This paper defends the cognitive value of literary fiction by showing how Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative understanding emphasizes the productive and creative elements of fictional discourse and defends its referential capacity insofar as fiction reshapes reality according to some universal aspect. Central to this analysis is Ricoeur’s retrieval of Aristotelian mimesis and mythos and their convergence in the notion of emplotment. This paper also supplements and specifies further Ricoeur’s account by retrieving an Aristotelian concept disregarded by Riceour, namely, synesis. (...) Although Ricoeur connects narrative understanding to the intelligibility of praxis and in turn phronêsis, as opposed to theoretical knowledge, he overlooks Aristotle’s discussion of synesis. This paper then clarifies how the fictional truth of narrative understanding remains related to, and yet distinct from, both theoretical discourse and praxis. (shrink)

This paper considers the proper location and function of critique in establishing a Thomist realism. The author begins by providing a brief explanation of Étienne Gilson’s understanding of critique and why he thinks a “critical realism” is incoherent. Next, the author considers the criticisms made by John Knasas who, from a Gilsonian perspective, argues that Jacques Maritain employs a version of the transcendental method of retorsion in order to justify his realism. Finally, the author offers a Maritainian response to Knasas (...) in which it is argued that Maritain’s account provides a via media between the Transcendental Thomists, on the one hand, and the strict Aristotelian or a posteriori Thomists, on the other. (shrink)

This paper defends the cognitive value of literary fiction by offering an account of fictional truth and wisdom that is based upon Aristotelian-Thomistic principles. It first shows how Aristotle’s notion of understanding as an intellectual virtue provides the foundation for the possibility of fictional truth and wisdom. Second, it considers how Aquinas’s notion of the cogitative faculty or ratio particularis elucidates the faculty that is employed in the act of perception that is essential to the virtue of understanding. Third, the (...) author shows how Martha Nussbaum’s contemporary account of deliberative imagination clarifies these classical notions of understanding and the cogitative faculty. Finally, the author argues that these central concepts, when connected to literary fiction, provide philosophical justification for the claim of fictional truth and in turn knowledge or wisdom. (shrink)

"AGM members lunch." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 13.

Consider the distinctive qualitative property grass visually appears to have when it visually appears to be green. This property is an example of what I call sensuous color. Whereas early modern mechanists typically argue that bodies are not sensuously colored, Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) disagrees. In cases of veridical perception, she holds that grass is green in precisely the way it visually appears to be. In defense of her realist approach to sensuous colors, Cavendish argues that (i) it is impossible to (...) conceive of colorless bodies, (ii) the very possibility of color experience requires that bodies are sensuously colored, and (iii) the attribution of sensuous colors to bodies provides the best explanation of color constancy. Although some passages might suggest that Cavendish endorses a reductive account of sensuous color, according to which sensuous color reduces to a body's microscopic surface texture (or some other mechanistically respectable property), I argue that she accepts a nonreductive account, on which sensuous color is not thus reducible. (shrink)

Henry More argues that materialism cannot account for cases where a single subject or perceiver has multiple perceptions simultaneously. Since we clearly do have multiple perceptions at the same time--for example, when we see, hear, and smell simultaneously--More concludes that we are not wholly material. In response to More's argument, Margaret Cavendish adopts a two-fold strategy. First, she argues that there is no general obstacle to mental unification in her version of materialism. Second, Cavendish appeals to the mind or rational (...) matter--terms she often uses interchangeably—to explain the integration of sensory input from multiple senses. When the mind integrates perceptions across modalities, the different parts of rational matter share their knowledge so that they all come to perceive alike. When rational parts successfully communicate their knowledge, each part knows what all the others know. They pool their knowledge; they perceive alike. Thus, when someone hears, sees, and tastes, each part of her mind hears, sees, and tastes alike, in parallel and in unison. The Cavendishian mind, in short, approximates simplicity by achieving uniformity or homogeneity of perceptions across its parts. (shrink)

In the _Meditations_ and related texts from the early 1640s, Descartes argues that the self can be correctly considered as either a mind or a human being, and that the self’s properties vary accordingly. For example, the self is simple considered as a mind, whereas the self is composite considered as a human being. Someone might object that it is unclear how merely considering the self in different ways blocks the conclusion that a single subject of predication—the self—is both simple (...) and composite, which is contradictory. In response to this objection, this paper develops a reading of Descartes’s various ways of considering the self. I argue that the best reading of Descartes’s qualified claims about the self, i.e., about the self _qua_ mind or the self qua human being, presupposes an account of the unqualified self, that is, of the self _simpliciter_. I argue that the self _simpliciter_ is not a mind, and that it is not a human being either. This result might suggest the pessimistic conclusion that Descartes’s view of the self is incoherent. To avoid this result, I introduce a new metaphysical account of the Cartesian self. On my view, the self is individuated by a unified mental life. The self is constituted by the beings that jointly produce this mental life, and derives its unity from it. (shrink)

In Return to Reason, Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of ...

In this article, from the 2009 Oxford University Press collection Epistemic Value, I criticize existing accounts of epistemic normativity by Alston, Goldman, and Sosa, and then offer a new view.

How does Descartes characterize the peculiar way in which each of us is aware of our bodies? I argue that Descartes recognizes a sense of bodily ownership, such that the body sensorily appears to be one's own in bodily awareness. This sensory appearance of ownership is ubiquitous, for Descartes, in that bodily awareness always confers a sense of ownership. This appearance is confused, in so far as bodily awareness simultaneously represents the subject as identical to, partially composed by, and united (...) to her body, without distinguishing these relations. Finally, the appearance of ownership is grounded in multiple other ways in which the body sensorily appears: namely, in the fact that the body appears to be inescapable, modified by bodily sensations, and an object of special concern. (shrink)

Transnational corporations have become actors with significant political power and authority which should entail responsibility and liability, specifically direct liability for complicity in human rights violations. Holding TNCs liable for human rights violations is complicated by the discontinuity between the fragmented legal/political structure of the TNC and its integrated strategic reality and the international state system which privileges sovereignty and non-intervention over the protection of individual rights. However, the post-Westphalian transition—the emergence of multiple authorities, increasing ambiguity of borders and jurisdiction (...) and blurring of the line between the public and private spheres—should facilitate imposing direct responsibility on transnational firms. Mechanisms for imposing direct responsibility on TNCs are considered including voluntary agreements and international law. However, I conclude that a hybrid public-private regime which relies on non-hierarchical compliance mechanisms is likely to be both more effective and consistent with the structure of the emerging transnational order. (shrink)

Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of knowledge. The centuries-old dominance of rationality has diminished the value of reasonableness. Toulmin issues a powerful call to redress the balance between rationality and reasonableness.

"Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson to describe what he believes is humanity's innate affinity for the natural world. In his landmark book Biophilia, he examined how our tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need, integral to our development as individuals and as a species. That idea has caught the imagination of diverse thinkers. The Biophilia Hypothesis brings together the views of some of the most creative scientists of our time, (...) each attempting to amplify and refine the concept of biophilia. The variety of perspectives -- psychological, biological, cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic -- frame the theoretical issues by presenting empirical evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis. Numerous examples illustrate the idea that biophilia and its converse, biophobia, have a genetic component: fear, and even full-blown phobias of snakes and spiders are quick to develop with very little negative reinforcement, while more threatening modern artifacts -- knives, guns, automobiles -- rarely elicit such a response people find trees that are climbable and have a broad, umbrella-like canopy more attractive than trees without these characteristics people would rather look at water, green vegetation, or flowers than built structures of glass and concrete The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity. More important, it implies serious consequences for our well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. Relentless environmental destruction could have a significant impact on our quality of life, not just materially but psychologically and even spiritually. (shrink)

What does it mean to think of philosophy in the condition of modernism, in which its relation to its past and future has become a relevant problem? This book argues that the writings of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard are best understood as responsive (each in their own way) to such questions. Through detailed analysis of these authors' most influential texts, Stephen Mulhall reorients our sense of the philosophical work each text aims to accomplish, engendering a critical dialogue between them (...) from which the elements of a new conception of philosophy might emerge. (shrink)

Malebranche holds that the feeling of having a body comes in three main varieties. A perceiver sensorily experiences herself (1) as causally connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the body as causing her sensory experiences and as uniquely responsive to her will, (2) as materially connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the perceiver as a material being wrapped up with the body, and (3) as perspectivally connected to her body, in (...) so far as the external senses represent the world from the body’s perspective. In addition to distinguishing these varieties of embodied experience, I explain why the perceiver experiences her connection to the body in these ways. Although Malebranche often casts the experience of embodiment in a negative light, his considered view is that this experience contributes to our survival and salvation. (shrink)

Hume's Enlightenment Tract is the first full study for forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. The Enquiry has, contrary to its author's expressed wishes, long lived in the shadow of its predecessor, A Treatise of Human Nature. Stephen Buckle presents the Enquiry in a fresh light, and aims to raise it to its rightful position in Hume's work and in the history of philosophy.

Despite his reputation for neglecting the body, Descartes develops a systematic account of bodily awareness. He holds that in bodily awareness each of us feels intimately connected to our body. We experience this body as inescapable, as infused with bodily sensations and volitions, and as a special object of concern. This multifaceted experience plays an ambivalent role in Descartes’s philosophy. Bodily awareness is epistemically dangerous. It tempts us to falsely judge that we cannot exist apart from our bodies. But bodily (...) awareness isn’t all bad for Descartes. It helps us stay alive. Bodily awareness also serves as a corrective to overly disembodied conceptions of the self. (shrink)

In his second book, Tierney argues that the purpose of education must move to the heart of the educational debate. Purpose will significantly influence what schools and the education system as a whole will do next.

Mike Coxhead and James Chamberlain on the transformative potential of philosophical conversations in prison.

The norms of simplicity, convenience, unfussiness, and self-control guide Diogenes the Cynic, Zeno of Citium, Chrysippus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius in approaching food. These norms generate the precept that meat and dainties are luxuries, so Stoics should eschew them. Considerations of justice, environmental harm, anthropogenic global climate change, sustainability, food security, feminism, harm to animals, personal health, and public health lead contemporary Stoics to condemn the meat industrial complex, debunk carnism, and select low input, plant-based foods.

Malebranche holds that visual experience represents the size of objects relative to the perceiver's body and does not represent objects as having intrinsic or nonrelational spatial magnitudes. I argue that Malebranche's case for this body-relative thesis is more sophisticated than other commentators—most notably, Atherton and Simmons —have presented it. Malebranche's central argument relies on the possibility of perceptual variation with respect to size. He uses two thought experiments to show that perceivers of different sizes—namely, miniature people, giants, and typical human (...) beings—can experience the very same objects as having radically different sizes. Malebranche argues that there is no principled reason to privilege one of these ways of experiencing size over the others and, more specifically, that all three kinds of perceivers experience size veridically. From the possibility of this kind of veridical perceptual variation, Malebranche infers that visual experience represents only body-relative size. (shrink)

A personal glimpse into the life of one of the most influential twentieth-century philosophers covers his involvement with the existentialist movement and false accusations associating him with Hitler and Nazism.

Undergraduate students with no prior classroom instruction in mathematical logic will benefit from this evenhanded multipart text by one of the centuries greatest authorities on the subject. Part I offers an elementary but thorough overview of mathematical logic of first order. The treatment does not stop with a single method of formulating logic; students receive instruction in a variety of techniques, first learning model theory (truth tables), then Hilbert-type proof theory, and proof theory handled through derived rules. Part II supplements (...) the material covered in Part I and introduces some of the newer ideas and the more profound results of logical research in the twentieth century. Subsequent chapters introduce the study of formal number theory, with surveys of the famous incompleteness and undecidability results of Godel, Church, Turing, and others. The emphasis in the final chapter reverts to logic, with examinations of Godel's completeness theorem, Gentzen's theorem, Skolem's paradox and nonstandard models of arithmetic, and other theorems. Unabridged republication of the edition published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York, 1967. Preface. Bibliography. Theorem and Lemma Numbers: Pages. List of Postulates. Symbols and Notations. Index. (shrink)

Foucault, Power, and Education invites internationally renowned scholar Stephen J. Ball to reflect on the importance and influence of Foucault on his work in educational policy.

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

The problem that Tallis attempts to address in Freedom: An Impossible Reality (2021) is that science appears to describe the entire world deterministically and that this seems to leave no room for free will. In the face of this threat, Tallis defends the existence of free will by arguing that science does not explain our intentional awareness of the world; and it is our intentional awareness that makes both science and free will possible. Against Tallis, it is here argued that (...) his argument is vulnerable to two criticisms. Firstly, his characterisation of science as apparently deterministic is inaccurate. Secondly, he has not solved the problem he has set himself but rather recast it, so that his conclusion leaves us having to account for free will, not in a deterministic universe, but either as a product of chance or as a miracle. It is here suggested that when we set aside the illusory threat of scientific determinism, we also set aside the temptation of free will (as its spurious answer). That done, we may better focus upon agent’s freedom of action – as discussed by philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke and Hume – the rational capability of an agent to act upon their wishes, given the constraints under which they find themselves. (shrink)

1 Introducing Monsieur Foucault Stephen J. Ball Michel Foucault is an enigma, a massively influential intellectual who steadfastly refused to align himself ...

Neo-Confucianism is a philosophically sophisticated tradition weaving classical Confucianism together with themes from Buddhism and Daoism. It began in China around the eleventh century CE, played a leading role in East Asian cultures over the last millennium, and has had a profound influence on modern Chinese society. -/- Based on the latest scholarship but presented in accessible language, Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical Introduction is organized around themes that are central in Neo-Confucian philosophy, including the structure of the cosmos, human nature, ways (...) of knowing, personal cultivation, and approaches to governance. The authors thus accomplish two things at once: they present the Neo-Confucians in their own, distinctive terms; and they enable contemporary readers to grasp what is at stake in the great Neo-Confucian debates. (shrink)

Dr. Stephen Hawking was the most renowned scientist since Einstein, known both for his groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology and for his mischievous sense of humor. He educated millions of readers about the origins of the universe and the nature of black holes, and inspired millions more by defying a terrifying early prognosis of ALS, which originally gave him only two years to live. In later life he could communicate only by using a few facial muscles, but he (...) continued to advance his field and serve as a revered voice on social and humanitarian issues. Hawking not only unraveled some of the universe's greatest mysteries but also believed science plays a critical role in fixing problems here on Earth. Now he turns his attention to the most urgent issues facing us. Will humanity survive? Should we colonize space? Does God exist? These are just a few of the questions Hawking addresses in this wide-ranging, passionately argued final book from one of the greatest minds in history. Featuring a foreword by Eddie Redmayne, who won an Oscar playing Stephen Hawking, an introduction by Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne, and an afterword from Hawking's daughter, Lucy. (shrink)

For the first time, this collection brings together a selection of philosophically challenging interpretations of Kierkegaard's thought in a coherent critique of his own philosophy.

This guest column marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Jacques Derrida. The journal in which it appears, Common Knowledge, was not especially receptive to deconstruction during Derrida's lifetime, but Lesley Chamberlain in retrospect sees reasons to reconsider his role in intellectual history now. The delicacy of Derrida's mission, she argues, has been misunderstood. He is best placed in the company not of the “deconstructionists” who thought to follow in his footsteps but, rather, in the company of the (...) moralistic and theologically minded German philosophers and thinkers who inspired him, from Kant and Hegel to Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. A personal fear of being pinned down, coupled with his tragic Jewish witness to a philosophical quest for certainty gone astray, led the “Sad Rider,” one of many possible Derridas, to want to “erase” as much as he wanted to write — despite which, he was not spared being turned into an industry. (shrink)

Some moral propositions are so obviously true that we refuse to doubt them, even where we believe that many people disagree. Following Fritz and McPherson, I call our behaviour in such cases ‘moral steadfastness’. In this paper, I argue for two metaethical implications of moral steadfastness. I first argue that morally steadfast behaviour is sufficiently prevalent to present an important challenge for some prominent analogies between moral epistemology and non-moral forms of epistemology. These analogies are often pressed by moral realists. (...) I then argue that moral quasi-realism, unlike realism, can explain and vindicate our presumption that moral steadfastness is frequently rational. On the assumption that we frequently act as it is rational to act, quasi-realism is therefore well placed to explain why we are so frequently morally steadfast. I conclude that this is an important respect in which quasi-realism is explanatorily preferable to realism. (shrink)

Playing the mystery card -- "But it fits!" -- Going nuclear -- Moving the semantic goalposts -- "But I just know!" -- Pseudo-profundity -- Piling up the anecdotes -- Pressing your buttons -- Conclusion -- The Tapescrew letters.

In this paper the author examines a new water ethos focused on sustainability within the parameters of a deep, green Christianity. The discussion begins witha brief outline of the problems facing water due to unsustainable practices and policies. At present paces the peoples, creatures, plants, and minerals of the world are at great risk of losing the nourishment of water needed to survive.The second portion begins with an overview of the complex values toward nature in the Christian tradition. The author (...) then develops three approaches for a new water ethos to guide decisions around sustainability and water. In the third approach of deep, green Christianity, the theological basis for a water ethos involves new understandings of Holy Spirit in relation to nature. Finally the author offers a revision of Catholic Social Teachings to serve as an ethical framework for sustainability of the environment and water. (shrink)