The theory of objectification offers a perspective to conceptualize learning as a collective cultural-historical process and to transform classrooms into sites of communal life where students make the experience of an ethics of solidarity, plurality, and inclusivity.

In challenging the implications of my putative counter‐example to Wittgenstein's claim that “It's on the tip of my tongue” (TT) is not the expression of an experience (cf. Philosophical Investigations, p.219)1, Professor Slater writes2 … the obvious way in which to meet the threat to the adequacy of (b1) [which is that the speaker should believe that he may be able to produce the missing word (fairly soon)] is to claim that the utterer of “It's on the tip of my (...) tongue” must not merely believe that he may recall the word fairly soon, he must also believe, i.e., not rule out the possibility that, he may do so without any treatment, i.e., without being prompted by an external source such as cues, pills, or shock, (p.51). (shrink)

Utilitarianism tells us that actions are morally right and good if and to the extent that they add to human happiness or diminish human unhappiness. And—or, perhaps, therefore—it also tells us that the best action a person can perform is that which of all the possible actions open to him is the one which makes the greatest positive difference to human happiness. Moreover, as everyone will also remember, utilitarianism further tries to tell us, perhaps intending it as a corollary of (...) that first, main claim, that the motive for an action has nothing to do with its moral rightness or goodness. But even if, as utilitarians, we accepted the dubious corollary, it would not follow, as many have thought, that utilitarians have no moral interest in motives. For unless, absurdly, a utilitarian believed either that there was never more than a fortuitous connection between on the one hand what we intended to do and on the other what we did and the consequences of what we did, or that, if there were such connections, we could not know of them, he must believe, as a moralist, that the best motive a person can have for performing an action is likely to be the desire to produce the happiest result. Indeed, utilitarians ought to be morally committed, it would seem, to trying to find out as much as they can about the consequences of our actions, e.g. what connections exist, if any, between how we raise children and what sort of adults they grow up to be. (shrink)

Having distinguished essentially fictional characters from inessentially fictional ones and having identified Anna Karenina as an inessentially fictional character, Barrie Paskins solves the problem I posed in ‘How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?’ thus: ‘our pity towards the inessentially fictional is, or can without forcing be construed as, pity for those people if any who are in the same bind as the character in the fiction’. Making a similar point in a footnote, ‘our emotions towards (...) fictional characters are directed towards those real people, if any, who are in essentially the same situation’, he continues in the text, ‘This possibility is neglected by Radford and Weston.’. (shrink)

In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of "nature ethics," offering an alternative ecofeminist approach. Seeking to heal the divisions between the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.

What is the connection between pain and pain behaviour? Is it logically necessary, or is it contingent? Or is it too complex to be classified in terms of this Humean dichotomy? Surely it is too complex, for if we say the relationship is a necessary one, we should, apparently, have to deny that there could be pain without pain behaviour, or pain behaviour without pain; yet stoicism and shamming pain occur. If we say that the relationship is not necessary and (...) so contingent, we should have to say that the natural correlate or expression of pain might have been languor or jolly laughter, and, conversely, that wincing, grimacing, writhing, groaning, etc., might have been the natural correlate or expression of sensations quite different from pains. To avoid the first difficulty it could be said that necessary connections need not be invariant. To avoid the second, it might be pointed out that some contingent connections are less contingent than others, and that, in particular, causal relationships need not always be of the external, Humean kind. But even if these observations are correct they are difficult precisely because they attempt to soften and blur a distinction whose hardness and exhaustiveness is constitutive of its clarity and strength. If we modify Hume's law we may do so only after a careful examination of a case which forces us to do so. (shrink)

In the Lectures on Religious Belief Wittgenstein is reported as saying that the non-believer cannot contradict the believer. This claim may seem both to run against our experience, particularly if we are apostates, and to offer a protection to the believer from the most direct criticism. Such claims, and others which are less clear but just as surprising, combine to suggest that much of what Wittgenstein has to say about religion and religious belief is obscurantist, and he acknowledges that some (...) say this of him. (shrink)

The origin of this paper is a problem: I had long been struck by the fact that if my glance happened to fall on a newspaper, a message on a note pad, printing on a label, etc., I would begin to read what was there written or printed—if I could see it and it was in English. If I can see it, and it is in English, I cannot but read what my glance falls on, even if I wish not (...) to do so. So my reading—at least on these occasions and of this brief sort—seemed to be involuntary. The illiterate person, of course, cannot read and, in that way, is not free to read. The person learning to read does not read freely. But the ‘free’ reader is not free not- to read that on which his glance falls. (shrink)

The hypotheses in both target articles rely implicitly on much the same logic. For a “social-bonding” device to make sense, there must be an underlying reason why an otherwise-arbitrary behaviour sustains alliances – namely, credible signals of one's value to partners. To illustrate our points, we draw on the parallels with supposed bonding behaviours in nonhuman animals.

La publicación de Filosofía de la aritmética (1891) trajo consigo un notable avance en las investigaciones fenomenológicas de E. Husserl, a la vez que se abrió paso entre las indagaciones ya existentes sobre la fundamentación de las matemáticas. Fue precisamente dentro de esta constelación de publicaciones donde se originó una de las polémicas filosóficas más interesantes de las postrimerías del siglo XIX: la recensión de Filosofía de la aritmética hecha por Frege en 1894. Lo que ofreceré en este texto son (...) algunas claves de interpretación que permitirán hacer una revisión juiciosa de aquellos aspectos filosóficos no vistos por Frege en su crítica. Todo ello a través del intercambio epistolar entre ambos, de la exposición de la reseña de 1894 y de las recensiones de Filosofía de la aritmética que han permanecido desconocidas hasta ahora. PALABRAS CLAVE: Filosofía de la aritmética, Fenomenología, Filosofía analítica, Husserl, Frege. (shrink)

This book presents Cicero's natural law theory, including valuable definitions of the state, the ideal state, the ideal ruler, and the laws for the ideal state. Explanations are offered of the Greek sources of Cicero's republican philosophy, his influence on the Principate of Augustus, and his role in the development of modern political philosophy. As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight (John Adams, 1787).

Unreason will arm readers with scientific knowledge to curb the misinformation and misconceptions that increasingly threaten our civil discourse. Even further, these essays present a way for us to be better citizens, equipped to deal with the winds of misinformation and disinformation swirling about us and better able to look ahead to a world where science and reason-indeed just good old common sense-can prevail.

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)

Foundational ontologies, central constructs in ontological investigations and engineering alike, are based on ontological categories. Firstly proposed by Aristotle as the very ur- elements from which the whole of reality can be derived, they are not easy to identify, let alone partition and/or hierarchize; in particular, the question of their number poses serious challenges. The late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg wrote around 1286 a tutorial that can help us today with this exceedingly difficult task. In this paper, I discuss (...) ontological categories and their importance for foundational ontologies from both the contemporary perspective and the original Aristotelian viewpoint, I provide the translation from the Latin into English of Dietrich's De origine II with an introductory elaboration, and I extract a foundational ontology–that is in fact a single-category one–from this text rooted in Dietrich's specification of types of subjecthood and his conception of intentionality as causal operation. (shrink)

In this article, we will make the case for an intercultural philosophy of religion with a special focus on interculturality between Chinese and African philosophies. We will provide an overview of the kind of intercultural philosophy that has already been undertaken between the East and the South and point out that a philosophy of religion has been left out. We will then make the case for a global philosophy of religion approach and why Chinese and African philosophies of religion should (...) engage in philosophical interchanges. We will then highlight some directions for carrying out such a philosophy and explain why the problem of evil may be better addressed from an intercultural perspective. (shrink)

Ontologies are some of the most central constructs in today's large plethora of knowledge technologies, namely in the context of the semantic web. As their coinage indicates, they are direct heirs to the ontological investigations in the long Western philosophical tradition, but it is not easy to make bridges between them. Contemporary ontological commitments often take causality as a central aspect for the ur-segregation of entities, especially in scientific upper ontologies; theories of causality and philosophical ontological investigations often go hand-in-hand, (...) and were essentially inseparable in medieval thought. This constitutes the foundation for a bridge, and this article analyzes the causality-based ontology of the late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg from the viewpoint of today's upper-ontology engineering. In this bridging attempt, it offers a translation into English of the first part of Dietrich's De origine (abbreviated title) that is a compromise between traditional scholarly translations of medieval Latin philosophical texts and contemporary ontology. (shrink)