Saying "yes" to Africa -- Deconstruction of the veil -- Arab-Jew -- Deconstruction and Zionism -- The figure of Jerusalem -- Conjuration -- The secular trace -- The double gesture -- Realism without realism -- The wordless "yes" -- Deconstruction and the African trace.
The people's theatre : a long drawn-out affair -- The cultural historic compromise -- The philosopher's tale : intellectuals and the trajectory of Gauchisme -- Joan of Arc in the Gulag -- The inconceivable revolution -- Factory nostalgia (notes on an article and various books) -- The ethics of sociology.
Syntactical treatments of propositional attitudes are attractive to artificial intelligence researchers. But results of Montague (1974) and Thomason (1980) seem to show that syntactical treatments are not viable. They show that if representation languages are sufficiently expressive, then axiom schemes characterizing knowledge and belief give rise to paradox. Des Rivières and Levesque (1988) characterize a class of sentences within which these schemes can safely be instantiated. These sentences do not quantify over the propositional objects of knowledge and belief. We (...) argue that their solution is incomplete, and extend it by characterizing a more inclusive class of sentences over which the axiom schemes can safely range. Our sentences do quantify over propositional objects. (shrink)
Explaining Attitudes offers a timely and important challenge to the dominant conception of belief found in the work of such philosophers as Dretske and Fodor. According to this dominant view beliefs, if they exist at all, are constituted by states of the brain. Lynne Rudder Baker rejects this view and replaces it with a quite different approach - practical realism. Seen from the perspective of practical realism, any argument that interprets beliefs as either brain states or states of (...) immaterial souls is a 'non-starter'. Practical realism takes beliefs to be states of the whole persons, rather like states of health. What a person believes is determined by what a person would do, say and think in various circumstances. Thus beliefs and other attitudes are interwoven into an integrated, commonsensical conception of reality. (shrink)
In this paper, I explore the question of whether the expected consequences of holding a belief can affect the rationality of doing so. Special attention is given to various ways in which one might attempt to exert some measure of control over what one believes and the normative status of the beliefs that result from the successful execution of such projects. I argue that the lessons which emerge from thinking about the case ofbelief have important implications for the way we (...) should think about the rationality of a number of other propositional attitudes,such as regret, desire, and fear. Finally,I suggest that a lack of clarity with respect to the relevant issues has given rise to a number of rather serious philosophical mistakes. (shrink)
Most contemporary philosophical discussions of intentionality start and end with a treatment of the propositional attitudes. In fact, many theorists hold (tacitly if not explicitly) that all attitudes are propositional attitudes. Our folk-psychological ascriptions suggest, however, that there are non-propositional attitudes: I like Sally, my brother fears snakes, everyone loves my grandmother, and Rush Limbaugh hates Obama. I argue that things are as they appear: there are non-propositional attitudes. More specifically, I argue that there are (...)attitudes that relate individuals to non-propositional objects and do so not in virtue of relating them to propositions. I reach this conclusion by not only showing that attempted analyses of apparently non-propositional attitudes in terms of the propositional fail, but that some non-propositional attitudes don't even supervene on propositional attitudes. If this is correct, then the common discussions of intentionality that address only propositional attitudes are incomplete and those who hold that all intentional states are propositional are mistaken. (shrink)
Many philosophers think, or used to think, that normative judgements are non-cognitive attitudes. Some of these philosophers now think that normative judgements are beliefs of which we can give a minimalist account, and others think that normative judgements are beliefs that do not purport to represent the world. In this paper, I argue that these philosophers’ views all face the same objection, and that this objection shows that their views are false. I conclude that normative judgements (...) are beliefs of which we cannot give a minimalist account and that purport to represent the world. (shrink)
On reading David Chalmers's book, The Conscious Mind (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), one is struck by the author's efforts to meet the difficulties and obscurities in understanding the human mind, as indeed most other philosophers have, by hazarding theories. Such undertakings rest on two broad, usually unexamined, assumptions. One is that we have direct access to our conscious minds such that pronouncements about it and its contents are descriptive. The other is that our actions have causal explanations (...) which incorporate beliefs, intentions, desires, etc . (propositional attitudes) as functional elements. These assumptions are questioned in this essay. They rest upon a notion of data which is out of place in explicating the mind. The conclusion reached is that we do not know our own minds because there are no data upon which such knowledge might be founded, and, consequently, there can be no responsible theories of mind. (shrink)
A central job for propositions is to be the objects of the attitudes. Propositions are the things we doubt, believe and suppose. Some philosophers have thought that propositions are sets of possible worlds. But many have become convinced that such an account individuates propositions too coarsely. This raises the question of how finely propositions should be individuated. An account of how finely propositions should be individuated on which they are individuated very finely is sketched. Objections to the effect (...) that the account individuates propositions too finely are raised and responses to the objections are provided. It is also shown that theories that try to individuate propositions less finely have serious problems. (shrink)
Propositionalism is the view that intentional attitudes, such as belief, are relations to propositions. Propositionalists argue that propositionalism follows from the intuitive validity of certain kinds of inferences involving attitude reports. Jubien (2001) argues powerfully against propositions and sketches some interesting positive proposals, based on Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment, about how to accommodate “propositional phenomena” without appeal to propositions. This paper argues that none of Jubien’s proposals succeeds in accommodating an important range of propositional phenomena, such as (...) the aforementioned validity of attitude-report inferences. It then shows that the notion of a predication act-type, which remains importantly Russellian in spirit, is sufficient to explain the range of propositional phenomena in question, in particular the validity of attitude-report inferences. The paper concludes with a discussion of whether predication act-types are really just propositions by another name. (shrink)
Folk psychological realism is the view that folk psychology is true and that people really do have propositional attitudes, whereas anti-realism is the view that folk psychology is false and people really do not have propositional attitudes. We argue that anti-realism is not worthy of acceptance and that realism is eminently worthy of acceptance. However, it is plainly epistemically possible to favor either of two forms of folk realism: scientific or non-scientific. We argue that non-scientific realism, while perhaps (...) unpopular among philosophers of mind, is a distinct form of realism from scientific realism, and that it is not yet knowable whether scientific or non-scientific realism is true. We also outline how adopting realism, but remaining neutral between scientific and non-scientific realism, offers fresh insights into such topics as instrumentalism, supervenience, the language of thought hypothesis, and elimin-ativism. (shrink)
Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of (...) class='Hi'>philosophers’ other commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)
The paper presents and discusses the so-called Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem (WKR problem) that arises for the fitting-attitudes analysis of value. This format of analysis is exemplified for example by Scanlon's buck-passing account, on which an object's value consists in the existence of reasons to favour the object- to respond to it in a positive way. The WKR problem can be put as follows: It appears that in some situations we might well have reasons to have pro-attitudes (...) toward objects that are not valuable. Or vice versa: we might have reasons not to have pro-attitudes toward some valuable objects. The paper goes through several attempts to solve (or dissolve) the WKR problem and argues that none of them is fully satisfactory. (shrink)
In this paper, I use an example from the history of philosophy to show how independently defining each side of a pair of contrary predicates is apt to lead to contradiction. In the Euthyphro, piety is defined as that which is loved by some of the gods while impiety is defined as that which is hated by some of the gods. Socrates points out that since the gods harbor contrary sentiments, some things are both pious and impious. But “pious” and (...) “impious” are contrary predicates; they cannot simultaneously characterize the same thing. Euthyphro changes his definition, but the problem of recognizing emotional ambivalence is only side-stepped. I go on to show how contemporary philosophers run into a similar problem. According to Prinz, something is good if and only if we harbor positive sentiments towards it and bad if and only if we harbor negative sentiments towards it. Thus, if we are ambivalent towards something (if we harbor both positive and negative sentiments towards it), then it is both good and bad. Like “pious” and “impious”, “good” and “bad” are contraries. Next, according to the fitting-attitude theory first elaborated by Brentano and favored by contemporary meta-ethicists like Blackburn, Brandt, Ewing, Garcia, Gibbard, McDowell, and Wiggins, something is good if and only if it is a fitting (appropriate) object of approbation, and something is bad if and only if it is a fitting (appropriate) object of disapprobation. I argue that moral ambivalence is sometimes appropriate, i.e., that the correct response to some things is to both love and hate them. Hence, according to the fitting-attitudes theory, some things are both good and bad. I conclude by discussing a variety of ways in which the problem of ambivalence may be solved, suggesting that attitudes of approbation and disapprobation be further individuated by the reasons for them. (shrink)
Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western philosophers developed theories of the world which express simultaneously their sense of wonder and their intuition that the world should be comprehensible. But their enterprise was by no means limited to this proto-scientific task. Through, for instance, Heraclitus' enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's paradoxes, the Western world was introduced to metaphysics, rationalist theology, ethics, and logic, by thinkers who often seem to be mystics (...) or shamans as much as philosophers or scientists in the modern mould. And out of the Sophists' reflections on human beings and their place in the world arose and interest in language, and in political, moral, and social philosophy. This volume contains a translation of all the most important fragments of the Presocratics and Sophists, and of the most informative testimonia from ancient sources, supplemented by lucid commentary. (shrink)
Beginning with the death of Socrates in 399 BC, and following the strand of philosophical inquiry through the centuries to recent figures such as Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, Bryan Magee's conversations with fifteen contemporary writers and philosophers provide an accessible and exciting account of Western philosophy and its greatest thinkers. With contributions from A. J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, and John Searle, the book is not only an introduction to the philosophers of the past, but (...) gives an invaluable insight into the view and personalities of some of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. (shrink)
The great philosophers missed it, and here are the reasons why, how to bring them all up to date, a woman's take on things, with new categories and concepts, like love, oneness, the feminine, the earth, Spirit, the end of the old order, and the beginning of the new.
A prospective introduction -- The received view -- Troubles with the received view -- Are propositional attitudes relations? -- Foundations of a measurement-theoretic account of the attitudes -- The basic measurement-theoretic account -- Elaboration and explication of the proposed measurement-theoretic account.
The suggestion that philosophers are responsible for global warming seems, on the face of it, absurd. However, that we might cause global warming has been known for over a century. If we had had in existence a more rigorous kind of academic inquiry devoted to promoting human welfare, giving priority to problems of living, humanity might have become aware of the dangers of global warming long ago, and might have taken steps to meet these dangers decades ago. That we (...) do not have academic inquiry of this type, giving priority to problems of living and able to warn humanity of the impending disaster of global warming, is the result of a philosophical mistake – a mistake about what constitutes rigorous intellectual inquiry. This is a mistake of philosophers. Thus philosophers, in failing to grasp the profound intellectual and humanitarian failings of academia as it is at present organized (the outcome of implementing a seriously defective philosophy of inquiry) can perhaps be said to be responsible for global warming. (shrink)
In this book, Marina McCoy explores Plato’s treatment of the rhetoric of philosophers and sophists through a thematic treatment of six different Platonic dialogues, including Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist, and Phaedras. She argues that Plato presents the philosopher and the sophist as difficult to distinguish, insofar as both use rhetoric as part of their arguments. Plato does not present philosophy as rhetoric-free, but rather shows that rhetoric is an integral part of the practice of philosophy.
The 40 essays in this volume, written by an outstanding international assembly of scholars, provide cogent and accessible discussions of key philosophers from ...
There is currently little empirical information about attitudes towards cognitive enhancement - the use of pharmaceutical drugs to enhance normal brain functioning. It is claimed this behaviour most commonly occurs in students to aid studying. We undertook a qualitative assessment of attitudes towards cognitive enhancement by conducting 19 semi-structured interviews with Australian university students. Most students considered cognitive enhancement to be unacceptable, in part because they believed it to be unethical but there was a lack of consensus on (...) whether it was similar or different to steroid use in sport. There was support for awareness campaigns and monitoring of cognitive enhancement use of pharmaceutical drugs. An understanding of student attitudes towards cognitive enhancement is important in formulating future policy. (shrink)
In this rich and detailed study of early modern women's thought, Jacqueline Broad explores the complexity of women's responses to Cartesian philosophy and its intellectual legacy in England and Europe. She examines the work of thinkers such as Mary Astell, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham, who were active participants in the intellectual life of their time and were also the respected colleagues of philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz and Locke. She also illuminates the continuities (...) between early modern women's thought and the anti-dualism of more recent feminist thinkers. The result is a more gender-balanced account of early modern thought than has hitherto been available. Broad's clear and accessible exploration of this still-unfamiliar area will have a strong appeal to both students and scholars in the history of philosophy, women's studies, and the history of ideas. (shrink)
Counterfactual attitudes like imagining, dreaming, and wishing create a problem for the standard formal semantic theory of de re attitude ascriptions. I show how the problem can be avoided if we represent an agent's attitudinal possibilities using "multi-centered worlds", possible worlds with multiple distinguished individuals, each of which represents an individual with whom the agent is acquainted. I then present a compositional semantics for de re ascriptions according to which singular terms are "assignment-sensitive" expressions and attitude verbs are "assignment (...) shifters". (shrink)
Are horror films immoral? Gianluca Di Muzio argues that horror films of a certain kind are immoral because they undermine the reactive attitudes that are responsible for human agents being disposed to respond compassionately to instances of victimization. I begin with this argument as one instance of what I call the Argument from Reactive Attitudes (ARA), and I argue that Di Muzio’s attempt to identify what is morally suspect about horror films must be revised to provide the most (...) persuasive interpretation of the ARA. I then argue that the ARA provides a compelling standard for evaluating the moral permissibility of creating and viewing horror films, yet I note that it is an exceedingly difficult practical task evaluating the risk that these films create for our reactive attitudes. My conclusion is that the ARA provides a useful way or orienting ourselves to the complicated details of evaluating the moral status of horror films. (shrink)
The 'Therapeutae' were a Jewish group of ascetic philosophers who lived outside Alexandria in the middle of the first century CE. They are described in Philo's treatise De Vita Contemplativa and have often been considered in comparison with early Christians, the Essenes, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. But who were they really? This study focuses particularly on issues of history, rhetoric, women, and gender in a wide exploration of the group, and comes to new conclusions about the 'Therapeutae' and (...) their relationship with the Jewish allegorical school of exegesis in Alexandria. The volume includes a new translation of De Vita Contemplativa. (shrink)
What better introduction to the world of philosophy than through the lives of its most prominent citizens. In The Philosophers, we are introduced to twenty-eight of the greatest thinkers in Western civilization, ranging from Aristotle and Plato to Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Sartre. An illustrious team of scholars takes us on a concise and illuminating tour of some of the most brilliant minds and enduring ideas in history. Here is Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Plato's cave of shadows, Schopenhauer's vision of reality (...) as blind, striving Will, Hegel's idea of the World Spirit, Bentham's principle of the Greatest Happiness, Mill's contributions to our understanding of liberty, William James's theory of the stream of consciousness, Husserl's phenomenology, and much more. Readers will find thoughtful discussions of everything from Kant's categorical imperative, to the Christian philosophies of Augustine, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard, to the materialism of Hobbes or Marx, to the modern--and quite different--philosophical systems of Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Each article is illustrated with a portrait of the philosopher, the contributors provide lists for further reading, and the volume includes a chronological table that gives valuable historical context. Here then is an authoritative and engaging guide to the ideas of the most notable philosophers, ranging from antiquity to the present day. The Philosophers shows how these great thinkers wrestled with the central problems of the human condition--with important questions of free will, morality, and the limits of logic and reason--as it illuminates their legacy for our time. (shrink)
The adventure I am now undertaking is an appraisal of my profession, philosophy, of my fellow professionals, the philosophers, and, finally of myself at least ...
Political candidates often believe they must focus their campaign efforts on a small number of swing voters open for ideological change. Based on the wisdom of opinion polls, this might seem like a good idea. But do most voters really hold their political attitudes so firmly that they are unreceptive to persuasion? We tested this premise during the most recent general election in Sweden, in which a left- and a right-wing coalition were locked in a close race. We asked (...) our participants to state their voter intention, and presented them with a political survey of wedge issues between the two coalitions. Using a sleight-of-hand we then altered their replies to place them in the opposite political camp, and invited them to reason about their attitudes on the manipulated issues. Finally, we summarized their survey score, and asked for their voter intention again. The results showed that no more than 22% of the manipulated replies were detected, and that a full 92% of the participants accepted and endorsed our altered political survey score. Furthermore, the final voter intention question indicated that as many as 48% (69.2%) were willing to consider a left-right coalition shift. This can be contrasted with the established polls tracking the Swedish election, which registered maximally 10% voters open for a swing. Our results indicate that political attitudes and partisan divisions can be far more flexible than what is assumed by the polls, and that people can reason about the factual issues of the campaign with considerable openness to change. (shrink)
The outstanding points of The Neglected Canon are that it provides a multicultural anthology of women philosophers: Chinese, European, North and Central American, that it provides a history of women philosophers through selected works from the first century to the beginning of the twentieth century, and that it provides unusual comprehensiveness in its bibliographies, biographies, and introductions to the works. In these three points it offers a more complete text than any yet on the market in this field. (...) Designed for the readership of the advanced college student, it serves as a classroom text for a course in women philosophers, as a supplementary text to introductory courses in philosophy, or in such specific courses as epistemology. It is also designed to serve as a resource for women's history and women's studies. (shrink)
In his article ‘Why Moral Philosophers Are Not and Should Not Be Moral Experts’ David Archard attempts to show that his argument from common-sense morality is more convincing than other competing arguments in the debate. I examine his main line of argumentation and eventually refute his main argument in my reply.
Euthanasia and physician assisted-suicide are terms used to describe the process in which a doctor of a sick or disabled individual engages in an activity which directly or indirectly leads to their death. This behavior is engaged by the healthcare provider based on their humanistic desire to end suffering and pain. The psychiatrist's involvement may be requested in several distinct situations including evaluation of patient capacity when an appeal for euthanasia is requested on grounds of terminal somatic illness or when (...) the patient is requesting euthanasia due to mental suffering. We compare attitudes of 49 psychiatrists towards euthanasia and assisted suicide with a group of 54 other physicians by means of a questionnaire describing different patients, who either requested physician-assisted suicide or in whom euthanasia as a treatment option was considered, followed by a set of questions relating to euthanasia implementation. When controlled for religious practice, psychiatrists expressed more conservative views regarding euthanasia than did physicians from other medical specialties. Similarly female physicians and orthodox physicians indicated more conservative views. Differences may be due to factors inherent in subspecialty education. We suggest that in light of the unique complexity and context of patient euthanasia requests, based on their training and professional expertise psychiatrists are well suited to take a prominent role in evaluating such requests to die and making a decision as to the relative importance of competing variables. (shrink)
This book provides a standard reference of the major medieval Jewish philosophers, as well as an eminently readable narrative of the course of medieval Jewish ...
In this riveting collection, which he has been working on for twenty-five years, Pyke presents 100 black-and-white portraits of contemporary philosophers, ...
Major Philosophers of Jewish Prayer in the Twentieth Century addresses the troubling questions posed by the modern Jewish worshiper, including such obstacles to prayer as the inability to concentrate on the words and meanings of formal liturgy, the paucity of emotional involvement, the lack of theological conviction, the anthropomorphic and particularly the masculine emphasis of prayer nomenclature, and other matters. In assessing these difficultites, Cohen brings to the reader the writings on prayer of some seminal 20th century Jewish theologians. (...) These include Herman Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Avraham Yitzhak, Hoakohen Kook, Mordecai M. Kaplan, R. Arele, Aaron Rote, Elie Munk, Abraham J. Heschel, Jakob J. Petuchowski, Eugene B. Borowitz, and Lawrence A. Hoffman. (shrink)
A comprehensive update of the best-selling first edition, this revitalized new text presents readers with a series of clear, well-written entries focusing on fifty of the most influential philosophers from the last two thousand years. Chosen to present the traditional mainstream of European philosophy, the text also provides a critical survey that meets the needs of readers seeking a broad basic understanding as well as a foundation for further philosophical enquiry. Encompassing a wide range of ancient, medieval and modern (...)philosophers, features of the second edition include: * new entries on Dewey, Collingwood, Popper, Quine, Merleau-Ponty, Ayer and Rawls * a thorough revision of existing entries * a complete update of the further reading section * an expanded glossary * the addition of an alphabetical table of contents and an index for ease of use. Authoritative and highly readable, this book is a vital reference tool for all those wishing to improve their understanding of some of the worlds most fascinating intellectual figures. (shrink)
Pre-Socratics, physiologists, sages and sophists -- Platonists, Cyrenaics, Aristotelians and cynics -- Sceptics, stoics and epicureans -- Classical Chinese philosophers -- Romans (serious and ridiculous) and neoplatonists -- The deaths of Christian saints -- Medieval philosophers: Christian, Islamic, and Judaic -- Philosophy in the Latin Middle Ages -- Renaissance, Reformation and scientific revolution -- Rationalists (material and immaterial), empiricists and religious dissenters -- Philosophes, materialists and sentimentalists -- Many Germans and some non-Germans -- The masters of suspicion and (...) some unsuspicious Americans -- The long twentieth century I: philosophy in wartime -- The long twentieth century II: analytics, continentals, a few moribunds and a near-death experience. (shrink)
This book examines the philosophical foremothers of women’s philosophy and explores what their work may have to offer modern theorizing in feminist ethics. Through such writers as Catharine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, and George Eliot, Gardner interprets a varied selection of moral philosophers in an attempt both to contribute to our understanding of their work, and perhaps even to encourage other philosophers to interpretive work of their own. She also looks into the reasons such forms as novels, letters, and (...) poetry have often been assigned non-philosophical status, while they seem to be prevalent in the work of women philosophers from the history of philosophy. (shrink)
Karl Jaspers died in 1969, leaving unfinished his universal history of philosophy, a history organized around those philosophers who have influenced the course of human thought. The first two volumes of this work appeared in Jasper's lifetime the third and fourth have been gathered from the vast material of his posthumous papers. This is the fourth volume. Following his original plan of "promoting the happiness that comes of meeting great men and sharing in their thoughts," Jaspers discusses Descartes, a (...) pious Catholic who vacillated between rational philosophy and obedience to authority. Lessing, whose thought was clear, open-ended, experimental, hones. Pascal. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Weber, who posed most penetratingly and urgently the "radical questionability of human Existenz." Marx was a dogmatic dreamer, and Einstein a great scientist, but limited in his insight into human existence. Jasper's method is personal, one of constant questioning and struggle, as he enters into dialogue iwth his "eternal contemporaries," the thinkers of the past. For he believes that it is only through communication with others that we come to ourselves and to wisdom. (shrink)
The twelve essays in this volume are not only introductions to some of the most influential thinkers in human history but are also invitations for the reader to participate in a living debate. "What is justice?" "What is truth?" These questions, first posed by Socrates two and a half millennia ago, have lost none of their power to baffle. And while many philosophers have claimed to answer them, ultimately the questions return, compelling us once again. The authors of these (...) essays are distinguished philosophers in their own right. They engage with philosophical ideas rather than merely relaying them. By choosing a specific aspect of their subject's work, they liberate the great philosophers from textbook cliche;s--revealing them in all their freshness and originality. (shrink)
A cautionary note -- Introduction -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau : the philosopher as victim -- Arthur Schopenhauer : the rebarbative bodhisattva -- Friedrich Nietzsche : a sickly Übermensch -- Feature : Nietzsche and Nazism -- Bertrand Russell : the mathematics of human behaviour -- Ludwig Wittgenstein : anger and asceticism -- Martin Heidegger : magician, predator, peasant and Nazi -- Feature : The Héloïse complex -- Jean-Paul Sartre : intellectual tyranny, charm and bad faith -- Feature : Women philosophers behaving (...) badly -- Michel Foucault : madness, sex and punishment -- Feature : Demetrius, philosopher king of Athens. (shrink)
This work examines the nature of what philosophers call de re mental attitudes, paying close attention to the controversies over the nature of these and allied...
Do professional ethicists behave any morally better than other professors do? Do they show any greater consistency between their normative attitudes and their behavior? In response to a survey question, a large majority of professors (83 percent of ethicists, 83 percent of nonethicist philosophers, and 85 percent of nonphilosophers) expressed the view that “not consistently responding to student e-mails” is morally bad. A similarly large majority of professors claimed to respond to at least 95 percent of student e-mails. (...) These professors, and others, were sent three e-mails designed to look like queries from students. Ethicists’ e-mail response rates were not significantly different from the other two groups’. Expressed normative view correlated with self-estimated rate of e-mail responsiveness, especially among the ethicists. Empirically measured e-mail responsiveness, however, was at best weakly correlated with self-estimated e-mail responsiveness; and professors’ expressed normative attitude was not significantly correlated with empirically measured e-mail responsiveness for any of the three groups. (shrink)
" The essays trace the personal philosophical journeys and orientations of a remarkable group of men and women and reveal a fascinating array of intellectual ...
This book makes a stimulating contribution to the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. It begins with a spirited defense of the view that propositions are structured and that propositional structure is "psychologically real." The author then develops a subtle view of propositions and attitude ascription. The view is worked out in detail with attention to such topics as the semantics of conversations, iterated attitude ascriptions, and the role of propositions as bearers of truth. Along the way important issues (...) in the philosophy of mind are addressed. (shrink)
I aim to alleviate the pessimism with which some philosophers regard the 'objective attitude', thereby removing a particular obstacle which P.F. Strawson and others have placed in the way of more widespread scepticism about moral responsibility. First, I describe what I consider the objective attitude to be, and then address concerns about this raised by Susan Wolf. Next, I argue that aspects of certain attitudes commonly thought to be opposed to the objective attitude are in fact compatible with (...) it. Finally, I examine the prospects of someone who wishes to adopt the objective attitude permanently. In response to philosophers who claim that this would be psychologically impossible, I argue that our commitment to attitudes that presuppose moral responsibility can soften and fade, often without our noticing it. (shrink)
Philosophic writing appears in a variety of genres, addressed to a variety of audiences; it appears nestled within distinctive 'enterprises' : Plato, Berkeley and Hume wrote dialogues; Augustine and Rousseau wrote autobiographical confessions; Mill and Bernard Williams wrote reports to Parliament; Boethius and Descartes wrote meditations; Bacon, Montaign and Hume wrote essays; Aquinas and our contemporaries contribte articles;Leibniz and Hume wrote histories' they all wrote letters and discourses.
Neosentimentalist accounts of value need an explanation of which of the sentiments they discuss are pro-attitudes, which attitudes are con-attitudes, and why. I argue that this project has long been neglected in the philosophical literature, even by those who make extensive use of the distinction between pro- and con-attitudes. Using the attitudes of awe and respect as exemplars, I argue that it is not at all clear what if anything makes these attitudes pro-attitudes. (...) I conclude that neither our intuitive sense of the distinction nor the vague accounts of it that exist in the philosophical literature are especially helpful in sorting out the hard cases. What is needed is a more explicit and thorough account of what the valence of our attitudes consists in. (shrink)
Hintikka's second generation epistemic logic introduces a syntactic device allowing to express independence relations between certain logical constants. De re knowledge attributions can be reformulated in terms of quantifier independence, but the reformulation does not extend to non-factive attitudes like belief. There, formulae with independent quantifiers serve to express a new type of attitude, intermediate between de dicto and de re, called ‘de objecto’: in each possible world compatible with the agent's belief, there is an individual with the specified (...) property – in each world the same individual, which or who need not exist actually. The philosophical benefits of our analysis of propositional attitudes include a refined account of the behaviour of proper names as well as of indefinite and definite descriptions in attitude reports. Some remarks about perception and about the hallucination argument are also presented. (shrink)
Do philosophy professors specializing in ethics behave, on average, any morally better than do other professors? If not, do they at least behave more consistently with their expressed values? These questions have never been systematically studied. We examine the self-reported moral attitudes and moral behavior of 198 ethics professors, 208 non-ethicist philosophers, and 167 professors in departments other than philosophy on eight moral issues: academic society membership, voting, staying in touch with one's mother, vegetarianism, organ and blood donation, (...) responsiveness to student emails, charitable giving, and honesty in responding to survey questionnaires. On some issues, we also had direct behavioral measures that we could compare with the self-reports. Ethicists expressed somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as vegetarianism and charitable donation. However, on no issue did ethicists show unequivocally better behavior than the two comparison groups. Our findings on attitude-behavior consistency were mixed: ethicists showed the strongest relationship between behavior and expressed moral attitude regarding voting but the weakest regarding charitable donation. We discuss implications for several models of the relationship between philosophical reflection and real-world moral behavior. (shrink)
The present article examines the philosophical temperaments of James and Royce, as well as the kind and development of their philosophical styles. After surveying their stances toward the universe, attitudes toward the more, and their openness to other philosophers’ ideas and critiques, this article focuses on the streams of philosophical thought from which James and Royce chose to “drink”-British, German, Asian, and the work of logicians. Some evidence is drawn from their correspondence and places of study. Their philosophical (...) styles, despite many common traits, differed in ageric tone, use of dichotomies, and frequency of reduplicative expressions, here called “double-barreled shotgun expressions.” Clearly, this research constitutes only one piece in the full mosaic of the increasingly studied James-Royce relationship. (shrink)
As philosophers we look-through a phenomenon and we see as it appears. The philosopher feels the sensation of dissatisfaction and lives in revolt against an instinctive dissatisfaction with the language. We see as the words are played, because they are source of confusion. He searches the liberating word, which liberates us from dissatisfaction or mental cramps: it subverts an idea, renews a thought, creates new knowledge and opens to the difference. The choice of words, based on the listening to (...) the words, is an aesthetic analyse, in the sense that it is a pursuit of pleasure and an avoidance of pain. (shrink)
An objection has been raised that Karol Wojtyła presents an ethical system heavily centered on actions and deeds. With the exception of his occasional references to the virtue of chastity in Love and Responsibility and his first writing on Saint John, some of the most central themes of ancient and medieval, as well as of contemporary, ethics seem almost entirely absent. In the following article, we will turn to Wojtyła’s most important philosophical work, The Acting Person, to glean from it (...) his understanding of “action.” We will then turn to the writings of Dietrich von Hildebrand, as an example of a classic counterpart for any approach to man primarily through action. After briefly discussing the ethical relevance of aspects such as inner responses, fundamental moral attitudes, and virtues, we will conclude by returning to Wojtyła and re-evaluating the legitimacy of the objection raised against him. (shrink)
“Between the earliest and the latest of the works included here, we have two hundred and fifty years of vigorous and adventurous philosophizing,” Monroe Beardsley writes in his Introduction to this collection. “If the modern period can be only vaguely or arbitrarily bounded, it can at least be studied, and we can ask whether any dominant themes, overall patterns of movement, or notable achievements can be found within it. This question is one that is best asked by the reader after (...) he has read, or read around in, these works.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic also includes a newly updated Bibliography. (shrink)
Response-dispositional accounts of value defend a biconditional in which the possession of an evaluative property is said to covary with the disposition to cause a certain response. In contrast, a fitting-attitude account of the same property would claim that it is such as to merit or make fitting that same response. This paper argues that even for secondary qualities, response-dispositional accounts are inadequate; we need to import a normative notion such as appropriateness even into accounts of such descriptive properties as (...) redness. A preliminary conclusion is that the normativity that appears in fitting-attitude accounts of evaluative properties need not have anything to do with the evaluative nature of those properties. It may appear there because evaluative properties—or at least thosefor which fitting-attitude accounts are plausible—really are so much like secondary qualities that it might well be appropriate to think of them as a subclass of secondary qualities. In the second half of the paper I discuss the views of three of the philosophers who have been most influential in discussions of response-featuring accounts of evaluative notions and who explicitly distinguish response-dispositional accounts of value from fittingattitude accounts: John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, and Crispin Wright. I highlight some of the theoretical temptations that can be associated with the assumption that the response-dispositional/fitting-attitude distinction parallels the secondary quality/evaluative property distinction. (shrink)
Homer (mid to late 8th century B.C.) : founder of western humanism -- Solon (630-560 B.C.) : poet, lawgiver, statesman -- Thales (early 6th century) : father of western science -- Sappho (612-580 B.C.) : poet on fire -- Pythagoras (mid-500s-496 B.C.) : mystic mathematician -- Parmenides (born c. 515 B.C.) : father of metaphysics and logic -- Themistocles (524-459 B.C.) : savior of the western world Phidias (490-430 B.C.) : lord of western aesthetics -- Gorgias (483-376 B.C.) : master (...) of the word -- Socrates (469-399 B.C.) : iconoclast and moral revolutionary -- Thucydides (460-399 B.C.) : true father of history -- Plato (427-347 B.C.) : fountainhead of western philosophy -- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) : polymathic genius -- Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) : disseminator of Greek culture -- Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) : physicist and ethician -- Zeno (335-263 B.C.) : stoic sage -- Galen (A.D. 129-199) : physician, scientist, philosopher --. (shrink)
Recent experimental philosophy arguments have raised trouble for philosophers' reliance on armchair intuitions. One popular line of response has been the expertise defense: philosophers are highly-trained experts, whereas the subjects in the experimental philosophy studies have generally been ordinary undergraduates, and so there's no reason to think philosophers will make the same mistakes. But this deploys a substantive empirical claim, that philosophers' training indeed inculcates sufficient protection from such mistakes. We canvass the psychological literature on expertise, (...) which indicates that people are not generally very good at reckoning who will develop expertise under what circumstances. We consider three promising hypotheses concerning what philosophical expertise might consist in: (i) better conceptual schemata; (ii) mastery of entrenched theories; and (iii) general practical know-how with the entertaining of hypotheticals. On inspection, none seem to provide us with good reason to endorse this key empirical premise of the expertise defense. (shrink)
I examine Plato's claim in the Republic that philosophers must rule in a good city and Aristotle's attitude towards this claim in his early, and little discussed, work, the Protrepticus. I argue that in the Republic, Plato's main reason for having philosophers rule is that they alone understand the role of philosophical knowledge in a good life and how to produce characters that love such knowledge. He does not think that philosophic knowledge is necessary for getting right the (...) vast majority of judgments about actions open to assessment as virtuous or vicious. I argue that in the Protrepticus Aristotle accepts similar reasons for the rule of philosophers, but goes beyond the Republic and seems to suggest that philosophic knowledge is required for getting right ethical and political judgments in general. I close by noting some connections with Aristotle's later views in the Eudemian Ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Politics. Footnotesa For comments on an earlier draft of this paper, I thank the other contributors to this volume, as well as Aditi Iyer and Rachana Kamtekar. (shrink)
In this paper, I situate Hans Blumenberg historically and conceptually in relation to a subtheme in the famous debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer at Davos, Switzerland in 1929. The subtheme concerns Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s divergent attitudes toward philosophical anthropology as it relates to the starting points and goals of philosophy. I then reconstruct Blumenberg’s anthropology, which involves reconceptualizing Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms in relation to Heidegger’s objections to the philosophical anthropology of his day (e.g., Max Scheler, (...) Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen) as unduly anthropocentric. Blumenberg builds on anthropologist Gehlen’s assumption that human beings are biologically underdetermined and therefore world-open. With this starting point, symbolic forms, such as myth and language, make up a compensatory life-world that supports human existence. Action, or self-assertion, which is necessary given the lack of a seamless fit between human beings and the environment, is thus circumscribed and shaped by the historied, cultural constructs that constitute a life-world. Human beings can thus be characterized as a species that continually renegotiates the shape of its existence through its relation to biological limits on the one hand and cultural constants on the other. Because Blumenberg and philosophical anthropology are relatively unexplored by Anglophone philosophers, and because philosophical anthropology is central to Blumenberg’s methodology generally, this study provides an introduction to both. (shrink)
What is involved in the consciousness of a conscious, "occurrent" propositional attitude, such as a thought, a sudden conjecture or a conscious decision? And what is the relation of such consciousness to attention? I hope the intrinsic interest of these questions provides sufficient motivation to allow me to start by addressing them. We will not have a full understanding either of consciousness in general, nor of attention in general, until we have answers to these questions. I think there are constitutive (...) features of these states which can be identified by broadly philosophical investigation, and in the early part of this paper I will try to do some of that identification. -/- Beyond the intrinsic interest of the topic, the nature of such conscious attitudes is highly pertinent to a philosophical account of psychological self-knowledge. So I will also say something about the significance of the constitutive features of these conscious attitudes for a philosophical account of how it can be that a thinker has a distinctive kind of knowledge of some of his mental states. The general challenge in this area is to find anything intermediate between the unexceptionable but uninformative, on the one hand, and the absolutely unbelievable on the other. (shrink)
There is an urgent need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry, its whole character and structure, so that it takes up its proper task of promoting wisdom rather than just acquiring knowledge. Academia as at present constituted has built into its institutions a momumental and very damaging philosophical blunder - one that most professional philosophers are blind to. This is little short of an intellectual scandal. It is time philosophers woke (...) up to their intellectual and humanitarian responsibilities. (shrink)
Eliminative materialism is a popular view of the mind which holds that propositional attitudes, the typical units of our traditional understanding, are unsupported by modern connectionist psychology and neuroscience, and consequently that propositional attitudes are a poor scientific postulate, and do not exist. Since our traditional folk psychology employs propositional attitudes, the usual argument runs, it too represents a poor theory, and may in the future be replaced by a more successful neurologically grounded theory, resulting in a (...) drastic improvement in our interpersonal relationships. I contend that these eliminativist arguments typically run together two distinct capacities: the folk psychological mechanisms which we use to understand one another, and scientific and philosophical guesses about the structure of those understandings. Both capacities are ontologically committed and therefore empirical. However, the commitments whose prospects look so dismal to the eliminativist, in particular the causal and logical image of propositional attitudes, belong to the guesses, and not necessarily to the underlying mechanisms. It is the commitments of traditional philosophical perspectives about the operation of our folk psychology which are contradicted by?new evidence and modeling methods in connectionist psychology. Our actual folk psychology was not clearly committed to causal, sentential propositional attitudes, and thus is not directly threatened by connectionist psychology. (shrink)
The type of cognitive theory of emotion traditionally espoused by philosophers of mind makes two central claims. First, that the occurrence of propositional attitudes is essential to the occurrence of emotions. Second, that the identity of a particular emotional state depends upon the propositional attitudes that it involves. In this paper I try to show that there is little hope of developing a theory of emotion which makes these claims true. I examine the underlying defects of the (...) programme, and show that several recent variants fail to repair these defects. Furthermore, even if such a theory could be developed, it would not achieve many of the things that we look to a theory of emotion for. I argue that philosophers should turn their attention to new and more promising approaches. These have been developed by various of the special sciences, while philosophy has remained enthralled by traditional, propositional attitude psychology. (shrink)
Personal value, i.e., what is valuable for us (rather than value simpliciter ), has recently been analysed in terms of so-called for-someone’s-sake attitudes. This paper is an attempt to add flesh to the bone of these attitudes that have not yet been properly analysed in the philosophical literature. By employing a distinction between justifiers and identifiers , which corresponds to two roles a property may play in the intentional content of an attitude, two different kinds of for-someone’s-sake (...) class='Hi'>attitudes can be identified. Moreover, it is argued that one of these kinds is particularly difficult to include in an analysis of value simpliciter but not in an analysis of value for. (shrink)
Beginning with a long and extensively rewritten introduction surveying the predecessors of the Presocratics, this book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century B.C. to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides and the complex physical theories of Anaxagoras and the Atomists in the fifth century it is based on a selection of some six hundred texts, in Greek and a close English translation which in this edition is given more prominence. These provide the basis for (...) a detailed critical study of the principal individual thinkers of the time. Besides serving as an essential text for undergraduate and graduate courses in Greek philosophy and in the history of science, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers with interests in philosophy, theology, the history of ideas and of the ancient world, and indeed to anyone who wants an authoritative account of the Presocratics. (shrink)
: In the course of the debates on Priscian's notion of the perfect sentence, the philosopher Peter Abelard developed a theory that closely resembles modern accounts of propositional attitudes and that goes far beyond the established Aristotelian conceptions of the sentence. According to Abelard, the perfection of a sentence does not depend on the content that it expresses, but on the fact that the content is stated along with the propositional attitude towards the content. This paper tries to provide (...) an analysis and a consistent interpretation of Abelard's arguments within the framework of the mediaeval models of language and mind. (shrink)
Knowledge of your own propositional attitudes requires at least two things. You need to know the content of the relevant mental state, and you need to know what attitude you take towards that content. If it is possible to mistake a wish for a belief, this is a mistake about the attitude, not the content. One need not believe that we are generally infallible about our mental states to hold that, typically, when I sincerely say..
According to what I will refer to as the ‘received view,’ at least some intentional states are propositional attitudes, construed as relations to propositions (§1). The received view faces some extraordinary difficulties (§2). In this paper, I propose that these difficulties may be avoided if we adopt the radically different view of intentional states developed by Franz Brentano. Brentano’s view is different from the received view in two crucial respects. First, according to Brentano every intentional state is an objectual (...) attitude – none is a propositional attitude (§3). The judgment that some dogs are cute, for example, is just the act of acknowledging (the existence of) a cute dog. Secondly, for Brentano (at least late in his career), objectual attitudes are not relations to objects; they are non-relational properties of subjects (§4). The judgment that some dogs are cute involves an experience as of standing in a relation to a cute dog, but that experience may or may not be veridical (depending on whether the judgment is true or not). These ideas sound strange to our contemporary ears, but I contend that once we familiarize ourselves with them, and see how they work, the portrait of the attitudes that emerges can be appreciated as not only intriguing but also plausible. (shrink)
This thought-provoking book will ask what it is to be human, what to be animal, and what are the natures of the relationships between them. This is accomplished with philosophical and ethical discussions, scientific evidence and dynamic theoretical approaches. Attitudes to Animals will also encourage us to think not only of our relationships to non-human animals, but also of those to other, human, animals. This book provides a foundation that the reader can use to make ethical choices about animals. (...) It will challenge readers to question their current views, attitudes and perspectives on animals, nature and development of the human-animal relationship. Human perspectives on the human-animal relationships reflect what we have learned, together with spoken and unspoken attitudes and assumptions, from our families, societies, media, education and employment. (shrink)
This volume presents twenty of the most important interviews the journal, Cogito conducted between 1987 and 1996. Covering a wide spectrum of intellectual inquiry, from logic to metaphysics to philosophy of mind, the interviews provide an excellent introduction to philosophy in the English speaking world at the end of the century. Interviews with: Michael Dummett Peter Strawson Alasdair MacIntyre David Gauthier Nancy Cartwright Mary Warnock Hilary Putnam Daniel Dennett Bernard Williams John Cottingham Willard Quine Stephen Korner Hugh Mellor Adam Morton (...) Jean Hampton Roger Scruton Richard Dawkins Richard Sorabji Derek Parfit Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)
Shows that both anaphoricity and egocentric de se binding play a crucial role in the interpretation of tense in discourse. Uses the English backwards shifted reading of the past tense in a mistaken time scenario to bring out the tension between these two features. Provides a suitable representational framework for the observed clash in the form of an extension of DRT in which updates of the common ground are accompanied by updates of each relevant agent's complex attitudinal state.
The emotions are at the centre of our lives and, for better or worse, imbue them with much of their significance. The philosophical problems stirred up by the existence of the emotions, over which many great philosophers of the past have laboured, revolve around attempts to understand what this significance amounts to. Are emotions feelings, thoughts, or experiences? If they are experiences, what are they experiences of? Are emotions rational? In what sense do emotions give meaning to what surrounds (...) us? -/- The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explores these questions in a clear and accessible way. The authors discuss the following key topics: -/- the diversity and unity of the emotions the relations between emotion, belief and desire the nature of values the relations between emotions and perceptions emotions viewed as evaluative attitudes the link between emotions and evaluative knowledge the nature of moods, sentiments, and character traits. -/- Including chapter summaries and guides to further reading, The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal starting point for any philosopher or student studying the emotions. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as psychology and the social sciences. (shrink)
In this paper, we present and defend the theoretical framework of an empirical model to describe people’s fundamental moral attitudes (FMAs) to animals, the stratification of FMAs in society and the role of FMAs in judgment on the culling of healthy animals in an animal disease epidemic. We used philosophical animal ethics theories to understand the moral basis of FMA convictions. Moreover, these theories provide us with a moral language for communication between animal ethics, FMAs, and public debates. We (...) defend that FMA is a two-layered concept. The first layer consists of deeply felt convictions about animals. The second layer consists of convictions derived from the first layer to serve as arguments in a debate on animal issues. In a debate, the latter convictions are variable, depending on the animal issue in a specific context, time, and place. This variability facilitates finding common ground in an animal issue between actors with opposing convictions. (shrink)
In this paper, we present and defend the theoretical framework of an empirical model to describe people’s fundamental moral attitudes (FMAs) to animals, the stratification of FMAs in society and the role of FMAs in judgment on the culling of healthy animals in an animal disease epidemic. We used philosophical animal ethics theories to understand the moral basis of FMA convictions. Moreover, these theories provide us with a moral language for communication between animal ethics, FMAs, and public debates. We (...) defend that FMA is a two-layered concept. The first layer consists of deeply felt convictions about animals. The second layer consists of convictions derived from the first layer to serve as arguments in a debate on animal issues. In a debate, the latter convictions are variable, depending on the animal issue in a specific context, time, and place. This variability facilitates finding common ground in an animal issue between actors with opposing convictions. (shrink)
I consider two possible sources of vagueness. The first is indeterminacy about which intension is expressed by a word. The second is indeterminacy about which referent (extension) is determined by an intension. Focusing on a Fregean account of intensions, I argue that whichever account is right will matter to whether vagueness turns out to be a representational phenomenon (as opposed to being “in the world”). In addition, it will also matter to whether supervaluationism is a viable semantic framework. Based on (...) these considerations, I end by developing an argument against supervaluational semantics that depends, instead, on anti-Fregean (Millian) assumptions. (shrink)
This volume brings together for the first time thirteen recent interviews with the brightest names in contemporary philosophy, including W.V.O. Quine, Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam and John Rawls. The pieces are culled from the Harvard Review of Philosophy, which has operated at the core of Harvard's Philosophy Department since 1991. Covering wide range of topics from the philosophy of law to logic to metaphysics to literature, the interviews provide a fascinating introduction to some of the most influential thinkers (...) of the day. The book also includes a foreword by Thomas Scanlon. Interviews with Henry Alison, Stanley Cavell, Alan Dershowitz, Cora Diamond, Umberto Eco, Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Alexander Nehemas, Hilary Putnam, W.V. Quine, John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Michael Sandel, Cornel West. (shrink)
A small industry has grown up around these works - Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens - complaining not just about their theological illiteracy but also about their ...
Counterfactual reasoning is broadly implicated in causal claims made by historians. However, this point is more generally recognized and accepted by economic historians than historians of science. A good site for examining alternative appeals to counterfactuals is to consider "what if" the Scientific Revolution had not occurred in seventeenth-century Europe. Two alternative interpretations are analyzed: that the revolution would eventually have happened somewhere else ("overdeterminism") or that the revolution would not have happened at all ("underdeterminism"). Broadly speaking, these two interpretations (...) correspond to the respective attitudes of philosophers and historians to the development of science. However, a case is presented for synthesizing the two interpretations into a normative historiography of science that would allow past and present concerns to interrogate each other. This exercise in counterfactual reasoning can be imagined in the spirit of a time traveler who aims to persuade, rather than simply understand, the natives he or she encounters. (shrink)
