ABSTRACT: Central to both James’s earlier psychology and his later philosophical views was a recurring distinction between percepts and concepts. The distinction evolved and remained fundamental to his thinking throughout his career as he sought to come to grips with its fundamental nature and significance. In this chapter, I focus initially on James’s early attempt to articulate the distinction in his 1885 article “The Function of Cognition.” This will highlight a key problem to which James continued to (...) return throughout his later philosophical work on the nature of our cognition, including in his famous “radical empiricist” metaphysics of “pure experience” around the turn of the century. We shall find that James grappled insightfully but ambivalently with the perceptual and conceptual dimensions of the “knowledge relation” or the “cognitive relation,” as he called it—or what, following Franz Brentano, philosophers would later call our object-directed thought or intentionality more generally. Some philosophers have once again returned to James’s work for crucial insights on this pivotal topic, while others continue to find certain aspects of his account to be problematic. What is beyond dispute is that James’s inquiries in this domain were both innovative and of lasting significance. (shrink)

BackgroundDespite rapid growth of the scientific literature, no consensus guidelines have emerged to define the optimal criteria for editors to grade submitted manuscripts. The purpose of this project was to assess the peer reviewer metrics currently used in the surgical literature to evaluate original manuscript submissions.MethodsManuscript grading forms for 14 of the highest circulation general surgery-related journals were evaluated for content, including the type and number of quantitative and qualitative questions asked of peer reviewers. Reviewer grading forms for the seven (...) surgical journals with the higher impact factors were compared to the seven surgical journals with lower impact factors using Fisher’s exact tests.ResultsImpact factors of the studied journals ranged from 1.73 to 8.57, with a median impact factor of 4.26 in the higher group and 2.81 in the lower group. The content of the grading forms was found to vary considerably. Relatively few journals asked reviewers to grade specific components of a manuscript. Higher impact factor journal manuscript grading forms more frequently addressed statistical analysis, ethical considerations, and conflict of interest. In contrast, lower impact factor journals more commonly requested reviewers to make qualitative assessments of novelty/originality, scientific validity, and scientific importance.ConclusionSubstantial variation exists in the grading criteria used to evaluate original manuscripts submitted to the surgical literature for peer review, with differential emphasis placed on certain criteria correlated to journal impact factors. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship in Kant between transcendental laws and empirical laws (focusing on causal laws), and then brings a particular interpretation of that issue to bear on familiar puzzles concerning the status of the regulative maxims of reason and reflective judgment. It is argued that the 'indeterminate objective validity' possessed by the regulative maxims derives ultimately from strictly constitutive demands of understanding.

"Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false belief. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it irrelevant to (...) many people whether they believe true things or not? In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively."–Publisher’s description. (shrink)

Each of the standard outlooks in the philosophy of perception --phenomenalism, direct realism, indirect realism, scepticism -- has thus been viewed as Hume's own considered position in the eyes of informed commentators. I argue that Hume does not ascribe univocally to any one of the traditional stances in the philosophy of perception, nor does he leave us only a schizophrenic or 'mood' scepticism. Hume attempted to resolve the traditional philosophical problem (or perhaps more accurately, to set it aside on principled (...) grounds) by transforming the issue from one of theoretical consistency to one of pragmatic coherence. Hume's moderate scepticism and his systematic naturalism entail a reflective 'return' to the vulgar (cp. T 223), a qualified normative endorsement of the directly realist beliefs of common life. The interpretive challenge is to understand the subtle nature of that endorsement, and to explain how it arises out of genuinely Humean doctrines. The account offered here attempts both to capture Hume's own considered position and to explain the attractions and shortcomings of each of the competing interpretations. After laying out the elements of Hume's account of perceptual belief (section I), I proceed to examine in some detail two recent attempts to interpret Hume as a realist (sections II-III). I contend that these revisionary accounts ascribe unHumean doctrines to Hume. The interpretation of Hume as an irreducible 'mood' sceptic or as a phenomenalist are in that respect both closer to the mark, but Hume's reflective return to the vulgar has recast the nature of the problem and leaves us with a position that is not reflected in the more traditional interpretations (section IV). (shrink)

Political Freedom By George G. Brenkert Routledge, 1991. Pp. 278. ISBN 0–415–03372–1. £35 hbk.Wittgenstein: A Bibliographical Guide By Guido Frongia and Brian McGuinness Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. x + 438. ISBN 00631–13765–3. £60.00.Metaphysics By Peter van Inwagen Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. xiii + 222. ISBN 0–19–8751400. £11.95 pbk.The Nature of Moral Thinking By Francis Snare Routledge, 1992. Pp. 187. ISBN 0–415–04709–9. £9.99 pbk.Filosofía analitica hoy: Encuentro de tradiciones Edited by Mercedes Torrevejano Servicio de Publications Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, (...) 1991. Pp. 284. ISBN 84–7191–722‐X. $15.5 pbk.The Puzzle of Experience By J.J. Valberg Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. 227. ISBN 0–19–824291–3. £25.Religion and Philosophy Edited by Martin Warner Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 31 Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. vi + 155. ISBN 0–521–42951‐X. £10.95 pbk.The Uses of Philosophy By Mary Warnock Blackwell, 1992. Pp. 256. ISBN 0–631–18038–9. £35.00 hbk. £11.95 pbk.The Disappearance of Time: Kurt Godel and the Idealistic Tradition in Philosophy By Palle Yourgrau Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. x + 182. ISBN 0–521–41012–6. £27.50. (shrink)

These fifteen essays on Nietzsche's indebtedness to the Classical Tradition were composed by scholars in the fields of philosophy, theology, German and Classics. The essays roughly cover the following epochs: the age of the Fathers of the Western Church, medieval scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Weimar Classicism, Romanticism and the several other intellectual trends and movements in the nineteenth century. Collection includes three essays comparing Nietzsche's perceptions of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates with those (respectively) of Augustine, Aquinas, and Hamann. Three (...) essays treat Nietzsche's relationship to Goethe, Schiller, and Heine. Three deal with Nietzsche and French literature or thought, one explores possible parallels between Nietzsche and Dante, another the extent of his debt to Byron. Four contributions center on Nietzsche's view of tragedy, and an older study has been expanded to show the underlying harmony of Nietzsche's conception with that of the French classical tragedians. This book affirms and fulfills the need for serious scholarship by the student of Nietzsche unable to work in German, while presenting a readable cross-section of the work being done relating Nietzsche to the intellectual tradition from which he sprang. (shrink)

This dialogue was produced by an email exchange, with each email limited to 200 words. The exchange took place between 21 January and 9 June, 2021. No edits were allowed once ‘send’ had been pressed and there was to be no other correspondence between the participants for the duration of the dialogue. The Call for Papers for this special issue of Human Affairs was the starting point and there was no other pre-planning.

This is the first modern, annotated and scholarly edition of Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ _Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting_, one of the seminal works of modern aesthetics in any language.

Abstract:This visual essay invites renewed reflection on the iconography of the people. In the spring of 2020, Guatemala's President Alejandro Giammattei prohibited citizens from leaving their homes to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus known as Covid-19. Doing little to manage the spread of the virus, these curfew events gave new aesthetic and political meaning to a familiar visual genre: photographs of empty streets. For more than a century, and especially in the summer of 2020, images of crowds (...) and mass protests have provided both governments on the one hand, and protesting multitudes on the other with an aesthetic representation of the people. But this interest in collective assemblies has tended to engage only one side of the equation. To fully appreciate the visual power of the people, it is also necessary to understand those images from which people are strikingly absent. (shrink)

This study aimed to provide an in-depth description and interpretation of African Roman Catholic Church priests’ experiences integrating African and Western worldviews into their lives and works as Roman Catholic Church priests through the lens of Jungian constructs. Fifteen African priests were purposely selected and interviewed in depth. Additional sources of data were reflexive notes and observation notes. Data were subjected to various iterative cycles of analysis. Most participants (80%) indicated that, in one way or another, they were experiencing conflict (...) in terms of the cultural values of manhood and Roman Catholic Church prescription. Findings suggest that a more concerted and serious effort should be undertaken by the Roman Catholic Church to support and guide its priests on a path of healing, which includes the priests risking cultural openness and being true to themselves and God. (shrink)

This paper argues that a number of entrenched posthumanist positions are seriously flawed as a result of their dependence on a technical interpretive approach that creates more problems than it solves. During the course of our discussion we consider in particular the question of personhood. After all, until we can determine what it means to be a person we cannot really discuss what it means to improve a person. What kinds of enhancements would even constitute improvements? This in turn leads (...) to an examination of the technical model of analysis and the recurring tendency to approach notions like personhood using this technical model. In looking to sketch a Heideggerian account of personhood, we are reaffirming what we take to be a Platonic skepticism concerning technical models of inquiry when it comes to certain subjects. Finally we examine the question as to whether the posthumanist looks to apply technology’s benefits in ways that we have reflectively determined to be useful or desirable or whether it is technology itself (or to speak as Heidegger would – the “essence” of technology) which prompts many posthumanists to rely on an excessively reductionist view of the human being. (shrink)

William James is notorious for the large number of inconsistencies and at least apparent contradictions in his writings. Many readers conclude that he should be appreciated more for his profound but erratic insights than for any coherent philosophical perspective. Ellen Kappy Suckiel disagrees. She argues that James is far more careful and systematic than many readers realize. Her work on James is guided by the attempt to lay bare his coherent philosophical vision and the consistent philosophical methodology (...) underlying it. As a result of this approach, Suckiel's work on James is both sympathetic to his philosophical insights and carefully argued. In her first book, The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James (1982), Suckiel applies this approach to James's philosophy as a whole. The result is a work of remarkable clarity and insight that serves as a wonderful introduction to James's thought. In her more recent book, Suckiel applies this approach specifically to James's philosophy of religion, with similar felicitous results. Heaven's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Vergil's Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary DiscourseJames J. O'HaraYasmin Syed. Vergil's Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary Discourse. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005. x + 277 pp. Cloth, $65.This book, which "began as a PhD dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley" (1997), tackles a timely, large, and difficult topic, possibly a topic too difficult to (...) be handled in a satisfactory way in a dissertation and first book. In sum, it makes a decent but flawed contribution on a topic that needs much more work, and in some ways, much more careful work.Two introductory chapters describe the importance of the Aeneid in imperial culture and the role of manipulation of the emotions in ancient theories of rhetoric. In a section called "The Reader's Subject Position," two chapters (both largely on Aeneas and Dido) treat "The Gaze" and "The Spectacle of Emotions." In the next section, on "Gender and Ethnicity," four chapters treat "Gendered Emotions" (before Allecto's visit, Amata is worried, but Turnus is calm; "frenzy, then, is female," 122), "Gendered Ethnicity" (Dido's characterization as Punic "is hard to detect because it is blended with her lover's persona," but it is still significant, 145), "Cleopatra and the Politics of Gendered Ethnicity" ("Augustan representations of Cleopatra form the birth of the Western discourse of orientalism," 177, somewhat overstated, but with interesting ideas about the connection between Cleopatra and Dido), and "Romanitas" (Greek stereotypes, and others, define Romans but are characterized by a "fundamental ambivalence," 203). A brief conclusion ends the book.The interesting argument that Syed makes in the first few chapters is "that the Aeneid used its visuality and its sublime style to appeal to the readers' emotions, and that it created a fictional space for an internal reader within the poem for [End Page 317] 316 whom the poem could articulate an identity by creating various fictional characters as figures of identification" (35). Both these and later chapters offer a mix of the new, the familiar, and, at times, the unconvincing. Two of the book's flaws are actually signaled in the surprising final paragraph, which declares that the book's "most glaring omission has been that of considering more Italian characters and generally of giving more attention to the second half of the poem" (227). Syed says that this "focus" on other aspects of the poem "has been a personal decision on my part," but it is hard to imagine thinking about "subject and nation" in the Aeneid without discussing the relationship between Rome and Italy both in the poem and in Vergil's world; see C. Ando, "Vergil's Italy: ethnography and politics in first-century Rome," pp. 123–42 in D. S. Levene and D. Nelis, eds., Clio and the Poets (Leiden, 2002), whose date is probably too close to Syed's publication date. Presumably there will be a full discussion of Rome and Italy in Alessandro Barchiesi's forthcoming The Geopoetics of Vergil's Aeneid.The lack of attention to Books 7–12 is also a problem, because often the arguments Syed makes about the parts of the Aeneid that she does treat are less convincing when we think about passages in the second half of the poem. The claims that Aeneas has a special ability "to control his emotional responses to the world" (70) and that "in contrast to Aeneas, whose emotions are carefully controlled, many characters in the poem give free rein to their emotions" (87), surely cry out for a consideration of Aeneas' rampage after the death of Pallas in Book 10 and the rage with which he kills Turnus in the poem's final lines. The discussion of Dido's wounds and of Lavinia's association, through allusive simile, with the wound of Menelaus (125–35) is fairly good. But Syed does not mention that Turnus at the start of Aeneid 12 is compared to a wounded deer, or that right before the Lavinia scene Vergil says Turnus "grows sicker with the attempt to heal" (aegrescitque medendo, 45). Lavinia is indeed associated with Menelaus by allusion, but Aeneas... (shrink)