This is a collection of writings by the late Lord Quinton, one of the wittiest and most versatile philosophers of his generation.

This book details Harris’s travels throughout the globe among common people through sixty-seven countries over twelve years. She stayed in a harem, wore a burqa, and slept on a sidewalk through the biggest battle in the Algerian War! Questions evoke critical reading and philosophical thought, and the book includes a bibliography of suggestions for further reading.

Om den engelske filosof Francis Bacon (1561-1624).

In the Phaedrus, Socrates insists that every proper logos must have the unity of an organic living thing. And yet it is hard to say what imposes any such unity on the various speeches and topics that are dealt with in this very dialogue. This chapter situates the view of Hermias of Alexandria in relation to modern debates about what, if anything, unifies the Phaedrus. For the ancient Neoplatonists, the question of unity was bound up with the question of each (...) dialogue's "skopos". We argue that Hermias' answer to this question -- that the skopos of the Phaedrus is 'beauty at every level' -- is not as wildly implausible as Neoplatonic readings of Plato's dialogues are often thought to be. (shrink)

Teachers in inclusive schools are often faced with the challenge of providing appropriate educational experiences for classes of students with abilities ranging from gifted to severely learning disabled. This challenge can be addressed either by the individual teacher or by a whole school approach. This paper reports on a study of the responses of teachers and parents to a trial of 'cluster grouping', as a model for meeting the educational needs of exceptional students. Data were gathered from teachers and parents (...) by questionnaire. The results remind us that there are factors, other than the strengths and weaknesses of a particular model, that can influence success. (shrink)

Philosophy is one of the most intimidating and difficult of disciplines, as any of its students can attest. This book is an important entry in a distinctive new series from Routledge: The Great Philosophers . Breaking down obstacles to understanding the ideas of history's greatest thinkers, these brief, accessible, and affordable volumes offer essential introductions to the great philosophers of the Western tradition from Plato to Wittgenstein. In just 64 pages, each author, a specialist on his subject, places the philosopher (...) and his ideas into historical perspective. Each volume explains, in simple terms, the basic concepts, enriching the narrative through the effective use of biographical detail. And instead of attempting to explain the philosopher's entire intellectual history, which can be daunting, this series takes one central theme in each philosopher's work, using it to unfold the philosopher's thoughts. (shrink)

We are accustomed to thinking of space and time as particulars or individuals—even if we should hesitate to describe them as things or objects or substances. We say ‘space has three dimensions’, ‘material things occupy space’, ‘the debris has disappeared into space’ and we talk in a comparable fashion about time. Not only do we think of space and time as individuals but, in many connections at any rate, we think of them as unique individuals. When we talk about spaces (...) and times in the plural, when we say ‘fill up the spaces on the form’, ‘it could go in the space between the lamp and the door’, ‘there were peaceful times in the early years of their marriage’ we think of these multiple spaces and times as parts of the unique allencompassing space and the unique all-encompassing time. Kant believed that we could not help thinking of them in this way. We do, at any rate, in fact think like this and it is this conviction that I want to examine. (shrink)

Conducting research with vulnerable populations involves careful attention to the interests of individuals. Although it is generally understood that informed consent is a necessary prerequisite to research participation, it is less clear how to proceed when potential research participants lack the capacity to provide this informed consent. The rationale for assessing the assent or dissent of vulnerable individuals and obtaining informed consent by authorized representatives is discussed. Practical guidelines for recruitment of and data collection from people in the middle or (...) late stage of dementia are proposed. These guidelines were used by research assistants in a minimal risk study. (shrink)

These past few days, I have been reading a transcript of your speech at the Military Academy on 18 September [1966] and, to be frank, some of the key formulations in it are highly erroneous.

Burke's Enquiry is one of those books that hovers, importantly but ineffectively, at the fringes of the attention of most modern readers of philosophy. It is something that they have always meant to read some time but yet which they all too seldom get around to actually reading. Its neglect, no doubt, is mainly to be accounted for as part of the generally rather forlorn position of aesthetics in our intellectual landscape. Students of literature disregard aesthetics as at once too (...) schematic and abstract for their purposes and as too often the work of people inadequately equipped for and experienced in the direct criticism of literature and the arts. Although the dominant style of modern criticism had as one of its principal sources a fairly consciously philosophical inquiry into the nature of literature, namely Richard's Principles of Literary Criticism , in its prevailing form, as manifested in the writings of Dr. Leavis and his fol-lowers, it is hostile to any pretensions to critical relevance on the part of academic philosophy. If it rejects impressionism for determinedly intellectual analysis of the detail of literature, it still relies on philosophy only in the loosest and most colloquial sense of the word in so far as it embodies a definitely articulated point of view on questions of morality. On the other hand, aesthetics has only figured in the most fitful and peripheral manner on the agenda of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. (shrink)

The story that is told in Lord Russell's recent book My Philosophical Development is one that has been told before, by him and by others, but this particular presentation of it stands out by reason of its comprehensiveness and its authority. It is a rather austerely intellectual autobiography, sticking firmly to the topic announced in its title, and the non-philosophical aspects of the author's character and interests take as modest a place in it as Collingwood's do in his not altogether (...) dissimilar Autobiography . What makes a comparison of these two intellectual self-portraits so tempting is the almost diametrical opposition of their authors. Russell is an aristocrat, an influential public figure too lively and multifarious to be contained for long in a university, a communicator who writes to be understood and believed, a mathematician still despite many years away from mathematics, a moral and political radical, an atheist and a lifelong defender of science as the most solid and enduring achievement of the human intellept. Collingwood was a scholarship boy, the son of an unsuccessful literary man, a pure example of the obscure and ineffectual don, who made out that he was too busy to answer criticism or to take part in college administration or university politics, an elaborately conscious stylist, almost as much a historian and an archaeologist as he was a philosopher, essentially a reactionary for all his autumnal flirtation with Marxism, a Christian and an embattled critic of the pretensions of science. (shrink)

In setting out to discuss the trouble with Kant I may seem to be suggesting that there is only one. I do think that there is one fundamental one, which is that he is a wild and intellectually irresponsible arguer. Any innate leaning that way must have been enhanced by the intellectual isolation of Konigsberg, which preserved him from serious criticism. I shall be sticking to one particular example of this failing. It is the account he gives of the way (...) in which the common world of experience is constructed or synthesized by applying some piece of mental apparatus—the forms of intuition and the categories—to what he calls the manifold of sensation. The rather elementary question I want to raise about this theory is that of how the claim can be made good that the outcome of this process is just one, single world; for all of us, for each of us at different times, even for any one of us at a particular time. (shrink)

Anthony Quinton; I*—The Presidential Address: Social Objects, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 1–28, https://doi.

This paper provides a starting point for thinking beyond a research–practice divide and discusses possible new conceptualizations of intervention and the role of IT research in contemporary organizational settings. ‘IT research’ denotes a conglomerate of overlapping research conducted under the headings of Information Systems, Systems Development, Critical IS Research and Participatory Design. The paper applies this joint notion of IT research and the IT researcher to draw parallels across these niches of research regarding the question of intervention. Through an analysis (...) of selected field study events, a prominent notion of intervention (as being active as opposed to being passive) is reworked in terms of intervention as circumstance, a circumstantial interplay of situated practices. In closing, subsequent possibilities for repositioning the IT researcher are discussed in terms of reflexivity, facilitation or being a trickster. (shrink)

"Under Magee's sensitive guidance a remarkably coherent interpretation of this period emerges."--Marshall Cohen, Listener. "The whole book has a marvellous air of casualness and clarity that makes it a delight to read."--Colin Wilson. Contemporary British philosophy is experiencing unprecedented openness to influences from abroad. New growth is evident in many areas of traditional philosophy which had been neglected by the logical positivists and the linguistic analysts. This sense of freedom permeates Magee's volume of conversations with leading British philosophers. Under Magee's (...) direction, the philosophers discuss other influential thinkers, such as Wittgenstein, Russell, Moore, and Austin, as well as ideas of universal interest, such as morality, art, religion, and social theory. As an introduction to contemporary British philosophy, a unique collection of candid commentaries by important thinkers, and study of fresh ideas, Modern British Philosophy is consistently lively and authoritative. (shrink)

Anthony Quinton; I*—The Presidential Address: Social Objects, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 1–28, https://doi.

Anthony Quinton; I*—The Presidential Address: Social Objects, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 1–28, https://doi.

In this celebrated masterpiece Plato imagines a high-society dinner party in Athens in 416 B.C. at which the guests each deliver a short speech in praise of love.

Anthony Quinton; The a Priori and the Analytic, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 64, Issue 1, 1 June 1964, Pages 31–54, https://doi.org/10.1093/a.

This book outlines the realist and pluralist philosophy of John Anderson, Australia's most original thinker, whose articles and teaching at Sydney University have deeply influenced Australian intellectual life. Several main themes run though his work, but Anderson never gave an overall account of his views. This is remedied here: in exhibiting the range of Anderson's thought, from logic, epistemology and theory of mind, to language and social theory, Baker's work sketches realism as a systematic philosophical position and shows something of (...) the history of ideas in Australia. This book will be of particular interest to historians of modern philosophy and those studying realism. (shrink)

A field experiment examined how signs of social class influence compassionate responses to those in need. Pedestrians in two major cities in the United States were exposed to a confederate wearing symbols of relatively high or low social class who was requesting money to help the homeless. Compassionate responding was assessed by measuring the donation amount of the pedestrians walking past the target. Pedestrians gave more than twice as much money to the confederate wearing higher-class symbols than they did to (...) the one wearing lower-class symbols. A follow-up study exposed participants to images of the target wearing the same higher- or lower-class symbols and examined the antecedents of compassionate responding. Consistent with theorizing, higher-class symbols elicited perceptions of elevated competence, trustworthiness, similarity to the self, and perceived humanity compared to lower-class symbols. These results indicate that visible signs of social class influence judgments of others’ traits and attributes, as well as in decisions to respond compassionately to the needs of those who are suffering. (shrink)