Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method provides an insightful critique of Russell’s analysis and metaphysics of logical atomism, proposing an unduly neglected neo-idealist alternative to Russell’s philosophical method. I summarize Collingwood’s critique of analysis and sympathetically outline the philosophical methodology of Collingwood’s post-Hegelian dialectical method: his scale of forms methodology, grounded on the overlap of philosophical classes. I then delineate Collingwood’s critique of the metaphysics of logical atomism, demonstrating how the scale of forms methodology is opposed to Russell’s logical atomism. (...) Finally, I reflect on the reasons Collingwood’s Essay aroused little interest upon publication and the importance of continually rethinking the history of philosophy. (shrink)

I argue that eliminative materialism, with its aim of jettisoning folk psychology, cannot account for the possibility of historical knowledge. Eliminative materialism destroys the disciplinary distinctions between history and science in such a way as to eclipse the former. I argue that ‘historical consciousness’ cannot be reduced to the discoveries of neuroscience; Paul Churchland’s charge of folk psychology’s explanatory impotence is undercut by the possibility, indeed, the actuality of historical knowledge, and one of Churchland’s main arguments for eliminative materialism is (...) dependent upon historical knowledge-claims that themselves must contradictorily utilize the propositional attitudes of folk psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 232-233 [Access article in PDF] Giuseppina D'Oro. Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience. New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. xi + 179. Cloth, $80.00. There is a resurgence of interest in Collingwood among philosophers and political theorists in the English-speaking world. One of the scholars leading this resurgence is Giuseppina D'Oro, whose fine monograph on Collingwood's metaphysics and epistemology appears in the (...) series "Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy." D'Oro's prose is lucid and tightly argued: her analyses of the problems that concerned Collingwood, as well as her reinterpretations and supporting arguments, are a thoughtful model of clarity.Collingwood is generally ignored except by philosophers of art and history; D'Oro aims to reassess Collingwood's important metaphysical and epistemological views and raise awareness of them. Arguing that, when not ignored, these aspects of Collingwood's philosophy often have been misinterpreted, D'Oro supplies a reconstruction and defense of Collingwood's conception of philosophical thought. Admirably and insightfully, she contextualizes his concerns within the past three centuries of philosophy and also within influential contemporary discussions (addressing, for example, relationships to Locke, Hume, Kant, Prichard, Russell, Ryle, Ayer, James, Rorty, and Quine). D'Oro demonstrates that Collingwood provides crucial contributions to both the history of philosophy and contemporary debates.For D'Oro, Collingwood's key text is his An Essay on Philosophical Method (1933), which is concerned with the proper subject matter, method, and task of philosophy. This work, [End Page 232] with its distinction between philosophical and empirical concepts, introduces into Collingwood's metaphysics the Kantian element that D'Oro emphasizes to support her original interpretation. Collingwood's metaphysics, like Kant's, is described as a "descriptive metaphysics" or "metaphysics of experience" (2-3) which was intended to reform, not jettison, metaphysics. Conceptual rather than ontological, Collingwood's metaphysics is an epistemological project that reveals not the "structure of reality," but the "structure of experience" (2). According to Collingwood, all knowledge is based on presuppositions and conditioned by them; thus, metaphysics cannot be a presuppositionless "study of pure being" (3) or things-in-themselves. Rather, Collingwood's Kantian metaphysics aims to uncover the absolute presuppositions behind various aspects of experience, presuppositions that ground or make possible diverse forms of knowledge and that structure different domains of inquiry. D'Oro here argues intriguingly against a view of much Collingwood scholarship: that for the later Collingwood of An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), metaphysics is the study of the historically relative presuppositions adopted by diverse people of different historical eras or epochs, i.e., metaphysics entails historical relativism. Instead, D'Oro contends, metaphysics for Collingwood is the second-order study of the absolute presuppositons that provide the conditions for the possibility of disciplinary knowledge. Furthermore, she argues, this metaphysical view is consistent with An Essay on Philosophical Method. Contra some commentators, there is no "early" and "late" Collingwood, and the notion that he ultimately experienced a "radical conversion" (79) to historical relativism is false.Collingwood's metaphysics of experience entails that domains of inquiry such as art, religion, natural science, and history are governed by distinct presuppositions or a priori principles and thus provide complementary, not competing, accounts of reality. Hence, history deals with actions and presupposes that their causes are freely chosen reasons or motives; natural science deals with events and presupposes that they are caused by empirical regularities in nature. These presuppositional distinctions are philosophical and conceptual rather than empirical, and different areas of knowledge may address the same empirical objects in different ways.This truncated summary hardly does justice to the rich totality of D'Oro's book, much of which provocatively works out the implications of her reinterpretation. Among other things, she defends Collingwood against metaphysical realism, neo-empiricism, and logical positivism; addresses his idiosyncratic "'rehabilitation' of the ontological proof" (67); argues against the common view that his philosophy of history promotes "re-enactment" as a methodological procedure for historical practice; and explores his non-dualist and non-physicalist resolution of the mind/body problem.Perhaps... (shrink)

Aaron Ridley has concluded that “Collingwood’s global Idealism is really only a distraction from the much more important and interesting ideas that constitute his aesthetics.” My paper takes issue with this conclusion. Collingwood’s idealism is an integral part of his aesthetics, and it simply cannot be shucked off, leaving his aesthetics untouched and intact. A careful reading of Collingwood’s oeuvre in aesthetics reveals that it is his long-standing antipathy to realism that grounds both his critique of pseudo-art and his own (...) theory of art, particularly his idealist theory of the imagination. If Collingwood’s aesthetics are interesting and important, so is the idealism that grounds them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 129-149 [Access article in PDF] Lord Acton and "the Insanity of Nationality" Timothy Lang "I hope I need not warn you against Montalembert's declamation about Poland—He has no idea of the insanity of nationality...." Acton to Richard Simpson, 25 September 1861 The sixty-year period that culminated in the First World War witnessed a momentous transformation in the European state (...) system. Italian and German unification, the expulsion of the Ottomans from southeastern Europe, the destruction of the three remaining empires—the Austrian, German, and Russian—as casualties of the war, their replacement by a band of successor states stretching from the Baltic to the Balkans: these developments completely altered the face of Europe, as dynastic states gave way to nation-states. Looking back on this transformation once the war was over, many Europeans believed the decision to rebuild their continent on the basis of nation-states made perfect sense. To establish the principles of self-determination and democracy would contribute to peace and prosperity by solving the nationalities problem that had caused such mischief in the past. But in the 1860s, as this transformation was just beginning, the question looked very different, especially to the young John Dalberg Acton—the future Lord Acton, famous for the Cambridge Modern History—as he contemplated without benefit of hindsight the rise of the modern nation-state. 1 [End Page 129]Acton's views on the nation-state appeared in an article on "Nationality," which he wrote in 1862 for the Home and Foreign Review. 2 Nationality—today we would call it nationalism—was, Acton pointed out to his colleague Richard Simpson, a "new question in political philosophy" 3 ; and Acton's essay was a remarkably precocious treatment of the subject. In this tour de force he placed nationalism in its historical context, enabling readers to understand its significance for their own time and to see in nationalism the most potent force unleashed by the French Revolution. For Acton the Revolution had given a new direction to social protest. Whereas in the past, people had resisted oppression by calling for a return to traditional ways, now, after 1789, they demanded a new social and political order. The Revolution thus spawned protest movements of a wholly unprecedented kind. These movements were "spontaneous and aggressive," he warned. They were "popular, unreasoning, and almost irresistible." They appealed to the masses, encouraging them to be "arbitrary as well as insubordinate" and to disregard tradition, prescription, and established rights. Nationalism, with Mazzini as its representative figure, was the most formidable of these new mass movements; for it subverted the existing order by attacking the territorial arrangement and sovereignty of legitimate states, and it provided the impetus behind contemporary revolution. 4 In contrast to later generations, who may have regarded nation-states as likely to promote peace and prosperity, Acton believed that to create these states by imposing the principle of nationality would damage irreparably the Europe he knew and valued.Acton clearly appreciated the power of nationalism—and for this he deserves credit—but too much can, and has, been made of his foresight. He was disturbed by nationalism not because he was clairvoyant, not because he saw in nationalism the twentieth century's totalitarian nightmare, but rather because he was preoccupied with very nineteenth-century concerns. 5 When in 1859 Cavour and Louis Napoleon contrived their war against Austria, hoping to drive the [End Page 130] Habsburgs from Italy and capture the provinces of Lombardy and Venetia for Piedmont, they exacerbated the nationalities problem in much of southern Europe. In Italy this problem was solved by the creation of a unified nation-state. The war against Austria was the first step in the process of unification that culminated in 1861 with the founding of the Kingdom of Italy. As a result of unification, inhabitants of the Italian peninsula found themselves subject to a highly centralized state, with an administration modeled on the Napoleonic system that was adverse to regional autonomy. The Italian war also aggravated the nationalities problem in... (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 102, Issue 1101, Page 607-622, September 2021.

In this paper I'm interested in the prospects for the Right Reasons theory of creditworthiness. The Right Reasons theory says that what it is for an agent to be creditworthy for X-ing is for that agent to X for the right reasons. The paper has a negative goal and a positive goal. The negative goal is to show that a class of Right Reasons theories are doomed. These theories all have a Conceptualization Condition on acting for the right reasons. Conceptualization (...) Conditions demand that agents who act for the right reasons deploy or be able to deploy certain normative concepts in acting. I argue that views of this type run into a host of overintellectualization problems. The positive aim is to argue for my Right Reasons view, which appeals to know-how to avoid overintellectualization. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the contribution that Hegel’s discussion of ethicality makes to his account of recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit. While the famous relation of lord and bondsman might prompt us to think of all failures of recognition as failures of reciprocity, Hegel’s account of ethicality shows that it is possible for forms of social life to be structured so that no one is recognized. This failure of recognition is unique since its source does not lie (...) in a lack of reciprocity between individuals but in the absence of an explicit and shared conception of the “self.” In conclusion I point to the importance of the idea of the self to Hegel’s account of reciprocal intersubjective recognition in the text and contrast it with Pippin’s recent interpretation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 24, 2010 (10:17 pm) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE3001\russell 30,1 032 red corrected.wpd 1 Just what exactly “separated by degree” means is a bone of contention among those playing the game. But it seems to me that if you have actually met a person Xz, then you have knowledge by acquaintance of X, whereas if you meet someone who met Xz you are separated from Xz by one (...) degree. Thus, I never met the jazz great Sun Ra, but my friend Warren Allen Smith (former head of a recording studio) worked with him on several of his albums, so I am one degree of separation from Sun Ra. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 30 (summer 2010): 63–7 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631 eu d’sprit “SIX DEGREES OF BERTRAND RUSSELL” Timothy J. Madigan Philosophy / St. John Fisher College Rochester, ny 14618, usa [email protected] One of the most quoted phrases in current popular culture is “six degrees of separation”. It expresses the idea that any human being is connected with any other human being by a chain of at most six acquaintances.1 While there is much debate as to whether this is literally true, it is an interesting thoughtexperiment, as well as the basis for many fun parlour games. One of these is entitled “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, in which Wlm fans try to connect the aforementioned actor with any other movie star in as few links as possible. I have been thinking of launching a similar parlour game called “Six Degrees of Bertrand Russell”, in which any Wgure from the past 200 years or so could be connected with Bertie in as few steps as possible. Why Bertie rather than, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein (who after all had a stated interest in games)? For two reasons: Wrst, Russell lived to the ripe old age of 97, and thus had the time to interact with a wide variety of people; and secondly he was for most of that long life a celebrity, who rubbed elbows with all manner of individuals, many of whom were either celebrities themselves at the time or came to be celebrated later. As is often pointed out, Russell’s list of acquaintances stretched from Lenin (V.yI.) to Lennon (zJohn), from the Bloomsbury Group to the Doomsday Prophets, from William Gladstone to Harold Wilson. Russell’s grandfather, LordJohn Russell, had as a young man visited Napoleon on the island of Elba and shaken his hand. When I shake the hand of Honorary Russell Archivist Ken Blackwell, September 24, 2010 (10:17 pm) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE3001\russell 30,1 032 red corrected.wpd 64 timothy j. madigan 2 Other historical writings by Russell are discussed in Kenneth R. Stunkel, “Bertrand Russell’s Writings and ReXections on History”, Russellz 21 (2001): 129–53. who met Bertie, I often think that I am only three degrees of separation from shaking Napoleon’s hand as well. And as for Napoleonz—zwell, who knows where that hand had been? Given this strong connection to history, it is not surprising that Russell himself would write an essay entitled “How to Read and Understand History”.2 In his Autobiographyz and other works such as Portraits from Memory, Russell made it quite clear that his aristocratic and privileged background gave him access to many of the most important movers and shakers in twentieth-century politics, literature, and academia, areas in which he himself excelled. He was aware that, unlike many of his fellow philosophers, who were known only to a small coterie of fellow deep thinkers, he was an historic Wgure, one who could interact on a personal level with cabinet ministers, Nobel prize-winners in all Welds, press lords, movie stars, presidents and premiers. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance, many concerned individuals tried to reach Kennedy and Khrushchev to give them advice, but Russell was one of the few outsiders whose letters actually got through, as he no doubt knew they would. For all of his concern with... (shrink)

In fundamental rights adjudication, should judges defer to the judgment of other decision makers? How can they defer, without betraying the respect that judges ought to accord those rights? How can they refuse to defer, without betraying the respect that judges ought to accord to other decision makers? I argue that only principles of comity justify deference, and their reach is limited. Comity never forbids the judges to take and to act upon a different view of fundamental rights from that (...) of another decision maker. I elaborate this view by reference to the decision of the House of Lords in Adan and Aitseguer [2001] 1 All ER 593. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the contribution that Hegel’s discussion of ethicality makes to his account of recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit. While the famous relation of lord and bondsman might prompt us to think of all failures of recognition as failures of reciprocity, Hegel’s account of ethicality shows that it is possible for forms of social life to be structured so that no one is recognized. This failure of recognition is unique since its source does not lie (...) in a lack of reciprocity between individuals but in the absence of an explicit and shared conception of the “self.” In conclusion I point to the importance of the idea of the self to Hegel’s account of reciprocal intersubjective recognition in the text and contrast it with Pippin’s recent interpretation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is the chapter's first paragraph: IN DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER JOHN MICHAEL MCDONAGH'S 2011 Quentin Tarantino-Hke comic film The Guard, there is a bizarre scene where three hit men, for no apparent reason, while driving down an Irish road get into a heated debate over who the world's greatest philosopher might be. It is amusing that the chauvinistic characters are willing to reconsider Russell's greatness once they can stop thinking of him as an Englishman, but no doubt (...) Lord Russell himself, given his cosmopolitan leanings as well as his oft-professed love for his Englishness, might have been doubly offended by their banter, not to say their subsequent actions of gunning down a police officer in cold blood. Still, it's yet another example of Russell's ubiquitiousness. His name and image often pop up in the most unexpected places. (shrink)

Is philosophy a unique discipline, or are its methods more like those of other sciences than many philosophers think? Timothy Williamson explains clearly and concisely how contemporary philosophers think and work, and reflects on their powers and limitations.

Robinson argues that by certain threshold criteria, pregnant women qualify for a higher moral status by reason of their pregnancies. While her intention is to make this a status upgrade for women, we worry that it may result in a status downgrade for women as a class, by presupposing and reinforcing women’s value in relation to their reproductive labour. Historically, central to feminist analysis is resistance to reductive accounts of women in relation to their reproductivity. For example, de Beauvoir addressed (...) men’s transcendence and contrasted it with women’s immanence, a status distinction possible because women are mired in expectations that they will marry, produce children and remain in the domestic realm; and for her part, Firestone argued that biological reproduction underlies women’s inferiority to men and that ‘The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both (should) be replaced by…artificial reproduction’1 2 Her concern was to liberate women from expectations of biological reproduction so their productive value in society is not reduced to their reproductive contributions. A formidable body of analysis in this same vein cautions against collapsing the value of women into their pregnancies, so much so that some commentators even distinguish ‘mothering’ from gestation.3 Robinson’s argument that pregnant women qualify at a higher threshold of personhood emphasises …. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Three Probes into St. Francis of Assisi's Second Letter to the Faithful1Robert J. Karris, OFMFrancis' Second Letter to the Faithful2 is so rich that it would take a lengthy book to probe most of its treasures. My goal is to make three probes: 1) from a literary analysis of this letter of exhortation, 2) from the results of a more thorough search for the biblical sources behind its eighty-eight (...) lines, and 3) from the insights achieved through literary and theological parallels to its contents.3 I accomplish my goals by going systematically through this letter, which I contend has introduction, positive exhortations, conclusion to positive exhortations and bridge to second part of the letter, negative exhortations, aka polemic, the example story of the unrepentant rich man, and ending.4 At the very beginning, I remind myself and my readers of something that we might take for granted: The dominant figure of this letter is "our Lord Jesus Christ," an expression and reality that pulses through its eighty-eight lines. Take, as [End Page 79] an example, n. 49–50, which are staggering in scope: "And they (who persevere in penance) will be children of the heavenly Father, whose works they are doing. And they are spouses, brothers, and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ."Methodology: Search for Literary and Theological ParallelsEarly on in my doctoral studies, I learned the importance and value of investigating New Testament texts by means of their literary parallels.5 For example, there were significant interpretive payoffs to be gained by comparing St. Paul's use of polemic in the Pastoral Epistles (1–2 Timothy and Titus) to that employed by the Stoics.6 Paul probably never met a Stoic philosopher in his life, but their means of no-holds-barred polemic was "in the air" he breathed. Daniel J. Harrington expresses well this common methodology in New Testament Studies: "In literature a parallel involves some point or points of similarity between two texts where literary dependence is unlikely or not proved. Parallels to New Testament texts can be taken from any body of literature and from any period of history…"7So what parallels do I suggest as background for the interpretation of Francis' 2LtF? There may be many, since Francis' letter is dealing with fundamental human and Christian realities: sin and virtue. I have selected what I call The Big Three:In his De Virtutibus et Vitiis Liber,8 Alcuin of York (d. 800) wrote a letter to Count Guy, who is engaged in martial activities. Alcuin has followed Guy's request for paternal admonition and prays that his writing may help Guy to perpetual salvation (n. 6). Alcuin writes briefly about 35 topics: wisdom, faith, charity, hope, zeal of reading, peace, mercy, remission, patience, humility, compunction of the heart, confession, repentance, not delaying conversion to God, fear of God, fasting, almsgiving, chastity, avoiding fraud, judges, false witnesses, envy, pride, proneness to anger, not seeking human praise, perseverance in good works, eight principal vices, greed, fornication, avarice, anger, [End Page 80] weariness (acedia), sorrow, cenodoxia (vainglory), and the four virtues.9 It is abundantly clear that Francis does not engage in 35 topics, but his exhortations do overlap with a number of Alcuin's, e.g., almsgiving, judges, perseverance in good works.In his Liber exhortationis,10 Archbishop St. Paulinus of Aquileia (d. 802) wrote to Count or Duke Henry of Fruilli. His treatise has 66 chapters and covers virtually all spiritual and moral topics. Of singular interest is Chapter 8, "On Friendship with God and Keeping God's Commandments." His final chapter is a long prayer to resist the wiles of the devil and to persevere in virtue. Saints Paulinus of Aquileia and Francis of Assisi's 2LtF have numerous points in common.11Archbishop Hincmar of Reims (d. 882) wrote a very polished and regarded letter, De cavendis vitiis et virtutibus exercendis to King Charles the Bald.12 It has ten chapters. The first seven deal chiefly with vices such as avarice, pride, voluptuousness, gluttony, envy, anger, and jealousy. They also encourage virtuous deeds such as almsgiving, works of mercy, fidelity, and prayer. Chapters 8... (shrink)

Brian Lleiter : Leiter reports -- Jason Stanley : philosophy as the great naïveté -- Eric Schwitzgebel : the splintered skeptic -- Mark Rowlands : hour of the wolf -- Eric T. olson : the philosopher with no hands -- Craig Callender : time lord -- Kieran Setiya : what Anscombe intended and other puzzles -- Kit Fine : metaphysical kit -- Patricia Churchland : causal machines -- Valerie Tiberius : mostly elephant, ergo -- Peter Carruthers : mind reader (...) -- Joshua Knobe : indie rock virtues -- Alfred R. Mele : the four million dollar philosopher -- Graham Priest : logically speaking -- Ursula Renz: after Spinoza : wiser, freer, happier -- Cecile Fabre: on the intrinsic value of each of us -- Hilde Lindemann : no ethics without feminism -- Elizabeth S. Anderson : the new leveller -- Christine Korsgaard: treating people as end in themselves -- Michael Lynch : truth, reason and democracy -- Timothy Williamson : classical investigations -- Ernie Lepore : meaning, truth, language, reality -- Jerry Fodor : meaningful words without sense, and other revolutions -- Huw Price : without mirrors -- Gary Gutting : what philosophers know. (shrink)

Call a term ‘pseudo-singular’ if it is syntactically singular but semantically plural. ‘The pair who wrote Principia’ is a good example, standing as it does for the two individuals, Whitehead and Russell. In this journal (2021), Eric Snyder and Stewart Shapiro launched an attack on the idea, calling it ‘linguistically and logically untenable.’ In this reply we rebut every one of their criticisms.

Recent studies have demonstrated neural overlap between resting state activity and self-referential processing. This “rest-self” overlap occurs especially in anterior cortical midline structures like the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (PACC). However, the exact neurotemporal and biochemical mechanisms remain to be identified. Therefore, we conducted a combined electroencephalography (EEG)-magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) study. EEG focused on pre-stimulus (e.g., prior to stimulus presentation or perception) power changes to assess the degree to which those changes can predict subjects’ perception (and judgment) of subsequent (...) stimuli as high or low self-related. MRS measured resting state concentration of glutamate, focusing on PACC. High pre-stimulus (e.g., prior to stimulus presentation or perception) alpha power significantly correlated with both perception of stimuli judged to be highly self-related and with resting state glutamate concentrations in the PACC. In sum, our results show (i) pre-stimulus (e.g., prior to stimulus presentation or perception) alpha power and resting state glutamate concentration to mediate rest-self overlap that (ii) dispose or incline subjects to assign high degrees of self-relatedness to perceptual stimuli. (shrink)

Hume’s criticisms of divine causation are insufficient because he does not respond to important philosophical positions that are defended by those whom he closely read. Hume’s arguments might work against the background of a Cartesian definition of body, or a Malebranchian conception of causation, or some defenses of occasionalism. At least, I will not here argue that they succeed or fail against those targets. Instead, I will lay out two major deficiencies in his arguments against divine causation. I call these (...) “deficiencies” because Hume does not adequately address live positions. This does not mean, of course, that there are not problems with these views or that Hume could not have given strong arguments against them. Rather, Hume’s arguments, which can seem comprehensive to the twenty-first century reader, are in fact not so. For the deficiencies discussed in this essay, I point to writers from Hume’s near context (many of whom we know he read carefully) who held the views not discussed, and I provide reasons why Hume seems not to have entertained these possibilities. I won’t distinguish between accidentally overlooking and actively ignoring. By drawing attention to these three deficiencies, I have two goals. The first is to demonstrate the diversity of seventeenth and early eighteenth century views on divine causation, especially among philosophers in England, Scotland, and Ireland, who are often ignored by philosophers today who, like Hume, focus on continental Cartesians while ignoring British dualists and vitalists. The second goal is to make today’s readers aware of shortcomings in Hume’s arguments to encourage productively contextual readings of Hume and his contemporaries. (shrink)

This study investigated the neuromodulatory effects of transspinal stimulation on soleus H-reflex excitability and electromyographic activity during stepping in humans with and without spinal cord injury. Thirteen able-bodied adults and 5 individuals with SCI participated in the study. EMG activity from both legs was determined for steps without, during, and after a single-pulse or pulse train transspinal stimulation delivered during stepping randomly at different phases of the step cycle. The soleus H-reflex was recorded in both subject groups under control conditions (...) and following single-pulse transspinal stimulation at an individualized exactly similar positive and negative conditioning-test interval. The EMG activity was decreased in both subject groups at the steps during transspinal stimulation, while intralimb and interlimb coordination were altered only in SCI subjects. At the steps immediately after transspinal stimulation, the physiological phase-dependent EMG modulation pattern remained unaffected in able-bodied subjects. The conditioned soleus H-reflex was depressed throughout the step cycle in both subject groups. Transspinal stimulation modulated depolarization of motoneurons over multiple segments, limb coordination, and soleus H-reflex excitability during assisted stepping. The soleus H-reflex depression may be the result of complex spinal inhibitory interneuronal circuits activated by transspinal stimulation and collision between orthodromic and antidromic volleys in the peripheral mixed nerve. The soleus H-reflex depression by transspinal stimulation suggests a potential application for normalization of spinal reflex excitability after SCI. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment by T. J. GorringeLibby GibsonThe Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment T. J. Gorringe New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 309 pp. $90.00Building on arguments set forth in A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, and Redemption (2002), theologian Timothy Gorringe begins The Common Good and the Global Emergency (...) by exploring whether an idea of the common good is relevant in a multicultural society and, if so, how an account of the common good can give rise to an alternative economic paradigm grounded in grace. While respect for cultural differences and the rise of individualism may argue against a robust understanding of the common good, Gorringe looks to the concept of oikonomia, or household management, to express the concept of managing “our affairs in such a way as to further what we perceive to be good ends” (35). Since our understanding of the economy shapes every aspect of the built environment, Gorringe traces local, regional, and national economies to what Wendell Berry calls “the great economy” or God’s creation, redemption, and sustenance of all things.Gorringe grounds his arguments about the common good in his Trinitarian theology of the built environment, expressed as God the Creator, God the Reconciler, and God the Redeemer. The triune perichoretic nature of God is inherently relational; therefore, as humans made in God’s image, we cannot ignore our interdependence. While God the Creator offers a sense of the common good springs from creation, God the Reconciler gives Gorringe traction to discuss the many barriers—race, gender, class, and space—that divide human beings and how our built environments structure these separations. God the Redeemer is concerned with empowering human beings to challenge all things that destroy life; thus Gorringe sees his project as contributing a theology of liberation committed to justice and fullness of life for all humans.Gorringe argues that our best chance to identify a common good rests on constructively addressing the common bad that he calls the global emergency. This emergency can be seen in the doubling of the world’s population in the past forty years, the problem of climate change, and global resource depletion. Seeing climate change and food, water, and energy issues as among the most pressing ethical issues of the coming decades, Gorringe challenges the reader to examine how our current common values have degraded the environment [End Page 202] and the lives of people worldwide. Since he specifically addresses the built environment, Gorringe’s purview is necessarily anthropocentric and justified by the doctrine of incarnation. Yet the Creator God expresses great wisdom in the laws of nature, and much could be learned from the “built” environments in the animal kingdom. While this line of thought would clearly depart from the rigorous academic method of Gorringe’s analysis, the book arose from a feeling that the Lord instructed him to continue working in this area, and attending to other nonrational sources of wisdom could greatly enhance our understanding of God’s grace in all the world.Gorringe acknowledges that the chapters do not unfold linearly, and that he seeks to point out points of confluence. The fluidity with which he addresses theological, political, economic, architectural, sociological, and ethical issues leads the reader to an overall picture of the common good and its powers to liberate us from injustice while an exact map of this process may be difficult to draw. Gorringe clearly and directly addresses both critics and supporters of his previous work on the built environment and solidifies his case for attending to the ways that our built environments could express a common good, grounded in grace, that allows for the fullness of life for all beings.Libby GibsonVirginia Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

Fran Brearton: Robert Graves and The White Goddess Joyce Hill: Authority and Intertextuality in the Works of Ælfric Michael Pennington: Barnardine's Straw: The Devil in Shakespeare's Detail David Womersley: Dulness and Pope Terence Cave: Montaigne Lord Moser: The Future of Our Universities Alexander Murray: The Inquisition and the Renaissance Robert Bagley: The Prehistory of Chinese Music Theory Edwin Cameron: Patents and Public Health: Principle, Politics and Paradox Mervyn King: What Fates Impose: Facing Up to Uncertainty Dominic Lieven: Empire, History (...) and the Contemporary Global Order Joan Oates: Archaeology in Mesopotamia: Digging Deeper at Tell Brak Timothy Besley: The New Political Economy Richard Gray: 'They Worship Death Here': William Faulkner, Sanctuary and Hollywood Lord Sutherland: Nomad's Progress James Piscatori: Imagining Pan-Islam: Religious Activism and Political Utopias. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DISCOMFORT: RICHARD RORTY AND PRAGMATISM 0 VER THE LAST twenty years, one of the most consistently incisive critics of traditional Anglo-American philosophy has been Richard Rorty. Few contemporary writers can match the vigor, breadth, and intelligence of his books and articles, even as few readers can accept the radicality of the views they express. Rorty disturbs and astonishes like spring weather. His pages mount (...) like cumulus clouds in our intellectual sky, saturated by the past and promising (ambiguously) either to irrigate or to inundate the present fields of our culture. Almost everybody complains about him, but can anything be done? This essay is an attempt to come to grips with aat least part of Rorty's multi-faceted and troubling corpus. His diagnosis of the root problems of epistemology and their larger significance (or insignificance) for Western intellectual life is often brilliant, but I shall argue that his prescription for the future is unattractive. His uncompromising war on dogmatism is based on a rejection of conventional notions of objective truth and metaphysical comfort and is presented in the name of human freedom. It represents, however, a potentially disastrous kind of pragmatism which can be criticized on both theoretical and practical grounds. Of the two, the practical considerations may perhaps be the more telling. I. The Problems of Reading Rorty In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty evaluates modern philosophy's comon self-understanding.1 One as1 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). ~70 RICHARD RORTY AND PRAGMATISM 271 sumed occupation of the discipline, on his view, is the discovery of the " foundations " of knowledge and thus the validation or invalidation of specific claims to know made in such various fields as science, ethics, art, and religion. Philosophy can claim to take the measure of these other areas of intellectual life because it claims to understand the nature of the mind and its capacity for accurate representation of reality. Philosophy can claim to be foundational with respect to the rest of culture because it claims to encompass the rest of culture, because it claims to know better than science and religion, for instance, what communion with reality they can and cannot attain to. Or so many modern philosophers would (perhaps only implicitly) believe. Rorty suggests that this conception of philosophy stems largely from intellectual developments beginning in the 17th Century, and in this vein he isolates three key contributions: (1) Descartes's idea of the mind as a separate substance, the " inner" workings of which are uniquely knowable to itself; (2) Locke's idea that a "theory of knowledge" is both necessary and possible on the basis of an understanding of the mind and how it works; and (3) Kant's idea that philosophy both can and should provide other fields with overarching canons of reason by dissecting a priori the structure of reason itself. These three contributions to modern philosophy's self-image are interrelated but nonetheless distinguishable. Each played its own crucial part in suggesting a foundation for that discipline, philosophy, which claimed to be foundational for all others. Over against this common picture of philosophy and its proper labors stand Rorty's "heroes": Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey. These three men agree, in Rorty's estimation, that the picture (common to Descartes, Locke, and Kant) of knowledge as needing certain foundations and of the mind as locus of privileged epistemic processes, needs to be abandoned. They agree that both epistemology and metaphysics can and should be " set aside as possible disciplines " 272 TIMOTHY P. JACKSON in the name of a therapeutic form of life and a postmodernist self-image.2 It is this deconstructive, therapeutic line that Rorty wishes to champion. Philosophy should no longer conceive of itself as underwriting links between the human mind and the "objective " world; we have no access to the objective world as it is in itself; so most of traditional epistemology is misguided. Rorty characterizes his efforts as more akin to moral surusion than rigorous argument, claiming that the epistemological positions with which he takes exception are immune to such argument but objectionable (or at least optional) even so... (shrink)

W. K. Clifford was a noted mathematician and popularizer of science in the Victorian era. Although he made major contributions in the field of geometry, he is perhaps best known for a short essay he wrote in 1876, entitled The Ethics of Belief, in which he argued that It is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. Delivered initially as an address to the august Metaphysical Society (whose members included such luminaries as Alfred (...) class='Hi'>Lord Tennyson, William Gladstone, T. H. Huxley, and assorted scientists, clerics and philosophers of differing metaphysical views, The Ethics of Belief became a rallying cry for freethinkers and a bone of contention for religious apologists. It continues to be discussed today as an exemplar of what is called 'evidentialism', a key point in current philosophy of religion debates over justification of knowledge claims. In this book, Timothy J. Madigan examines the continuing relevance of The Ethics of Belief to epistemological and ethical concerns. He places the essay within the historical context, especially the so-called 'Victorian Crisis of Faith' of which Clifford was a key player. Clifford's own life and interests are dealt with as well, along with the responses to his essay by his contemporaries, the most famous of which was William James's The Will to Believe. Madigan provides an overview of modern-day critics of Cliffordian evidentialism, as well as examining thinkers who were positively influenced by him, including Bertrand Russell, who was perhaps Clifford's most influential successor as an advocate of intellectual honesty. The book ends with a defense of The Ethics of Belief from a virtue-theory approach, and argues that Clifford utilizes an as-if methodology to encourage intellectual inquiry and communal truth-seeking.' The Ethics of Belief' continues to provoke and stimulate controversy, which was perhaps Clifford's own fondest hope, although he had no right to believe it would do so. (shrink)

Books reviewed:John Barton and John Muddiman, The Oxford Bible CommentaryLuke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive ConversationDavid R. Bauer, An Annotated Guide to Biblical Resources for MinistryDavid Martin, John Orme Mills and W. S. F. Pickering, Sociology and Theology: Alliance and ConflictRichard K. Fenn, The Return of the Primitive: A New Sociological Theory of ReligionJoseph Blenkinsopp, Treasures Old and New: Essays in the Theology of the PentateuchJohn Jarick, 1 ChroniclesMartin Hengel, The (...) Septuagint As Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of Its CanonTricia Gates Brown, Spirit in the Writings of John: Johannine Pneumatology in Social‐Scientific PerspectiveFrederick H. Cryer and Thomas L. Thompson, Qumran between the Old and New TestamentOtto Kaiser, The Old Testament Apocrypha: An IntroductionDavid A. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and SignificanceMarie E. Isaacs, Reading Hebrews and James: A Literary and Theological CommentaryUwe Michael Lang, Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical PrayerWendy E. Sproston North, The Lazarus Story within the Johannine TraditionAlan Kreider, The Origins of Christendom in the WestBernard Hamilton, The Christian World of the Middle AgesH. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085G. R. Evans, The Medieval Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Medieval PeriodNicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Westminster Blood RelicRichard Dutton, Alison Findlay and Richard Wilson, Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian ShakespeareHoward Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish PhilosophyHeinz Halm, Shi'ism Carl W. Ernst, Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary WorldMark D. Meyerson and Edward D. English, Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural ChangeBruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of SectarianismMatthew Dillon, Girls and Women in Classical Greek ReligionJane E. A. Dawson, The Politics of Religion in the Age of Mary, Queen of Scots: The Earl of Argyll and the Struggle for Britain and IrelandSteven Nadler, Spinoza: A LifeDabney Townsend, Hume's Aesthetic Theory: Taste and SentimentImmanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781Felicity McCutcheon, Religion Within the Limits of Language Alone: Wittgenstein on Philosophy and ReligionEmyr Vaughan Thomas, Wittgensteinian Values: Philosophy, Religious Belief and Descriptivist MethodologyTerry Nardin, The Philosophy of Michael OakeshottKirk Ludwig, Donald DavidsonMartin Heidegger, Off the Beaten TrackFrank Lambert, ‘Pedlar in Divinity’: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic RevivalsDeclan Marmion, A Spirituality Of Everyday Faith: A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl RahnerHugh Rayment‐Pickard, Impossible God: Derrida's TheologyJoseph Pearce, Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc. (shrink)

Errol Lord offers a new account of the nature of rationality: what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons, and dispels doubts about whether we ought to be rational.

What does 'if' mean? Timothy Williamson presents a controversial new approach to understanding conditional thinking, which is central to human cognitive life. He argues that in using 'if' we rely on psychological heuristics, fast and frugal methods which can lead us to trust faulty data and prematurely reject simple theories.

Errol Lord explores the boundaries of epistemic normativity. He argues that we can understand these better by thinking about which mental states are competitors in rationality’s competition. He argues that belief, disbelief, and two kinds of suspension of judgment are competitors. Lord shows that there are non-evidential reasons for suspension of judgment. One upshot is an independent motivation for a certain sort of pragmatist view of epistemic rationality.