Introduction; Aidos in Homer; From Hesiod to the Fifth Century; Aeschylus; Sophocles; Euripides; The Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle; References; Glossary; Index of Principal Passages; General Index.

The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition (Series Editor(s): Miranda Anderson, Douglas Cairns) -/- Questions the barriers between the humanities and the cognitive sciences. -/- Cognitive science is finding increasing evidence that cognition is distributed across brain, body and world. This series calls for a reappraisal of historical concepts of cognition in light of these findings. It engages with recent debates about the various strong or weak models of distributed cognition and brings them into discourse with research in the (...) humanities. Together, the books in this series give a wide-ranging examination of the parallels (and divergences) from these models in cultural, philosophical and scientific works, from antiquity to the mid-20th century. -/- Key Features: * Opens up our reading of Western European works in the fields of history of ideas, history of science, material culture and literary studies by bringing recent insights in cognitive science to bear on the distributed nature of cognition * Explores how sociocultural and environmental contexts lead to the manifestation of particular forms of cognitive paradigms or to their suppression * Traces the interconnections between and particular divergences across Western European history among the various concepts of distributed cognition -/- . (shrink)

This volume, the fourth in the Edinburgh Leventis Studies series, comprises a selection of papers from the conference held in Edinburgh March 2005 in conjunction with Professor Terry Penner's tenure of the A. G. Leventis Visiting Research Chair in Greek. It brings together contributions from leading Plato scholars from Britain, Europe and North America on a closely defined topic central to Plato's thought and to Ancient Philosophy--Plato's Form of the Good. The importance of the collection lies in the combination and (...) presentation in one place of a range of different approaches to the good in Plato's Republic, and different solutions to the problems posed and proposed by these approaches. The two central issues, which form an underlying thread throughout the collection, are: first whether Plato's Republic is centred on what is good for individual humans, or on some quasi-moral good; and secondly, what the Form of the Good is. Pursuing the Good goes beyond recent studies in the field, and will appeal to classicists and philosophers alike. To the advanced student, it represents a wide-ranging introduction to central issues of Plato's philosophy; for the academic it will provide stimulus through antithetical and controversial solutions to questions old and new. (shrink)

This volume is the result of a three-year collaboration (funded by the American Council of Learned Societies and the British Academy) between scholars of early China and of ancient/Hellenistic Greece to investigate the emergent discourses of emotions in philosophy, medicine, and literature from around the fifth century BCE to the second century CE. It brings together scholars working on the history and philosophy of emotions in the two ancient traditions, and with different areas of expertise, to investigate the emotions and (...) their conceptualization at a crucial period in the cultural and intellectual development of both cultures. The project was motivated by a desire to make an intervention in the existing scholarship on emotions in both fields, which stands to benefit from a greater methodological self-awareness about the category of emotions and the kinds of commitments it entails. The volume aims to explore how the tools of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary investigation might be deployed to advance our understanding of the emotions in the two ancient societies and to use that understanding as a contribution to current research on the emotions more generally. (shrink)

An introduction to a collection of nine papers on contempt, bringing contemporary philosophical approaches to the phenomenon into relation with its construction and presentation in the four classical cultures of China, Greece, India, and Rome. The introduction offers a brief summary of the papers and places the issues that they explore in the wider research context of the historical and cross-cultural study of emotion.

CairnsDouglas Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature: A Philosophical Perspective Routledge. 2018. pp. ix, 412. £125.

Este artículo explora aspectos de lo que llamaré piedad o compasión en Homero (especialmente en _Ilíada_ 24) y Aristóteles (sobre todo en la _Retórica_), pero sin depender de una precisa terminología. Los fenómenos que abarcan términos como “compasión”, “simpatía”, “empatía” y “lástima” (y sus análogos, cuando existen, en otras lenguas) constituyen una familia en la que las semejanzas son a menudo bastante estrechas en la práctica (aunque determinados miembros del grupo entren y salgan de moda y adquieran una serie de (...) connotaciones diferentes en distintas épocas y contextos). Al concentrarme en la teoría y la práctica de la literatura, no ofrezco un relato sintético de la piedad griega antigua, sino que me centro principalmente en dos autores, Homero y Aristóteles, y procedo principalmente mediante una confrontación entre la representación de la piedad en el libro final de la _Ilíada_ y la teorización de esa emoción en la _Retórica_ y la _Poética_ de Aristóteles. Comienzo con Homero, pero inmediatamente pongo en relación la narración homérica con el relato de la piedad de Aristóteles en la _Retórica._ Esto llevará a algunas reflexiones sobre la naturaleza de la piedad y la compasión en Homero en general, antes de volver al contraste entre Homero y Aristóteles (con énfasis en la _Poética),_ un contraste que en cierto modo se ve subrayado por ciertas diferencias entre Aristóteles y Platón sobre los efectos emocionales de la poesía épica y trágica. Un aspecto de especial atención será la vinculación que hace Aristóteles de la piedad con el tipo de cosas que uno temería si le ocurrieran a uno mismo, por contraste con la conexión, en Homero y Platón, entre la piedad por los demás y la experiencia del dolor, tanto propio como ajeno. (shrink)

This discussion concentrates on the meaning of Nausicaa's words in lines 286–8, in particular on the force of the phrase κα δ' λλ κτλ. and the sense of the verb μσγηται. On the latter Hainsworth comments, ‘In later usage the simple verb in such a context is used as a euphemism for the sexual act. The line must have sounded most odd to the classical age.’ Thus he translates ‘associate with’, citing Odyssey 7.247 as an exact parallel; since, in that (...) place, the verb refers to nothing more than ordinary human intercourse , with no further connotations, one must conclude that Hainsworth sees no innuendo whatever in 6.288. (shrink)

This discussion concentrates on the meaning of Nausicaa's words in lines 286–8, in particular on the force of the phrase κα δ' λλ κτλ. and the sense of the verb μσγηται. On the latter Hainsworth comments, ‘In later usage the simple verb in such a context is used as a euphemism for the sexual act. The line must have sounded most odd to the classical age.’ Thus he translates ‘associate with’, citing Odyssey 7.247 as an exact parallel; since, in that (...) place, the verb refers to nothing more than ordinary human intercourse, with no further connotations, one must conclude that Hainsworth sees no innuendo whatever in 6.288. (shrink)

Confronted with the suggestion that he contrived to see Candaules’ wife naked, Gyges immediately expresses his horror.

Confronted with the suggestion that he contrived to see Candaules’ wife naked, Gyges immediately expresses his horror.

In Politics 5.1–3, Aristotle sees different conceptions of proportional equality and justice as the fundamental causes of stasis and metabolē. His account shows what happens to notions of ‘particular’ justice when they become causes of individual and collective action in pursuit of moral and political revolution. The whole discussion of the causes of stasis should be read through the filter of individual/group motivation – as a reflection of what goes on in the heads of those who engage in stasis. Movements (...) towards political change are motivated by ingrained conceptions of proportional equality and fair distribution of honour and wealth. Aristotle’s approach, therefore, may be compared to Axel Honneth’s, that social justice should be seen in terms of the distribution of dignity and respect as well as of material resources. (shrink)

We reply to the objections raised in Polis 40 (2023) by Ryan Balot and Manuel Knoll to our original paper ‘Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis’, published in Polis 39 (2022). We argue that Knoll is correct in arguing that Aristotle distinguishes between democratic views of distributive justice and his own, but wrong to argue that this wholly resolves a tension in Aristotle’s exposition between views of democratic justice as, in one sense, based on equality ‘according to worth’ (...) and in another based on arithmetic equality. Balot, we contend, misconstrues our original argument when he represents us as claiming that, according to Aristotle, the injustice which leads agents to engage in stasis exists entirely in their own minds. We did not and do not hold that view and therefore (pace Balot) are in no way committed to any of its alleged implications. Balot’s misunderstanding on that point entails a wholesale misrepresentation of our original argument. (shrink)

12 essays by international specialists in classical antiquity create a period-specific interdisciplinary introduction to distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities - The first book in an ambitious 4-volume set looking at distributed cognition in the history of thought - Includes essays on archaeology, art history, rhetoric, literature, philosophy, science, medicine and technology -For students and scholars in classics, cognitive humanities, philosophy of mind and ancient philosophy -Includes essays by international specialists in classics, ancient history and archaeology This collection explores how (...) cognition is explicitly or implicitly conceived of as distributed across brain, body and world in Greek and Roman technology, science, medicine, material culture, philosophy and literary studies. A range of models emerge, which vary both in terms of whether cognition is just embodied or involves tools or objects in the world. As many of the texts and practices discussed have influenced Western European society and culture, this collection reveals the historical foundations of our theoretical and practical attempts to comprehend the distributed nature of human cognition. (shrink)

Review of Douglas Cairns, Fritz-Gregor Hermann and Terry Penner , Pursuing The Good: Ethics and Metaphysics in Plato’s Republic, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2007.

On 18–19 May 2018, a symposium was held in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Ronald W. Hepburn (1927–2008). The speakers at this event discussed Hepburn’s oeuvre from several perspectives. For this book, the collection of the revised versions of their talks has been supplemented by the papers of other scholars who were unable to attend the symposium itself. Thus this volume contains contributions from (...) eighteen notable scholars of different disciplines, ranging from contemporary aesthetics and art theory through to philosophical approaches to religion, education and social anthropology. It also includes a bibliography of Hepburn’s writings. The essays were first published in two special issues of the Journal of Scottish Thought, vols. 10–11 (2018–2019). -/- Ronald William Hepburn was born in Aberdeen on 16 March 1927. He went to Aberdeen Grammar School, then he graduated with an M.A. in Philosophy (1951) and obtained his doctorate from the University of Aberdeen (1955). His tutor at Aberdeen was Donald MacKinnon (1913– 1994), a Scottish philosopher and theologian, the author of A Study in Ethical Theory (1957) and The Problem of Metaphysics (1974). Hepburn taught as Lecturer at the Department of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen (1956–60), and he was also Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy at New York University (1959–60). He returned from the United States as Professor of Philosophy at Nottingham University. In 1964, he was appointed as a Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and between 1965 and 1968 he was also Stanton Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. From 1975 until his retirement in 1996, he held the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. He died in Edinburgh on 23 December 2008. His philosophical interests ranged from theology and the philosophy of religion through moral philosophy and the philosophy of education to art theory and aesthetics. Notably, Hepburn is widely regarded as the founder of modern environmental and everyday aesthetics as a result of the influence of papers in the 1960s which pioneered a new approach to the aesthetics of the natural world. (shrink)

Legal humanism has become deeply entrenched in most modern works on European legal history from the 17th century onwards and has been accepted with such blind faith by many modern scholars that few have challenged it. As a result, it has been used to substantiate larger claims about the deathof Roman law, the separation between the golden age of a pan-European medieval ius commune and the fragmented reception of Roman law into the nation states of Europe, and the relevance of (...) 'dogmatic' Roman law as opposed to 'antiquarian' Roman law.Now, the traditional grand narratives of European legal history have begun to be questioned, to the extend that the nature and legacy of legal humanism now deserve closer scrutiny. Building on the groundbreaking work by Douglas Osler, who has been critical of the traditional narratives, this volumeinterrogates the orthodox views regarding legal humanism and its legacy. Fundamentally reassessing the nature and impact of legal humanism on the narratives of European legal history, this volume brings together the foremost international experts in related fields of legal and intellectual history to debate the central issues. (shrink)

Patrick Colm Hogan announced in 2002 that "cognitivist methods, topics, and principles have come to dominate what are arguably the most intellectually exciting academic fields today". Today, what dominates those "cognitivist methods, topics, and principles" is likely to be Distributed Cognition. The term was initially addressed by Edwin Hutchin in Cognition in the Wild and currently has been developed to encompass an intertwined group of theories including embodied cognition, embedded cognition, extended cognition, and enactive cognition. The distributed views of cognition (...) generally hold that mind is "spread out over the brain, the non-neural body and an environment... (shrink)

This short article is a response to Douglas Cairns, Mirko Canevaro, and Kleanthis Mantzouranis, who in Polis 39 (2022) explicitly criticize both of my previous interpretations of Aristotle’s view of democratic justice and of the relation of proportional and numerical equality. Against Cairns et al., I argue that there is no tension or contradiction between Aristotle’s statements on these two kinds of equality and on democratic justice. The paper suggests a new reading of Aristotle’s texts that strictly (...) distinguishes between Aristotle’s own views and his references to ‘respected opinions’ (endoxa). It concludes that Aristotle consistently identifies democratic justice with ‘numerical’ or ‘arithmetic’ equality and not with proportional equality, which he usually identifies with equality ‘according to worth or merit’ (kat’ axian). (shrink)

Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, “I” arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the “strange loop”—a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called “I.” The “I” is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming (...) to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. How can a mysterious abstraction be real—or is our “I” merely a convenient fiction? Does an “I” exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Gödel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is a moving and profound inquiry into the nature of mind. (shrink)

In this article, I make the case for the continued relevance of Plato’s Timaeus. I begin by sketching Allan Bloom’s picture of the natural sciences today in The Closing of the American Mind, according to which the natural sciences are, objectionably, increasingly specialized and have ejected humans qua humans from their purview. I argue that Plato’s Timaeus, despite the falsity of virtually all of its scientific claims, provides a model for how we can pursue scientific questions in a comprehensive way (...) that stresses their connections to other disciplines, including the humanities, and that puts humanity qua humanity back in the picture. I then argue that being led by Plato’s philosophy to return humanity conceptually to the natural world can improve our thinking regarding climate change and other important environmental crises. (shrink)

Chapter INTRODUCTION Charles Sanders Peirce is quickly becoming the dominant figure in the history of American philosophy. The breadth and depth of his work ...

I provide a comprehensive metaphysics of causation based on the idea that fundamentally things are governed by the laws of physics, and that derivatively difference-making can be assessed in terms of what fundamental laws of physics imply for hypothesized events. Highlights include a general philosophical methodology, the fundamental/derivative distinction, and my mature account of causal asymmetry.