrepancy between the human rights invoked in this discourse and traditional philosophical accounts that conceive of human rights as natural rights. This article explores an alternative approach in which human rights are conceived primarily as international norms aimed at securing the basic conditions of membership or inclusion in a political society. Central to this `political conception' of human rights is (...) the idea of human rights as special (in contrast to general) rights that individuals possess in virtue of specific associative relations they stand in to one another. This view is explored and defended through a critical review of four recent political conceptions — Michael Ignatieff, John Rawls, Thomas Pogge and Joshua Cohen. (shrink)

Some philosophers posit a connection between normativity and agency. This connection allows us to infer propositions about what we ought to do or what reason we have to do from the conditions of action. This chapter considers arguments for this connection. In particular, the chapter argues that not only do the conditions of generic agency have important normative implications for us, but so too do the conditions of narrower, more contingent, and more local kinds of agency. Finally, objections to this (...) thesis are summarized and rejected, in part because they presuppose our having far more control over what our deliberations require in the way of agency than we actually do. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Of Dialogues and SeedsKenneth SeeskinPlato’s Literary Garden: How to Read a Platonic Dialogue, by Kenneth M. Sayre; xxiii & 292 pp. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995, $34.95.One of the best known paradoxes in the Platonic corpus occurs in the Seventh Letter (341), when Plato says that he has never written about the problems which concern him and never will. His reason: “This knowledge can never (...) be put into words like other subjects; but is generated by living with the matter itself and from many conversations (ek polle\s sunousias). Then like a flashing light when a fire is kindled, it is born in the soul and nourishes itself.” Why would the most gifted philosophical writer in history say that when it comes to goodness, beauty, or justice, language is an inadequate medium in which to convey truth?One answer is that Plato had an esoteric doctrine that he divulged to a few close associates but did not express in the dialogues. 1 The crux of the esotericist position is that Plato’s objection is not to language as such but to written language in particular. A more satisfying answer is offered by Kenneth M. Sayre in this recent book. According to Sayre, Plato wrote dialogues to allow the reader to have conversation (sunousia) with the author “in an indirect manner” and to facilitate the reader’s own discovery of truth. In other words, the dialogues are surrogates for the sort of discussions Plato shared with Socrates “in hopes of producing a similar effect in the mind of the reader.” [End Page 167]If Sayre is right, the problem discussed in the Seventh Letter is not limited to written communication but involves “logoi in whatever form we might identify them today” (p. 159). Sayre enlarges on this insight by claiming (p. 18) that for Plato “philosophic knowledge is not awareness of the truth of propositions” but “discernment of some aspect of reality.” 2 Nor is this view limited to the Seventh Letter; Sayre finds it expressed in dialogues ranging from the Meno to the Statesman. Although I have problems with some of the details of this interpretation, it is noteworthy that the Seventh Letter (342a) does claim its epistemology is not new and “has been expounded many times before.” 3The title of Sayre’s book is taken from a famous passage in the Phaedrus (276), where Socrates says that while written language gives the appearance of finality and inviolability, it is an image (eido\lon) of living speech, by which he means words that can defend themselves and are accompanied by knowledge. But as Sayre points out, the passage also carves out a role for written speech by claiming that it is legitimate for the dialectician to plant seeds in “a literary garden” to assist memory in later years and to help others who “wish to walk in the same path.” In fact, the passage tells us that the dialectician will select a soul of the right type and take pleasure in watching the seeds grow and mature. In keeping with Plato’s metaphor, Sayre organizes his chapters into functions associated with gardening: some dialogues prepare the ground, others sow the seeds, train the shoots, or allow us to reap the fruit. The book ends with an appendix on how to read a specific dialogue, the Theaetetus, in a way that emphasizes indirect or imagined conversation. As one might expect, Sayre takes the Theaetetus to imply that knowledge cannot be defined as true belief with a logos.Although not a highly technical work, Plato’s Literary Garden is a thoughtful and thought-provoking one designed for someone who wants students to see that Plato is not just another philosopher with another doctrine to peddle. So the first step in reading a Platonic dialogue is to recognize with Sayre that the dialogues are not “proto-essays” and that the decision to write dialogues is tied up with important features of Plato’s epistemology. But does that mean, as Sayre claims (p. 12), that “Plato’s dialogues were not conceived by their author as contexts in which to develop and to display positive arguments for... (shrink)

The question of why Nietzsche writes as he does defines his philosophy—much more so than for almost any other thinker. Let me begin with the following claim: Nietzsche does not primarily write books. Rather, he edits them from a huge reservoir of different kinds of notebooks. In the process, the “I” that is the subject of the “writing” becomes increasingly unstable. This is of course an intended philosophical effect. Take the case of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which Nietzsche considered to be (...) his most important and long-lasting book. Most philosophers, when they engage with it at all, still take it more or less at face value. Zarathustra’s speeches are quoted as if they were enunciations of Nietzsche himself... (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

What one is acquainted with has always been important for the rejection or acceptance of any ontological description. Yet the relevance of acquaintance to ontology has not always been clearly stated. Some philosophers have held that they were acquainted with the simple entities of ontological analysis. They also held that if they were not acquainted with such entities, their analysis would be inadequately supported. In this paper I argue that acquaintance with ontological simples cannot be a reason for accepting or (...) rejecting any ontological analysis. At the same time, I examine what I believe to be the relevance of acquaintance to ontological description. (shrink)

In ‘‘The Myth of Original Intentionality,’’ Daniel Dennett appears to want to argue for four claims involving the familiar distinction between original (or underived) and derived intentionality.

In The Recovery of the Soul, Kenneth Rankin suggests that the current impasse over solutions to many philosophical problems is the result, in part, of a failure to consider how each of these problems bears on the rest. Rankin shows that a libertarian theory of free will, an A-theory of time, a corporealist theory of personal identity, and a non-relativist interpretation of the foundation of ethics all contribute to or are derived from a psychocentric form of physicalism. The proposed (...) Modal Identity thesis identifies the mind, or that which ensouls the body, with a strictly physical power, the power to act intentionally from occasion to occasion in any one of several mutually exclusive ways. Rankin argues further that the non-arbitrary individuation of particular physical things derives from the causal powers they possess. The distinctive power that ensouls our bodies is identified as the primary causal power: all other powers derive their status as powers from it in so far as they are constitutive, or instruments, of it. Rankin demonstrates that many of our ontological preconceptions are Aristotelian in origin. The psychocentric physicalism of the central thesis is a response to Aristotle's question "What is being?" and in the earlier chapters of the book Aristotle's contributions to a theory of being are used as a preliminary study to suggest which parts of these preconceptions should be kept and which revised. Later chapters suggest that failure to resolve many philosophical problems results in part from the failure of Aristotle's philosophy to fulfil its promise. (shrink)

In The Recovery of the Soul, Kenneth Rankin suggests that the current impasse over solutions to many philosophical problems is the result, in part, of a failure to consider how each of these problems bears on the rest. Rankin shows that a libertarian theory of free will, an A-theory of time, a corporealist theory of personal identity, and a non-relativist interpretation of the foundation of ethics all contribute to or are derived from a psychocentric form of physicalism. The proposed (...) Modal Identity thesis identifies the mind, or that which ensouls the body, with a strictly physical power, the power to act intentionally from occasion to occasion in any one of several mutually exclusive ways. Rankin argues further that the non-arbitrary individuation of particular physical things derives from the causal powers they possess. The distinctive power that ensouls our bodies is identified as the primary causal power: all other powers derive their status as powers from it in so far as they are constitutive, or instruments, of it. Rankin demonstrates that many of our ontological preconceptions are Aristotelian in origin. The psychocentric physicalism of the central thesis is a response to Aristotle's question "What is being?" and in the earlier chapters of the book Aristotle's contributions to a theory of being are used as a preliminary study to suggest which parts of these preconceptions should be kept and which revised. Later chapters suggest that failure to resolve many philosophical problems results in part from the failure of Aristotle's philosophy to fulfil its promise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: -/- [99] JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:1 JANUARY 198 5 Book Reviews Kenneth Dorter. Plato's 'Phaedo': An Interpretation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Pp. xi + 233. $28.50. Kenneth Dorter of the University of Guelph has given us a useful and unusual study of the Phaedo, which will attract the interest of a variety of Plato's readers. He provides the careful studies of (...) the dialogue's arguments for immortality to be expected in a sound commentary, paying close attention to the text as well as to recent scholarship, and displaying a good sense of argument. What gives the book additional interest, however, are its features as an interpretation of the Phaedo. Two stand out. First, Dorter wishes to give full weight not only to the logic of the arguments but also to the dramatic details of Plato's writing, believing these to be important in disclosing Plato's intentions. Secondly, he reads the Phaedo in light of a more general understanding of Plato's philosophy, especially the nature of the soul in its cosmic as well as individual aspects. Much of this is set out in a final speculative chapter, where Dorter seeks to make intelligible Plato's developing conception of soul by means of such notions as energy and poles of consciousness. Not every reader will be persuaded; but Dorter is to be commended for an attempt to move the discussion beyond the Phaedo and Plato's own vocabulary. The study gains its coherence from Dorter's belief that Plato's view of soul cannot support the ostensible aim of the dialogue, to provide reassurance of personal immortality. Although he has no doubt that for the Platonic Socrates there is "a meaningful sense in which we may be called immortal" (94, cf. 159), Dorter's analysis must be stretched to provide that sense. In part this is a result of his assessment of the arguments. The first, from reciprocity in nature, can at most show that, given the eternal nature of the world, soul and corporeality in general must continue to exist. The argument from recollection can point only to a non-empirical element in our knowledge ; that from the soul's kinship with the divine is best seen as an analogy developed to awaken within us a sense of eternity. The final argument, though containing fallacies (157), will support the conclusion that immortal soul is imperishable as long as soul is regarded as motive force in the universe, in the first argument's sense. In none of these discussions, then, can Plato's reasoning yield up personal survival. But there is another part to Dorter's case, underlying this conclusion. For Plato the individual human being is a composite of soul and body; so even if Plato were to prove the immortality of the soul he could never establish personal survival (63-64). It is not surprising then that Dorter is left with a doctrine of immortality either reduced to a "discovery of eternity within ourselves" (77), or else dissolved into a principle of enduring cosmic energy. So in neither case does it seem meaningful for Plato to say that we are immortal: the eternal which we sense is no more us than it is anything else. Although it is of course possible that Plato did not intend this consequence of his arguments, Dorter thinks otherwise. In support he invokes literary features of the dialogue to argue that Plato operates on one level for the less sophisticated (who wish to be persuaded of personal survival) and on another for the philosophically reflective reader. Dorter treats the textual evidence for this claim with an appropriate modesty, and tries to justify Plato's apparent duplicity as an attempt to convince the weak by a 'noble lie' (95-97). Nevertheless this leads Dorter to mix together too quickly for this reader popular religion, myth, and metaphor. To the fact that Plato does not espouse the language of popular religion literally, Dorter adds his own view of myth as an imaginative appeal to emotion that can be translated without loss into rational discourse (7, 165, a95). So the accounts of the afterlife at 8oc-84 b... (shrink)

One might have thought that if something has two or more distinct realizations, then that thing is multiply realized. Nevertheless, some philosophers have claimed that two or more distinct realizations do not amount to multiple realization, unless those distinct realizations amount to multiple “ways” of realizing the thing. Corey Maley, Gualtiero Piccinini, Thomas Polger, and Lawrence Shapiro are among these philosophers. Unfortunately, they do not explain why multiple realization requires multiple “ways” of realizing. More significantly, their efforts to articulate multiple (...) “ways” of realizing turn out to be problematic. (shrink)

The traditional philosophical metaphors of epistemology, which speak of grounds or foundations, produce a conception of knowledge as fixed and absolute. This paper is not an effort to revive traditional epistemological view of foundations and origins. After a preliminary and cursory discussion of how the metaphors of foundation and ground are employed, principally by Descartes and Heidegger, and what is suggested by such an employment, I sketch the postmodern rejection of these metaphors. However, I further indicate how, as valuable as (...) it is, postmodern criticism leaves us with an inadequate account of how we understand ourselves and how it is that weunderstand in general. I criticize postmodern thinking for ignoring the human elements of feeling and imagination and endorse the more satisfying model suggested by Paul Ricoeur. By understanding the role of feeling and imagination, we can escape the strict sterility of the grapheme. I end with my own suggestion that we gain a better sense of our attachment to and understanding of the world if we change the metaphors of foundations, grounds, and origins and instead employ metaphors of gathering, coalescence, or coagulation. (shrink)

This chapter considers the problem of divine hiddenness as an issue potentially if not explicitly addressed by the prominent 20th century proponent of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda (1896-1977). In a four-part argument, Prabhupāda’s identifying Kṛṣṇa as the perfect teacher, particularly in his role as Arjuna’s teacher in the Bhagavad-Gītā, enables consideration of how the divine hiddenness issue is resolvable, particularly by framing awareness of God’s existence and understanding of divine attributes as an educational process encapsulated by the (...) word “yoga”. This approach further enables appreciation of the bhakti-yoga perspective—in its celebration of divine absence—as an inversion of divine hiddenness as a philosophical problem into a theological solution to the adept’s acute sense of divine absence, even while perceiving evidence of God’s existence at every turn. (shrink)

Drawing on broad definitions of technology and engineering as well as precedents in the philosophical literature, this paper makes the novel argument that the purposeful design of one’s unique good life using existing philosophical concepts is an engineering activity. Whether as a metaphor or as an engineering activity in its own right, a sampling of important benefits and perspectives provided for well-being by the presented “life engineering” framework are highlighted. A key strength of the framework is the conceptual simplicity, with (...) minimal sacrifices in completeness or consistency. This necessitates a tradeoff of limited precision for any one practical implementation. Consistent conceptual definitions for wisdom, virtue and the good life are presented within an informative ethics. Only a descriptive evaluation to aid in conceptual understanding is discussed, no prescriptive normative evaluations are made. The good life is defined to be one in which the minimum requirements are met and then performance is good, but no attempt is made to define what is good. A fundamental limitation of the framework stems from the inherent focus of technology on human utility. Although no novel fundamental conclusions are drawn in this paper, the presented framework is demonstrated to correspond with numerous ethical precepts of many existing philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a rekindling of interest in the method of reflective equilibrium. Most of this attention has been suspicious, however. Critics have alleged that the method is nothing more than a high-minded brand of navel-gazing, that it suffers from all the classic problems of inward-looking coherence theories, and that it overestimates the usefulness of self-scrutiny. In this paper I argue that these criticisms miss their mark because they labor under crucial misconceptions about the method of reflective equilibrium. In (...) defending reflective equilibrium I put forward a handful of theses about the nature of inquiry (or, more generally, norm-governed enterprises) that form the backdrop to the method. The critics’ objections fall short, I argue, because they do not recognize reflective equilibrium’s embrace of these theses. Confronting these objections and understanding why they fail brings us to a better understanding what, exactly, the method of reflective equilibrium is. The answer I come to in the final section of the paper is that the method of reflective equilibrium is not, exactly, anything. It is a mistake to try to give a positive characterization of the view, to identify it with a concern with a particular species of data, particular procedures and methods, or even a particular conception of normative success. Instead, it should be understood as the denial of essentialism about just these matters—as a form of anti-essentialism about our epistemic inputs, methods, and goals. (shrink)

_International Perspectives on Intercultural Education_ offers a comprehensive analysis of intercultural education activity as it is practiced in the countries of Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, England, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Chapters by key scholars and practitioners from these nations inform the reader of current educational practice related to diversity. Each author, responding to a common series of guiding questions, presents: *a brief description of the national educational system in her or (...) his country; *descriptive data on demographics in these countries, including data on various subgroups and subcultures and their experiences with the mainstream educational system; * a discussion of the perceived obstacles to addressing intercultural issues in schools and solutions to overcoming these obstacles; and *a comprehensive analysis of intercultural information on how teacher preparation institutions address intercultural education at the present time. An overall concern of each chapter author is how intercultural approaches can be employed to solve the difficulties faced by both individuals and schools while maintaining the cultural integrity of the child. (shrink)

Whereas many philosophers take backwards causation to be impossible, the few who maintain its possibility either take it to be absent from the actual world or else confined to theoretical physics. Here, however, I argue that backwards causation is not only actual, but common, though occurring in the context of our social institutions. After juxtaposing my cases with a few others in the literature and arguing that we should take seriously the reality of causal cases in these contexts, I consider (...) several objections. These objections involve whether the cases should be reinterpreted, whether they are properly within the institution, whether they involve necessitation or else Cambridge changes, whether and how they involve changing the past, and whether this should call us to question institutional reality. I end by suggesting that it is a virtue of our institutions that they allow backwards causation, that this is a kind of technology that they are often built to incorporate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Intervention into the Flew/Fogelin Debate Kenneth G. Ferguson Under an aggressive title, Robert FogeUn has recently undertaken to reveal "What Hume Actually Said About Miracles."1 He felt this necessary to correct whathe considers a serious misreading ofHume's essay "OfMiracles" (sec. 10 ofthe Enquiries2), a reading which infers that Hume did not argue thatmiracles are impossible a priori (Fogelin, 81). One writer at least regards this reading so (...) common that she has dubbed it the "traditional interpretation" of Hume's account of miracles.3 At any rate, it finds a strong advocate in Anthony Flew,4 against whom the majority ofFogelin's comments are directed. What I find fascinating about this debate is that both Flew and FogeUn appear to be right. On the one hand, Hume does have the textual resources to marshall a fully deductive argument against miracles, at least, once a strict definition of miracles is admitted. On the other hand, while exploiting these resources, Hume somewhat clumsily mingles in vestiges ofa not-fully consistent inductive argument against miracles which he bases on the balancing of probabilities. I will attempt to identify these two skeins ofargument, in the anticipation that this will help to temper the debate between Flew and Fogelin. Hume opens section 10by promisingan argument that will furnish "an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion" (E 110). Moreover, he claims that "there is here a direct and full proof... against the existence of any miracle" (E 115), a quote which Fogelin repeats seven times (toextractits full flavour). C. S. Peirce, wholate inlife took an interest in Hume's argument, conjectured that Hume hoped to provide a general disproof of all miracles that would not require "a minute analysis of each story"; such a procedure was in fact popular amongthe miracle debunkers ofHume's day, forexample, Rev. Thomas Woolston, whose books were extremely popular.5 Hume's boast of "a direct and full proof might be assumed, offhand, to augur an a priori argumentbased on the comparison ofideas; butitmust notbe forgotten that back in the Treatise (for which the essay "Of Miracles" was originally drafted6) Hume defines a "proof" as an argument "deriv'd from the relation of cause and effect."7 There he contrasts "proofs" explicitly with the type of assured knowledge that comes "from the comparison ofideas" (T 124). Still, Hume requires that proofs, despite their empirical origin, must nonetheless be "entirely free from doubt Volume XVII Number 2 105 KENNETH G. FERGUSON and uncertainty" (T 124); proofs, then, must be superior to ordinary causal arguments that are able to offer only a degree of probability (T 124). By his own examples, namely, that "the sun will rise to-morrow" and "all men must dye" (T 124), likewise from the essay "Of Miracles" itself, that "lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air" and that "fire consumes wood" (E 114), Hume makes it clear that "proofs" are simply to be causal arguments uniformly confirmed by a great wealth of past experience: empirical conclusions so sound that any who deny them "wou'd appear ridiculous" (T 124). Taking Hume's definition of "proof" to heart, we might infer that his "direct and full proof against miracles is not then to be an a priori or deductive conclusion, but instead merely a fully convincing induction, along the Unes of"all men must dye." This,would appear to dispel Fogelin's hope to portray the argument as a priori; but the logic ofHume's special proofagainst miracles is somewhat complicated. As Hume's own selection of examples verify, a proof, at least ordinarily, issues in the confirmation of a law of nature. This contrasts with the special proof against miracles where the object is, of course, not to defend a law of nature, but rather to exploit reasoning about the formation of such laws to prove a result regarding the occurrence of miracles. The proof against miracles, consequently, concerns causes, but is not necessarily a causal argument in the ordinary sense. Indeed, it might be properly thought ofas a "meta-causal" argument, if such a term is allowed. And such an argument may potentially have, as Fogelin proposes, an a priori... (shrink)

The problem of the time of a killing concerns exactly when and where to locate our actions. It is a problem for many of our actions beyond killing, and there are versions of the problem that can be raised no matter where your theory locates actions in particular. To answer the problem, I claim that we should be guided to the referent of ‘the killing’ by examining the definition of ‘to kill.’ Once we have the correct definition, we can see (...) that there are several candidate events that might be the referent of ‘the killing,’ but that the definition does not determine which of them is the referent. So, I argue that it is indeterminate or vague which event is ‘the killing.’ This solution is general across many action verbs, appeals to a minimally controversial type of vagueness, avoids the unintuitive results of views that determinately locate killings, and is compatible with different views about the location of actions. In the concluding section, I show how appealing to vagueness is distinct from and superior to appealing to ambiguity. (shrink)

Behaving presents an overview of the recent history and methodology of behavioral genetics and psychiatric genetics, informed by a philosophical perspective. Kenneth F. Schaffner addresses a wide range of issues, including genetic reductionism and determinism, "free will," and quantitative and molecular genetics. The latter covers newer genome-wide association studies that have produced a paradigm shift in the subject, and generated the problem of "missing heritability." Schaffner also presents cases involving pro and con arguments for genetic testing for IQ and (...) for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Schaffner examines the nature-nurture controversy and Developmental Systems Theory using C. elegans or "worm" studies as a test case, concluding that genes are special and provide powerful tools, including "deep homology," for investigating behavior. He offers a novel account of biological knowledge emphasizing the importance of models, mechanisms, pathways, and networks, which clarifies how partial reductions provide explanations of traits and disorders. The book also includes examinations of personality genetics and of schizophrenia and its etiology, alongside interviews with prominent researchers in the area, and discusses debates about psychosis that led to changes in the DSM-5 in 2013.Schaffner concludes by discussing additional philosophical implications of the genetic analyses in the book, some major worries about "free will," and arguments pro and con about why genes and DNA are so special. Though genes are special, newer perspectives presented in this book will be needed for progress in behavioral genetics- perspectives that situate genes in complex multilevel prototypic pathways and networks. With a mix of optimism and pessimism about the state of the field and the subject, Schaffner's book will be of interest to scholars in the history and philosophy of science, medicine, and psychiatry. (shrink)

The struggles that Alfred Schutz, Aron Gurwitsch, Harold Garfinkel, and other social phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists have had with Edmund Husserl’s progenitive but inconsistent notion of intersubjectivity are summarized and assessed. In particular, an account of Schutz’s objections to intersubjective constitution is presented. The commonly pervading elements and major differences within this lineage of inquiry – a four generation-long lineage of teacher and student that commences with Husserl, runs through Schutz and Gurwitsch, then Garfinkel, and then the present author and his (...) colleagues – are discussed, under the advisory (as suggested by Maurice Natanson) that what Husserl sought was more important than what he found. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 33.2 (2005) 71-97 [Access article in PDF] The Subject of Religion Lacan and the Ten Commandments Kenneth Reinhard Julia Reinhard Lupton Despite Freud's Nietzschean unmasking of religion as ideology, psychoanalysis has frequently been attacked as itself a religion, a cabal of analyst-priests dedicated to the worship of a dead master. Such critics "do not believe in Freud" in much the same way as atheists "do not believe (...) in God," and their rejections of psychoanalysis in the name of the secular partake in the very structure of religious thought they claim to repudiate. In Seminar XXI: Les non-dupes errent, Lacan comments on the blindness of the atheistic insight concerning religion: "I know that you're not believers, right? But that doesn't mean that you aren't all the more conned... because even if you are not believers, you still believe in that aspiration [for the love of God]. I won't say that you suppose it; rather, it supposes you" [Dec. 18, 1973; our trans.]. In Lacan's analysis, it is not that secular intellectuals suffer from unexamined religious "suppositions" or assumptions, to be swept away through a little ideology-critique or time on the couch. The case is rather, in Lacan's strong formulation, that religious discourse supposes us—supports and underwrites our very structures of being, subjectivity, and social interaction. That is, the secular subject is produced by the religious discourses that precede and continue to speak through it; the challenge for the contemporary critic is not to silence or debunk those discourses, but rather to bring the modern subject to assume responsibility for their enunciation.Throughout the decades of his seminar, Lacan addressed the monotheistic foundations of Western subjectivity as a set of discursive ruptures or cuts which continue to scar and brand the modern subject beyond their secular abrogation. Distinguishing between Freud "the individual with his atheistic profession of faith" and "the Freud who was the first to acknowledge the value and relevance of [the] myth... we call the death of God" [S VII 192–93], Lacan insists that Freud regarded monotheism as an epochal divide that irrevocably altered all that came before and after it: "On the left of this [monotheistic] message, there are some things that are henceforth outdated, obsolete; they no longer hold beyond the manifestation of the message. On the right, things are quite different" [172]. What, in Lacan's analysis, is the difference that monotheism has made, both during its periods of dominance and after? The laws, narratives, and symbols of monotheism continue to undergird key fantasies of personhood, nationhood, and neighborhood in the modernity that purports to have supplanted them. In Lacan's formulation, monotheism "supposes" the subject of these fantasies, precipitating it from out of the expanse of signifiers and in relation to a sublime object of both unbearable enjoyment and social obligation. Moreover, it is the scandal and the gift of monotheism that it not only creates moments of traumatic singularity, but also thinks the singular as trauma, rending the fabric of an animistic nature which would unite every polarity of being in the fullness of a sexual relation. Unlike the gods of Greek philosophy, the monotheistic God is not part of the nature he creates. In its decisive thinking of singularity, monotheism elicits and eludes all rapprochement with philosophical conceptions of the One, whether in the guise of Hellenized Judaism, Pauline theology, or Arab Aristotelianism. Lacan extends the monotheistic project of thinking singularity [End Page 71] by insisting that "there is something of One" [il y a de l'Un]—not the self-identical One of Greek logic, mathematics, and cosmology, but the One of a violent rupture that creates subjects and their worlds around a void, an un that un-does the primacy it speaks.If, from the Lacanian vantage, the singular invention of the God shared by the People of the Book forever separates religion from philosophy, we would also insist that religion is not simply a subset of "culture," understood as the symbolic practices that unify a people... (shrink)

Philosophers and bioethicists have mostly given up on human dignity. As a concept, dignity has seemed obscure and unintelligible, or forbidden because of its connection with theology. Here I take a fresh look, and identify two families of dignity concepts: dignity as arche and dignity as telos. Arche draws on the idea of an origin or source, as in ‘archetype’ or ‘archeology.’ Dignity as arche refers to the qualities inherent in a being that is the source (the arche) of our (...) duties to that being. Dignity as telos is the endpoint (telos) that we try to promote in our patients and in ourselves. I illustrate these ideas using examples from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book for young readers, A Little Princess. Identifying these two families of dignity concepts helps to identify the dignity-related tasks for psychotherapists. These are to help patients recognise, connect with, and respect their own dignity as arche, and to help them realise their own dignity as telos. Revisiting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps us to see how these tasks also apply to the broader goals of healthcare. (shrink)

Authority is defined by the capacity to provide new reasons that apply to its subjects. There are two types of authority that differ from each other with respect to the kind of reasons their directives or opinions create. Authorityepistemic authority is distinguished from Authoritypractical authority in that the former is the source of reasons to believe and the latter is the source of reasons for action. Both kinds of authority are of considerable philosophical importance. This entry, however, is concerned with (...) the notion of practical authority and will focus on certain conceptual and normative issues arising in connection with such authority. In particular, this entry will be concerned with identifying the properties that constitute something as a practical authority and hence distinguish authorities from non-authorities; explicating the kind of reasons that bind subjects of a practical authority and give rise to a justified expectation, on the part of the authority, of subject compliance; and examining what standards a practical authority must satisfy to be morally legitimate. The reason for the emphasis is the central importance of practical authority in law. Law characteristically regulates subject behavior by issuing legal norms thought to be authoritative in the sense that they create new reasons for compliance that bind the subject. While the notion of epistemic authority figures into many issues arising in connection with law, this entry is intended to clarify the notion of practical authority that is thought to ground the binding quality of legal directives. Although there will be some discussion of epistemic authority and its relation to practical Authoritypractical, the relevant form of authority for our purposes is practical authority—again, as this is central to understanding the mechanisms by which law regulates subject behavior. (shrink)

Alexander Pruss and I have proposed an analysis of omnipotence which makes no use of the problematic terms 'power' and 'ability'. However, this raises an obvious worry: if our analysis is not related to the notion of power, then how can it count as an analysis of omnipotence, the property of being all-powerful, at all? In this paper, I show how omnipotence can be understood as the possession of infinite power (general, universal, or unlimited power) rather than the possession of (...) particular powers. I then argue that the ordinary notions of particular powers or abilities can be understood as applying vague limitations to the notion of infinite power. The vagueness of these limitations is the source of the well-known difficulties in the analysis of ability. (shrink)

Lifelong learning has become a key concern as the focus of educational policy has shifted from mass schooling toward the learning society. The shift started in the mid 1960s and early 1970s under the impetus of a group of writers and adult educators, gravitating around UNESCO, with a humanist philosophy and a leftist agenda. The vocabulary of that movement was appropriated in the 1990s by other interests with a very different performativist agenda emphasizing effectiveness and economic outcomes. This change of (...) interest, described in the book, has signified the death of education. The Learning Society in a Postmodern World explores different theoretical resources to respond to this situation, mainly those that propose some restoration of an educated public or, to the contrary, individual self-creation, and uses the works of a broad range of philosophers and thinkers - notably MacIntyre, Habermas, Foucault, Derrida, Rorty, and Baudrillard. In addition, it raises important questions about postmodern and poststructuralist responses to education in the postmodern world. Its comprehensiveness and historical background make it an essential textbook for theoretical courses in lifelong learning and in educational theory in general. A broad range of interests and subject matter make it important reading for educators, policy specialists, media specialists, researchers on the subject of lifelong learning and on the relation between education and the postmodern world, political theorists, philosophers, and philosophers of education. (shrink)

Hume observes in the Treatise: “There is no question, which on account of its importance, as well as difficulty, has caus’d more disputes both among antient and modern philosophers, than this concerning the efficacy of causes, or that quality which made them be followed by their effects”.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric and AngerKenneth S. Zagacki and Patrick A. Boleyn-FitzgeraldSince most believe anger can be either good or bad, rhetors face a moral problem of determining when anger is appropriate and when it is not. They face a corresponding rhetorical problem in deciding when and how to express anger and determining the role that it might play in public discourse, with specific audiences and in particular rhetorical situations. Rhetorical scholars (...) have catalogued whole genres of angry rhetoric—apocalyptic genres, jeremiads, the demonizing rhetoric of religious and political leaders—wherein the rhetorical display of anger is explained in terms of situational conventions and cultural norms.1 Yet these scholars have not easily resolved the moral problems associated with angry rhetoric. Aristotle suggested the earliest and most obvious solutions to these problems. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he outlines a typology for discerning the moral limits of anger and, by implication, angry rhetoric. And in Book II of the Rhetoric he asserts that the orator needs to know the structure of emotions like anger and how to intensify and dissipate them. Or, in other words, the orator must know how to make it reasonable to be angry. Some contemporary philosophers have gone further, suggesting that a failure to feel and express anger in public betrays an insufficient concern for justice and self respect.In this essay, we follow Aristotle in arguing that anger is sometimes the emotion we expect people to feel or the rhetorical response we expect them to display and evoke in others. But we also challenge part of Aristotle's argument by asking: "Even when angry rhetoric would appear to be a reasonable, morally appropriate response, is there a way in which rhetors might manage anger in their public discourse in order to achieve ends which are both morally and pragmatically productive?" The answer, we propose, lies in what we call "non-angry" rhetoric, which involves transforming and reflecting upon anger in public discourse. Because such rhetoric often promotes noble ends such as reconciliation and forgiveness, it is at least morally permissible and more likely morally virtuous.2 In order to establish these claims, our analysis focuses on the case of Nelson Mandela and his "Address to the Interfaith Commissioning Service for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission."3 In this speech, Mandela, as our [End Page 290] analysis demonstrates, managed anger and turned it into an object of reflection, thereby illustrating what opportunities for reconciliation and democratic deliberation would look like during the difficult period attending the political transition in South Africa in general and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in particular. His "Address" exemplified a unique moment when the rhetoric and the ethics of anger came together in a public performance. While acknowledging the understandable anger of blacks, Mandela (who may in fact have harbored considerable anger himself) simultaneously suggested that by engendering a less hostile social-political context, in which participants maintained their self-respect without necessarily sacrificing justice, a new democratic community could emerge. This would be a community where, as he described it, individuals began to reconcile with and no longer persecute one another. As Aristotle might explain, the purpose of Mandela's speech was to manage the anger of blacks, so that they would then be able to deliberate properly about the issues before the TRC and about the larger democratic transition. As the philosopher Eugene Garver says, the particular passions Aristotle chooses to explore in the Rhetoric serve a role necessary for the kind of public, political decision making he assigns to rhetoric. These emotions serve to integrate—or segregate, as the case may be—"distinct individuals into a deliberative or judging body, or demos" (1994, 131).What we are recommending, then, is that rhetoric encompasses both considerations of moral desert as well as broader moral concerns. While there are times when individuals seem to deserve our angry rhetoric, it may not be justified from a broader moral perspective, especially when the goal is the good of the state or the community—viz., if angry rhetoric leads to the violent dissolution of democratic community. Ultimately, we argue that the moral constitution of political, deliberative communities must be viewed in terms... (shrink)

In 300 BCE, the tutor of the heir-apparent to the Chu throne was laid to rest in a tomb at Jingmen, Hubei province in central China. A corpus of bamboo-strip texts that recorded the philosophical teachings of an era was buried with him. The tomb was sealed, and China quickly became the theater of the Qin conquest, an event that proved to be one of the most significant in ancient history. For over two millennia, the texts were forgotten. But in (...) October 1993, they were unearthed. The discovery of the Guodian texts, together with other recently discovered Warring States manuscripts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese intellectual history. Kenneth Holloway argues that the Guodian corpus puts forth a political philosophy based on the harmonious interconnection of individuals engaged in moral self-cultivation. This unique worldview, says Holloway, cannot meaningfully be categorized as "Confucian" or "Daoist," because it shares important concepts and vocabulary with a number of different textual traditions that have anachronistically been characterized as competing or incompatible "schools" of thought. He finds that within the Guodian corpus familiar philosophical concepts and texts are applied in distinctive ways, presenting a worldview that is quite different from the received textual traditions. In the corpus, the most important function of government is to assist in the harmonization of state and family relations. It sees the relationship between these two entities - the family and the collection of families that ultimately constitute the state - as being inherently conflicting social groupings. The texts posit an interesting solution: State and family disharmony can be overcome by developing a hybrid government that employs both meritocratic and aristocratic methods. Without knowledge of the emphasis on hybridization found in the Guodian texts, however, scholars were unable to understand the interrelationships between these two methods of government. This new understanding illuminates central issues of government, religion, and philosophy in early China that were overlooked in received texts. As part of the contribution to our understanding of this particular body of texts, Holloway proposes a methodology for assessing a corpus of texts without relying on assumptions and definitions that derive from two thousand years of scholarship. The Guodian corpus, and Holloway's analysis of it, are now absolutely indispensable to any student or scholar of ancient Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)

I argue here for a view I call epistemic separabilism , which states that there are two different ways we can be evaluated epistemically when we assert a proposition or treat a proposition as a reason for acting: one in terms of whether we have adhered to or violated the relevant epistemic norm, and another in terms of how epistemically well-positioned we are towards the fact that we have either adhered to or violated said norm. ES has been appealed to (...) most prominently in order to explain why epistemic evaluations that conflict with the knowledge norm of assertion and practical reasoning nevertheless seem correct. Opponents of such a view are committed to what I call epistemic monism , which states that there is only one way we can be properly evaluated as epistemically appropriate asserters and practical reasoners, namely in terms of whether we have adhered to or violated the relevant norm. Accepting ES over EM has two significant consequences: first, a “metaepistemological” consequence that the structure of normative epistemic evaluations parallels that found in other normative areas , and second, that the knowledge norms of assertion and practical reasoning are no worse off than any alternatives in terms of either explanatory power or simplicity. (shrink)

This article undertakes to examine the reception of Platonic theories of falsification in the contemporary philosophy of Leo Strauss and his adherents. The aim of the article is to consider the Straussian response to, and interaction with, Platonic ideas concerning deception and persuasion with an emphasis on the arguments found in the Laws. The theme of central interest in this analysis is Plato's development of paramyth in the Laws. Paramyth entails the use of rhetorical language in order to persuade the (...) many that it is to their advantage to obey certain laws. It does so without explaining in detail why a given law is ethically correct and its use assumes that the audience, on the whole, is not capable of understanding the finer philosophical underpinnings of the law. The so-called 'noble lie' of the Republic is also considered in this context. The crucial issue, for Plato if not for Strauss, is whether or not an instance of falsification, however minor, for the purposes of persuasion contains 'truth-value', that is, whether it is morally justifiable in terms of ends and means. In terms of Strauss's reception of Plato, such issues as ancient Hebrew mysticism, Medieval Jewish and Islamic scholarship and Heideggerian Phenomenology figure in the argument. Ultimately, the article finds that Strauss and his followers have constructed a particular view of Platonic ideas that, while unique, is not compatible with their original signification. (shrink)

There are many historical concerns about freedom that have come to be deemphasized in the free will literature itself—for instance, worries around the tyranny of government or the alienation of capitalism. It is hard to see how the current free will literature respects these, or indeed how they could even find expression. This paper seeks to show how these and other concerns can be reintegrated into the debate by appealing to a levels ontology. Recently, Christian List and others have considered (...) how the notion of levels could be relevant to the free will debate. Invariably, however, the focus is on the significance of facts at lower levels. The threats come from below, from fundamental physics or neuroscience. Here, I aim to show how we can frame many interesting concerns about free will in terms of threats from above. After arguing that determination from above is no less threatening, I catalogue such concerns that might constitute threats to our freedom. Doing this not only allows us to show how these concerns relate to those standardly discussed, but it pushes us to expand our conception of freedom. (shrink)

Kenneth Dorter's Can Different Cultures Think the Same Thoughts? is a study of fundamental issues in metaphysics and ethics across major philosophical traditions of the world, including the way in which metaphysics can be a foundation for ethics, as well as the importance of metaphysics on its own terms. Dorter examines such questions through a detailed comparison of selected major thinkers and classic works in three global philosophical traditions, those of India, China, and the West. In each chapter Dorter (...) juxtaposes and compares two or more philosophers or classic works from different traditions, from Spinoza and Shankara, to Confucius and Plato, to Marcus Aurelius and the Bhagavad Gita. In doing so he explores different perspectives and reveals limitations and assumptions that might otherwise be obscure. The goal of Dorter's cross-cultural approach is to consider how far works from different cultures can be understood as holding comparable philosophical views. Although Dorter reveals commonalities across the different traditions, he makes no claim that there is such a thing as a universal philosophy. Clearly there are fundamental disagreements among the philosophers and works studied. Yet in each of the case studies of a particular chapter, we can discover a shared, or at least analogous, way of looking at issues across different cultures. All those interested in metaphysics, ethics, Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, and comparative philosophy will find much of interest in this book. (shrink)

Many significant moral theories, ones to which a large number of philosophers pledge themselves, employ in a fundamental way the criterion of universalizability. This is true not only of Kant and his more illustrious successors, but also utilitarians of many sorts. But concomitant with adherence to universalizability as a moral criterion is adherence to the belief that certain features of putatively moral acts and immoral acts are relevant and others irrelevant to the determination to the rightness or wrongness of those (...) acts. Despite the fact that this belief is problematic, few moral philosophers have openly struggled with the problem of relevant descriptions. It is as if investigation of this problem would invite unsettlable doubts about universalizability itself. (shrink)

In Modernism as a Philosophical Problem Robert Pippin offers an interpretation of post-Kantian continental philosophy that locates the project of autonomy or self-determination at the center of the modernity/postmodernity debate and presents Hegel as a kind of radical, post-Kantian modernist, whose philosophical "experiment" is preferable to more recent attempts to overcome or deconstruct metaphysics. I raise some questions about the adequacy of Pippin's interpretation of Hegel's notion of a rational justification, at least as it bears on his argument in the (...) Philosophy of Right, and I express some reservations about Pippin's own attempt to view modernity in terms of the project of autonomy. I conclude with some reasons for preferring Habermas's account of modernity which, without abandoning the project of autonomy, relinquishes the idea of a self-grounding of reason and proposes a more modest role for philosophy within the current division of intellectual labor. (shrink)

The paradox of Secher Nbiw, the Golden Path, is that the prescient God Emperor Leto II Atreides – son of Paul – must essentially enslave human kind to bring about its eventual liberation. Future humans with the genetics or technology to evade prescience would be invisible not only to their enemies, but to the God Emperor himself. One of the most important interests humans have is in self‐determination – in being the authors of our own lives. Like science fiction authors, (...) philosophers sometimes contemplate different “possible worlds,” situations that might exist if only events had gone a little differently. For most of human history, selecting the sex of children has primarily been accomplished through the crude and costly method of post natal infanticide. The “openness” of a child's future is difficult to maximize because the pursuit of one opportunity often closes off others. (shrink)

This article argues that the Mondragon cooperatives, a network of worker-owned businesses in the Basque region of Spain, offers a concrete example of Deweyan economy, wherein democracy is part of everyday work-life. It first identifies three central features of Deweyan economy: a) its notion of economic growth is rooted in human growth; b) it is organic and evolutionary, not ideological or utopian; and c) it is empirical and experimental. Second, the article sketches some of the important historical and philosophical influences (...) upon and distinct features of the Mondragon cooperatives, and, third, it indicates how the Mondragon cooperatives manifest each of the three central features of Deweyan economy. The article concludes by suggesting that the Mondragon cooperatives have achieved a previously unknown level of economic democracy and that its recent modifications in response to changing economic conditions, far from being retreats from fundamental principles, as some critics maintain, are evidence of Mondragon’s experimental, non-ideological character. Furthermore, it is an economic model that transcends the stale, false capitalist-socialist dichotomy and thereby helps us to imagine creative solutions to current economic problems. (shrink)

The rapid development of connectionist models in computer science and of powerful computational tools in neuroscience has encouraged eliminativist materialist philosophers to propose specific alternatives to traditional mentalistic theories of mind. One of the problems associated with such a move is that elimination of the mental would seem to remove access to ideas like truth as the foundations of normative epistemology. Thus, a successful elimination of propositional or sentential theories of mind must not only replace them for purposes of our (...) psychology, it must also replace them for purposes of the evaluation of our theories and explanations, psychological and otherwise. This paper briefly reviews eliminativist arguments for doubting the correctness of sentential accounts of explanation, understanding, and normative evaluation. It then considers Paul Churchland's (1989) proposed alternative norms, which are framed neurocomputationally. The alternative is found wanting in several specific ways. The arguments for eliminating propositionally-based norms are then re-examined and it is suggested that the need for wholesale elimination is overstated. A clear gap in the traditional epistemological story is identified, however, and a more modest set of norms is proposed as a way of filling this gap, rather than as a way of entirely replacing the traditional framework. (shrink)