This paper examines Hegel’s idea of nation and its significance for his theory of the modern state, namely, the role that ‘the national’ plays for his justification of right in the Philosophy of Right. It is argued that Hegel strikes a balance between historicism and a rational justification of state and law. He bases the state on a notion of Sittlichkeit (ethical life) that is both national and subjected to a world historical development toward rationality and universal right. Consequently, ‘nation,’ (...) in the sense of a group of people invoking identity and rights based on a primordial common language, culture, and territory, does not cover what Hegel means by the modern nation state. ‘Ethical life’ is national, but it also constitutes a historically changeable community of values supported by citizens’ conscious participation in communal life (patriotism). Today, Hegel’s idea undermines the legitimacy of nationalistic invocations of primordial ethnic cultures within politics. (shrink)

It is argued that causal understanding originates in experiences of acting on objects. Such experiences have consistent features that can be used as clues to causal identification and judgment. These are singular clues, meaning that they can be detected in single instances. A catalog of 14 singular clues is proposed. The clues function as heuristics for generating causal judgments under uncertainty and are a pervasive source of bias in causal judgment. More sophisticated clues such as mechanism clues and repeated interventions (...) are derived from the 14. Research on the use of empirical information and conditional probabilities to identify causes has used scenarios in which several of the clues are present, and the use of empirical association information for causal judgment depends on the presence of singular clues. It is the singular clues and their origin that are basic to causal understanding, not multiple instance clues such as empirical association, contingency, and conditional probabilities. (shrink)

Berkeley’s likeness principle is the claim that “an idea can be like nothing but an idea”. The likeness principle is intended to undermine representationalism: the view (that Berkeley attributes to thinkers like Descartes and Locke) that all human knowledge is mediated by ideas in the mind which represent material objects. Yet, Berkeley appears to leave the likeness principle unargued for. This has led to several attempts to explain why Berkeley accepts it. In contrast to ‘metaphysical’ and ‘epistemological’ interpretations available in (...) the literature, in this paper I defend a ‘conceptual’ interpretation. I argue that Berkeley accepts the likeness principle on the basis of (i) his commitment to the transparency of ideas, and (ii) his account of resemblance which he sets out in his works on vision. Thus, I provide an explanation for Berkeley’s reasons for accepting the likeness principle which, appropriately, focuses on his views concerning ideas and likeness. (shrink)

In my contribution to this Concise Collection on Margaret Cavendish, I focus on teaching Cavendish’s work in the context of philosophy (and, more specifically, Early Modern Philosophy). I have three aims. First, to explain why teaching women from philosophy’s history is crucially important to the discipline. Second, to outline my own reflections on teaching Cavendish’s philosophy. Third, to defend a specific claim about the benefits of teaching Cavendish to philosophy students; namely, that introducing biographical detail alongside philosophical ideas enriches the (...) learning experience. (shrink)

William Molyneux was born in Dublin, studied in Trinity College Dublin, and was a founding member of the Dublin Philosophical Society (DPS), Ireland’s counterpart to the Royal Society in London. He was a central figure in the Irish intellectual milieu during the Early Modern period and – along with George Berkeley and Edmund Burke – is one of the best-known thinkers to have come out of that context and out of Irish thought more generally. In 1688, when Molyneux wrote the (...) letter to Locke in which he posed the now famous question about a man born blind made to see, he was an active member of the DPS and was on familiar terms with several other key figures in Irish philosophy at the time. For the most part, Irish thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries answered “no” to Molyneux’s question of whether a blind man made to see could distinguish, by sight alone, between a cube and a sphere. (shrink)

In der genannten Epoche werden Grundentscheidungen gefällt, welche die Fundamentalfrage der Philosophie, die Seinsfrage, in die Krisis führen, in den Nihilismus unter ontologischem, metaphysischem, epistemologischem, axiologischem Aspekt. Den Extrempositionen der Systemdenker Hegel, Schopenhauer und Schelling erwachsen in den Hegelkritikern Feuerbach, Br. Bauer, Marx und Stirner Kontrapositionen, die das Wahrheitsproblem der Beliebigkeit unterstellen. Kierkegaard klagt unter existentiellem Aspekt das Problem der Wahrheit ein. Nietzsche überholt durch Abschaffung der Wahrheit alle Positionen,was seinen Standort in der europäischen Denkgeschichte ausmacht und als Ergebnis der (...) problemgeschichtlichen Analysen zu charakterisieren ist. Die Rückgewinnung des Vernunfthorizontes setzen erst die Problemdenker N. Hartmann und M. Heidegger ins Werk durch kritische Erneuerung der Seinsfrage. (shrink)

In this book we present a collection of papers on the topic of applying paraconsistent logic to solve inconsistency related problems in science, mathematics and computer science. The goal is to develop, compare, and evaluate different ways of applying paraconsistent logic. After more than 60 years of mainly theoretical developments in many independent systems of paraconsistent logic, we believe the time has come to compare and apply the developed systems in order to increase our philosophical understanding of reasoning when faced (...) with inconsistencies. This book wants to be a first step toward an application based, constructive debate to tackle the question which systems are best applied for which kind of problems and which philosophical conclusions can be drawn from such applications. (shrink)

What is the relation between monetary policy and inequalities in income and wealth? This question has received insufficient attention, especially in light of the unconventional policies introduced since the 2008 financial crisis. The article analyzes three ways in which the concern central banks show for inequalities in their official statements remains incomplete and underdeveloped. First, central banks tend to care about inequality for instrumental reasons only. When they do assign intrinsic value to containing inequalities, they shy away from trade-offs with (...) the standard objectives of monetary policy that such a position entails. Second, central banks play down the causal impact monetary policy has on inequalities. When they do acknowledge it, they defend their actions by claiming that it is an unintended side effect, that it is temporary, and/or that any alternative policy would fare even worse. The article appeals to the doctrine of double effect to criticize these arguments. Third, even if one accepts that inequalities should be contained and that today’s monetary policies exacerbate them, is it both desirable and feasible to make containing inequalities part of the mandate of central banks? The article analyzes and rejects three attempts on the part of central banks to answer this question negatively. (shrink)

In recent years, democrats both inside and outside the academy have begun to reconsider the merits of the age-old practice of sortition, the random selection of political officials. Despite this fact, however, the comparative assessment of the merits of voting and sortition remains in its infancy. This paper will advance this project by treating the problem of assigning public responsibilities as a problem of allocative justice. To treat the problem in this manner is to treat public office as a type (...) of good to which citizens might have various claims. Random selection is the appropriate method for distributing public office when all citizens have equal claims to that office and there is not enough to go around. Universal distribution is more appropriate when all claimants have equal claims to the office and there is enough to go around (as with universal suffrage, for example). Election (or possibly other procedures, such as appointment) makes sense when citizens do not enjoy equal claims to the office and that office is in scarce supply. This approach captures a crucial component of democratic equality. Different understandings of democratic equality lay behind sortition and election. Each might be appropriate under different circumstances, but both place rights-based constraints on the design of a democratic political system. (shrink)

Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an ‘explanatory gap’ between physical, functional and intentional facts, on the one hand, and the facts of phenomenal consciousness, on the other, argue that there are reasons of principle why phenomenal consciousness cannot be reductively explained: Jackson (1982), (1986); Levine (1983), (1993), (2001); McGinn (1991); Sturgeon (1994), (2000); Chalmers (1996), (1999). Some of these writers claim that the existence of such a gap would warrant a belief in some form (...) of ontological dualism (Jackson, 1982; Chalmers, 1996), whereas others argue that no such entailment holds (Levine, 1983; McGinn, 1991; Sturgeon, 1994). In the other main camp, there are people who argue that a reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness is possible in principle (Block and Stalnaker, 1999), and yet others who claim, moreover, to have provided such an explanation in practice (Dennett, 1991; Dretske, 1995; Tye, 1995,2000; Lycan, 1996; Carruthers, 2000). (shrink)

This book brings together the study of two great disciplines of the Islamic world: law and philosophy. In both sunni and shiite Islam, it became the norm for scholars to acquire a high level of expertise in the legal tradition. Thus some of the greatest names in the history of Aristotelianism were trained jurists, like Averroes, or commented on the status and nature of law, like al-Fārābī. While such authors sought to put law in its place relative to the philosophical (...) disciplines, others criticized philosophy from a legal viewpoint, like al-Ghazālī and Ibn Taymiyya. But this collection of papers does not only explore the relative standing of law and philosophy. It also looks at how philosophers, theologians, and jurists answered philosophical questions that arise from jurisprudence itself. What is the logical structure of a well-formed legal argument? What standard of certainty needs to be attained in passing down judgments, and how is that standard reached? What are the sources of valid legal judgment and what makes these sources authoritative? May a believer be excused on grounds of ignorance? Together the contributions provide an unprecedented demonstration of the close connections between philosophy and law in Islamic society, while also highlighting the philosophical interest of texts normally studied only by legal historians. (shrink)

Reprint of paper first published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research in 1984.

[1] The rise of modern paganism.--v. 2. The science of freedom.

The historian Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) is most often treated by historians of philosophy as part of the story of political philosophy in the Islamic world. While this is perfectly legitimate, it may be misleading when it comes to the question of the method he proposes for the historian. This paper argues that that method is in fact based on a different branch of (Aristotelian) science: natural philosophy. After rendering this proposition initially plausible by noting frequent references to "nature" in (...) the _Muqaddima_, the paper discusses a number of parallels between natural philosophy and history as Ibn Khaldūn conceives it. Ultimately it is suggested that this method is legitimated insofar as history is for Ibn Khaldūn a study of human nature. (shrink)

ACT, CONTENT, AND OBJECT THE TITLE I have chosen for this work is a mere label for a set of problems; the controversial views that have historically been ...

The most comprehensive compilation of the works of Abelard and Heloise ever presented in a single volume in English, _The Letters and Other Writings_ features an accurate and stylistically faithful new translation of both _The Calamities of Peter Abelard_ and the remarkable letters it sparked between the ill-fated twelfth-century philosopher and his brilliant former student and lover—an exchange whose intellectual passion, formal virtuosity, and psychological drama distinguish it as one of the most extraordinary correspondences in European history. Thanks to (...) this edition, Latin-less readers will be better placed than ever to see why this undisputed milestone in the intellectual life of medieval France is also a masterpiece of Western literature. In addition to the _The Calamities_ and the letters--the first complete English translation of all seven in more than eighty years--this volume includes an Introduction, a map, and a chronology, Abelard's _Confession of Faith_, letters between Heloise and Peter the Venerable, the Introduction to _The Questions of Heloise_, and selected songs and poems by Abelard, among them a previously untranslated shaped poem, Open Wide Your Eyes. Extracts of lost letters sometimes ascribed to Abelard and Heloise are given in appendixes. (shrink)

Do we think in natural language? Or is language only for communication? Much recent work in philosophy and cognitive science assumes the latter. In contrast, Peter Carruthers argues that much of human conscious thinking is conducted in the medium of natural language sentences. However, this does not commit him to any sort of Whorfian linguistic relativism, and the view is developed within a framework that is broadly nativist and modularist. His study will be essential reading for all those interested (...) in the nature and significance of natural language, whether they come from philosophy, psychology or linguistics. (shrink)

Jacob Neumann provides a thoughtful reading of Paulo Freire in the 21st century: Education, dialogue, and transformation. His comments on the importance of contextualising Freire’s work and the value of openness in engaging Freirean ideas are insightful and helpful. His use of the term ‘apolitical’ is, however, rather more problematic. Drawing on points made in Paulo Freire in the 21st century, and with links to Freire’s wider philosophy and pedagogy, this article argues that education from a Freirean perspective is always (...) political. (shrink)

The Evolving Block Universe is a model where spacetime continuously emerges leading to a ‘growth’ of spacetime by which there is a passage of time. Its most recent version extends ideas on the passage of time and the various arrows of time (determined by the cosmological evolution of the whole universe). Attention is drawn to some principal problems with this model, especially how the present moment and the passage of time are defined.

This study presents a substantial and often radical reinterpretation of some of the central themes of Locke's thought. Professor Alexander concentrates on the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and aims to restore that to its proper historical context. In Part I he gives a clear exposition of some of the scientific theories of Robert Boyle, which, he argues, heavily influenced Locke in employing similar concepts and terminology. Against this background, he goes on in Part II to provide an account of Locke's (...) views on the external world and our knowledge of it. He shows those views to be more consistent and plausible than is generally allowed, demonstrating how they make sense and enable scientific explanations of nature. In examining the views of Locke and Boyle together, the book throws light both on the development of philosophy and the beginnings of modern science, and in particular it makes a considerable and original contribution to our understanding of Locke's philosophy. (shrink)

The question of toleration matters more than ever. The politics of the twenty-first century is replete with both the successes and, all too often, the failures of toleration. Yet a growing number of thinkers and practitioners have argued against toleration. Some believe that liberal democracies are better served by different principles, such as respect of, or recognition for, people's ways of life. Others argue that because the liberal state should be entirely neutral or indifferent towards people's ways of life, it (...) can no longer be tolerant - it has no grounds on which it can object, and so there is nothing left to tolerate.Respecting Toleration provides a new, original, and provocative take on the question of toleration and its application to the politics of contemporary diversity. The volume demonstrates how toleration - despite its critics - is essential to any liberal political order. Peter Balint argues that from a conceptual viewpoint, toleration is entirely compatible with liberal politics; and from a normative viewpoint, it is utterly essential. The volume argues that if one cares about people living divergent lives, then it is liberal toleration that should be respected by legislators and policy makers, and not people's differences. It is a book that will shape the debate and demand a response from all who are interested in which political structures most fairly accommodate the competing ways of life that characterise contemporary diversity.Key Features:Develops a new framework of political tolerationProvides a clear demonstration and analysis of complex concepts and argumentsProvides extensive practical and theoretical examples. (shrink)

[Peter Lipton] From a reliabilist point of view, our inferential practices make us into instruments for determining the truth value of hypotheses where, like all instruments, reliability is a central virtue. I apply this perspective to second-order inductions, the inductive assessments of inductive practices. Such assessments are extremely common, for example whenever we test the reliability of our instruments or our informants. Nevertheless, the inductive assessment of induction has had a bad name ever since David Hume maintained that any (...) attempt to justify induction by means of an inductive argument must beg the question. I will consider how the inductive justification of induction fares from the reliabilist point of view. I will also consider two other well-known arguments that can be construed as inductive assessments of induction. One is the miracle argument, according to which the truth of scientific theories should be inferred as the best explanation of their predictive success; the other is the disaster argument, according to which we should infer that all present and future theories are false on the grounds that all past theories have been found to be false. \\\ [John Worrall] Science seems in some ways to have been remarkably successful. What does this success tell us about the epistemological status of current scientific claims? Peter Lipton considers various meta-inductive arguments each of which start from premises about science's 'track record'. I show that his endorsements of the 'strongest' of these are, on analysis, remarkably weak. I argue that this is a reflection of difficulties within the general epistemological framework that he adopts-that of reliabilism. Finally, I briefly outline the quite different approach that I take to this issue, in the process responding to Lipton's criticisms of the 'pessimistic meta-induction'. (shrink)

Karl Marx’s acerbic observation in the opening lines of _The Eighteenth Brumaire_ that “all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur the first time as tragedy, the second as farce” may be profitably applied to a reconsideration of literary farce sui generis, a genre represented in this article by a long-neglected work of utopian fiction, Archibald Marshall’s _Upsidonia_ (1915). Although _Upsidonia_’s current disregard is arguably undeserved, the article’s chief interest is not to reclaim the novel on aesthetic (...) grounds but to illuminate the mechanics of what Marx would call its “serious buffoonery.” In its persistent reversal of capitalist principles and relations, _Upsidonia_ naturally invites readers to revisit Marx, whose mordant gambit may serve as a key to Marshall’s own farcical plot and praxis, rooted in return and repetition, the essential maneuvers of farce itself. (shrink)

According to a standard view, predictions of new phenomena provide stronger evidence for a theory than explanations of old ones. More guardedly, a theory that predicts phenomena that did not prompt the initial formulation of that theory is better supported by those phenomena than is a theory by known phenomena that generated the theory in the first place. So say various philosophers of science, including William Whewell (1847) in the 19th century and Karl Popper (1959) in the 20th, to mention (...) just two.Stephen Brush takes issue with this on historical grounds. In a series of fascinating papers he argues that generally speaking scientists do not regard the fact that a theory predicts new phenomena, even ones of a kind totally different from those that prompted the theory in the first place, as providing better evidential support for that theory than is provided by already known facts explained by the theory. (shrink)

A much-maligned feature of ancient and medieval political thought is its tendency to appeal to nature to establish norms for human communities. From Aristotle's claim that humans are "political animals" to Aquinas' invocation of "natural law," it may seem that pre-modern philosophers were all too ready to assume that whatever is natural is good, and that just political arrangements must somehow be natural. The papers in this collection show that this assumption is, at best, too crude. From very early, for (...) instance in the ancient sophists' contrast between nomos and physis, there was recognition that political arrangements may be precisely artificial, not natural, and it may be questioned whether even such supposed naturalists as Aristotle in fact adopt the quick inference from "natural" to "good." The papers in this volume trace the complex interrelations between nature and such concepts as law, legitimacy, and justice, covering a wide historical range stretching from Plato and the Sophists to Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, Cicero, the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, ancient Christian thinkers, and philosophers of both the Islamic and Christian Middle Ages. (shrink)

Each book in the Access to Religion and Philosophy series provides a concise and readable introduction to a key area in religious studies and philosophy for A Level students. The third edition of Philosophy of Religion has been updated in line with the revised 2008 A level specification requirements. It examines key issues including the proofs for the existence of God, the problem of evil and suffering and the relationship between mind, body and religious language. It provides a solid basis (...) for those who are starting A level courses in Religious Studies or Philosophy. The new edition combines all the strengths of the second edition with a new design and features to make the content more accessible to all students in order to develop their understanding of the topic. New features include: - Key questions throughout the chapters to help students focus on the key issues - Key terms defined and explained throughout the chapters - Profiles of key individuals - their contribution and significance - More summary diagrams throughout to aid revision - Revision checklists at the end of chapters - New exam-style questions and tips at the end of each chapter. (shrink)

This book brings together philosophers, mathematicians and logicians to penetrate important problems in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. In philosophy, one has been concerned with the opposition between constructivism and classical mathematics and the different ontological and epistemological views that are reflected in this opposition. The dominant foundational framework for current mathematics is classical logic and set theory with the axiom of choice. This framework is, however, laden with philosophical difficulties. One important alternative foundational programme that is actively pursued (...) today is predicativistic constructivism based on Martin-Löf type theory. Associated philosophical foundations are meaning theories in the tradition of Wittgenstein, Dummett, Prawitz and Martin-Löf. What is the relation between proof-theoretical semantics in the tradition of Gentzen, Prawitz, and Martin-Löf and Wittgensteinian or other accounts of meaning-as-use? What can proof-theoretical analyses tell us about the scope and limits of constructive and predicative mathematics? (shrink)

I survey Brouwer’s weak counterexamples to classical theorems, with a view to discovering what useful mathematical work is done by weak counterexamples; whether they are rigorous mathematical proofs or just plausibility arguments; the role of Brouwer’s notion of the creative subject in them, and whether the creative subject is really necessary for them; what axioms for the creative subject are needed; what relation there is between these arguments and Brouwer’s theory of choice sequences. I refute one of Brouwer’s claims with (...) a weak counterexample of my own. I also examine Brouwer’s 1927 proof of the negative continuity theorem, which appears to be a weak counterexample reliant on both the creative subject and the concept of choice sequence; I argue that it provides a good justification for the weak continuity principle, but it is not a weak counterexample and it does not depend essentially on the creative subject. (shrink)

While research has focused on the role of racism in (re)producing ethnic/racial inequalities in education, there is very little research that investigates how variability in minority students’ responses to racism can be explained. By using an ecological approach to integrate existing research on actors’ responses to racism, this study finds that researchers have generally neglected factors and processes situated at the micro- and meso-levels of analysis. Qualitative interview data with Turkish–Cypriot children enrolled in schools in the predominantly Greek-speaking part of (...) the Republic of Cyprus are used to investigate their strategies in response to racism and the factors that explain the observed variability in their responses. The findings suggest the importance of and interactions between factors situated at different levels of analysis, including the level of organizations and social groups and face-to-face interactions in explaining variability in young people’s responses to racism. (shrink)

From a reliabilist point of view, our inferential practices make us into instruments for determining the truth value of hypotheses where, like all instruments, reliability is a central virtue. I apply this perspective to second-order inductions, the inductive assessments of inductive practices. Such assessments are extremely common, for example whenever we test the reliability of our instruments or our informants. Nevertheless, the inductive assessment of induction has had a bad name ever since David Hume maintained that any attempt to justify (...) induction by means of an inductive argument must beg the question. I will consider how the inductive justification of induction fares from the reliabilist point of view. I will also consider two other well-known arguments that can be construed as inductive assessments of induction. One is the miracle argument, according to which the truth of scientific theories should be inferred as the best explanation of their predictive success; the other is the disaster argument, according to which we should infer that all present and future theories are false on the grounds that all past theories have been found to be false. \\\ [John Worrall] Science seems in some ways to have been remarkably successful. What does this success tell us about the epistemological status of current scientific claims? Peter Lipton considers various meta-inductive arguments each of which start from premises about science's 'track record'. I show that his endorsements of the 'strongest' of these are, on analysis, remarkably weak. I argue that this is a reflection of difficulties within the general epistemological framework that he adopts-that of reliabilism. Finally, I briefly outline the quite different approach that I take to this issue, in the process responding to Lipton's criticisms of the 'pessimistic meta-induction'. (shrink)