Scholars have remained undecided how much the British Idealists owe to Hegel, how much to Kant, and how much they may be credited with minting a new intellectual coinage of their own. By way of a detailed examination of T. H. Green’s metaphysics of free will and how it stands to both its Kantian and its Hegelian predecessors, this paper attempts to make some headway on that longstanding question of pedigree. It is argued that by translating previously naturalistic considerations about (...) free will into Kantian or atemporalist terms, Green makes some useful and important advances. But he still remains subject to the tension between libertarian and autonomous approaches to the issue. It might be wondered whether any theory could ever reconcile these two approaches, but it is argued that by filtering his Kantianism through a more Hegelian lens, Green manages somewhat to reduce the friction between these two perspectives and to get closer to his ideal of a unified theory of human free will. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Among the traditional list of divine attributes it is commonly said that God is a person. Making a distinction between being a person and having a personality, it is argued that God cannot be a person because it makes no sense to think of him as having a personality. Problems with the notion of divine personality are considered stemming from God’s perfection, his infinity, his omniscience, his rationality, his morally good nature and his gender neutrality. Three generic types of response (...) to these problems are considered, but each is found wanting. It is concluded that the problems with personality apply as much to the human case as to the divine. (shrink)

Does God knows what it is like to be me? Scripture and religious tradition seem quite clear that God knows everything about us, even the deepest secrets of our hearts. There is nothing hidden from him. And this is an answer backed up by a more philosophical theology; for among the traditional list of divine attributes is omniscience: knowing everything that there is to know. The idea, moreover, seems essential to the ordinary religious consciousness, for how can God really help (...) us, or fairly judge us, unless he knows exactly what things are like for us? (shrink)

Among the traditional list of divine attributes it is commonly said that God is a person. Making a distinction between being a person and having a personality, it is argued that God cannot be a person because it makes no sense to think of him as having a personality. Problems with the notion of divine personality are considered stemming from God’s perfection, his infinity, his omniscience, his rationality, his morally good nature and his gender neutrality. Three generic types of response (...) to these problems are considered, but each is found wanting. It is concluded that the problems with personality apply as much to the human case as to the divine. (shrink)

Does God knows what it is like to be me? Scripture and religious tradition seem quite clear that God knows everything about us, even the deepest secrets of our hearts. There is nothing hidden from him. And this is an answer backed up by a more philosophical theology; for among the traditional list of divine attributes is omniscience: knowing everything that there is to know. The idea, moreover, seems essential to the ordinary religious consciousness, for how can God really help (...) us, or fairly judge us, unless he knows exactly what things are like for us? (shrink)

This article argues that theism entails a species of pantheism on the grounds that there is simply no discernible difference between the God's knowledge of the world and the world that God knows. The case against this thesis begins with the traditional theory of distinctions. But since God is necessarily omniscient there is not even the possibility that these might be considered apart and thus distinguished in that way. But neither is it possible to do this by means of Leibnitz's (...) law, that is, by finding some feature possessed by the one but not the other. Three potential areas of difference are considered but rejected, first, that knowledge unlike the world is representational, and second, that knowledge unlike the world is phenomenal – there is something that it is like to have. Both of these features, though able to distinguish ordinary knowledge from its objects, cease to provide the difference we require when extended to the case of divine knowledge. A final area of potential difference lies in the transcendent nature of God over the world, especially with respect to time, finitude and possibility. But this, in the end, is found no more able to distinguish God's knowledge from its object than the previous two suggestions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBritish Idealism was the philosophical school which dominated during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Using the ideas of Bernard Bosanquet, John Caird and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison as an illustration, this paper looks at some of the ways in which the British Idealists sought to develop new and more subtle conceptions of the transcendent, able to resist the corrosive effects of late nineteenth-century critical and naturalistic thinking. The paper concludes by looking at three fields – philosophy, theology and literature (...) – in which it is possible to discern the ongoing influence into the first half of the twentieth century of their efforts. (shrink)

The ontological proof became something of a signature argument for the British Idealist movement and this paper examines how and why that was so. Beginning with an account of Hegel's understanding of the argument, it looks at how the thesis was picked up, developed and criticized by the Cairds, Bradley, Pringle-Pattison and others. The importance of Bradley's reading in particular is stressed. Lastly, consideration is given to Collingwood's lifelong interest in the proof and it is argued that his attention is (...) best understood as a direct continuation of theirs. In view of the fact that recent commentators have tried to draw a sharp line between Collingwood's approach to metaphysics and ontology and that of his predecessors, the establishment of this connection calls for a measure of reassessment on both sides. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the great English idealist thinker T. H. Green (1836-82) as philosophers have begun to overturn received opinions of his thought and to rediscover his original and important contributions to ethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy. This collection of essays by leading experts, all but one published here for the first time, introduces and critically examines his ideas both in their context and in their relevance to contemporary debates.

Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the great English idealist thinker T. H. Green as philosophers have begun to overturn received opinions of his thought and to rediscover his original and important contributions to ethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy. This collection of essays by leading experts, all but one published here for the first time, introduces and critically examines his ideas both in their context and in their relevance to contemporary debates.

Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the great English idealist thinker T. H. Green (1836-82) as philosophers have begun to overturn received opinions of his thought and to rediscover his original and important contributions to ethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy. This collection of essays by leading experts, all but one published here for the first time, introduces and critically examines his ideas both in their context and in their relevance to contemporary debates.

Royce's Argument for the Absolute w.j. MANDER IN 188 5 IN THE PENULTIMATE CHAPTER of his first book, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Josiah Royce put forward an argument for Absolute Idealism based on the possibility of error. He considered the argument a most important one and returned to it on numerous occasions after that, slightly recasting it each time,' but never, he later claimed, really leaving it behind. Nor was he alone in his opinion of it; well received (...) by his contemporaries, such as William James, the argument did much to establish the young Royce's reputation. 9 Like the Absolute Idealism which it was designed to support, Royce's once- famous argument is now largely forgotten, yet there is no real justification for this save fashion, for it deals in a fresh and imaginative way with a subject matter still very much discussed in the literature. The purpose of this study is to recon- sider Royce's argument and to assess its validity. I shall examine it in some detail below, but first let me give a very brief summary of Royce's case keeping as close as possible to his own original presentation of it. The argument occurs in the following places, references to which will be abbreviated by the letters in brackets: The Religious Aspect of Philosophy , Chap. XI; The spirit of Modern Philosophy , Ch. XI; "The Implications of self-Consciousness," reprinted in his Studies.. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

This paper examines John Stuart Mill’s ‘psychological theory’ of the mind, as he set it out in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. After outlining Mill’s theory and the problem he finds with it, the paper discusses four different interpretations that have been suggested, before proposing a new alternative reading. The matter is of intrinsic interest to anyone who sees value in trying to get to the bottom of tricky texts about puzzling questions by great philosophers, but I (...) argue also that the investigation may help us with another vexed interpretative issue relating to an even more famous philosopher, David Hume, and that it may hold lessons for the philosophy of mind today. (shrink)

According to the editors of this book, “The history of philosophy as taught today is a highly selective activity. In its determination to tell a particular story, it passes over in silence large swathes of otherwise interesting philosophical work”. This claim would have been worthy of serious consideration had it been made a few decades ago—that is to say, at a time when analytic philosophy was a clearly recognizable philosophical movement. The “particular story” according to which the works of the (...) British idealists were allegedly sacrificed would then have been easily identified as the story of how the young Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore showed the absurdity involved in holding that... (shrink)

We develop and apply a multi-dimensional account of explanatory depth towards a comparative analysis of inflationary and bouncing paradigms in primordial cosmology. Our analysis builds on earlier work due to Azhar and Loeb (2021) that establishes initial conditions fine-tuning as a dimension of explanatory depth relevant to debates in contemporary cosmology. We propose dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy as two further dimensions of depth in the context of problems with instability and trans-Planckian modes that afflict bouncing and inflationary approaches respectively. In (...) the context of the latter issue, we argue that the recently formulated trans-Planckian censorship conjecture leads to a trade-off for inflationary models between dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy. We conclude with the suggestion that explanatory preference with regard to the different dimensions of depth is best understood in terms of differing attitudes towards heuristics for future model building. (shrink)

An outline is given of the proof that the consistency of a κ⁺-Mahlo cardinal implies that of the statement that I[ω₂] does not include any stationary subsets of Cof(ω₁). An additional discussion of the techniques of this proof includes their use to obtain a model with no ω₂-Aronszajn tree and to add an ω₂-Souslin tree with finite conditions.

In this comment I discuss the role of an ethics case consultant in an institutional setting, in contrast to situations when an ethics consultant serves an individual client. In the former situation, I believe the case consultant should articulate ethical issues, options, and arguments, but not recommend a particular course of conduct. In the latter situation, the role of the ethics consultant can be defined and determined in negotiations with the client.

My interest is to examine the nature of mind in relation to value, for I suspect that the neglect by the psychologist of the true status of value has deterred his work in two respects: first, that it has prevented a genuine theory of mind's being arrived at, and secondly that it has prevented him in his clinical work from achieving for the individual the fuller expression of mind or self that makes for satisfaction or happiness.

In analyzing moral distress, perhaps greater attention should be given to the possible implicit sources of feelings of distress, as well as explicit sources.

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 8-10.

This dissertation examines the strategy of justifying doctrinal beliefs by appealing to special revelation. Even if one thinks that belief in God is rationally warranted, it does not follow that one's distinctive religious doctrines are justified. Though theism may be justified, it remains an open question whether or not believers are entitled to believe, for example, that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate or that God is triune. Traditionally, religious believers have claimed that their doctrinal beliefs are justified because they have (...) been revealed by God. ;My assessment of this claim consists of three parts. First I examine the concept of special revelation and defend it against charges of incoherence. But if even it makes sense to say that God can reveal himself, the more philosophically interesting question concerns how we could know that he has in fact done so. Hence the second part of the dissertation assesses criteria for adjudicating revelation claims. Locke's claim that the veracity of revelation is vouchsafed through miracles is examined. I argue that it is preferable to understand our doctrinal beliefs as properly basic rather than attempt to authenticate revelation claims through appeals to miracles. Finally, in part three, I consider and respond to several objections against the claim that our doctrinal beliefs can be justified. The first objection says that the strategy of justifying doctrinal beliefs through appeals to special revelation is undermined by competing claims to revelation. The second criticism claims that appeals to special revelation fail to provide the degree of justification required to underwrite decisive assent to doctrinal beliefs. I argue that neither of these criticisms is effective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionWilliam J. ConnellOne of the more unusual works in the corpus of the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla is the Oratio in principio sui studii, on the relation between Latin letters and the Christian faith. The speech was written and delivered in October 1455, toward the end of Valla’s life, as a lecture to inaugurate the academic year at the University of Rome where he had held the chair in (...) rhetoric since 1450. It was traditional at Rome to hold such an address each year not only to encourage the assembled students and faculty in their studies but also to thank the papacy for its support of the university, the Studium Urbis. For this reason Valla’s speech ends with customary words praising Pope Calixtus III for having increased the stipends of the lecturers in the university, even though, notwithstanding some remarkable kindnesses to Valla himself, Calixtus’s reputation was not that of a friend to scholarship. Valla’s Schoolyear Inaugural was not lengthy: it can only have lasted fifteen minutes. Nor is there indication that anyone was displeased with it. In fact, that is precisely what is oddest about the Inaugural, for throughout his career Valla had shown himself to be the sort of person who seized on such occasions to make polemical arguments. We read the speech—and it is possible that his audience also listened to it this way—expecting with each step that Valla will let fly a critical or unorthodox statement, but that never happens. 1Beginning with his earliest formal work, a comparison of Cicero and Quintilian written in 1428 and now lost, in which the humanist argued against Cicero on behalf of Quintilian, Valla seemed to delight in challenging established authorities. 2 His next important work, an attack on Bartolus of [End Page 1] Sassoferrato and the scholastic method of contemporary jurists, resulted in his forced departure from the University of Pavia. 3 A continuing combativeness is illustrated in subsequent writings, reaching an apogee in the work on the Donation. Even when Valla was developing another writer’s idea, he had a consistent way of pushing the argument to a daring extreme. This, as Riccardo Fubini argues below, is what Valla did in the De donatione, a work Fubini suggests relied more heavily on Nicholas of Cusa’s De concordantia catholica than hitherto realized, but written to promote an agenda far more radical than that of Cusanus. One of the surest indications of Valla’s brilliance as a polemicist is the fact that seventy years after his death humanists of the caliber of Agostino Steuco, the subject of Ronald K. Delph’s essay in this number, were still eager to take up cudgels against him.Valla paid a price for initiating so many disputes. In 1444, when he was called before the Inquisition in Naples after the attack on the Donation of Constantine, Valla was made to answer charges against not only that work, but also against the De vero bono for its Epicureanism, the De libero arbitrio for its determinism, the De professione religiosorum for its criticism of religious orders, and the Repastinatio totius dialectice et philosophie for various unorthodox statements, especially concerning the Trinity. This last work was the humanist’s most ambitious project, and he seems to have been aware of its explosive quality, since he alluded to a “peril to his life” should it be published. 4The 1455 Schoolyear Inaugural shows no trace of the risks that Valla took in his other writings, of his polemical temperament, or of his past disagreements with the Church. With style and vigor the speech argues that the Church deserves great thanks and praise for having ensured the survival [End Page 2] of Latin letters after the collapse of the Empire. This may seem a notable change of heart in the author who had written the oration On the Falsely Believed and Forged Donation of Constantin—a text which always seems to be lurking in the background of the Inaugural but which finds no explicit reference there. Given the proximity of Valla’s argument to the well-worn medieval theme of the translatio studii, his argument could hardly have been... (shrink)

The claim that glycogen contains protein was first made exactly 100 years ago and has been the subject of contention ever since. It has now been established that rabbit‐muscle glycogen contains a covalently bound protein of Mr 37,000, present in equimolar proportion to glycogen. The protein, named glycogenin, is joined to muscle glycogen via a novel linkage involving the hydroxyl group of tyrosine, a fact of possible significance in the light of insulin's message being transmitted by tyrosine phosphorylation. The protein (...) is seen as the biogenetic precursor of glycogen. Its existence suggests an additional mode of regulation of glycogen metabolism since the amount, turnover and cellular location of glycogenin will influence the corresponding parameters for glycogen. A protein “primer” is suggested for the biogenesis of storage polysaccharides in general. (shrink)