Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

This bold and brilliant book asks the ultimate question of the life sciences: How did the human mind acquire its incomparable power? In seeking the answer, Merlin Donald traces the evolution of human culture and cognition from primitive apes to the era of artificial intelligence, and presents an original theory of how the human mind evolved from its presymbolic form. In the emergence of modern human culture, Donald proposes, there were three radical transitions. During the first, our bipedal (...) but still apelike ancestors acquired "mimetic" skill—the ability to represent knowledge through voluntary motor acts—which made Homo erectus successful for over a million years. The second transition—to "mythic" culture —coincided with the development of spoken language. Speech allowed the large-brained Homo sapiens to evolve a complex preliterate culture that survives in many parts of the world today. In the third transition, when humans constructed elaborate symbolic systems ranging from cuneiforms, hieroglyphics, and ideograms to alphabetic languages and mathematics, human biological memory became an inadequate vehicle for storing and processing our collective knowledge. The modern mind is thus a hybrid structure built from vestiges of earlier biological stages as well as new external symbolic memory devices that have radically altered its organization. According to Donald, we are symbol-using creatures, more complex than any that went before us, and we may have not yet witnessed the final modular arrangement of the human mind. (shrink)

Presenting the cultural and neuronal forces that power our distinctively human modes of awareness, the author proposes that the human mind is a hybrid product of interweaving a super-complex form of matter (the brain) with an invisible symbolic web (culture) to form a cognitive network. Reprint. 11,500 first printing.

Repr. as Essay 14 in Davidson, Donald, _Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation_, 2nd ed. Oxford, UK (Clarendon, 2001). 215-226.

Two things become one thing, something having parts, and something becoming something else, are cases of many things being identical with one thing. This apparent contradiction introduces others concerning transitivity of identity, discernibility of identicals, existence, and vague existence. I resolve the contradictions with a theory that identity, number, and existence are relative to standards for counting. What are many on some standard are one and the same on another. The theory gives an account of the discernibility of identicals using (...) phrases like “insofar as”. And it holds that standards for counting remain or shift depending on our purposes. (shrink)

This book proposes a theory of human cognitive evolution, drawing from paleontology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, and especially neuropsychology. The properties of humankind's brain, culture, and cognition have coevolved in a tight iterative loop; the main event in human evolution has occurred at the cognitive level, however, mediating change at the anatomical and cultural levels. During the past two million years humans have passed through three major cognitive transitions, each of which has left the human mind with a new way (...) of representing reality and a new form of culture. Modern humans consequently have three systems of memory representation that were not available to our closest primate relatives: mimetic skill, language, and external symbols. These three systems are supported by new types of “hard” storage devices, two of which (mimetic and linguistic) are biological, one technological. Full symbolic literacy consists of a complex of skills for interacting with the external memory system. The independence of these three uniquely human ways of representing knowledge is suggested in the way the mind breaks down after brain injury and confirmed by various other lines of evidence. Each of the three systems is based on aninventivecapacity, and the products of those capacities – such as languages, symbols, gestures, social rituals, and images – continue to be invented and vetted in the social arena. Cognitive evolution is not yet complete: the externalization of memory has altered the actual memory architecture within which humans think. This is changing the role of biological memory and the way in which the human brain deploys its resources; it is also changing the form of modern culture. (shrink)

A human brain operates as a pattern of switching. An abstract definition of a quantum mechanical switch is given which allows for the continual random fluctuations in the warm wet environment of the brain. Among several switch-like entities in the brain, we choose to focus on the sodium channel proteins. After explaining what these are, we analyse the ways in which our definition of a quantum switch can be satisfied by portions of such proteins. We calculate the perturbing effects of (...) normal variations in temperature and electric field on the quantum state of such a portion. These are shown to be acceptable within the fluctuations allowed for by our definition. Information processing and unpredictability in the brain are discussed. The ultimate goal underlying the paper is an analysis of quantum measurement theory based on an abstract definition of the physical manifestations of consciousness. The paper is written for physicists with no prior knowledge of neurophysiology, but enough introductory material has also been included to allow neurophysiologists with no prior knowledge of quantum mechanics to follow the central arguments. (shrink)

Free speech has been a historically volatile issue in higher education. In recent years, however, there has been a surge of progressive censorship on campus. This wave of censorship has been characterized by the explosive growth of such policies as "trigger warnings" for course materials; "safe spaces" where students are protected from speech they consider harmful or distressing; "micro-aggression" policies that often strongly discourage the use of words that might offend sensitive individuals; new "bias-reporting" programs that consist of different degrees (...) of campus surveillance; the "dis-invitation" of a growing list of speakers, including many in the mainstream of American politics and values; and the prominent "shouting down" or disruption of speakers deemed inconsistent with progressive ideology. Not to be outdone, external forces on the right are now engaging in social media bullying of speakers and teachers whose views upset them. The essays in this collection, written by prominent philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, and legal scholars, examine the issues at the forefront of the crisis of free speech in higher education. The contributors address the broader historical, cultural, legal, and normative contexts of the current crisis, and take care to analyze the role of "due process" in protecting academic freedom and individuals accused of misconduct. Additionally, the volume is unique in that it advances practical remedies to campus censorship, as the editors and many of the contributors have participated in movements to remedy limitations on free speech and open inquiry. The Value and Limits of Academic Speech will educate academic professionals and informed citizens about the phenomenon of progressive censorship and its implications for higher education and the republic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.4 (2001) 577-592 [Access article in PDF] Eclecticism and the History of Ideas Donald R. Kelley "What we call the history of ideas," Joseph Mazzeo wrote in in 1972, "itself has a history." 1 In this country the history of ideas in the past century has been associated with the American philosopher and founder of this journal, Arthur O. Lovejoy, and his (...) epigones and critics. However, this field has an earlier history sub literam, going back almost two centuries, and a still deeper prehistory before the coinage of the phrase, traceable at least indirectly back to antiquity. The purpose of this essay is to trace some aspects of one intellectual tradition out of which the history of ideas has, knowingly or not, emerged.In 1829 Victor Cousin gave a diagnosis of and his prescription for philosophy in the wake of one revolution and on the threshold of another. He saw just three possibilities: either it could renounce its independence and submit again to authority, it could keep on retracing the circle of obsolescent systems, or--and this was his solution--it could "disengage what is true in each of these systems, and thus construct a philosophy superior to all systems [and] shall be neither this or that philosophy in its essence and in its unity." This procedure, "to select in all what appears to be true and good, and consequently everlasting,--this, in a single word, is ECLECTICISM." Moreover, Cousin added, "[i]f this philosophy is to be Eclectic, it must also be sustained by the history of philosophy."How had Cousin come upon this program? In December 1815, in the first year of both the Restoration Monarchy and his teaching at the École Normale Supérieure, he was lecturing on the history of philosophy. In post-revolutionary France this was a field in great disarray, and Cousin looked back to the great schools of the earlier generation, noting three in particular--the French, the [End Page 577] Scottish, and the German traditions, represented respectively by Condillac, Reid, and Kant. "It would be an interesting and instructive study," he told his enthusiastic young students, "to examine the weaknesses of these schools by engaging one with another and by selecting their various merits in the context of a great eclecticism which would contain and surpass all three." 2Over the next three decades this doctrine was publicized and extended by Cousin's many scholarly publications, by the still more famous lectures he gave after returning to his chair of philosophy in 1828, by his many international contacts and disciples, and by his later public career as minister of education. 3 For half a century before his death in 1867 Cousin had an unparalleled intellectual influence as virtually the "official philosopher" in France, with Eclecticism being widely regarded as a "state philosophy," 4 and translations of his works extending his renown into other parts of Europe and this country. In defending his achievements and hegemonic position Cousin claimed an absolute originality and a unique truth-value for his ideas. Eclecticism had not been drawn from German sources, he protested in 1855. "It was born spontaneously in our own spirit [notre esprit] from the spectacle of the resounding conflicts and the hidden harmonies of the three great philosophical schools of the eighteenth century," he declared. "Thus," he concluded, "eclecticism is a French doctrine and peculiar to us." 5Historically speaking, however, nothing could be further from the truth--or indeed further from the premises of the earlier eclectic tradition on which Cousin knowingly drew. The defining characteristic of his philosophy was its dependence not only on the three schools he recognized in his early years of teaching but on the whole history of philosophy from its Greek and especially Platonic beginnings, to which Cousin himself devoted much of his historical and philological [End Page 578] scholarship. That Eclecticism was a sort of higher plagiarism was admitted by Cousin himself: "What I recommend," Cousin said in 1817, "is an enlightened eclecticism which, judging with equity, and even with benevolence... (shrink)

As the accompanying articles in the Special Issue on Semiotic Scaffolding will attest, my colleagues in biosemiotics have done an exemplary job in showing us how to think about the critically generative role that semiotic scaffolding plays “vertically” – i.e., in evolutionary and developmental terms – by “allowing access to the upper floors” of biological complexity, cognition and evolution.In addition to such diachronic considerations of semiotic scaffolding, I wish to offer here a consideration of semiotic scaffolding’s synchronic power, as well (...) – and in particular the ability that it can afford its users to access new and other sign relations “horizontally” as a function of the way that multiple semiotically scaffolded relations intertwine to result in a “definite semantic topology that determines the ways that symbols modify each other’s referential functions in different combinations”.Taking up, in turn, Terrence Deacon’s later challenge that what the sciences of cognition – and biology more generally – needs to “come to grips with [is] the process of semiosis; the dynamic of interpretive activity by which semiotic relationships emerge from other semiotic relationships [as] intrinsically dynamic phases in a generative process”, I attempt here to show how Deacon’s own Peirce-inspired matrix of referential sign relations as presented in The Symbolic Species, when viewed as a semiotic scaffold of interactional constraints and possibility biases, provides the key to understanding the essentially thirdness-manifesting nature of symbol reference, formation and growth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scepticism About Persons in Book II of Hume’s TreatiseDonald C. AinslieBook ii of Hume’s Treatise—especially its first two Parts on the “indirect passions” of pride, humility, love, and hatred—has mystified many of its interpreters.1 Hume clearly thinks these passions are important: Not only does he devote more space to them than to his treatment of causation, but in the “Abstract” to the Treatise, he tells us that Book II (...) “contains opinions that are altogether as new and extraordinary” (T 659) as those found in Book I. And, he says, these opinions constitute “the foundation” (T 646) for his treatment of morals and politics in Book III.2 The mystery arises, however, because in the actual text of [End Page 469] Book II Hume never spells out what makes his opinions on the passions “new and extraordinary,” nor why they are foundational for his moral theory.Thus some of his interpreters, notably Norman Kemp Smith, conclude that Hume was simply mistaken in his assessment of his treatment of the passions. While his accounts of the will and of motivation (in the early Sections of Part iii of Book II) are significant, Kemp Smith takes the extended analysis of the indirect passions to spring merely from his misplaced enthusiasm for associationist psychology. As such, the philosophical lessons to be learned from the first two Parts of Book II are slim.3 Páll Árdal, in contrast, tries to construct for Hume what he seems to have omitted—a philosophical rationale for his obvious interest in the indirect passions. Árdal starts by drawing attention to the role these passions play in Hume’s moral philosophy, in particular, his repeatedly connecting the indirect passions to the moral sentiments of approval and disapproval. Árdal concludes that Hume means to equate the moral sentiments with particular kinds of indirect passions. The first two Parts of Book II are of interest, on Ardal’s reading, because it is there that he shows us how moral sentimentalism can be founded on something more fully naturalistic than Hutcheson’s somewhat mysterious “moral sense.”4I argue against Árdal’s interpretation in §2. But this reopens the problem of accounting for Hume’s interest in the indirect passions. I offer my view in §§3–5 where, like Árdal, I provide a reconstruction of Hume’s discussion of these passions in order to show how it has an underlying philosophical motivation. My claim is that Hume relies on the indirect passions to explain how we form beliefs about persons as bearers of features that make them into who [End Page 470] they are. It is by feeling an indirect passion towards someone that we think of her as more than accidentally related to some quality, such as her country, her riches, her family, or even her character traits. In support of my interpretation I point to the many parallels Hume draws between the indirect passions and the associative mechanism he offers to explain our forming causal beliefs (I.iii). And I suggest that, just as Hume’s associative explanation of causal beliefs is necessitated by his scepticism about intrinsic “necessary connexions,” so also his associative mechanism for our beliefs about persons—the indirect passions—is necessitated by a certain kind of scepticism about persons. This is not the scepticism about persons that we find in “Of personal identity” (I.iv.6), where Hume argues against the view that our perceptions inhere in a simple soul; it is rather a scepticism about there being intrinsic features of persons that define them as who they are.But, before I explain in more detail what my claim amounts to, it will help to have available a brief description of the mechanism that Hume’s takes to explain the indirect passions.1. THE MECHANISM FOR THE INDIRECT PASSIONSA passion, for Hume, is a simple impression felt in response to various circumstances. Because of their simplicity, we cannot define passions by putting their characteristic feeling into words; instead, Hume thinks, we can only delineate “such circumstances, as attend them” (T 277). Passions are indirect if those circumstances include as an outcome the focusing of attention onto a person... (shrink)

Technical results about the time dependence of eigenvectors of reduced density operators are considered, and the relevance of these results is discussed for modal interpretations of quantum mechanics which take the corresponding eigenprojections to represent definite properties. Continuous eigenvectors can be found if degeneracies are avoided. We show that, in finite dimensions, the space of degenerate operators has co-dimension 3 in the space of all reduced operators, suggesting that continuous eigenvectors almost surely exist. In any dimension, even when degeneracies are (...) hit, we find conditions under which a theorem due to Rellich can provide continuous eigenvectors. We use this result to formulate an extended version of the modal interpretation. We also discuss eigenvector instability which we argue poses a serious problem for the modal interpretation, even in our extended version. Many examples are given to illustrate the mathematics. (shrink)

The idea that the self is in need of rethinking, as the title to this collection of essays suggests, presupposes that the self has already been “thought.” And indeed it has—both explicitly, by philosophers, and implicitly, in the practices of everyday life. For philosophers, this thinking about the self has taken place largely in abstract terms; persons have been treated as metaphysical-cum-moral subjects, disembodied minds that could plausibly be split from or melded with other such minds, or as rational agents, (...) capable of choosing a plan in terms of which to live their lives. In everyday life, in contrast, we “think” one another as selves by making assumptions about how the people we encounter fit into the social landscape and about how we ourselves have a place in the world. As the essays in this collection demonstrate, feminists have challenged both ways of thinking of selfhood in various, sometimes contradictory, ways. (shrink)

In 2014, Morten Tønnessen and the editors of Biosemiotics officially launched the Biosemiotic Glossary Project in the effort to: solidify and detail established terminology being used in the field of Biosemiotics for the benefit of newcomers and outsiders; and to by involving the entire biosemiotics community, to contribute innovatively in the theoretical development of biosemiotic theory and vocabulary via the discussions that result. Biosemiotics, in its concern with explaining the emergence of, and the relations between, both biological ‘end-directedness’ and semiotic (...) ‘about-ness’, would seem a fertile field for re-conceptualizing the notion of intentionality. The present project is part of a systematic attempt to survey and to document the current thinking about this concept in our field. (shrink)

Corporate entrepreneurs -- described in the academic literature as those managers or employees who do not follow the status quo of their co-workers -- are depicted as visionaries who dream of taking the company in new directions. As a result, though, in overcoming internal obstacles to reaching their professional goals they can often walk a fine line between clever resourcefulness and outright rule breaking. A framework is presented as a guideline for middle managers and organizations seeking to impede unethical behaviors (...) in the pursuit of entrepreneurial activity. This paper examines the barriers middle managers face in trying to be entrepreneurial in less supportive environments, the ethical consequences that can result, and a suggested assessment and training program for averting such dilemmas. We advise companies that embrace corporate entrepreneurship: (1) establish the needed flexibility, innovation, and employee initiative and risk-taking; (2) remove the barriers that the entrepreneurial middle manager may face to more closely align personal and organizational initiatives and reduce the need to behave unethically; and (3) include an ethical component to corporate training which will provide guidelines for instituting compliance and values components into the state-of-the-art corporate entrepreneurship programs. (shrink)

What is the nature of the social sciences? What kinds of knowledge can they—and should they—hope to create? Are objective viewpoints possible and can universal laws be discovered? Questions like these have been asked with increasing urgency in recent years, as some philosophers and researchers have perceived a "crisis" in the social sciences. Metatheory in Social Science offers many provocative arguments and analyses of basic conceptual frameworks for the study of human behavior. These are offered primarily by practicing researchers and (...) are related to problems in disciplines as diverse as sociology, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and philosophy of science. While various points of view are expressed in these nineteen essays, they have in common several themes, including the comparison of social and natural science, the role of knowledge in meeting the demands of society and its pressing problems, and the nature and role of subjectivity in science. Some authors hold that subjectivity cannot be studied scientifically; others argue that it can and must be if progress in knowledge is to be made. The essays demonstrate the philosophical pluralism they discuss and give a wide range of alternative positions on the future of the social and behavioral sciences in a postpositivist intellectual world. (shrink)

The article presents a new interpretation of Hume’s treatment of personal identity, and his later rejection of it in the “Appendix” to the Treatise. Hume’s project, on this interpretation, is to explain beliefs about persons that arise primarily within philosophical projects, not in everyday life. The belief in the identity and simplicity of the mind as a bundle of perceptions is an abstruse belief, not one held by the “vulgar” who rarely turn their minds on themselves so as to think (...) of their perceptions. The author suggests that it is this philosophical observation of the mind that creates the problems that Hume finally acknowledges in the “Appendix.” He is unable to explain why we believe that the perceptions by means of which we observe our minds while philosophizing are themselves part of our minds. This suggestion is then tested against seven criteria that any interpretation of the “Appendix” must meet. (shrink)

A physical and mathematical framework for the analysis of probabilities in quantum theory is proposed and developed. One purpose is to surmount the problem, crucial to any reconciliation between quantum theory and space-time physics, of requiring instantaneous “wave-packet collapse” across the entire universe. The physical starting point is the idea of an observer as an entity, localized in space-time, for whom any physical system can be described at any moment, by a set of (not necessarily pure) quantum states compatible with (...) his observations of the system at that moment. The mathematical starting point is the theory of local algebras from axiomatic relativistic quantum field theory. A function defining thea priori probability of mistaking one local state for another is analysed. This function is shown to possess a broad range of appropriate properties and to be uniquely defined by a selection of them. Through a general model for observations, it is argued that the probabilities defined here are as compatible with experiment as the probabilities of conventional interpretations of quantum mechanics but are more likely to be compatible, not only with modern developments in mathematical physics, but also with a complete and consistent theory of measurement. (shrink)

Willem Drees’ excellent What Are the Humanities For? triggered a series of second thoughts about the role of the humanities in modern society. These include several topics on which he and I agree but where we may be out of step with current trends, such as a dedication to “value‐free” scholarship and the continuing importance of the academic study of religion. It also provided an opportunity to question why religion has been excluded from policy debates involving the principal interface between (...) science and religion in the twenty‐first century: the creation of new medicines and their delivery to the billions of religious people around the world. Finally, I question the assumption that studying the humanities necessarily promotes critical thinking and argue that achieving that goal is more important now than ever before. (shrink)

In the Treatise of Human Nature , Hume argues that, because we have adequate ideas of the smallest parts of space, we can infer that space itself must conform to our representations of it. The paper examines two challenges to this argument based on Descartes's and Locke's treatments of adequate ideas, ideas that fully capture the objects they represent. The first challenge, posed by Arnauld in his Objections to the Meditations , asks how we can know that an idea is (...) adequate. The second challenge, implicit in Locke's Essay , asks how an empiricist can characterize an idea as inadequate, as both picking out an object and yet failing to capture it fully. In showing how Hume responds to these challenges, his theory of perceptual representation is explained and his treatment of space is related to his scepticism. His conclusion is shown not to be a characterization of space as it exists wholly apart from our powers of conception. Instead, in an adumbration of Kant, his claim is restricted to space as it appears to us. (shrink)

In a series of papers, a many-minds interpretation of quantum theory has been developed. The aim in these papers is to present an explicit mathematical formalism which constitutes a complete theory compatible with relativistic quantum field theory. In this paper, which could also serve as an introduction to the earlier papers, three issues are discussed. First, a significant, but fairly straightforward, revision in some of the technical details is proposed. This is used as an opportunity to introduce the formalism. Then (...) the probabilistic structure of the theory is revised, and it is proposed that the experience of an individual observer can be modelled as the experience of observing a particular, identified, discrete stochastic process. Finally, it is argued that the formalism can be modified to give a physics in which no constants are required. Instead, “constants” have to be determined by observation, and are fixed only to the extent to which they have been observed. (shrink)

It is proposed that the physical structure of an observer in quantum mechanics is constituted by a pattern of elementary localized switching events. A key preliminary step in giving mathematical expression to this proposal is the introduction of an equivalence relation on sequences of spacetime sets which relates a sequence to any other sequence to which it can be deformed without change of causal arrangement. This allows an individual observer to be associated with a finite structure. The identification of suitable (...) switching events in the human brain is discussed. A definition is given for the sets of sequences of quantum states which such an observer could occupy. Finally, by providing an a priori probability for such sets, the definitions are incorporated into a complete mathematical framework for a many-worlds interpretation. At a less ambitious level, the paper can be read as an exploration of some of the technical and conceptual difficulties involved in constructing such a framework. (shrink)

How come quantum theory has anything to do with mind? Is your theory refutable? What is the point of all the technical detail? Do you suggest that the operation of the brain involves large scale quantum coherence? Isn't large scale quantum coherence necessary to solve the problem of the unity of consciousness? How does a many-minds interpretation survive Occam's razor? What, briefly, is your current philosophical position? What is your understanding of the relationship between mind and brain for split-brain patients? (...) Do you believe that the mind can survive the death of the brain? No journal reference is given for several of the recent papers on your home page. Where will these papers be printed? How are the “source” and “pdf” versions of the papers on your home page produced and viewed? Why does the page with your photograph behave oddly in some browsers? Where can I find an elementary introduction to the interpretation of quantum theory? Doesn't decoherence theory solve all the problems of the interpretation of quantum theory? How do the ambiguities of decoherence affect the many-worlds interpretation? Could you expand on your answers to the two previous questions? Why isn't the conventional interpretation of quantum theory adequate? What about the Bohm interpretation? What about consistent histories? Does the present many-minds interpretation solve all the problems? (shrink)

The article presents a new interpretation of Hume's treatment of personal identity, and his later rejection of it in the “Appendix” to the Treatise. Hume's project, on this interpretation, is to explain beliefs about persons that arise primarily within philosophical projects, not in everyday life. the belief in the identity and simplicity of the mind as a bundle of perceptions is an abstruse belief, not one held by the “vulgar” who rarely turn their minds on themselves so as to think (...) of their perceptions. the author suggests that it is this philosophical observation of the mind that creates the problems that Hume finally acknowledges in the “Appendix.” He is unable to explain why we believe that the perceptions by means of which we observe our minds while philosophizing are themselves part of our minds. This suggestion is then tested against seven criteria that any interpretation of the “Appendix” must meet. (shrink)

This paper is a response to some recent discussions of many-minds interpretations in the philosophical literature. After an introduction to the many-minds idea, the complexity of quantum states for macroscopic objects is stressed. Then it is proposed that a characterization of the physical structure of observers is a proper goal for physical theory. It is argued that an observer cannot be defined merely by the instantaneous structure of a brain, but that the history of the brain's functioning must also be (...) taken into account. Next the nature of probability in many-minds interpretations is discussed and it is suggested that only discrete probability models are needed. The paper concludes with brief comments on issues of actuality and identity over time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 153-156 [Access article in PDF] JHI 2000 Donald R. Kelley It was just sixty years ago that this Journal first made its appearance. Two hundred thirty-nine issues later it continues in a world transformed by war, overpopulation, cultural shocks, scientific and technological transformations, globalization, the avalanche of information produced by electronic exchange, and "the acceleration of just about everything." Yet (...) despite these factors and the strains of postmodernism and cultural alterity, 1 it has not entirely lost touch with its intellectual innocence, faith in humanistic learning, and reliance on enlightened reason. This continuity itself may seem something of a novelty in an age of distrust of history and "rage against reason," but for some of us it reflects the critical spirit and intellectual context out of which such ostensibly subversive attitudes emerge, and reemerge. To some extent, moreover, the diversity of opinions about intellectual traditions is the result of specializations, and special interests, which have changed the climate of opinion since the time of Arthur O. Lovejoy, principal founder of the JHI. Lovejoy's vision was super- as well as inter-disciplinary; that is, he intended to include in the agenda of "history of ideas" particular areas of history of philosophy, literature, art, science, social science, etc., as well as the larger intellectual and cultural areas into which these disciplinary histories extend. 2 These days, however, all these disciplinary traditions have their own more specialized journals and do not need to seek a vehicle in publications of more general interest. What remains then, for the most part, is the interdisciplinary arena in which larger questions of human experience should be posed--and for Lovejoy, as for so many epigones and critics, the main "larger question" is not only one of value but also of specifically historical inquiry. 3 [End Page 153]The first issue of the JHI appeared under the editorship of Lovejoy (with Philip Wiener, who did most of the editorial work, as "managing editor"), assisted by a committee that included two historians, three philosophers, four literary scholars, and one political theorist; namely, Crane Brinton, Gilbert Chinard, Morris Cohen, Francis Coker, Richard McKeon, Perry Miller, Marjory Nicolson, J. H. Randall, J. Salwyn Schapiro, and Louis Wright. The first volume featured contributions from each of these, including Wiener, except for Miller (vol. 2), Shapiro (vol. 3), McKeon (vol. 8), and Coker. 4 During the first five years there were also reviews of books by Dilthey (by Horace L. Friess), Croce (Schapiro), Mannheim (Randall), Perry Miller (Herbert W. Schneider), Van Wyck Brooks (Miller) and Alfred Kazin (F. O. Matthiessen). In this period the disciplinary distribution of articles was not markedly different from that of the past five years, nor was the ranking of fields by number of submissions. 5 Most important, the original interdisciplinary thrust of Lovejoy's agenda, if not his attachment to the spiritualist currency of "unit-ideas," has survived growing specialization.At first the history of ideas was pursued largely in the shadow of the history of philosophy; for in this field, according to Lovejoy, "is to be found the common seed-plot, the locus of initial manifestation in writing, of the greater number of the more fundamental and pervasive ideas, and especially of the ruling preconceptions, which manifest themselves in other regions of intellectual history." 6 Lovejoy's concern was always with concepts, especially "-isms," and yet in some ways he anticipated the "linguistic turn" of the later years of this century, pointing out in particular "the role of semantic shifts, ambiguities, and confusions, in the history of thought and taste," for "nearly all of the great catchwords have been equivocal--or rather, multivocal." 7 If ideas could be given stable definitions, they were nonetheless often, in the context of language, in conflict, even in the mind of a single thinker; for such was the "anomaly of knowledge." 8 So Lovejoy was at pains to distinguish the various meanings of [End Page 154] catch-words like "nature," "perfectibility," "romanticism," "progress," and "pragmatism," not to mention more inflammatory terms of wartime ideological debate.But... (shrink)

The current interest in bioregionalism, stimulated in part by Kirkpatrick Sale’s Dwellers in the Land, shows that people are looking for a form of political praxis which addresses the importance of region. In this paper, I argue that much of the bioregional literature written to date mystifies the concept of region, discounting the role of subjectivity and culture in shaping regional boundaries and veers toward asimplistic view of “nature knows best.” Bioregionalism can be rehabilitated, provided we treat it not as (...) a “revealed wisdom” for the reconstruction of human society, but as a sensibility and environmental ethic that can infuse our work even as we make use of the functional regionalisms that increasingly shape people’s consciousness. I conclude by citing Lewis Mumford’s concept of a region as capturing the dialectical interplay of natural and cultural elements. (shrink)

The combination of genuine ethical concerns and fear of learning to use germ-line therapy for human disease must now be confronted. Until now, no established techniques were available to perform this treatment on a human. Through an integration of several fields of science and medicine, we have developed a nine step protocol at the germ-line level for the curative treatment of a genetic disease. Our purpose in this paper is to provide the first method to apply germ-line therapy to treat (...) those not yet born, who are destined to have a life threatening, or a severely debilitating genetic disease. We hope this proposal will initiate the process of a thorough analysis from both the scientific and ethical communities. As such, this proposal can be useful for official groups studying the advantages and disadvantages of germ-line therapy. (shrink)

BackgroundThe role of consent for research use of health information is contentious. Most discussion has focused on when project-specific consent may be waived but, recently, a broader range of consent options has been entertained, including broad opt-in for multiple studies with restrictions and notification with opt-out. We sought to elicit public values in this matter and to work toward an agreement about a common approach to consent for use of personal information for health research through deliberative public dialogues.MethodsWe conducted seven (...) day-long public dialogues, involving 98 participants across Canada. Immediately before and after each dialogue, participants completed a fixed-response questionnaire rating individuals' support for 3 approaches to consent in the abstract and their consent choices for 5 health research scenarios using personal information. They also rated how confident different safeguards made them feel that their information was being used responsibly.ResultsBroad opt-in consent for use of personal information garnered the greatest support in the abstract. When presented with specific research scenarios, no one approach to consent predominated. When profit was introduced into the scenarios, consent choices shifted toward greater control over use. Despite lively and constructive dialogues, and considerable shifting in opinion at the individual level, at the end of the day, there was no substantive aggregate movement in opinion. Personal controls were among the most commonly cited approaches to improving people's confidence in the responsible use of their information for research.ConclusionBecause no one approach to consent satisfied even a simple majority of dialogue participants and the importance placed on personal controls, a mechanism should be developed for documenting consent choice for different types of research, including ways for individuals to check who has accessed their medical record for purposes other than clinical care. This could be done, for example, through a web-based patient portal to their electronic health record. Researchers and policy makers should continue to engage the public to promote greater public understanding of the research process and to look for feasible alternatives to existing approaches to project-specific consent for observational research. (shrink)

Some philosophers such as Ninian Smart have claimed that mystics from different religious traditions may sometimes have the same experience , while nevertheless giving different and tradition-bound descriptive reports of that experience. In two important essays, Steven Katz has challenged such a claim. Mystics from different religious traditions do not have the same experience.

In these papers Duclow views the thought of Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus through the lens of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics. He highlights the interplay of creativity, symbolic expression and language, interpretation and silence as they comment on the mind's work in naming God. This work itself becomes mystical theology when negation opens into a silent awareness of God's presence, from which the Word once again 'speaks' within the mind. Comparative studies with Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Anselm and Hadewijch suggest the book's (...) wider implications for medieval philosophy and theology. (shrink)

This paper introduces the important concept of a biophysical perspective on economics into the business ethics literature. The biophysical perspective recognizes that ecological processes determine what can be done in an economy and how best to do it. A biophysical perspective places the economic system into a larger context of the ecologic system. This changes the perception of ethical issues by identifying a larger scope of management decisions. The paper examines the changing ethical landscape in such issues as biotechnology, planned (...) obsolescence, productivity, and international trade. The paper also examines the shift in mindset associated with the shift in economic framework. It draws on the literature on cognitive structures and moral imagination to show this new perspective can actually raise the bar for ethical decision-making and behavior. The pattern is that the ethical behavior associated with a biophysical economic framework has a greater scope of responsibility with the benefit that the required ethical behavior leads to better long-term decision making. (shrink)