The domain of children's social understanding, including understanding of one's own and others’ minds and emotions, has been the topic of much research over the past few decades. Social understandi...

Many environmentalists believe that the ethos of capitalism is a primary cause of environmental degradation, arguing that only a fundamental shift away from the materialism and competition of the marketplace will allow humans to live within the earth's carrying capacity. A different strand of contemporary thought, free market environmentalism, argues the opposite: private ownership, individual choice, and the creative forces of human ingenuity are the best available means to solve ecological problems. This essay considers how Christian ecological ethics should respond (...) to free market environmentalism, identifying its moral claims and the theoretical questions it poses to our field while also critiquing the shortcomings that accompany its economic view of human nature and character. We advocate a pragmatic approach that engages in a mutually educative dialogue toward the shared goal of protecting the earth and all its inhabitants. (shrink)

This study offers a new analysis of the last argument of Plato's Phaedo for the immortality of the soul. Interpretations of this argument and especially of the last section have differed considerably. Judgements on its value have usually been adverse. One scholar speaks of the ‘screen of unreal argument’ which concludes the proof, and writes that ‘from the standpoint of logic the argument has petered out into futility’. Another describes the final stage of the proof as ‘a blatant petitio principii’. (...) A third remarks that the conclusion follows ‘if we do not look too closely’. (shrink)

This study offers a new analysis of the last argument of Plato's Phaedo for the immortality of the soul. Interpretations of this argument and especially of the last section have differed considerably. Judgements on its value have usually been adverse. One scholar speaks of the ‘screen of unreal argument’ which concludes the proof, and writes that ‘from the standpoint of logic the argument has petered out into futility’. Another describes the final stage of the proof as ‘a blatant petitio principii’. (...) A third remarks that the conclusion follows ‘if we do not look too closely’. (shrink)

At the end of the last section we anticipated the concluding page of the argument, where Plato makes the soul imperishable, as well as not-dead, and where he describes finally the soul's withdrawal at the approach of death. For the conclusion that the soul never admits death, and is in that sense was probably in Plato's eyes the heart of the argument. The final page, we shall argue, will have seemed to Plato in some ways less important, and even something (...) of an embarrassment. (shrink)

In an earlier article I sought to analyse the metaphor of withdrawal in the last argument of Plato's Phaedo for the immortality of the soul.1 The key to the metaphor lies, I believe, in recognizing the paradox that in terms of Plato's metaphor something stays as it is, for example continues to be fire and to be hot, or to be cold and to be snow, by running away. Plato's argument is that fire will either ‘run away’, i.e. it will (...) escape the onslaught of cold, and so continue to be fire, or else it will perish. For in terms of Plato's metaphor if something which is characterized essentially by one of a pair of opposites, in the way that soul is, were to ‘stay behind’ then it would have to ‘accept’ the opposite of the form by which it is characterized, and that it cannot do. Fire cannot be cold. Snow cannot be hot. The soul cannot be dead. (shrink)

At the end of the last section we anticipated the concluding page of the argument, where Plato makes the soul imperishable, as well as not-dead, and where he describes finally the soul's withdrawal at the approach of death. For the conclusion that the soul never admits death, and is in that sense was probably in Plato's eyes the heart of the argument. The final page, we shall argue, will have seemed to Plato in some ways less important, and even something (...) of an embarrassment. (shrink)

Robert Denis Collison Black was internationally recognized as the authority on Jevons, and in particular on the centrally important elements of Benthamite Utilitarianism in Jevons' thought. Jevons' Theory Political Economy was, Black argued, a Benthamite exercise, not a systematic treatise on value and distribution. This in turn explained why Jevons' theory of production was essentially classical, and why he had no theory of aggregate distribution. Black's work on Jevons also threw light on the professionalization of economics. Black was the well-merited (...) recipient of many honours. In 1974 he was elected both a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He became an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin in 1982; President of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland over the years 1983 to 1986; acted as President of Section F of the British Association in 1984–5; was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society in 1987; and in 1988, Queen's University bestowed upon him an Hon. D.Sc. Econ. (shrink)

A en croire Platon, Héraclite, à l'encontre d'Empédocle, professait une coïncidence de l'un et du multiple. Pour Aristote, c'est tout le contraire: Héraclite, de même qu'Empédocle, enseignait une alternance de l'un et du multiple. Comment expliquer ce désaccord ? En exposant sa théorie de l'unité des opposés, Heraclite ne s'est pas toujours exprimé de la même façon. Aristote aurait compris de travers des formules où l'unité se range du côté de l'un des opposés. Plato and Aristotle presumably read the same (...) text of Heraclitus, and yet they come up with entirely opposite accounts of its meaning Plato thinks that Heraclitus and Empedocles disagree. Aristotle, that they agree. Scholars have failed to solve this conundrum, because they have failed to recognise in the fragments of Heraclitus the Obscure alternative forms of the law of the unity of opposites. Aristotle (wrongly) took one formulation of the law of the unity of opposites to imply an endless succession of the one and the many, and therefore the agreement of Heraclitus with Empedocles. (shrink)

Anaximander explained the sun as an ejection of light or fire from an opening in the hollow rim of a kind of wheel which revolved around the earth. We are told that this wheel or circle of the sun is 27 times the size of the earth, and again that it is 28 times the size of the earth. These numbers have been thought to represent respectively the inner and the outer diameters of the sun wheel. This has been questioned (...) by Kirk. Kirk assumes that the thickness or width of the rim of the sun wheel would be the same as the diameter of the earth. He argues therefore that there should be a difference of two units between the inner and the outer diameter. (shrink)

Anaximander explained the sun as an ejection of light or fire from an opening in the hollow rim of a kind of wheel which revolved around the earth. We are told that this wheel or circle of the sun is 27 times the size of the earth, and again that it is 28 times the size of the earth. These numbers have been thought to represent respectively the inner and the outer diameters of the sun wheel. This has been questioned (...) by Kirk. Kirk assumes that the thickness or width of the rim of the sun wheel would be the same as the diameter of the earth. He argues therefore that there should be a difference of two units between the inner and the outer diameter. (shrink)

In an earlier article I sought to analyse the metaphor of withdrawal in the last argument of Plato's Phaedo for the immortality of the soul.1 The key to the metaphor lies, I believe, in recognizing the paradox that in terms of Plato's metaphor something stays as it is, for example continues to be fire and to be hot, or to be cold and to be snow, by running away. Plato's argument is that fire will either ‘run away’, i.e. it will (...) escape the onslaught of cold, and so continue to be fire, or else it will perish. For in terms of Plato's metaphor if something which is characterized essentially by one of a pair of opposites, in the way that soul is, were to ‘stay behind’ then it would have to ‘accept’ the opposite of the form by which it is characterized, and that it cannot do. Fire cannot be cold. Snow cannot be hot. The soul cannot be dead. (shrink)

Terence Wilmot Hutchison, a Fellow of the British Academy, was a historian of economics, methodologist, and acerbic critic of hubris and pretension amongst economists. He was born at Bournemouth and grew up in London. Hutchison's father was the flamboyant and much married Robert Langton Douglas, while his mother was Grace Hutchison. It was as a classicist that he went to the University of Cambridge in 1931. But Hutchison quickly lost interest in a subject that seemed to him to have little (...) relevance to the economic turmoil of the world, and switched to economics, graduating in 1934 with a First. He left Cambridge in 1934 and registered as an occasional student at the London School of Economics. This chapter presents a biography of Hutchison and also narrates his trips to Germany, Iraq, and India, as well as his stints at the University of Hull, LSE, and the University of Birmingham. (shrink)

If stem cell-based therapies are developed, we will likely confront a difficult problem of justice: for biological reasons alone, the new therapies might benefit only a limited range of patients. In fact, they might benefit primarily white Americans, thereby exacerbating long-standing differences in health and health care.

The volume presents essays on the philosophical explanation of the relationship between body and soul in antiquity from the Presocratics to Galen. The title of the volume alludes to a phrase found in Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, referring to aspects of living behaviour involving both body and soul, and is a commonplace in ancient philosophy, dealt with in very different ways by different authors.

Critics have argued that utilitarians, by the very nature of the system they endorse, cannot maintain their integrity; and that they cannot, in the end, be individuals of the sort human beings want to be. In my dissertation I explore this criticism and argue that utilitarianism need not endanger integrity, that it need not undercut autonomy, and that it need not deny individuality of any sort. ;Bernard Williams is the major proponent of this criticism. Williams argues that a utilitarian cannot (...) maintain the commitment to projects and principles which is necessary for a person to be an individual. He cannot have what Williams calls "ground projects," projects which are so central to him that they are what give point to his life. The reasons Williams gives for this are varied, and the connections between his various criticisms are not always clear. In the thesis I first analyze the arguments Williams uses against utilitarianism. I show that Williams' arguments that a utilitarian cannot have ground projects depends on a false assumption about the emotional attachment required for a person to be committed to his projects in a way that individuates. I argue that Williams demands an emotional attachment that blinds one to rational consideration, in a way that we will find unacceptable. ;Williams offers an account of individuality which claims that utilitarianism does not allow the proper sort of emotional attachment to projects because it is too necessarily rational a system. W. D. Falk, on the contrary, offers a theory which if correct will show utilitarianism to be an insufficiently rational system. Falk argues that any moral system which declares that there are universal moral rules by which all people's behavior should be regulated undercuts the autonomy of the agents to whom it dictates. If one is to be autonomous, one must do only what one has reason to do. An agent has reason to do something only if he would be motivated to do it upon reflection. If utilitarianism does not motivate some particular agent, that agent, in order to preserve rationality and autonomy, ought not to follow utilitarianism. ;In response to these criticisms I suggest a more plausible notion of individuality which requires neither irrational emotional attachment nor Falk's subjective standard of rational choice. I then advocate a modified form of utilitarianism which does not pose the dangers to individuality which traditional forms of utilitarianism may. In this version, we broaden the notion of utility so that our evaluative beliefs are of special importance in our determination of what things have utility. When utility-maximization is construed in this way it does not pose special dangers for individuality. (shrink)

Hume claims that education is ‘disclaimed by philosophy, as a fallacious ground of assent to any opinion’ (T 1.3.10.1) and that it is ‘never... recogniz'd by philosophers’ (T 1.3.9.19). He is usually taken to be referring here to indoctrination. I argue, however, that his main concern is with association and those philosophers who emphasize the epistemic dangers of the imagination. These include Locke, Hutcheson and Descartes, but not Hume himself. Hume praises education, highlighting its role in the formation of general (...) rules, and in fostering social conditions that encourage the growth of knowledge and moral virtue. (shrink)

Abstract Plotinus did not set out to be obscure. Difficulties of interpretation arise partly from his style of writing, compressed, elliptical, allusive. The allusions, easily enough recognisable by those he was writing for, are often not recognised at all by the modern reader who no longer has at his fingertips the texts of Plato and Aristotle that Plotinus undoubtedly alludes to, but whose authors he has no need to name. So it is pre-eminently with his subtle use of earlier ideas (...) in tackling the difficult question of the nature of matter and its place in the scheme of emanation. The frequent references to matter as `non-being' and as `privation' can be understood only if they are seen as a radical adaptation of the paradoxical definition of a `form that is, of what is not' in Plato's Sophist (258 D 5-7) and as a deliberate correction of Aristotle's unsuccessful attempt at including female desire in an analysis of privation in the Physics (i 9, 192 a 22-25). Only when the debt to Plato and Aristotle has been recognised for what it is are we able to appreciate that matter defined as `non-being' is not therefore `non-existent', and that the `privation' that is matter is not a terminus a quo of change, but a permanent substrate of change. The adaptation and the daring syncretism lead to deliberate paradox in Plotinus' own definition of matter as both `so to speak a form of sorts' and `formless' (I 8 [51] 3). The seeming inconsistency is Plotinus' acknowledgment of the use he has made of earlier ideas when he writes of matter, so defined, as `made' by a lower manifestation of soul, and therefore as the last and the least of the products flowing from, but not created by, the One. (shrink)

The form of beauty is the ultimate correlate of love in Socrates' account of Diotima's teaching in the Symposium . To arrive at this insight, Socrates aims to show the `absurdity' of adopting any more specific correlate as a definition of the very nature of love. Were love defined as love `for a father or a mother', we could never love anyone who was not our father or our mother. An obvious absurdity.

« La matière est-elle identique à l'altérilé ? » Plotin se pose cette question au commencement du dernier chapitre de son traité Sur la matière (Enn., II 4 [12] 16). « Plutôt non », répond-il. « Elle est en revanche identique à cette partie de l'altérité qui s'oppose aux êtres proprement dits. » En s'exprimant de la sorte, Plotin fait allusion à un passage du Sophiste (258 E 2-3). Son allusion suppose pourtant l'existence d'un texte qui n'est pas attesté dans (...) les manuscrits. Cette différence textuelle implique un changement fondamental de doctrine, dont les éditeurs modernes ne se sont pas avisés. (shrink)