Free-choice disjunction manifests itself in complements of comparatives, existential modals, and related contexts. For example, “Socrates is older than Plato or Aristotle” is usually understood to mean “older than each”, not “older than at least one”. Normally, to get an “at least one” reading, a wh-rider has to be appended, e.g., “whichever is younger” or “but I don’t remember which”. Similarly, “Socrates could have been a lawyer or a banker” usually means “Socrates could have been a lawyer and could have (...) been a banker”. And “Socrates needs an umbrella or a raincoat” is normally understood in a way that isn’t synonymous with “Socrates needs an umbrella or Socrates needs a raincoat”. Roughly, the reading is “getting a satisfactory umbrella would meet his needandgetting a satisfactory raincoat would meet his need”.These examples all have “conjunctive force” and the question I address is whether there’s a satisfactory pragmatic account of why the force is with them. I present a simple Gricean argument that the “co-operative speaker” assumption, added to a disjunctive literal meaning, produces conjunctive force for epistemic modals. This argument may work for some other cases, but I express some pessimism about covering the full range of modals. (shrink)

I aim to sketch a view of a methodology for metaphysics, suggested by Hookway’s reading of C. S. Peirce, that allows one to hold realist metaphysical views (i.e. ones that avoid anti-realism, or idealism) about some questions, but avoids merely verbal disputes, and ‘unwieldy realism’. It is named for Peirce’s ‘Critical Commonsensism’, and uses pragmatic transcendental arguments to defend realism about non-optional basic commitments, e.g. to generality, agency, normativity, modality, change, concrete substances, and other minds. It is critical because we (...) are entitled to hope that the presuppositions of our most basic non-optional commitments obtain, and commonsensical because we begin with our current practices and proceed with anti-sceptical fallibilism. I consider a number of objections to the proposed methodology, including concerns associated with our identification of presuppositions, with the basic non-optional commitments they are presuppositions of, and the community who are so committed. These questions, I will claim, are open to empirical and anthropological investigation, but can begin with careful observation of human practices of action, inquiry, explanation, and justification. I will defend the view we end up with as realist, rather than anti-realist or quasi-realist, and argue that, given holism of confirmation, we are plausibly justified in believing (rather than merely hoping) a number of metaphysical theses that have stood the test of time. (shrink)

Many important social and political goals are at least partially funded by charitable donations (e.g. environmental, public health, and educational). Recently a number of laboratory experiments have shown that a potential donor’s incidental emotions—those felt at the time of the decision but unrelated to the decision itself—are important factors. We extend these findings by examining the effect of incidental emotions on charitable giving using a natural field experiment, where the potential donors are unaware of the intervention. In partnership with a (...) pledge drive at a small national liberal arts college, we demonstrate that participants who were asked to recall a person or event that has benefited them since graduating, pledged larger amounts (an increase of 92%) compared to the control group, although the probability of making a pledge was statistically no different. (shrink)

 (e.g., Quine ), the main symptom of the unintelligibility of de re modal language is said to be the failure of coreferential “singular terms” to interchange salva veritate within the scope of modal operators. From this it is supposed to follow..

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a very common carcinogen in our environment, but epidemiological data on the relationship between skin cancers and ambient solar UV radiation are very restricted. In hairless mice the process of UV carcinogenesis can be studied in depth. Experiments with this animal model have yielded quantitative data on how tumor development depends on dose, time and wavelength of the UV radiation. In combination with epidemiological data, these experimental results can be transposed to humans. Comparative studies on molecular, (...) cellular and physiological changes in mouse and man can further our fundamental understanding of UV carcinogenesis in man. This is likely to improve risk assessments such as those related to a stratospheric ozone depletion, and to yield well‐targeted intervention schemes, e.g. prescribing a specific drug or diet, for high‐risk individuals. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a noticeable yet largely unacknowledged ‘pragmatic turn’ in the scientific realism debate, inspired in part by van Fraassen’s work on ‘epistemic stances’. Features of this new approach include: an ascent to the meta-level (the focus is not so much on whether scientific realism is true, but on the prior questions of the nature of the positions in this debate, how to decide whether to be a scientific realist, etc.); a reinterpretation of scientific realism and (...) anti-realism as (or as closely associated with) stances or frameworks, rather than theories or beliefs; a move away from the previously dominant empirical-explanatory (i.e. quasi-scientific or naturalistic) conception of scientific realism, anti-realism, and their justification; and a stress on the pragmatic and values-based elements in the debate. The traditional scientific realism debate is concerned with determining which position is true, or most epistemically justified. The new approach by contrast is concerned with determining which position best serves certain values, e.g. is most useful, fruitful, or otherwise prudentially preferable. In this paper we try to bring together the various strands in this new orientation, summarise its key features, contrast it with superficially similar but opposing views, and explore the similarities and differences among some of its adherents. Given we are advocates of the turn, we also offer a defence of the value and fruitfulness of this reconceptualization of the debate. (shrink)

Scientific claims implicitly invite criticism. While we might expect that challenging an epistemic authority in religious circles would be seen as an illegitimate activity (e.g. heresy) and met with suppression, challenging an epistemic authority in scientific circles is supposed to be a legitimate form of engagement, and should (ideally) be met with reasoned argument based in empirical evidence. Given this implicit invitation to challenge scientific claims, and the sweeping knowledge claims often made by today’s scientists, it is hardly surprising that (...) people outside narrowly defined scientific communities (i.e. science’s “public”) often challenge the truth of scientific consensuses. The scrutiny of scientific claims by non-scientist members of the public is quite understandable and in many ways unobjectionable, given the role that science advice increasingly plays in our society’s governance structures and public policy making. As scientists increasingly play policy-maker, they become doubly subject to public criticism: first as a scientist making substantive claims about reality and second as public-interest decision-maker making important decisions about public policy. Thus, for the scientist’s social role as epistemic authority to remain justified, public criticism of science should ideally be entertained and answered by practicing scientists. (shrink)

The conceptual framework of behaviorism is reconstructed in a logical scheme rather than along chronological lines. The resulting reconstruction is faithful to the history of behaviorism and yet meets the contemporary challenges arising from cognitive science, psycholinguistics, and philosophy. In this reconstruction, the fundamental premise is that psychology is to be a natural science, and the major corollaries are that psychology is to be objective and empirical. To a great extent, the reconstruction of behaviorism is an elaboration of behaviorist views (...) of what it is for a science to be objective and empirical. The reconstruction examines and evaluates behaviorist positions on observation and the rejection of introspection, the behavioral data language, theory construction, stimulus-response psychology, the organization of behavior, complex processes, agency, and the interpretation of mentalistic language. The resulting reconstruction shows behaviorism to be a pragmatic psychological version of positivism based on a behavioral epistemology. (shrink)

Wegner (2002) fails to (1) distinguish conscious will and voluntariness; (2) account for everyday willed acts; and (3) individuate thoughts and acts. Wegner incorrectly implies that (4) we experience acts as willed only when they are caused by unwilled thoughts; (5) thoughts are never true causes of actions; and (6) we experience ourselves as first performing mental acts which then cause our intentional actions.

In this paper I shall venture into an area with which I am not very familiar and in which I feel far from confident; namely into phenomenology. My main motive is not to get away from standard, boring, methodological questions like those of induction and demarcation; but the conviction that a phenomenological account of the empirical basis forms a necessary complement to Popper's falsificationism. According to the latter, a scientific theory is a synthetic and universal, hence unverifiable proposition. In fact, (...) in order to be technologically useful, a scientific hypothesis must refer to future states-of-affairs; it ought therefore to remain unverified. But in order to be empirical, a theory must bear some kind of relation to factual statements. According to Popper, such a relation can only be one of potential conflict. Thus a theory T will be termed scientific if and only if T is logically incompatible with a so-called basic statement b, where b is both empirically verifiable and empirically falsifiable. In other words: T is scientific if it entails ¬b; where b, hence also ¬b, is an empirically decidable proposition. (shrink)

Essentially a collection of letters from Santayana strung together with narrative about the activities of Santayana, C. A. Strong and Cory himself. Other figures come and go: Walter Lippman, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound. Some of the flavor of Santayana's thought comes through and a good deal of his personality. The letters cover the years 1927-1952: a period of great productivity for Santayana, embracing the Realms of Being, The Last Puritan, Persons and Places and Dominions and Powers. As long as (...) Cory keeps Santayana the center of focus, the book is captivating and brilliantly effective—like Santayana at his best. Unfortunately, the latter half of the book covers a period when Cory was generally somewhat independent and at a distance from Santayana: there are not so many letters and the narrative becomes longer, more autobiographical and much less interesting. Only Santayana's death refocuses the book. But by then the work is irremediably flawed.—W. G. E. (shrink)

This closing volume of Tillich's Systematic Theology is devoted to the domain of the Spirit, the domain of social reality, culture, history, and tradition. Tillich's existential, ex-static concept of faith, his qualitative concept of God, and his symbolic concept of the Christ lead him to see the ambiguity, fragmentariness and repeated failures of the church as an empirical reality. But they offer insufficient tools for an analysis of the positive nature and functions of the community of the Faithful. The Protestant (...) Principle becomes a principle of the ultimate inadequacy of all finite systems of thought and action, and is offered as the universally valid resolution of existential estrangement. As such, one wonders if it can also be a principle of faith for a community of believers. This ambiguity creates a number of difficulties throughout the book. Many of the themes of this volume are central to Tillich's thought and the general approach parallels and completes the earlier volumes. And for such a passionately committed theologian as Tillich, this last volume must be of first importance.—W. G. E. (shrink)

There are many reasons to rejoice at this revision of Owens' masterful work, although one might question the term "revision." There are no substantive revisions in the text. There is a very important addition, the Foreword to the Second Edition, in which Owens defends his views against critics and goes on to point out some conclusions about the nature of the Metaphysics which were not explicitly stated in the previous edition, notably that Aristotle's metaphysics was necessarily not a system and (...) was necessarily incomplete. New bibliographical information has been included in footnotes throughout and the Bibliography has been up-dated. The major improvement in the book is that it has now been printed with regular set type. An almost equal boon to the reader is the inclusion of the footnotes at the bottom of the appropriate pages, rather than as a separate section at the back of the book. That extensive revisions of a substantive nature were not necessary is only one more tribute to the excellence of Owens' original work.--W. G. E. (shrink)

This translation of the Fons Vitae, "specially abridged," is stiflingly verbal. There is no critical apparatus, no index, no attempt to lay bare the philosophic doctrine, no explanation of the "abridgment." The book is useless to a serious student and too clumsy to interest any but the most general reader.--W. G. E.

Weiss offers here what might be called a normative phenomenology of religion. The book clearly presupposes a body of descriptive detail and properly avoids metaphysical considerations of the existence and nature of God. The latter can be found in Modes of Being, the former have been the province of several disciplines. Weiss begins with an exploration of human experience to find those elements which give rise to religion and the common features which we should expect to qualify religious as well (...) as other human experience. The religious experience is described as a distinctive, episodic, qualitative immediacy involving the individual with God and detaching him from the world. Since the individual is public as well as private, the religious experience is both anticipatorily public and needs to be sustained within a religious community. We must be able to achieve a non-religious perspective in order to know what is involved in a religious experience. But the idea of God receives most of its content within a community which is distinctively religious though related in various ways to secular communities, and more or less antagonistic to competing religious communities. The most powerful chapters discuss these conflicts between religious communities and the phenomenon of "becoming religious." Combined with the section on the dedicated community, these provide one of the finest analyses of the religious life available in philosophic literature. The book is written with enviable style and grace, especially in the latter half.—W. G. E. (shrink)

A very useful collection of extensive selections from the Metaphysics, the Categories, On Interpretation, Posterior Analytics, the Physics, On the Soul, Ethics, Politics and Poetics. Entire works, or groups of related books within a work are given. The translations are popular. In the general introduction and the commentaries before each major section, the editor attempts to briefly state the issues in the context of present discussion and relate Aristotle's doctrine to current work in British and American analytic philosophy. The collection (...) is of some merit for introducing students to Aristotle, though it provides many causes for doubt in one at all familiar with Aristotle already.—W. G. E. (shrink)

An interpretative introduction to the major themes of classic American philosophy and five of its major figures: Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey and Whitehead. Smith shows sympathy and insight into these men and their ideas, making an excellent choice of basic themes for discussion. Running throughout the book is a sustained argument for a renewal of the breadth of philosophic interest and the sound empirical basis displayed by Pragmatism at its best. Smith is concerned that this "Spirit of American Philosophy" be (...) rescued from the neglect it has suffered over the past decades and be recalled to the attention of the philosophic community. His book is an admirable step in that direction.--W. G. E. (shrink)

An excellent translation of the seminal and highly influential section of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft entitled "Religionssoziologie." This section, really an extended monograph, is Weber's most profound systematic analysis and theoretical account of religious communities. His basic concepts and distinctions—priest and prophet, rationalization and breakthrough, ethical and exemplary prophecy—have long provided the basic framework for the best work in the Sociology of Religion in this country. His study of the relationship between religious breakthrough and social status is masterful. His discussion of (...) "salvation" and the various kinds of asceticism and mysticism is invaluable. Talcott Parsons' introduction is helpfully expository and judiciously critical. In short, a truly classic text is now available in a worthy English version.—W. G. E. (shrink)

Ferrater Mora's paper is devoted to the thesis that man makes his own life--a person constituting himself historically. Harris's lecture is a two-pronged attack on contemporary analytic philosophy. One part of the argument attempts to show that the enterprise is self-refuting, based on an epistemology of naive positivistic empiricism which most of its present proponents have themselves rejected. The other part of the argument is ad hominem, showing the urgent necessity for a synthetic and constructive philosophy which will be able (...) to develop a way of life and system of values capable of stemming the drift toward nuclear self-annihilation. Prior, starting with the MacTaggart-Broad time puzzle and digressing backward through St. Augustine, offers an adverbial analysis of time and tenses, based on the theory that there are only things, not events, and that things are present tense, when they are.--W. G. E. (shrink)

The global shortage of organs for transplantation and the development of new and better medical technologies for organ preservation have resulted in a renewed interest in non-heart-beating donation (NHBD). This article discusses ethical questions related to controlled and uncontrolled NHBD. It argues that certain preparative measures, such as giving anticoagulants, should be acceptable before patients are dead, but when they have passed a point where further curative treatment is futile, they are in the process of dying and they are unconscious. (...) Furthermore, the article discusses consequences of technological developments based on improvement of a chest compression apparatus used today to make mechanical heart resuscitation. Such technological development can be used to transform cases of non-controlled NHBD to controlled NHBD. In our view, this is a step forward since the ethical difficulties related to controlled NHBD are easier to solve than those related to non-controlled NHBD. However, such technological developments also evoke other ethical questions. (shrink)

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the resistance to extinction obtained in evaluative conditioning (EC) studies implies that EC is a qualitatively distinct form of classical conditioning (Baeyens, Eelen, & Crombez, 1995 Baeyens, F, Eelen, P, and Crombez, G, (1995a). Pavlovian associations are forever: On classical conditioning and extinction, Journal of Psychophysiology 9 ((1995a)), pp. 127–141.[Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]a) or whether it is the result of an nonassociative artefact (Field & Davey, 1997 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (...) (1997). Conceptual conditioning: Evidence for an artifactual account of evaluative learning, Learning and Motivation 25 ((1997)), pp. 446–464.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1998 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1998). Evaluative conditioning: Arti‐fact or ‐fiction?‐ A reply to Baeyens, De Houwer, Vansteenwegen, and Eelen (1998), Learning and Motivation 29 ((1998)), pp. 475–491.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1999 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 25 ((1999)), pp. 211–224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]). Both experiments included between‐subjects control groups in addition to standard within‐subjects control conditions. In Experiment 1, only verbal ratings were measured in order to evaluate the effect of postacquisition CS‐only exposures on EC whereas in Experiment 2, verbal ratings and postextinction priming effects were measured. The results showed that the EC effects are demonstrable in a between‐subjects design and that the extinction procedure did not have any influence on the acquired evaluative value of CSs regardless of whether the verbal ratings or the priming effects were used as dependent variables. The present results provide evidence that EC is resistant to extinction and suggest an interpretation of EC as a qualitatively distinct form of associative learning. (shrink)

G. E. Moore 's 1912 work Ethics has tended to be overshadowed by his famous earlier work Principia Ethica. However, its detailed discussions of utilitarianism, free will, and the objectivity of moral judgements find no real counterpart in Principia, while its account of right and wrong and of the nature of intrinsic value deepen our understanding of Moore 's moral philosophy. Moore himself regarded the book highly, writing late in his career, "I myself like [it] better than Principia Ethica, because (...) it seems to me to be much clearer and far less full of confusions and invalid arguments." Short but philosophically rich, and written with impressive precision and intellectual candor, Ethics is a minor classic which repays careful study. This new edition includes Moore 's essay "The Nature of Moral Philosophy" as well as editorial notes, an introduction, and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

G. E. R. Lloyd explores the amazing diversity of views that humans have held on being, humanity, and understanding. In a cross-cultural study that ranges from ancient to modern times, he asks how far we are bound by the conceptual systems to which we belong, and explores topics such as ontology, morality, philosophy of language, and communication.

Despite the periodic table having been discovered by chemists half a century before the discovery of electronic structure, modern designs are invariably based on physicists’ definition of periods. This table is a chemists’ table, reverting to the phenomenal periods that led to the table’s discovery. In doing so, the position of hydrogen is clarified.