This essay argues for a two-part thesis concerning the deflationist theories of truth and reference. First, I identify two points of contrast between the deflationist theories and their traditional inflationary opponents: (1) they each employ different orders of explanation for the variety of semantic phenomena, and (2) the inflationist is typically taken to be beholden to a reductive explanation of reference, whereas the deflationist is doubtful of this project. Secondly, I argue that these two points of contrast need not come (...) together to exhaust the space of possible views. There is room for a plausible middle ground: a moderate version of inflationism. My moderate inflationism will reject the deflationist's order of explanation, so it counts as genuinely inflationary. However, it also rejects the reductionist ambitions of the earlier inflationists, so it isn’t an apt target for deflationary scepticism. (shrink)

A theory of truth is language-transcendent if it ascribes truth conditions to truth-bearers that are not expressible in our natural language; a theory is language-immanent if it is not language-transcendent. In this paper, I argue for the following theses. Whether the correct theory of truth is language-transcendent or language-immanent will have significant consequences for general philosophy. Prima facie, a language-transcendent theory is preferable. However, language-transcendent theories tend to require substantive metaphysical commitments concerning truth. Deflationist theories are particularly interesting in this (...) context. I argue that, if deflationism is to remain consistent with its motivations, then it must opt for a language-immanent conception of truth. (shrink)

An object-based correspondence theory of truth holds that a truth-bearer is true whenever its truth conditions are met by objects and their properties. In order to develop such a view, the principal task is to explain how truth-bearers become endowed with their truth conditions. Modern versions of the correspondence theory see this project as the synthesis of two theoretical endeavours: basic metasemantics and compositional semantics. Basic metasemantics is the theory of how simple, meaningful items (e.g. names and concepts) are endowed (...) with their contributions to truth conditions, and compositional semantics is the theory of how the meanings of simple items compose to generate (among other things) the truth conditions of sentences. Understanding truth along these broad lines was once popular; it was first championed by Field (1972). However, the once-popular conception of its tasks included an over-ambitious view of basic metasemantics. It was thought that reference needed to be analyzed (or reduced a posteriori) in terms of more fundamental, non-semantic relations (e.g. causal relations, indication, or teleological relations, in the case of mental representation). Obstacles in providing such an analysis engendered skepticism towards this understanding of truth and eventually gave way to its deflationary competitors. This dissertation aims to defend the modern, object-based correspondence theory against its rivals—especially deflationism. Chapter one provides a historically-grounded overview of the theory. Chapter two identifies two points of contrast between the correspondence theorist and the deflationist: they employ different orders of explanation for the variety of semantic phenomena, and they (traditionally) take different attitudes towards the prospects of reduction. Situating the dialectic in this way allows me to develop a middle ground: a moderate version of inflationism that takes the inflationary explanatory structure and combines it with a non-reductive, pluralist approach to basic metasemantics. Chapter three expands on the details of this pluralist account of reference. Chapter four contrasts the view with another rival approach to basic metasemantics: metasemantic interpretationism. And finally, chapter five applies the theory to answer another question of broad philosophical interest: what role does our conception of truth play in inquiry about the world? (shrink)

Normative ethical theories owe us an account of how to evaluate decisions under risk and uncertainty. Deontologists seem at a disadvantage here: our best decision theories seem tailor-made for consequentialism. For example, decision theory enjoins us to always perform our best option; deontology is more permissive. In this paper, we discuss and defend the idea that, when some pro-tanto wrongful act is all-things considered permissible, because it is a ‘lesser evil’, it is often merely permissible, by the lights of deontology. (...) We show that this raises new problems for deontological decision theory, and we show that to resolve them, we need to take a more innovative approach to morally evaluating decision-making under risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

Normative ethical theories owe us an account of how to evaluate decisions under risk and uncertainty. Deontologists seem at a disadvantage here: our best decision theories seem tailor-made for consequentialism. For example, decision theory enjoins us to always perform our best option; deontology is more permissive. In this paper, we discuss and defend the idea that, when some pro-tanto wrongful act is all-things considered permissible, because it is a ‘lesser evil’, it is often merely permissible, by the lights of deontology. (...) We show that this raises new problems for deontological decision theory, and we show that to resolve them, we need to take a more innovative approach to morally evaluating decision-making under risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

Responding to growing interest in the Kantian tradition and in issues concerning space and time, this volume offers an insightful and original contribution to the literature by bringing together analytical and phenomenological approaches in a productive exchange on topical issues such as action, perception, the body, and cognition and its limits.

In recent years there has been increased focus on supporting the safety and wellbeing of children and young people with disability. This paper reports on a study that asked children and young people with disability and adults who work with them about practices that support their wellbeing and safety, including barriers and enablers to ethical practice. We used the theory of practice architectures to unpack the practices. Findings point to a range of practices that both young people and adults regarded (...) as important in creating the cultural conditions for young people to feel happy, safe and well, albeit placing different emphases on particular practices. Several tensions within and between these practices and the evolving requirements of disability and safeguarding policy environments were also apparent. While often not well articulated, the inherent tensions have implications when considering what children and young people need, particularly those with higher support needs. Findings suggest closer attention needs to be given to the intersection between individual and systemic factors in shaping ethical practice aimed at supporting the wellbeing and safety of children and young people with disability. (shrink)

Epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore's paradox. I set out the puzzling phenomena, explain why a standard relational semantics for these operators cannot handle them, and recommend an alternative semantics. A pragmatics appropriate to the semantics is developed and interactions between the semantics, the pragmatics, and the definition of consequence are investigated. The semantics is then extended to probability operators. Some problems and prospects for probabilistic representations of content and context are (...) explored. (shrink)

En posant avec clarté des questions de philosophie de l’esprit, d’ontologie et d’épistémologie, ce livre témoigne à la fois de l’intérêt réel de la danse comme objet philosophique et du rôle unique que peut jouer la philosophie dans une meilleure compréhension de cet art. Qu’est-ce que danser ? Que nous apprend le mouvement dansé sur la nature humaine et la relation entre le corps et l’esprit ? À quelles conditions une œuvre est-elle correctement interprétée par les danseurs et bien identifiée (...) par les spectateurs ? (shrink)

The interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy as a version of traditional idealism has a long history. In spite of Kant's and his commentators’ various attempts to distinguish between traditional and transcendental idealism, his philosophy continues to be construed as committed (whether explicitly or implicitly and whether consistently or inconsistently) to various features usually associated with the traditional idealist project. As a result, most often, the accusation is that his Critical philosophy makes too strong metaphysical and epistemological claims.In hisThe Revolutionary Kant, (...) Graham Bird engages in a systematic and thorough evaluation of the traditionalist interpretation, as part of perhaps the most comprehensive and compelling defence of a revolutionary reading of Kant's thought. In the third part of this special issue, the exchanges between, on the one hand, Graham Bird and, on the other, Gary Banham, Gordon Brittan, Manfred Kuehn, Adrian Moore and Kenneth Westphal focus on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of Kant's first Critique. More exactly, the emphasis is on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of the Introduction, Analytic of Principles and Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique.The second part of the special issue is devoted to discussions of particular topics in Bird's construal of the remaining significant parts of the first Critique, namely, of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Analytic of Concepts. Written by Sorin Baiasu and Michelle Grier, these articles examine specific issues in these two remaining parts of the Critique, from the perspective of the debate between the traditionalist and revolutionary interpretation. The special issue begins with an Introduction by the guest co-editors. This provides a summary of the exchanges between Bird and his critics, with a particular focus on the debates stemming from the differences between traditional and revolutionary interpretations of Kant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Style and the Mole: Domestic Aesthetics in The Wind in the WillowsSeth Lerer (bio)Writing to her husband’s first illustrator, Graham Robertson, in 1931, Elspeth Grahame thanked him for the gift of his recently published memoirs. She called them “entrancing” and goes on to note: “The touch is so light yet so sure that whatever the subject the reading of it would be full of pleasure to any lover (...) of English style.”1 Lovers of English style would have been long familiar with Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, originally published in 1908 and, by 1931, available in four different editions (a new one, illustrated by Ernest Shepard would soon appear in that year).2 A. A. Milne’s stage adaptation, Toad of Toad Hall, played to welcoming audiences in 1929, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, perhaps that era’s greatest arbiter of English style, had ensconced Grahame with two selections in his Oxford Book of English Prose, published in 1925.3While The Wind in the Willows is about many things—the nature of friendship, the loss of English pastoral security, the temptations of fashion and fad—it is, first and foremost, an essay in aesthetics. Style governs each and every creature of its woods and mansions, from Mole’s quiet, gentlemanly domesticity to Toad’s manic, aristocratic shows. Style governs, too, the progress of its narrative, and throughout this book, Grahame explores techniques of pictorial description and devices of characterization that would come to epitomize what Elspeth could evoke as “English style.”4Though voiced decades after her husband’s major work had been completed, Elspeth’s judgment chimes with the ideals of the Edwardian aesthetic codified in Quiller-Couch’s anthology.5 Central to that aesthetic was a kind of effortless esprit, as well as an essential “Englishness” that rooted that esprit in local landscape and personal reminiscence. There remains something sweetly nostalgic about the Edwardian idiom, and Quiller-Couch makes clear that, even though his book may brim with “purple patches,” there is nonetheless a “subdued and hallowed emotion” to its selections: “a sense of wonderful history written silently in books and buildings, all [End Page 51] persuading that we are heirs of more spiritual wealth than, may be, we have surmised or hitherto begun to divine.”6 Some of those selections, he claims, hold “the core of true English gentility.” Others are, he reflects, full of “out-of-door matter.”7 He goes on to note that, when Wolfe crossed the St. Lawrence, he is reputed to have “murmured a stanza or two from Gray’s Elegy,” and Quiller-Couch himself has drawn on writers who, he claims, evoked “this imperishable land of ours revived.”8 Such sentiments could not have been far from the mind of Elspeth Grahame, who invites Graham Robertson to their home in the country in her letter of thanks:Do you ever go caring—or if by train we are within an hour of Paddington, and 5 minutes walk from the station here—in an old cottage next the church with a round village lock-up in the garden—so if you would ever propose yourself to come down & see us we should be so glad—and used as you are in Surrey to beauty-spots the river & trees are beautiful in summer-time, that is of course when there is any summer about which has not been the case this year.9The Grahames lived by what Quiller-Couch calls that “green and English country churchyard,” and in his anthology he calls attention to a selection from Charles Reade, “The English Skylark in Australia.” There, in an amazing, paragraph-long sentence, Reade epitomizes the ideals of local pastoralism, and his style—though readers today may find it overwrought—would provide a model for the criticism of Elspeth as well as the writing of her husband:Every time he checked his song to think of its theme, the green meadows, the quiet stealing streams, the clover he first soared from and the Spring he sang so well, a loud sigh from many a rough bosom, many a wild and wicked heart, told how tight the listeners had... (shrink)

Alfred Jules Ayer was born in London and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He attended sessions of the logical positivist ‘Vienna Circle’ in 1932, and taught at Oxford from 1933 until joining the Army in 1940. His Language, Truth and Logic was published in 1936, and The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge in 1940. After war service he returned to Oxford in 1945, and became Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College, London, the following (...) year. The Problem of Knowledge was published in 1956. In 1959 he returned to Oxord as Wykeham Professor of Logic, a post he held until his retirement in 1977. He had been made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1952, and was knighted in 1970. Among his publications after he returned to Oxford are The Concept of a Person , Philosophical Essays , The Origins of Pragmatism , Metaphysics and Common Sense , Russell and Moore: the Analytical Heritage , Probability and Evidence , The Central Questions of Philosophy , and Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. (shrink)

This paper discusses the major theme of Adrian Moore’s The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics. Moore argues that the philosophical theories of many modern Western philosophers, seen as the project of making sense of the world—in the most general sense of that notion—lead to self-referential contradiction. I agree with him. Moore takes this as a sign that this project requires the need of some non-propositional notion of making sense. Contrary to this, I argue (as in Beyond the Limits (...) of Thought) that it simply indicates the dialetheias at the limits of the project. (shrink)

Beginning with Sir William Hamilton's revitalisation of philosophy in Scotland in the 1830s, Gordon Graham takes up the theme of George Davie's The Democratic Intellect and explores a century of debates surrounding the identity and continuity of the Scottish philosophical tradition. Gordon Graham identifies a host of once-prominent but now neglected thinkers - such as Alexander Bain, J. F. Ferrier, Thomas Carlyle, Alexander Campbell Fraser, John Tulloch, Henry Jones, Henry Calderwood, David Ritchie and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison - (...) whose reactions to Hume and Reid stimulated new currents of ideas. Graham concludes by considering the relation between the Scottish philosophical tradition and the 20th-century philosopher John Macmurray. (shrink)

This paper explores developments in the defence of theism within Scottish philosophy following Hume's Dialogues and the advent of Darwinian evolutionary biology. By examining the writings of two nineteenth-century Scottish philosophers, it aims to show that far from Darwinian biology completing Hume's destruction of natural theology, it prompted a new direction for the defence of philosophical theism. Henry Calderwood and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison occupied, respectively, the Chairs of Moral Philosophy and Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in (...) the late nineteenth century. Their books reveal that the challenge of articulating new grounds for philosophical theism was not motivated by a conservative desire to see off a new intellectual threat, but by a desire for a proper understanding of evolutionary biology. (shrink)

This concluding chapter addresses the conceptual questions that arise in connection with identifying a philosophical tradition, and giving it a distinctive national label. It argues against the common identification of ‘Scottish philosophy’ with the ‘School of Common Sense’, and argues that Francis Hutcheson initiated an approach to philosophical questions that pre-dates the appeal to common sense developed by Reid. It contends that the ‘School of Common Sense’ was just one attempt to formulate a satisfactory response to David Hume. By examining (...) the work of Andrew Seth and Henry Jones, it explores the idea of a shared philosophical agenda, and argues that a common project rooted in a long-standing institutional framework is what sustained the Scottish philosophical intellectual tradition. The chapter ends by considering the factors that may be said to have brought that tradition to an end. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with Graham Bird’s treatment, in The Revolutionary Kant, of Kant’s mathematical antinomies. On Bird’s interpretation, our error in these antinomies is to think that we can settle certain issues about the limits of physical reality by pure reason whereas in fact we cannot settle them at all. On the rival interpretation advocated in this essay, it is not true that we cannot settle these issues. Our error is to presuppose that the concept of the unconditioned (...) has application to physical reality. Once this presupposition has been abandoned, we can retrieve sound arguments from the antinomies, not indeed to demonstrate that the views originally being defended are correct, but to demonstrate that the views originally being attacked are incorrect. The essay concludes with some comments concerning how this disagreement relates to a broader disagreement about the best way to understand Kant. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers, Cynthia MacDonald and Graham MacDonald offer a resolution to the twin problems of mental causation and mental causal relevance. They argue that the problem of mental causation is soluble via token monism – mental events are causally efficacious physical events. At the same time, the problem of mental causal relevance is solved by combining this causally efficacious mental property instance with the systematic co-variation between distinct mental properties of the cause and the action-theoretic (...) properties of the effect in question. In this paper we argue that the solution offered by Mac- Donald and MacDonald faces significant difficulties in resolving both of the twin problems of mental causation and mental causal relevance. (shrink)

Gillian Piggott's study of the resonances between the work of Charles Dickens and Walter Benjamin arrives in the wake of an increasing critical interest in Benjamin's life and thought, as an array of books from Graham Gilloch's Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City (1996) to Esther Leslie's biographical Walter Benjamin (2007), and beyond, makes clear. While many critics have addressed Benjamin's importance to discussions of nineteenth-century modernity, Piggott's is the first booklength attempt to compare Benjamin and Dickens. (...) Fler goal is to produce a "creative comparison of the authors' responses to modernity" (4) rather than establish direct lines of influence, though she points out that Benjamin was aware of at least some of Dickens's work, particularly The Old Curiosity Shop and Great Expectations (11), and included fifteen entries about him in the Arcades Project (1927-40). (shrink)

Moore, Gerard Review of: Sackcloth and ashes: Penance and penitence in a self-centred world. The Bloomsbury lent book 2014, by Anne Widdecombe, London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 181, $19.99; Looking through the cross: The archbishop of Canterbury's lent book 2014, by Graham Tomlin,, pp. 215, $24.99.

The interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy as a version of traditional idealism has a long history. In spite of Kant's and his commentators’ various attempts to distinguish between traditional and transcendental idealism, his philosophy continues to be construed as committed to various features usually associated with the traditional idealist project. As a result, most often, the accusation is that his Critical philosophy makes too strong metaphysical and epistemological claims.In his The Revolutionary Kant, Graham Bird engages in a systematic and (...) thorough evaluation of the traditionalist interpretation, as part of perhaps the most comprehensive and compelling defence of a revolutionary reading of Kant's thought. In the third part of this special issue, the exchanges between, on the one hand, Graham Bird and, on the other, Gary Banham, Gordon Brittan, Manfred Kuehn, Adrian Moore and Kenneth Westphal focus on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of Kant's first Critique. More exactly, the emphasis is on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of the Introduction, Analytic of Principles and Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique.The second part of the special issue is devoted to discussions of particular topics in Bird's construal of the remaining significant parts of the first Critique, namely, of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Analytic of Concepts. Written by Sorin Baiasu and Michelle Grier, these articles examine specific issues in these two remaining parts of the Critique, from the perspective of the debate between the traditionalist and revolutionary interpretation. The special issue begins with an Introduction by the guest co-editors. This provides a summary of the exchanges between Bird and his critics, with a particular focus on the debates stemming from the differences between traditional and revolutionary interpretations of Kant. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 106 Heft: 4 Seiten: 717-721.

My contribution to a book symposium on Graham’s commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, sponsored by the North American and the UK Kant Societies, held in conjunction with the Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Chicago, 20 February 2009. Comments also delivered by Adrian Moore, Gary Banham, Jill Buroker and Manfred Kuehn, with relplies by Graham Bird.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment by Gordon GrahamDeborah BoyleGRAHAM, Gordon. Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. xvii + 254 pp. Cloth, $110.00Histories of Scottish philosophy typically focus on the school of "common sense" from the eighteenth century, beginning with Francis Hutcheson and ending with Dugald Stewart. As Gordon Graham notes in the preface to this volume, nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy is "an area of (...) the history of philosophy that has generally gone almost entirely unexplored." His collection of eleven standalone essays (only one of which has been previously published) argues that something recognizable as "Scottish philosophy" continued into the nineteenth century—although Graham thinks it ended, then, too—and suggests conceptions of Scottish philosophy that go beyond the old trope of "common sense."Unusually for a work in the history of philosophy, the first chapter is autobiographical. Graham recalls that as an undergraduate studying moral philosophy at St. Andrews in 1968, the only Scottish philosopher he was assigned to read was Hume, whose work was taught in the ahistorical manner that dominated philosophy at that time, and that upon his appointment to the Regius Chair of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen in 1995 he found little appreciation for the university's most famous former professor, Thomas Reid. Thus began Graham's establishment of the Reid Project at the University of Aberdeen (later the Centre for the Study of Scottish Philosophy and now the Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy), the founding of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, and his editorship of several book series on Scottish philosophy. The story of Graham's scholarship over the years is really the story of the recovery of the history of Scottish philosophy after its near-total neglect in the twentieth century.Graham seems wary of the contextualist turn that historians of philosophy have embraced since around the 1980s, which he likens to "antiquarianism," but at the same time he notes that our current philosophical interests are "not an infallible or even an especially reliable guide to what is intellectually significant" from the past. His solution is to look for intellectual "trajectories" in the history of philosophy—although not with the Whiggish view that these culminate in the present—and to locate particular figures within those trajectories. Thus he is especially interested in identifying the various themes—not just "common sense"— [End Page 551] that can unite the work of different philosophers born and working in Scotland in order to provide a more expansive account of Scottish philosophy.Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment provides a close look at the lives and work of major figures of this period, with a chapter devoted to each: William Hamilton (chapter 2), James Frederick Ferrier (chapter 3), Alexander Bain (chapter 4), Thomas Carlyle (chapter 5), Alexander Campbell Fraser (chapter 9), and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (chapter 10). Although Graham argues that Pringle-Pattison's work marks the culmination and end of distinctively Scottish philosophy, he devotes the final chapter to the work of twentieth-century philosopher John McMurray on the grounds that McMurray's conception of human agency is rooted in Scottish debates from the previous two centuries over realism and idealism (chapter 11). Along the way, the book helpfully introduces other thinkers currently much less well known, such as Edward Caird, Henry Calderwood, Henry Jones, James Hutchison Stirling, John Tulloch, and John Veitch.Instead of thinking of Scottish philosophy as simply equivalent to common sense philosophy, Graham offers various alternative conceptions of Scottish philosophy, characterized as various "trajectories" that can be seen as originating in the eighteenth century and developing through the nineteenth: as a concern with realism and idealism that developed in the nineteenth century into responses (whether critical or favorable) to Hegelianism (chapter 6); as a prolonged conversation about the relationship between science and philosophy and the possibility of progress in the scientific study of the mind (chapter 7); and as the continuation of eighteenth-century post-Humean Scottish philosophers' aim of defending theism, even in the face of Darwin's findings (chapters 8 and 9). Presenting Scottish philosophy through these different lenses is highly illuminating and makes a persuasive case for the need for further... (shrink)

In “Epistemic Modals,” Seth Yalcin argues that what explains the deficiency of sentences containing epistemic modals of the form ‘p and it might be that not-p’ is that sentences of this sort are strictly contradictory, and thus are not instances of a Moore-paradox as has been previous suggested. Benjamin Schnieder, however, argues in his Yalcin’s explanation of these sentences’ deficiency turns out to be insufficiently general, as it cannot account for less complex but still defective sentences, such as (...) ‘Suppose it might be raining.’ Consequently, Schnieder proposes his own, expressivist treatment of epistemic modals which he thinks can explain the deficiency of both the original sentence type as well as more complex cases of embedded sentences containing epistemic modals. In this study, I argue that although Schnieder is right to draw our attention to the explanatory failure of Yalcin’s account, we aren’t forced to adopt Schnieder’s expressivist account of epistemic modals. I defend instead a contextualist-friendly alternative which explains the deficiencies of all the relevant sentence types, while avoiding both the defects of Yalcin’s account and the intuitive costs of expressivism. (shrink)

According to some critics, Aristotle’s elenctic defence (elenchos, elenchus) of the Law of Non-Contradiction (Metaphysics IV) would be ineffective because it viciously begs the question. After briefly recalling the elenctic refutation of the denier of the Law of Non-Contradiction, I will first focus on Filippo Costantini’s objection to the elenchus, which, in turn, is based on the dialetheic account of negation developed by Graham Priest. Then, I will argue that there is at least one reading of the elenchus that (...) might not be viciously question-begging. In doing so, I will leverage, reinterpret and adjust the distinction between two senses of epistemic dependence, offered by Noah Lemos and originally based on some thoughts about George Edward Moore’s ‘proof of an external world.’ The key point of my counter-objection to recover the elenchus is to use the distinction between a necessary-condition relation between propositions (p only if q) and a grounding relation between facts (the fact that an epistemic agent S believes that p is grounded in the fact that S believes that q), where p and q are the content of S’s beliefs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Prelude to the Special Issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education on Children’s LiteratureEllen Handler Spitz, Guest Editor (bio)When Professor Pradeep A. Dhillon, editor of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, suggested to me one day that I might guest edit a special issue of the journal devoted to the topic of children’s literature, my initial reticence was toppled and my sense of resolve buoyed as I began to fantasize (...) with billowing excitement about just how this might be done. First, I dreamt up the image of guest editor as bountiful hostess—setting out delectable dishes in an elegantly appointed banquet before the readers of this journal. That metaphor faded, however, despite Maria Tatar’s eloquent reminder to us in these pages that gastronomy has frequently and salubriously been juxtaposed with reading. I could not help worrying (even though children vociferously protest the logic of this problem) that one cannot have one’s cake and eat it too. Therefore, switching to music, I began to imagine the editor as conductor of a highly select ensemble of musicians, all gifted with glorious well-seasoned voices. They might perform a concert (recorded for posterity, of course) of pieces aimed at an audience of those who care passionately about aesthetics, education, literature, and above all about children, and at those who, perhaps with tenderness, still recall their own childhood reading.But how to accomplish this in practical terms? Well, I reasoned, I would simply invite a group of distinguished senior scholars who, having achieved their reputations in related fields and having written on other subjects as well, have published highly significant works pertaining to children’s literature. Each person would contribute a composition in his or her own voice, and there would be complete freedom, carte blanche, no holds barred—the only constraint being page numbers. Would the results turn out to be harmony or cacophony? Well, I speculated, if each voice were finely tuned, resonant, and clear, whether treble or bass, forte or pianissimo, the outcome—although [End Page 1] unpredictable in terms of specifics—would, unquestionably, be musical. But that, dear reader, is ultimately for you to judge, for you have now heard precisely how this issue came into being and will, we hope, read on. Each author I asked responded to my call with alacrity and, in his or her original style and tone, made my task as conductor a perfect pleasure.We offer you a work in three parts. First, you will encounter two melodious and euphonious pieces, contributed respectively by Marina Warner (“Out of an Old Toy Chest”) and Maria Tatar (“From Bookworms to Enchanted Hunters: Why Children Read”). Here, the overarching themes of children’s play and make believe are set up, analyzed, and explored. Playing and reading are placed side by side, as well as reasons why children love to read and how they are variously exhorted, extolled, and even occasionally excoriated by adults for doing so.Our second movement consists of three apparently unrelated motifs, contributed in turn by Gareth Matthews (“Philosophical Adventures in the Lands of Oz and Ev”), Seth Lerer (“Style and the Mole: Domestic Aesthetics in The Wind in the Willows”), and myself (“Ethos in Steig’s and Sendak’s Picture Books: The Connected and the Lonely Child”). Actually, however, these essays are not unrelated, for each motif arises from a particular mode of interpretation grounded in turn in philosophy, in literary history and theory, and in psychology. The works considered are all by notable writers for children: L. Frank Baum, Kenneth Grahame, William Steig, and Maurice Sendak.For our grand finale, we offer two sonorous, seriously challenging contributions, one by Jack Zipes (“Why Fantasy Matters Too Much”) and the other by Eliza T. Dresang and Bowie Kotrla (“Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth”). These works grapple with contemporary matters, with fantasy, with technology, and with “radical change” as these can be discerned in the literature, imagery, and general cultural lives of today’s and even, quite possibly, of tomorrow’s children. Gesturing toward the future even more strikingly, we conclude this work with a flourishing coda in the actual voice of a living child... (shrink)

This _Companion_ provides an authoritative survey of the whole range of Kant’s work, giving readers an idea of its immense scope, its extraordinary achievement, and its continuing ability to generate philosophical interest. Written by an international cast of scholars Covers all the major works of the critical philosophy, as well as the pre-critical works Subjects covered range from mathematics and philosophy of science, through epistemology and metaphysics, to moral and political philosophy.

[A. W. Moore] Criteria of ineffability are presented which, it is claimed, preclude the possibility of truths that are ineffable, but not the possibility of other things that are ineffable—not even the possibility of other things that are non-trivially ineffable. Specifically, they do not preclude the possibility of states of understanding that are ineffable. This, it is argued, allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and those who adopt the (...) new reading recently championed by Cora Diamond, James Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather than ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. /// [Peter Sullivan] Moore proposes to cut between 'traditional' and 'new' approaches to the Tractatus, suggesting that Wittgenstein's intention is to convey, through the knowing use of nonsense, ineffable understanding. I argue, first, that there is indeed room for a proposal of Moore's general kind. Secondly, though, I question whether Moore's actual proposal is not more in tune with Wittgenstein's later thought than with the attitude of the Tractatus. (shrink)

International law and conventional morality grant that states may stand ready to defend their borders with lethal force. But what grounds the permission to kill for the sake of political sovereignty and territorial integrity? In this book leading theorists address this vexed issue, and set the terms of future debate over national defence.

Graham Nerlich is one of the most distinguished of contemporary philosophers of space and time. Eleven of his essays are here brought together in a carefully structured volume, which deal with ontology and methodology in relativity, variable curvature and general relativity, and time and causation. The author has provided a new general introduction and also introductions to each part to bring the discussion more up to date and draw out the general themes. The book will be welcomed by all (...) philosophers of physics, and of science in general. (shrink)

First published in 1962. Kant’s philosophical works, and especially the _Critique of Pure Reason_, have had some influence on recent British philosophy. But the complexities of Kant’s arguments, and the unfamiliarity of his vocabulary, inhibit understanding of his point of view. In _Kant’s Theory of Knowledge _an attempt is made to relate Kant’s arguments in the _Critique of Pure Reason _to contemporary issues by expressing them in a more modern idiom. The selection of issues discussed is intended to present a (...) continuous argument, of an epistemological kind, which runs centrally through the _Critique_. The argument deals with essentially with the problems, raised in the Transcendental Analytic, about the status of categories. It deals with certain preliminary assumptions made in setting these problems, and discusses the way in which the various sections of the Analytic contribute to their solution. It also deals with Kant’s criticisms of traditional metaphysics, and ends with an account of his effort in the Third Antinomy to resolve the conflict between freedom and causality, and so to effect a transition of knowledge to moral philosophy. (shrink)

In print for the first time in over ten years, Act and Crime provides a unified account of the theory of action presupposed by both Anglo-American criminal law and the morality that underlies it. The book defends the view that human actions are always volitionally caused bodily movements and nothing else. The theory is used to illuminate three major problems in the drafting and the interpretation of criminal codes: 1) what the voluntary act requirement both does and should require; 2) (...) what complex descriptions of actions prohibited by criminal codes both do and should require ; and 3) when two actions are 'the same' for purposes of assessing whether multiple prosecutions and multiple punishments are warranted. The book both contributes to the development of a coherent theory of action in philosophy, and it provides both legislators and judges a grounding in three of the most basic elements of criminal liability. (shrink)

In a previous paper (Moore, 2001), the headline findings from a study of social and financial performance over three years of eight firms in the UK supermarket industry were reported. These were based on the derivation of a 16‐measure social performance index and a 4‐measure financial performance index. This paper discusses the formulationof the indices and then reports on: discussions with two supermarket firms concerning the overall results; inter‐relationships between individual financial performance measures; inter‐relationships between individual social performance measures; (...) stakeholder group analysis; and inter‐relationships between turnover, age and gearing with social performance measures. The paper discusses these inter‐relationships, incorporating comments from the interviews with the two supermarket firms, and reports on both factor and cluster analysis. The interviews lend support for Preston and O’Bannon’s (1997) Available Funding Hypothesis in both its positive and negative form. The findings show that there are individual or combinations of related measures that could be used as surrogate measures for social and financial performance, instead of deriving a full index. However, the recommendation is that a full index continues to be used until there is further corroboration of these results. The findings also provide statistically significant support for the Negative Synergy Hypothesis (Preston and O’Bannon, 1997), show a statistically significant association between pre‐tax profits (both lagged and contemporaneous) with community contributions, and show that all statistically significant associations between individual social performance measures are positive – suggesting that they are mutually reinforcing. The association of size with social performance, noted in the previous paper, is also reinforced. Findings in relation to the proportion of women managers and the number of women on the Board and positive associations with other social and environmental performance measures raise interesting gender issues for business ethics. Factor analysis leads to no clear conclusions but cluster does show two or three clear clusters of firms, where size would seem to be the main but not sole factor. Further areas of research are noted. (shrink)

[A. W. Moore] There are criteria of ineffability whereby, even if the concept of ineffability can never serve to modify truth, it can sometimes serve to modify other things, specifically understanding. This allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and those who adopt the new reading recently championed by Diamond, Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather (...) than ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. /// [Peter Sullivan] Moore proposes to cut between 'traditional' and 'new' approaches to the Tractatus, suggesting that Wittgenstein's intention is to convey, through the knowing use of nonsense, ineffable understanding. I argue, first, that there is indeed room for a proposal of Moore's general kind. Secondly, though, I question whether Moore's actual proposal is not more in tune with Wittgenstein's later thought than with the attitude of the Tractatus. (shrink)

G. E. M. Anscombe’s Intention, meticulous in its detail and its structure, ends on a puzzling note. At its conclusion, Anscombe claims that when he denied Jesus, St. Peter intentionally did what he intended not to do. This essay will examine why Anscombe construes the case as she does and what it might teach us about the nature of practical rationality.

"Seth examines the practical origins of much of the research undertaken by Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich, some of which addressed problems carried over from his years of teaching at an engineering school"--OCLC.

This article begins by addressing a critique of my book Immaterialism by the archaeologists Þóra Pétursdóttirr and Bjørnar Olsen in their 2018 article “Theory Adrift.” As they see it, I restrict myself in Immaterialism to available historical documentation on the Dutch East India Company (VOC), and they wonder how my account might have changed if I had discussed more typical archaeological examples instead: wrecked and sunken ships, released ballast, deserted harbors, distributed goods, and derelict fortresses. In response, I argue that (...) my account was not therefore non-archaeological, since ruins are the topic of archaeology only by accident: the real subject of the discipline is what Marshall McLuhan describes as “cold media,” in the sense that they are low in information. McLuhan’s distinction between hot and cold media is shown to be surprisingly analogous to Aristotle’s difference between continua and discrete substances, and some consequences are drawn from this analogy. (shrink)