Donald Capps and John Capps's James and Dewey on Belief and Experience juxtaposes the key writings of two philosophical superstars. As fathers of Pragmatism, America's unique contribution to world philosophy, their work has been enormously influential, and remains essential to any understanding of American intellectual history. In these essays, you'll find William James deeply embroiled in debates between religion and science. Combining philosophical charity with logical clarity, he defended the validity of religious experience against crass forms of (...) scientism. Dewey identified the myriad ways in which supernatural concerns distract religious adherents from pressing social concerns, and sought to reconcile the tensions inherent in science's dual embrace of common sense and the aesthetic. James and Dewey on Belief and Experience is divided into two sections: the former showcases James, the latter is devoted to Dewey. Two transitional passages in which each reflects on the work of the other bridge these two main segments. Together, the sections offer a unique perspective on the philosophers' complex relationship of influence and interdependence. An editors' introduction provides biographical information about both men, an overview of their respective philosophical orientations, a discussion of the editorial process, and a brief commentary on each of the selections. Comparing what these foremost pragmatists wrote on both themes illumines their common convictions regarding the nature of philosophical inquiry and simultaneously reveals what made each a distinctive thinker. (shrink)

William James called his classic work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, "a study in human nature." This volume recognizes that a fundamental feature of human nature for James is that we have a conscious and a subconscious mind and that the subconscious mind is deeply implicated in the religious life, especially in conversion and other experiences of spiritual enlightenment. In this volume, Capps addresses religious melancholy, the divided self and discordant personality, religious conversion, the saintly character, and the prayerful (...) consciousness. In addition, the cases of two clergymen--one deeply troubled, the other exemplary of the spiritual person--are also presented. A brief discussion of James's view of religion as the generator of hope concludes this introduction to his insights into the religious life. Given that James was a popular writer in his own day, this book is intended to make his insights accessible to general readers. (shrink)

_You've Got to Be Kidding!: How Jokes Can Help You Think_ is a thoughtful and accessible analysis of the ways in which jokes illustrate how we think critically, and how the thinking process goes awry in everyday human situations Uses jokes to illustrate the various mistakes or fallacies that are typically identified and discussed in courses on critical reasoning Provides an effective way to learn critical thinking skills since jokes often describe real-life situations where it really matters whether a person (...) thinks well or not Demonstrates how philosophy is actually very practical and clearly related to real- life human experiences Explains how developing good reasoning habits can make a real difference in all aspects of one’s life. (shrink)

The goals of this paper are twofold. The first is to show that William James' discussion in The Varieties of Religious Experience of the divided self and the process of its unification offers an invaluable lens through which to understand the conversion experience of Augustine as presented in his Confessions. The second is explore the question of how Augustine became a divided self, a question that James chooses not to speculate about because he is suspicious of theories of causality, especially (...) those that have little if any empirical evidence in their support. To explore this question, I will discuss E. R. Dodds' article, "Augustine's Confessions: A Study of Spiritual Maladjustment." He was Professor of Greek at the University of Birmingham at the time that the article was published, and later Professor of Classics at Oxford University. Dodds believes that the origins of Augustine's divided self "are to be looked for in his family history" and he makes what I consider to be a persuasive case in support of this belief. Significantly, his discussion of Augustine as a divided self has distinct resonances with James's own discussion, suggesting that he was almost certainly aware of James' earlier work. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The False Dilemma Begging the Question Two Wrongs The Straw Man The Slippery Slope Conclusion.

This chapter contains sections titled: The False Cause Fallacy Hasty Generalizations Failure to Take Context into Account Suppressing Relevant Evidence The Gambler's Fallacy Affirming the Consequent/Denying the Antecedent The Fallacies of Composition and Division Missing the Forest for the Trees.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Relevance of Context Differentiating the Rational from the Irrational Rationality and Acting Prudentially Having Good Reasons for What We Believe Beliefs Have Practical Consequences The Desire to Appear Intelligent to Others.

Jesus' encounter with two “troubled” adolescents exposes the distance between the generations resulting from the anxieties their conflicts provoke. As a “surrogate” father, Jesus brings a nonanxious presence that heals and empowers these young people.

This chapter contains sections titled: Objective Truth The Issue of Proof Facts and Values Thinking Together Critical Thinking and Radical Skepticism Critical Thinking is Lifelong.

This chapter contains sections titled: Threat Disguised as Reason Appeal to Inappropriate Authority Appeal to the Public Targeting the Person Accusing a Person of Hypocrisy The Appeal to Pity The Appeal to Ignorance The Use of Equivocal Language The Use of Amphiboly Conclusion.

In this edition, two recent addresses in the CAPPE public lecture program are presented in full. Dr Barry Jones asks how complex issues are tackled in public life, and what role the pursuit of truth and objectivity plays in these important debates; his assessment is not positive. Professor Peter Newman argues that, amidst the public debate on climate change and resource degradation, there has been little discussion of peak oil and the grave threats it poses. In his article, Professor Newman (...) explains what peak oil is, the dangers involved and what we can do to avert them. Also in this edition, Professor Tony Coady offers a new analysis of terrorism and why it is wrong, as well as the moral dangers posed by recent counter-terrorist activity. (shrink)

What is the relation between a reason and an action when the reason explains the action by giving the agent's reason for doing what he did? We may call such explanations rationalizations, and say that the reason rationalizes the action. In this paper I want to defend the ancient - and common-sense - position that rationalization is a species of ordinary causal explanation. The defense no doubt requires some redeployment, but not more or less complete abandonment of the position, as (...) urged by many recent writers. (shrink)

In this volume--the first, focused study of Hume on time and identity--Baxter focuses on Hume’s treatment of the concept of numerical identity, which is central to Hume's famous discussions of the external world and personal identity. Hume raises a long unappreciated, and still unresolved, difficulty with the concept of identity: how to represent something as "a medium betwixt unity and number." Superficial resemblance to Frege’s famous puzzle has kept the difficulty in the shadows. Hume’s way of addressing it makes sense (...) only in the context of his unorthodox theory of time. Baxter shows the defensibility of that theory against past dismissive interpretations, especially of Hume’s stance on infinite divisibility. Later the author shows how the difficulty underlies Hume’s later worries about his theory of personal identity, in a new reading motivated by Hume’s important appeals to consciousness. Baxter casts Hume throughout as an acute metaphysician, and reconciles this side of Hume with his overarching Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

Problems of Rationality is the eagerly awaited fourth volume of Donald Davidson 's philosophical writings. From the 1960s until his death in August 2003 Davidson was perhaps the most influential figure in English-language philosophy, and his work has had a profound effect upon the discipline. His unified theory of the interpretation of thought, meaning, and action holds that rationality is a necessary condition for both mind and interpretation. Davidson here develops this theory to illuminate value judgements and how we (...) understand them; to investigate what the conditions are for attributing mental states to an object or creature; and to grapple with the problems presented by thoughts and actions which seem to be irrational. Anyone working on knowledge, mind, and language will find these essays essential reading. (shrink)

The concept of metaphor as primarily a vehicle for conveying ideas, even if unusual ones, seems to me as wrong as the parent idea that a metaphor has a special meaning. I agree with the view that metaphors cannot be paraphrased, but I think this is not because metaphors say something too novel for literal expression but because there is nothing there to paraphrase. Paraphrase, whether possible or not, inappropriate to what is said: we try, in paraphrase, to say it (...) another way. But if I am right, a metaphor doesn't say anything beyond its literal meaning . This is not, of course, to deny that a metaphor has a point, nor that that point can be brought out by using further words. . . . My disagreement is with the explanation of how metaphor works its wonders. To anticipate: I depend on the distinction between what words mean and what they are used to do. I think metaphor belongs exclusively to the domain of use. It is something brought off by the imaginative employment of words and sentences and depends entirely on the ordinary meanings of those words and hence on the ordinary meanings of the sentences they comprise. Donald Davidson is University Professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many important essays, including "Actions, Reasons and Causes," "Causal Relations," and "Truth and Meaning," coauthor of Decision-Making: An Experimental Approach, and coeditor of Words and Objections, Semantics of Natural Language, and The Logic of Grammar. (shrink)

Pandemic plans recommend phases of response to an emergent infectious disease outbreak, and are primarily aimed at preventing and mitigating human-to-human transmission. These plans carry presumptive weight and are increasingly being operationalized at the national, regional and international level with the support of the World Health Organization. The conventional focus of pandemic preparedness for EIDs of zoonotic origin has been on public health and human welfare. However, this focus on human populations has resulted in strategically important disciplinary silos. As the (...) risks of zoonotic diseases have implications that reach across many domains outside traditional public health, including anthropological, environmental, and veterinary fora, a more inclusive ecological perspective is paramount for an effective response to future outbreaks. (shrink)

Modern theorists often use Immanuel Kant's work to defend the normative primacy of human rights and the necessity of institutionally autonomous forms of global governance. However, properly understood, his law of nations describes a loose and noncoercive confederation of republican states. In this way, Kant steers a course between earlier natural lawyers such as Grotius, who defended just-war theory, and visions of a global unitary or federal state. This substantively mundane claim should not obscure a more profound contribution to the (...) science of international law. Kant demonstrates that his concept of law forms part of a logical framework by which to ascertain the necessary institutional characteristics of the international legal order. Specifically, his view is that the international legal order can only take a noncoercive confederated form as its subjects become republican states and that in these circumstances law can exist without a global state. Put another way, Kant argues that if we get state-building right, the law of nations follows. CN - 58005245. (shrink)

I argue that an individual has aspects numerically identical with it and each other that nonetheless qualitatively differ from it and each other. This discernibility of identicals does not violate Leibniz's Law, however, which concerns only individuals and is silent about their aspects. They are not in its domain of quantification. To argue that there are aspects I will appeal to the internal conflicts of conscious beings. I do not mean to imply that aspects are confined to such cases, but (...) the best way to start is to recognize them experientially. We can feel the conflicts within ourselves. In doing so we can feel some of our aspects. I will try to enhance our understanding of the concept of aspect by listing and formalizing some principles for its use. After that I will argue that all sorts of individual things have aspects, not just people who are conflicted. (shrink)

The concept of metaphor as primarily a vehicle for conveying ideas, even if unusual ones, seems to me as wrong as the parent idea that a metaphor has a special meaning. I agree with the view that metaphors cannot be paraphrased, but I think this is not because metaphors say something too novel for literal expression but because there is nothing there to paraphrase. Paraphrase, whether possible or not, inappropriate to what is said: we try, in paraphrase, to say it (...) another way. But if I am right, a metaphor doesn't say anything beyond its literal meaning. This is not, of course, to deny that a metaphor has a point, nor that that point can be brought out by using further words.... My disagreement is with the explanation of how metaphor works its wonders. To anticipate: I depend on the distinction between what words mean and what they are used to do. I think metaphor belongs exclusively to the domain of use. It is something brought off by the imaginative employment of words and sentences and depends entirely on the ordinary meanings of those words and hence on the ordinary meanings of the sentences they comprise. Donald Davidson is University Professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many important essays, including "Actions, Reasons and Causes," "Causal Relations," and "Truth and Meaning," coauthor of Decision-Making: An Experimental Approach, and coeditor of Words and Objections, Semantics of Natural Language, and The Logic of Grammar. (shrink)

Johnson and Degeling have recently enquired whether one health requires a comprehensive normative framework, concluding that such a framework, while not necessary, may be helpful. In this commentary, we provide a context for this debate, and describe how pragmatism has been predominant in the OH literature. We nevertheless argue that articulating a comprehensive normative theory to ground OH practice might clear existing vagueness and provide stronger guidance in relevant health dilemmas. A comprehensive theory will also be needed eventually to ground (...) notions such as universal good. We, thus, call for the systematic articulation of a comprehensive, metaethical theory, concomitantly with already ongoing normative work. (shrink)

David Hume is famous as a sceptical philosopher but the nature of his scepticism is difficult to pin down. Hume's True Scepticism provides the first sustained interpretation of Part 4 of Book 1 of Hume's Treatise: his deepest engagement with sceptical arguments, in which he notes that, while reason shows that we ought not to believe the verdicts of reason or the senses, we do so nonetheless. Donald C. Ainslie addresses Hume's theory of representation; his criticisms of Locke, Descartes, (...) and other predecessors; his account of the imagination; his understanding of perceptions and sensory belief; and his bundle theory of the mind and his later rejection of it. (shrink)

Age‐related and cancer‐related epigenomic modifications have been associated with enhanced cell‐to‐cell gene expression variability that characterizes increased cellular stochasticity. Since gene expression variability appears to be highly reduced by—and epigenetic and phenotypic stability acquired through—direct or long‐range cellular interactions during cell differentiation, we propose a common origin for aging and cancer in the failure to control cellular stochasticity by cell–cell interactions. Tissue‐disruption‐induced cellular stochasticity associated with epigenetic drift would be at the origin of organ dysfunction because of an increase in (...) phenotypic variation among cells, ultimately leading to cell death and organ failure through a loss of coordination in cellular functions, and eventually to cancerization. We propose mechanistic research perspectives to corroborate this hypothesis and explore its evolutionary consequences, highlighting a positive correlation between the median age of mass loss onset (a proxy for the onset of organ aging) and the median age at cancer diagnosis. (shrink)

Despite increased interest in pragmatic theories of truth, Dewey’s approach has not received the same degree of attention as other pragmatists such as Peirce and James. This may seem rather surprising given the sheer quantity Dewey published in his lifetime, much of it focused on issues of epistemology and scientific inquiry. On the other hand, this might seem not surprising at all, since Dewey often went to some effort, especially near the end of his career, to avoid the concept of (...) truth and its associated baggage.1A natural question to ask is whether Dewey even had a theory of truth: that is, a well worked-out position on this crucial philosophical concept. Here, the usual answers—where we can find them—are not... (shrink)