In this work, McGilvray explains Noam Chomsky's rationalist view of human nature.

I defend a version of color subjectivism — that colors are sortals for certain neural events — by arguing against a sophisticated form of color objectivism and by showing how a subjectivist can legitimately explain the phenomenal fact that colors seem to be properties of external objects.

Noam Chomsky has made major contributions to three fields: political history and analysis, linguistics, and the philosophies of mind, language, and human nature. In this thoroughly revised and updated volume, James McGilvray provides a critical introduction to Chomsky's work in these three key areas and assesses their continuing importance and relevance for today. In an incisive and comprehensive analysis, McGilvray argues that Chomsky’s work can be seen as a unified intellectual project. He shows how Chomsky adapts the (...) tools of natural science to the study of mind and of language in particular and explains why Chomsky's "rationalist" approach to the mind continues to be opposed by the majority of contemporary cognitive scientists. The book also discusses some of Chomsky’s central political themes in depth, examining how Chomsky's view of the good life and the ideal form of social organization is related to and in part dependent on his biologically based account of human nature and the place of language within it. As in the first edition, McGilvray emphasizes the distinction between common sense and science and the difference between rationalist and empiricist approaches to the mind, making clear the importance of these themes for understanding Chomsky's work and showing that they are based on elementary observations that are accessible to everyone. This edition has been extensively re-written to emphasize Chomsky's recent work, which increasingly 'biologizes' the study of language and mind and - by implication - the study of human nature. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy, linguistics, and politics, as well as to all those keen to develop a critical understanding of one of the most controversial and important thinkers writing today. (shrink)

This paper defends physical becoming against Grünbaum's attack, by constructing three arguments in favor of physical becoming. Of the three, I rely primarily on an argument from the philosophy of language, and especially on the principle that tensed discourse involves presuppositions and commitments that Grünbaum's account of becoming cannot handle. I show that Grünbaum's analysis of becoming can provide only a very implausible reconstruction of the temporal coordination of speakers engaged in discourse.

In this paper I attempt a new approach to an old technical term: becoming. I show how the theory that becoming is coming-to-be could be supported by a semantic derivation of the nominalization becoming from its verbal counterpart, by investigating the properties of the present progressive constructions in which becoming as a verbal appears. My theory denies that dates, or qualitative change, play an essential role in the analysis of becoming.

Expanding on some of Chomsky’s recently expressed views of meaning in a way that is consistent with his long-held rationalist conception of mind, I show how syntax, broadly conceived, could individuate meanings and provide a science of meanings inside the head. Interpretation becomes a pragmatic matter, although a rationalist account of mind shows how internal meanings guide interpretation and, more generally, language use. In this view of meanings, interpretation, and mind, semantics as usually understood disappears.

A comprehensive and accessible companion to the various aspects of Noam Chomsky's work.

First published over thirty years ago, "Classic Philosophical Questions" has presented decades of students with the most compelling classic and contemporary readings on the most enduring and abiding questions in philosophy. The anthology, topically arranged, uses debate and argument as vehicles to teach students the fundamentals of philosophy while also demonstrating that philosophy is a discourse spanning centuries. "James A. Gould" and "Robert J. Mulvaney" continue to provide students with interesting, intriguing essays from major philosophers in a distinctive presentation, (...) often involving a pro/con format, to ensure that both the apparent and subtle points of argument are both meaningful and clear. Features of this new edition: Sections on epistemology and metaphysics introduced earlier in this edition New readings from Martha Nussbaum and Martin Luther King, Jr. Concise, student-friendly introductions to each philosopher and reading Helpful study and reflection questions focus students' reading and improve comprehension. (shrink)

The practice of paying research subjects for participating inclinical trials has yet to receive an adequate moral analysis.Dickert and Grady argue for a wage payment model in whichresearch subjects are paid an hourly wage based on that ofunskilled laborers. If we accept this approach, what follows?Norms for just working conditions emerge from workplacelegislation and political theory. All workers, includingpaid research subjects under Dickert and Grady''s analysis,have a right to at least minimum wage, a standard work week,extra pay for overtime hours, (...) a safe workplace, no faultcompensation for work-related injury, and union organization.If we accept that paid research subjects are wage earners likeany other, then the implications for changes to current practiceare substantial. (shrink)

Despite their crucial role in the translation of pre-clinical research into new clinical applications, phase 1 trials involving patients continue to prompt ethical debate. At the heart of the controversy is the question of whether risks of administering experimental drugs are therapeutically justified. We suggest that prior attempts to address this question have been muddled, in part because it cannot be answered adequately without first attending to the way labor is divided in managing risk in clinical trials. In what follows, (...) we approach the question of therapeutic justification for phase 1 trials from the viewpoint of five different stakeholders: the drug regulatory authority, the IRB, the clinical investigator, the referring physician, and the patient. Our analysis shows that the question of therapeutic justification actually raises multiple questions corresponding to the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders involved. By attending to these contextual differences, we provide more coherent guidance for the ethical negotiation of risk in phase 1 trials involving patients. We close by discussing the implications of our argument for various perennial controversies in phase 1 trial practice. (shrink)

For years, _Multicultural Education_ has served as an essential resource for education professionals, featuring scholarly articles written by industry leaders and topics, following current trends in education instruction today. The text helps educators understand the concepts, paradigms, and explanations necessary for becoming effective practitioners in the ever-evolving classroom environment, highlighting cultural, raocial and language-focused topics. Each chapter now incorporates new theoretical, conceptual, and research developments within the field, providing an adaptable approach to classroom techniques. With growing classroom diversity, the text (...) also features a chapter that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. Statistical tables, figures and charts have been updated to present the most current information. (shrink)

Competing perspectives on the nature of emotion are illustrated with latent and emergent variable models. Latent variable models draw from classical test theory, assuming that the measured indicators of emotion covary by virtue of some common executive, organizing neural circuit or network in the brain. By contrast, emergent variable models draw from a theory-driven, operational definition tradition, positing that emotions do not cause, but rather are caused by, the measured indicators of emotion, assuming no executive neural circuit or network, and (...) requiring no covariation among indicators. I suggest that the emergent variable model may be more compatible with the extant literature on the nature of emotion, especially in the age of affective neuroscience. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The present volume is a study of the extant commentaries on a number of Plato's dialogues which were written by Neoplatonist philosophers of ...

What is the cognitive significance of talking to ourselves? I criticize two interpretations of this function , and offer a third: I argue that inner speech is a genuine dialogue, not a monologue; that the partners in this dialogue represent the independent interests of experienced meaning and logical articulation; that the former is either silent or capable only of abbreviated speech; that articulation is a logical, not a social demand; and that neither partner is a full-time subordinate of the other. (...) I examine the views of Plato, Arendt, Gadamer, Ryle, Piaget and Vygotsky on the nature of inner speech, and the views of Gazzaniga and Dennett on the role of inner speech in the constitution of human consciousness. (shrink)

A detailed account of certain traits of intellectual character—the epistemic virtues—and of their relation to the responsibility for one's beliefs.

The Metaphysical Club, a gathering of intellectuals in the 1870s associated with Harvard, is widely recognized as the crucible where pragmatism, America's distinctively original philosophy, was refined and proclaimed. Louis Menand's bestseller about the group was a dramatic publishing success. However, only three actual members - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles S. Peirce, and William James - appear in this book, alongside other thinkers such as John Dewey who were never in the Club. The Real Metaphysical Club tells the (...) full story of how this influential group shifted the course of philosophy in America. In addition to pioneering pragmatism, the group explored radical empiricism and idealism, and formulated personalism and process philosophy, equally important developments. This volume contains thirty-seven important writings dating from 1870 to 1885 by the real members of the Metaphysical Club. The first section centers on pragmatism and science; the second part collects writings of the lawyers; and the third part covers idealist and personalist philosophers. Many of these writings have never been reprinted before, and nothing like this impressive collection has ever been attempted. A general introduction provides a narrative history, and the editors' three introductions to the volume's sections vividly bring to life the intense meetings, sustained debates, and pioneering thought from the Metaphysical Club. (shrink)

What big questions and large‐scale narratives give coherence to the history of science? From the late 1970s onward, the field has been transformed through a stress on practice and fresh perspectives from gender studies, the sociology of knowledge, and work on a greatly expanded range of practitioners and cultures. Yet these developments, although long overdue and clearly beneficial, have been accompanied by fragmentation and loss of direction. This essay suggests that the narrative frameworks used by historians of science need to (...) come to terms with diversity by understanding science as a form of communication. The centrality of processes of movement, translation, and transmission is already emerging in studies of topics ranging from ethnographic encounters to the history of reading. Not only does this approach offer opportunities for crossing boundaries of nation, period, and discipline that are all too easily taken for granted; it also has the potential for creating a more effective dialogue with other historians and the wider public. (shrink)

Despite Plato's various warnings not to do so, his dialogues have been studied as systematic philosophy since antiquity. In this innovative and controversial reassessment, James Arieti argues that they should be read primarily as works of drama rather than philosophical discourse. Analyses of 18 of the 28 dialogues allow the reader to see them as integrated dramas, with all the ambiguities and uncertainties that literary works contain. As in plays generally, the arguments of particular characters cannot be seen as (...) the opinions of the author, whose views emerge only from examining each work as a whole. This literary reading shows how much of the debate about Plato's meaning has been misplaced. Instead of demonstrating that an argument is fallacious or valid, we need to ask why Plato has the particular character make the argument. Interpreting Plato achieves what no other work on Plato has attempted: to see the philosophical arguments as serving a dramatic purpose. (shrink)

The authors offer their sincere thanks to all of the commentators for taking the time to comment on our work ; one of the advantages of the AJOB format is immediate feedback,...

What big questions and large‐scale narratives give coherence to the history of science? From the late 1970s onward, the field has been transformed through a stress on practice and fresh perspectives from gender studies, the sociology of knowledge, and work on a greatly expanded range of practitioners and cultures. Yet these developments, although long overdue and clearly beneficial, have been accompanied by fragmentation and loss of direction. This essay suggests that the narrative frameworks used by historians of science need to (...) come to terms with diversity by understanding science as a form of communication. The centrality of processes of movement, translation, and transmission is already emerging in studies of topics ranging from ethnographic encounters to the history of reading. Not only does this approach offer opportunities for crossing boundaries of nation, period, and discipline that are all too easily taken for granted; it also has the potential for creating a more effective dialogue with other historians and the wider public. (shrink)

What is the cognitive significance of talking to ourselves? I criticize two interpretations of this function , and offer a third: I argue that inner speech is a genuine dialogue, not a monologue; that the partners in this dialogue represent the independent interests of experienced meaning and logical articulation; that the former is either silent or capable only of abbreviated speech; that articulation is a logical, not a social demand; and that neither partner is a full-time subordinate of the other. (...) I examine the views of Plato, Arendt, Gadamer, Ryle, Piaget and Vygotsky on the nature of inner speech, and the views of Gazzaniga and Dennett on the role of inner speech in the constitution of human consciousness. (shrink)

This book explores how the Hebraic and classical traditions forming our Western heritage combined from about 300 BCE to 300 CE. James Arieti investigates the principal causes of the merger in the common model of God that developed in the Greek philosophical schools, along with its ethical implications, and the shared portrayal in biblical, rabbinic, and postclassical literature of the compassionate warm character that we recognize as a mentsh.

In this paper we explain our pretense account of truth-talk and apply it in a diagnosis and treatment of the Liar Paradox. We begin by assuming that some form of deflationism is the correct approach to the topic of truth. We then briefly motivate the idea that all T-deflationists should endorse a fictionalist view of truth-talk, and, after distinguishing pretense-involving fictionalism (PIF) from error- theoretic fictionalism (ETF), explain the merits of the former over the latter. After presenting the basic framework (...) of our PIF account of truth-talk, we demonstrate a few advantages it offers over T-deflationist accounts that do not explicitly acknowledge pretense at work in the discourse. In turning to the Liar Paradox, we explain how the quasi-anaphoric functioning that our account attributes to truth-talk provides a diagnosis of the Liar Paradox (and other instances of semantic pathology) as having no content—in the sense of not specifying any of what we call M-conditions. At the same time, however, we vindicate the intuition that we can understand liar sentences, thereby avoiding one standard objection to “meaningless strategy” responses to the Liar Paradox. With this diagnosis in place, we then, by way of treatment, introduce a new predicate, ‘semantically defective’, and show how the explanation we give for its application allows for a consistent, yet revenge-immune, (dis)solution of the Liar Paradox, and semantic pathology generally. (shrink)

As an essential companion to Plato's Apology and Crito, Socrates Against Athens provides valuable historical and cultural context to our understanding of the trial.

The idea that ‘business ethics’ picks out a distinct discipline within ethical theory is contentious; in particular, it is unclear why theoretical approaches to moral and political philosophy cannot satisfactorily address ethical concerns in the context of business activity, just as they can in the context of other human activities. In response, I argue that some features of the business environment require more focused analysis than currently available. This environment is characterised by the presence of large social groups – business (...) organisations – that are not political in nature, but yet wield considerable power and are the vehicles for complex forms of collective action. The most pressing ethical concern raised by such collective action is collective moral responsibility. I develop an account of collective responsibility that is tailored to business organisations and that combines a number of strands of moral thought – a desert-based account of moral responsibility that is of a kind with that typically applied to individual humans; a pluralistic account of how collective responsibility is generated that is rooted in irreducible group-level properties; and a moderate approach to social ontology that sees nothing mysterious in ‘distinct’ collective entities. From this starting point I develop two detailed models that illustrate how business organisations can constitute distinct collective entities that may be held morally responsible. The first shows how such organisations may satisfy the conditions required to hold moral agency, which is typically assumed to be a prerequisite for moral responsibility. The second breaks with this tradition and argues for the possibility of ‘non-agential’ moral responsibility in cases where complex organisational structures mediate the actions of the moral agents that populate them. I conclude by showing how this distinct organisational-level responsibility, far from insulating organisation members from personal culpability, illustrates quite distinct standards against which such individuals may be judged. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper is an analysis of Plato's use of the embassy to Achilles in Homer's Iliad book 9 as a literary template for Crito's mission to persuade Socrates to escape from prison in Athens. Plato's purpose is to elevate the nature of a hero by contrasting the impulsive, impetuous, mercurial temper of Achilles with the steady, thoughtful, deliberative, calmly rational argument of Socrates. Plato shows, in a volley fired at the poet, how the philosopher is more meaningfully heroic than the (...) warrior, for where the warrior aims selfishly at securing his own honor, the philosopher aims at political virtue. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics tells us that states involving indistinguishable fermions must be antisymmetrized. This is often taken to mean that indistinguishable fermions are always entangled. We consider several notions of entanglement and argue that on the best of them, indistinguishable fermions are not always entangled. We also present a simple but unconventional way of representing fermionic states that allows us to maintain a link between entanglement and non-factorizability.

As scholars have observed and analyzed Herodotus's sophistication, the father of history has been recognized as a complex and profound moral historian. How would Herodotus's contemporaries have responded to his recounting of the past? And what enduring lessons does Herodotus have for us? James A. Arieti attempts to discover, as far as possible, Herodotus's purpose in writing, and reveals how in the History of the Persian Wars Herodotus shapes his narrative in order to advise the troubled Greek world of (...) his day. Arieti's reading is an interpretive study, exploring the philosophical, literary, and historical richness of the history--in short, examining why it is a classic. Discourses on the First Book of Herodotus is an important work for historians, classicists, and philosophers. (shrink)