The work encompasses analysis of philosophers and writers from ancient times through to the present day and examines such episodes as the Oklahoma City Federal ...

Drawing primarily on the Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV, Chapter 1 disquisition of the virtue of Liberality, Aristotle's account of the vices of virtue of wealth is discussed in detail. Historical differences between Aristotle's post-Periclean and modern post-industrial ideas of ownership, finance and trade organizations are introduced so to evaluate the relevance of Aristotle's approach to current investigations in business ethics. It is concluded that the lasting value of Aristotle's approach lies in its capacity to incorporate wealth into a comprehensive ordering (...) of human goods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Defense of My Reading of Husserl and a Final NotePeter Hadreas (bio)KeywordsSSRI, Prozac, Fluoxetine, Zoloft, Sertraline, Paxil, Paroxetine, Husserl, phenomenologyI want to acknowledge Dr. Mark D. Rego and Professor Marilyn Nissim-Sabat for the care they put into the responses to my paper "Husserlian Self-Awareness and Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors." One of the abiding strengths of Philosophy, Psychiatry and Philosophy is its debate format.Thanks to the debate format, (...) I am not constrained from openly (and sincerely) contesting Marilyn Nissim-Sabat's reading of my paper. In my opinion, Marilyn Nissim-Sabat remarks suffer from many misconceptions. I'll respond in some detail to these misconceptions and misapprehensions. Contrastingly, I am largely in agreement with Mark Rego's commentary. After discussing Nissim-Sabat's misconceptions, I'll use the remaining space to propose how some of Mark Rego's suggestions might be filled out for further psychological research using the model of prereflective awareness.Nissim-Sabat brings many misunderstandings to my paper. They extend to the paper's purposes, its manner of evidence, as well as its consequences for psychotherapy. I respond to each of these issues.First about the paper's purpose. She writes: "I share with Hadreas the conviction that Husserlian phenomenology is the best philosophical approach to understanding, and indeed, possibly improving the treatment of mental disorders" (54). Nissim-Sabat and I do not share the same point of view regarding Husserlian philosophy and mental disorders. I am keen on Edmund Husserl's theories of pre-reflective awareness inasmuch as they provide a model for understanding mental disorders. Given the space limits, I focus my paper on puzzles emerging from case histories of people treated with SSRIs. Even so, I think it is a mistake to make Husserl's philosophy into a Rosetta stone for decoding this topic. This may mislead the reader as well as misrepresent the history of philosophy. As I point out in the section of the paper titled, "Husserl on Self-Awareness," Husserl is not the only well-known philosopher or psychologist who proposes a pre-reflective account of self-awareness. William James proposes an analogous notion of self-awareness. G. W. Leibniz, at the and of the seventeenth and the beginning of eighteenth centuries, worked out a very sophisticated understanding of pre-reflective awareness, which he applied to a multitude of psychological, epistemological, and ethical topics (Leibniz 1996, 53, 11, 164, 194). Husserl's account of pre-reflective awareness is 'better' inasmuch as it is systematically connected to an epistemology that can enable a researcher to understand how pre-reflective awareness fits both personal self-understanding and empirical psychological [End Page 61] experimentation. But James' and Leibniz 's accounts also have their strengths. Their descriptions of pre-reflective awareness are less burdened with technical language than Husserl's and, in the case of Leibniz, broadly applied to topics outside of psychology and epistemology.Perhaps in keeping with Husserl's philosophy as "the best," Nissim-Sabat argues that I am unfaithful to Husserl's true mission as she sees it. I fail to uphold the essence of Husserlian philosophy. She reminds us: "… Husserl's view that the raison d'etre of phenomenology is to develop an attitude that 'overcomes naturalism once and for all' …" (55–56). She quotes from Husserl's "Vienna Lecture," in support of the claim that overcoming naturalism is the raison d'etre of Husserl's phenomenology. Nissim-Sabat picks out one theme of Husserl's philosophy and makes it into its "raison-d'etre." Those familiar with Husserlian philosophy, and circumspect of its application to current issues in psychiatry and psychotherapy, would find her position worrisome. Specifically, as regards the application of Husserlian philosophy to current issues, a more specific obstacle than a looming naturalism is the prospect that researchers in the empirical sciences will doubt the efficacy of Husserlian philosophy for establishing causal relations through statistical correlations. Because Husserlian philosophy is intentionality based, it might seem (falsely) that it cannot handle the rigorous quantitative analysis of after and side effects that psychopharmacology requires.There should be little worry that anyone who would apply Husserlian philosophy to current psychological or psychiatric issues might... (shrink)

The goal of the paper is to offer a model of self-awareness that fits the testimony of both good and bad responders to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), of which fluoxetine (Prozac; Lilly, Indianapolis, IN) is probably the most well known. After a review of troubling current uncertainties concerning how and for whom SSRIs are therapeutic, it is argued that SSRIs, as a rule, lessen the emotionality of SSRI subjects in favor of an increased cognitive and volitional orientation. Traditional empiricist (...) and rationalist accounts self-awareness fail to provide models that adequately explain how such a shift from an active emotional response to an increased cognitive/volitional orientation is possible. Instead, notions of self-awareness, as understood by founding phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl, fit the testimony of SSRI subjects. (shrink)

Cet article cherche à montrer qu'en dépit de la célèbre polémique qui les a opposés l'un à l'autre, John Searle et Jacques Derrida s'accordent sur certains points de leurs philosophies du langage respectives. Les divergences les plus marquantes peuvent être aplanies par l'application de procédures qui sont en conformité avec les théories des deux auteurs.This paper sets out to show, notwithstanding their notorious polemic, how elements of John Searle's and Jacques Derrida's philosophies of language agree with each other. It is (...) also suggested how certain of Searle's and Derrida's most egregious bones of contention may be laid to rest through applying procedures consistent with the writings of both philosophers. (shrink)

It is argued that traditional functional explanations of the incest taboo do not sufficiently supply causal conditions. It is widely acknowledged that the incest taboo, although universal among human societies, is largely a feature of human behavior. Husserl's investigations of intentionality are introduced to supply the particularly human element by which the taboo may be understood. So as to illumine the contrast between the conflicting intentionalities, a classical Aristotelian contrast between eros and parent/ child philia is drawn. Parent/child philia and (...) eros, although both requisite for the survival of the species, are shown to be crosspurposeful in several ways. Husserl's understanding of 'negation,' as it applies to affective and practical intentionalities, is reconsidered. It is thereby explained how parental/child affection and erotic love, are 'incompossible' and not only conflict, but 'nullify' and 'cancel out' each other, generating the 'taboo'. (shrink)

As I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical caxc. The suffering and death that are occurring there now axe not inevitable, 1101; unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond Lhe capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to (...) very small proportions. The decisions arid actions of human beings can prevent this kind of suffering. Unfortunately, human beings have not made the necessary decisions. At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any signihczmt way. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds; they have not written t0 their parliamentaxy representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing thc refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs. At thc government level, no govcrmmcnt has given the sort of massive aid that would enable the refugees to survive fm: more than a few days. Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. It has, to date, given £14,750,000. For comparative purposes, B1~itain’s share of thc nonreccverabla development costs of the Anglo-French Concorde project is already in excess of £275,000,000, and on present estimates will reach £440,000,¤00. The implication is that the British government values a supersonic transport more than thirty times as.. (shrink)

This paper argues that a set of questioning attitudes are among the foundations of human and animal minds. While both verbal questioning and states of curiosity are generally explained in terms of metacognitive desires for knowledge or true belief, I argue that each is better explained by a prelinguistic sui generis type of mental attitude of questioning. I review a range of considerations in support of such a proposal and improve on previous characterizations of the nature of these attitudes. I (...) then broaden their explanatory scope to include a number of forms of exploratory search. The paper has three main goals: to characterize the nature of the questioning attitudes, outlining their causal role and type of content; to argue that they are fundamental components of the mind, being widespread among animals and not constructed during ontogeny out of other attitudes; and to suggest that they explain a great deal more behavior than one might think. (shrink)

Wo liegt der Anfang der Bewegung, die unser Leben ist? Was steuert die Menschen in ihrem Verhalten? Wie kommt es zu unseren Handlungen? Die Menschen konnen ihrem Handeln ein inneres geistiges Geschehen vorschalten: das Uberlegen, und dann aus der Uberlegung so handeln, wie sie es tun. Der Beginn beim Uberlegen fuhrt allerdings schnell auf etwas Elementareres, darauf, dass die Menschen Wesen sind, die etwas wollen. Das Uberlegen ist in allem auf ein vorgangiges, anderweitig bestimmtes Wollen bezogen und in seinen Ergebnissen (...) von diesem Wollen abhangig. Tatsachlich liegt, so Peter Stemmer in seinem neuen Buch, die Substanz des menschlichen Lebens nicht im Uberlegen, sondern im Wollen. Wenn aber das Wollen die Ergebnisse des Uberlegens und damit das Handeln bestimmt, was bestimmt dann die Ausrichtung des Wollens? Warum wollen wir, was wir wollen? (shrink)

We propose a solution to the problem of logical omniscience in what we take to be its fundamental version: as concerning arbitrary agents and the knowledge attitude per se. Our logic of knowledge is a spin-off from a general theory of thick content, whereby the content of a sentence has two components: an intension, taking care of truth conditions; and a topic, taking care of subject matter. We present a list of plausible logical validities and invalidities for the logic of (...) knowledge per se for arbitrary agents, and isolate three explanatory factors for them: the topic-sensitivity of content; the fragmentation of knowledge states; the defeasibility of knowledge acquisition. We then present a novel dynamic epistemic logic that yields precisely the desired validities and invalidities, for which we provide expressivity and completeness results. We contrast this with related systems and address possible objections. (shrink)

What is ethics? Where do moral standards come from? Are they based on emotions, reason, or some innate sense of right and wrong? For many scientists, the key lies entirely in biology---especially in Darwinian theories of evolution and self-preservation. But if evolution is a struggle for survival, why are we still capable of altruism? In his classic study The Expanding Circle, Peter Singer argues that altruism began as a genetically based drive to protect one's kin and community members but (...) has developed into a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral concern. Drawing on philosophy and evolutionary psychology, he demonstrates that human ethics cannot be explained by biology alone. Rather, it is our capacity for reasoning that makes moral progress possible. In a new afterword, Singer takes stock of his argument in light or recent research on the evolution of morality.--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Narrative thinking -- Narrative thinking about one's past -- Grief : a case study -- Narrative thinking about one's future -- Self-forgiveness : a case study -- The narrative sense of self -- Narrative, truth, life, and fiction.

Single-premise epistemic closure is the principle that: if one is in an evidential position to know that P where P entails Q, then one is in an evidential position to know that Q. In this paper, I defend the viability of opposition to closure. A key task for such an opponent is to precisely formulate a restricted closure principle that remains true to the motivations for abandoning unrestricted closure but does not endorse particularly egregious instances of closure violation. I focus (...) on two brands of epistemic theory that naturally incorporate closure restrictions. The first type holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant question. The second holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant topic. For each approach, I offer a formalization of a leading theory from the literature and use this formalization to evaluate the theory’s adequacy in terms of a precise set of desiderata. I conclude that neither theory succeeds in meeting these desiderata, casting doubt on the viability of the underlying approaches. Finally, I offer a novel variant of the topic-sensitive approach that fares better. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

Introduction These essays have been written over a period of about ten years and have already been published separately in various places. ...

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

I lay out the framework for my theory of sensory imagination in “Imagining as a guide to possibility.” Sensory imagining involves mental imagery , and crucially, in describing the content of imagining, I distinguish between qualitative content and assigned content. Qualitative content derives from the mental image itself; for visual imaginings, it is what is “pictured.” For example, visually imagine the Philadelphia Eagles defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers to win their first Super Bowl. You picture the greenness of the field and (...) the football’s brown oblong shape. Some of what you imagine isn’t explicitly pictured, however. That it is Sunday, that it is the Super Bowl: these facts are assigned. (shrink)

Using Martin Heidegger’s later philosophy as his springboard, Peter S. Dillard provides a radical reorientation of contemporary Christian theology. From Heidegger’s initially obscure texts concerning the holy, the gods, and the last god, Dillard extracts two possible non-metaphysical theologies: a theology of Streit and a theology of Gelassenheit. Both theologies promise to avoid metaphysical antinomies that traditionally hinder theology. After describing the strengths and weaknesses of each non-metaphysical theology, Dillard develops a Gelassenheit theology that ascribes a definite phenomenology to (...) the human encounter with divinity. This Gelassenheit theology also explains how this divinity can guide human action in concrete situations, remain deeply consonant with Christian beliefs in the Incarnation and the Trinity, and shed light on the Eucharist and Religious Vocations. Seminal ideas from Rudolf Otto and Ludwig Wittgenstein are applied at key points. Dillard concludes by encouraging others to develop an opposing Streit theology within the non-metaphysical, Heidegerrian framework he presents. (shrink)

Dominikanische Theologie nimmt ihren Ausgang bei den Menschen in ihren konkreten Lebenssituationen inmitten der Welt. Diesen Ansatz vertrat bereits Thomas von Aquin, der auf die Tradition horen und gleichzeitig auf die sozialen und politischen Verhaltnisse seiner Zeit theologisch antworten wollte. Anlasslich der Verleihung des Titels "Magister in Sacra Theologia" haben sich die Dominikaner Tiemo Rainer Peters, aus der Tradition der Neuen Politischen Theologie, und der Mediavist Walter Senner historisch und theologisch mit dem Politischen bei Thomas von Aquin auseinandergesetzt und dessen (...) Bedeutung fur die Gegenwart reflektiert. Beide gehen von ihrer eweiligen wissenschaftlichen Hermeneutik aus und damit von unterschiedlicher Seite aufeinander zu - ein ungewohnliches Unterfangen mit signifikanten Erlebnissen. (shrink)

Political decisions have the potential to greatly impact our lives. Think of decisions in relation to abortion or climate change, for example. This makes political legitimacy an important normative concern. But what makes political decisions legitimate? Are they legitimate in virtue of having support from the citizens? Democratic conceptions of political legitimacy answer in the affirmative. Such conceptions righly highlight that legitimate political decision-making must be sensitive to disagreements among the citizens. But what if democratic decisions fail to track what (...) there is most reason to do? What if a democratically elected government fails to take measures necessary to protect its population from threats related to climate change? Peter argues that the legitimacy of political decisions doesn't just depend on respect for the citizens' will; and defends a novel hybrid conception of political legitimacy, called the Epistemic Accountability conception. According to this conception, political legitimacy also depends on how political decision-making responds to evidence for what there is most reason to do. Grounds for Political Legitmacy starts with an overview of the main ways in which philosophers have thought about political legitimacy, and identifies the epistemic accountability conception as an overlooked alternative. It then develops the epistemic accountability conception of political legitimacy and discusses its implications for legitimate political decision-making. Considering the norms that should govern political debate, it examines the role of experts in politics, and probes the responsibilities of democratically elected political leaders and as well as of citizens. (shrink)

Knowledges and their histories -- Concepts -- Processes -- Problems and prospects -- Timeline.

Foreword -- Preface -- Is Aristotle's philosophy "divine, but useless"? -- Surveying the definition of Aristotle's "man" -- Exploring the habits of Aristotle's "ethical man" -- Exploring the habits of Aristotle's "working man" -- Aristotle on becoming something -- The gods and giants grapple with "art"! -- Aristotle's "philosophical man" finds his "goods" -- Aristotle's "philosophical man" sees the world in a grain of sand -- Aristotle's "philosophical man" gets to know his limits -- Aristotle's "philosophical man" finds "God" -- (...) Aristotle's "man" competes in the philosophical marketplace -- Aristotle's "philosophical man" finds himself -- Plato's "clever modern man" loses himself. (shrink)

This volume addresses the means and ends of sacrificial speculation by inviting a selected group of specialists in the fields of philosophy, history of religions, and indology to examine philosophical modes of sacrificial speculation-especially in Ancient India and Greece-and consider the commonalities of their historical raison d'etre. Scholars have long observed, yet without presenting any transcultural grand theory on the matter, that sacrifice seems to end with (or even continue as) philosophy in both Ancient India and Greece. How are we (...) to understand this important transformation that so profoundly changed the way we think of religion (and philosophy as opposed to religion) today? Some of the complex topics inviting closer examination in this regard are the interiorisation of ritual, ascetism and self-sacrifice, sacrifice and cosmogony, the figure of the philosopher-sage, transformations and technologies of the self, analogical reasoning, the philosophy of ritual, vegetarianism, and metempsychosis. (shrink)

Im Diabolischen, das die Welt durchherrscht, wird ein Bedeutungsüberschuss spürbar, dem durch keine wissenschaftliche Betrachtung beizukommen ist. Diese leugnet die Existenz eines objektiv Bösen. Hingegen kann keine Ethik, die nicht blind-naiver Aufklärung anhängt, einer Ontologie des "Teufels" entbehren. Dabei bildet akkurat die "unschuldige" Natur mit ihren Orgien des Fressens und Gefressen-Werdens, denen die harmlosesten, freundlichsten Geschöpfe zum Opfer fallen, ein satanisches Tableau. Dessen Entzauberung durch die Theorie der Evolution verstärkt bloß den Zauber des Bösen.Die Präsenz des Dämonischen zeigt sich in (...) der Stimmung, die den modernen Menschen heimsucht. Er fühlt sich abgeschnitten von der wahren Realität, fürchtet, als ein Wesen existieren zu müssen, das seiner Seele verlustig ging. Unsere Zombie-Angst vermittelt eine Ahnung vom Radikalbösen. (shrink)

This volume explores the use of higher-order logics in metaphysics. Seventeen original essays trace the development of higher-order metaphysics, discuss different ways in which higher-order languages and logics may be used, and consider their application to various central topics of metaphysics.

Peter Anstey presents a thorough and innovative study of John Locke's views on the method and content of natural philosophy. Focusing on Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding, but also drawing extensively from his other writings and manuscript remains, Anstey argues that Locke was an advocate of the Experimental Philosophy: the new approach to natural philosophy championed by Robert Boyle and the early Royal Society who were opposed to speculative philosophy. On the question of method, Anstey shows how Locke's pessimism (...) about the prospects for a demonstrative science of nature led him, in the Essay, to promote Francis Bacon's method of natural history, and to downplay the value of hypotheses and analogical reasoning in science. But, according to Anstey, Locke never abandoned the ideal of a demonstrative natural philosophy, for he believed that if we could discover the primary qualities of the tiny corpuscles that constitute material bodies, we could then establish a kind of corpuscular metric that would allow us a genuine science of nature. It was only after the publication of the Essay, however, that Locke came to realize that Newton's Principia provided a model for the role of demonstrative reasoning in science based on principles established upon observation, and this led him to make significant revisions to his views in the 1690s. On the content of Locke's natural philosophy, it is argued that even though Locke adhered to the Experimental Philosophy, he was not averse to speculation about the corpuscular nature of matter. Anstey takes us into new terrain and new interpretations of Locke's thought in his explorations of his mercurialist transmutational chymistry, his theory of generation by seminal principles, and his conventionalism about species. (shrink)

This book offers a reassessment of the political philosophy of the British Idealists, a group of once influential and now neglected nineteenth-century Hegelian philosophers, whose work has been much misunderstood. Peter Nicholson focuses on F. H. Bradley's idea of morality and moral philosophy; T. H. Green's theory of the Common Good, of the social nature of rights, of freedom, and of state interference; and Bernard Bosanquet's notorious theory of the General Will. By examining the arguments offered by the Idealists (...) and by their critics the author is able to penetrate the deep layers of hostile comment laid down by several generations of later writers and to show that these ideas, once properly understood, are not only defensible but interesting and important. (shrink)