Within the limitations which I have set for myself ‒ namely, those of a discussion of the attaining of the foundations for general knowledge, and of the construction of general knowledge once these foundatio11s have been obtained ‒Professor Yolton agrees with my argument. His major concern consists in urging me to extend my thesis into the domain of knowledge of nature. The main question is whether the method I have argued is present in Locke's Essay can help account for particular (...) knowledge claims Locke might make in physics rather than in the realm of conceptual relations, in the realm of the mixed modes of mathematics, geometry, and morals. The difficulty I here face is stated unambiguously by Locke himself. (shrink)

Locke tells us that his purpose in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is “to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent”. He provides a characterization of general human knowledge as universal truths in propositional form. In doing this he presupposes a striking doctrine about the “extent” of man's general knowledge, and he draws freely upon a theory meant to explain both the materials out of which this (...) knowledge is constructed and the way in which it is constructed. He holds that the “certainty” which characterizes general knowledge is obtained only if we proceed from the right materials or foundations in the right way, and that the right foundations themselves can only be obtained in one specific way. In this study I try to show how much more Cartesian Locke is than many commentators would allow. I argue that on Locke's own view the way to obtain the foundations for general knowledge is that of Cartesian analysis, and the way to construct general knowledge once these foundations have been obtained is that of Cartesian synthesis. (shrink)

Monsieur Schouls a établi un certain nombre de points, avec lesquels je me declarerai d'accord. Je crois qu'il a raison d'affirmrr que pour Locke, le fondement de toute connaissance au niveau initial de l'expérience est un divers de la sensation ou de la réflexion formé par des combinations d'idées unies ensemble. D'autre part, la description de la maniere dont l'esprit acquiert la connaissance générale par un processus d'abstraction et done d'analyse me semble conforme à l'épistémologie de Locke.Mais je crois (...) que par ce processus, l'esprit atteint seulement le niveau de la connaissance générale; la connaissance générale elle-même consiste dans la démonstration et, meme si la démonstration se raméné à une chaîne d'intuitions, conformément au modèle cartésien des Regulae, c'est seulement dans l'illatio que l'on peut situer ce que M. Schouls qualifie de synthèse: c'est cette illatio qui constitue proprement la science.D'où le problème de cette éthique démontrable dont il faudrait établir, conformément à cette thèse, le mode de formation “synthétique” à partir d'axiomes et de principes. (shrink)

There are many echoes of Descartes and of other Cartesians in Locke's Essay. There is one particularly curious passage in the Essay which is clearly taken from the Regulae. This passage may be the one clear instance of the method of analysis and synthesis in Locke. Before I cite that passage, I want to raise a few questions about some of the claims in Professor Schouls’ paper. Professor Schouls is right to call attention to the need for some (...) careful analysis of the concept of experience in Locke. He concentrates upon the form experience takes initially : lf“he means temporally first, as with infants, the examples he cites do not fit this concept. The quotes he gives on p. 583 all refer to adult, sophisticated experience, not to the learning experience of children. There is a rudimentary genetic psychology in Locke's Essay and in his Education. He does list some brief order in the acquisition of ideas by children, in the very earliest stages of experience, e.g., with the foetus, “some faint ideas of hunger, and thirst, and warmth, and some pains” are acquired. (shrink)

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this lucid and penetrating book, Peter A. Schouls considers Locke's major writings in terms of the closely related ideas of freedom, progress, mastery, reason, and education.

The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. In Exceeding Our Grasp, Stanford argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the nature of the scientific enterprise. The historical record (...) of scientific inquiry, Stanford suggests, is characterized by what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives. Past scientists have routinely failed even to conceive of alternatives to their own theories and lines of theoretical investigation, alternatives that were both well-confirmed by the evidence available at the time and sufficiently serious as to be ultimately accepted by later scientific communities. Stanford supports this claim with a detailed investigation of the mid-to-late 19th century theories of inheritance and generation proposed in turn by Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, and August Weismann. He goes on to argue that this historical pattern strongly suggests that there are equally well-confirmed and scientifically serious alternatives to our own best theories that remain currently unconceived. Moreover, this challenge is more serious than those rooted in either the so-called pessimistic induction or the underdetermination of theories by evidence, in part because existing realist responses to these latter challenges offer no relief from the problem of unconceived alternatives itself. Stanford concludes by investigating what positive account of the spectacularly successful edifice of modern theoretical science remains open to us if we accept that our best scientific theories are powerful conceptual tools for accomplishing our practical goals, but abandon the view that the descriptions of the world around us that they offer are therefore even probably or approximately true. (shrink)

The place of the emotions among the passions -- The analytic of the emotions I -- The analytic of the emotions II -- The dialectic of the emotions -- Pride, arrogance, and humility -- Shame, embarrassment, and guilt -- Envy -- Jealousy -- Anger -- Love -- Friendship -- Sympathy and empathy.

Peter Schouls examines the role played by the concepts of freedom, mastery, and progress in Descartes' writings, arguing that these ideas express a vital and ...

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. Unavailable for many years,_ Scepticism and Naturalism_ is a profound reflection on two classic philosophical problems by a philosopher at the pinnacle of his career. Based on his acclaimed Woodbridge lectures delivered at Columbia University in 1983, Strawson begins with a discussion of scepticism, which he defines as questioning the adequacy of our grounds for holding various beliefs. He then (...) draws deftly on Hume and Wittgenstein to argue that we must distinguish between 'hard', scientific naturalism; or 'soft', humanistic naturalism. In the remaining chapters the author takes up several issues in which sceptical doubts play an important role, in particular the nature of transcendental arguments and including the objectivity of moral philosophy, the mental and the physical, and the existence of abstract entities. _Scepticism and Naturalism_ is essential reading for those seeking an introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most important and original philosophers. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Quassim Cassam and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson, which together form an excellent introduction to his life and work. (shrink)

This new book describes the intellectual structure of modern science as a body of knowledge produced by the Cartesian method.

The concept of normal is so familiar that it can be hard to imagine contemporary life without it. Yet the term entered everyday speech only in the mid-twentieth century. Before that, it was solely a scientific term used primarily in medicine to refer to a general state of health and the orderly function of organs. But beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, normal broke out of scientific usage, becoming less precise and coming to mean a balanced condition to (...) be maintained and an ideal to be achieved. In Normality, Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens offer an intellectual and cultural history of what it means to be normal. They explore the history of how communities settle on any one definition of the norm, along the way analyzing a fascinating series of case studies in fields as remote as anatomy, statistics, criminal anthropology, sociology, and eugenics. Cryle and Stephens argue that since the idea of normality is so central to contemporary disability, gender, race, and sexuality studies, scholars in these fields must first have a better understanding of the context for normality. This pioneering book moves beyond binaries to explore for the first time what it does—and doesn’t—mean to be normal. (shrink)

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. Unavailable for many years,_ Scepticism and Naturalism_ is a profound reflection on two classic philosophical problems by a philosopher at the pinnacle of his career. Based on his acclaimed Woodbridge lectures delivered at Columbia University in 1983, Strawson begins with a discussion of scepticism, which he defines as questioning the adequacy of our grounds for holding various beliefs. He then (...) draws deftly on Hume and Wittgenstein to argue that we must distinguish between 'hard', scientific naturalism; or 'soft', humanistic naturalism. In the remaining chapters the author takes up several issues in which sceptical doubts play an important role, in particular the nature of transcendental arguments and including the objectivity of moral philosophy, the mental and the physical, and the existence of abstract entities. _Scepticism and Naturalism_ is essential reading for those seeking an introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most important and original philosophers. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Quassim Cassam and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson, which together form an excellent introduction to his life and work. (shrink)

Psychologists today must deal with a broad range of ethical issues--from charging fees to maintaining a client's confidentiality, and from conducting research to respecting clients, colleagues, and students. As the field of psychology has grown in size and scope, the role of ethics has become more important and complex whether the psychologist is involved in teaching, counseling, research, or practice. Now this most widely read and cited ethics text in psychology has been revised to reflect the ethics questions and dilemmas (...) that psychologists encounter in their everyday work. Ethics in Psychology has been completely updated in response to evolving trends in psychological research and practice, as well as extensive changes in the American Psychological Association's ethics code. Gerald P. Koocher and Patricia Keith-Spiegel take a practical, commonsense approach to ethics in modern-day psychological practice, and offer constructive suggestions for both preventing problems and resolving ethical predicaments. In this book, their main intent is to present the full range of contemporary ethical issues in psychology as not only relevant and intriguing, but also as integral and unavoidable aspects of the profession. The authors make extensive use of actual case studies in order to illustrate how the APA guidelines apply to specific situations, such as fee setting, advertising for clients, research ethics, sexual attraction, classroom ethics, managed care issues, confidentiality, and much more. The most recent ethics code of the American Psychological Association (1992) is used here only as a starting point. The authors go well beyond the APA code and incorporate the input of many experts. In addition to the analysis of a wide variety of general situations, new problematic areas are identified and explored. The book includes two appendixes - Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, adopted by American Psychological Association, Rules and Procedures of the Ethics Committee of the American Psychological Association - both in an easy-to-use format. In addition, each chapter lists summary guidelines along with current and valuable references. Highly readable, the book unites a straightforward, lively writing style with humorous anecdotes that highlight the human side of ethics and make the book a pleasure to read. Ethics in Psychology will be an indispensable guide to ethical decision-making for all psychologists and students in psychology. (shrink)

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Cognitive Modelling presents a new approach to cognition that challenges long-held views. It systematically develops a broad-based framework to model cognition, which is mathematically equivalent to the emerging 'quantum-like modelling' of the human mind. The book argues that a satisfactory physical and philosophical basis of such an approach is missing, a particular issue being the application of quantization to the mind for which there is no empirical evidence as yet. In response to this issue, the book (...) adopts a COM (classical optical modelling) approach, broad-based but mathematically equivalent to quantum-like modelling while avoiding its problematic features. It presents a philosophically informed and empirically motivated mathematical model of cognition, mainly concerning decision making processes. It also deals with applications to different areas of the social sciences. It will be of interest to scholars and research students interested in the mathematical modelling of cognition and decision making, and also interdisciplinary researchers interested in broader issues of cognition. (shrink)

This study concerns the ideas of one particular philosopher, Henri Bergson, whose views of time, intuition, and creativity have had a significant impact on art, literature, and the humanities, both in his time and in our own. Although it is generally recognized that Bergson's ideas have significantly impacted the arts and the humanities, it has not been recognized how they have also had a creative influence on the sciences as well. Nor has it been realized that this was one of (...) his most basic contentions. Bergson's conception of intuition--his fundamental insight into reality--was not limited to fugitive insights into human existence. By realizing previously unsuspected possibilities for research and discovery, his endeavors were also meant to make possible new advances in the sciences. If it enabled his cousin by marriage, Marcel Proust, to explore human memory in depth, it also inspired psychologists like Daniel Schachter to use Bergson's ideas to make real contributions to contemporary memory science. If his notion of creative evolution brought many thinkers to a belief in human creative freedom, it brought others (notably Alexis Carrel and Pierre Lecomte de Noüy) to a scientific study of biological time. Among his successful speculations was the theory of the Big Bang cosmology. 'Getting Bergson Straight' shows many points at which Bergson's ideas anticipated future developments in the sciences. This was seen clearly by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis de Broglie who viewed Bergson's physics as presaging quantum physics. Thus, the text is well situated for arts, humanities, social science, and natural science classrooms studying creative thinking and/or intellectual history. (shrink)

There are no intimate connections between Locke's political thought and his general philosophical position — that, at least, is the longestablished view, the accepted orthodoxy. Locke's Second Treatise of Government, so it is held, presents doctrines which are unrelated to, or perhaps even in conflict with, those of the Essay concerning Human Understanding.For contemporary students and scholars this view is firmly established through Peter Laslett's influential ‘Introduction’ to his edition of Locke's Two Treatises of Government.At the moment it receives powerful (...) support from a magisterial work by an author well known both as political theorist and as commentator on Locke: Richard Ashcraft's Revolutionary Politics & Locke's Treatises of Government. Ashcraft's reductive contextualism and his concomitant intentional neglect of certain philosophical dimensions of Locke's position would lead us to read the 2T more as a piece of parochial political propaganda than as a treatise of political theory. (shrink)

On suppose généralement que Descartes fait jouer au libre vouloir un rôle secondaire par rapport à celui de la raison. Dans ce texte, j'avan cerai que sur certains points d'importance cruciale, c'est le libre vouloir cartésien qui possède la primauté sur la raison.