In rhetoric, an orator needs both a large vocabulary and a stock of commonplaces and arguments. Erasmus put them together in his De duplici copia verborum ac rerum . In this sixth volume of the first Ordo of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus, Betty Knott has edited the Latin text and added an English introduction and commentary, providing philological and historical information which helps the reader to understand the text and identify its sources.

The Editors’ Preface to the fourth edition of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is disparaging of the earlier editorial efforts of G. E. M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees and in particular of their inclusion and titling of the material in “Part II”. I argue, on both historical and philosophical grounds, that the Editors have failed to refute the editorial decisions of Rhees and Anscombe – a failure born both of a neglect of the historical circumstances and Wittgenstein's own expressed hopes and intentions (...) for his writings, and of a myopic understanding of his philosophy. Wittgenstein's legacy has not been well served by their interventions, which should be undone in future editions. (shrink)

Many of us, and I am no exception, have been led to assume, almost un-consciously, that Śankara is India's greatest philosopher and that the non-dualist philosophy he consolidated, Advaita Vedānta, is the supreme spiritual philosophy of India, if not of the whole world. Dualist opponents like Madhva, on the other hand, have usually been appreciated very little, if at all. Several of my colleagues think of Madhva as a reactionary, if brilliant, theist whose philosophy best serves as a foil to (...) Śankara's. Madhva, it almost seems, is studied not for his own philosophical virtues but as a means the better to appreciate Śankara's. I believe that we must weigh more carefully the dualist position, particularly its trenchant critique of non-dualism. We may discover in the process that Śankara, whatever else he was – brilliant stylist, mystic par excellence , deft polemicist – was not the originator or consolidator of anything like an internally consistent metaphysics. (shrink)

• We define a notion of order of indiscernibility type of a structure by analogy with Mitchell order on measures; we use this to define a hierarchy of strong axioms of infinity defined through normal filters, the α-weakly Erdős hierarchy. The filters in this hierarchy can be seen to be generated by sets of ordinals where these indiscernibility orders on structures dominate the canonical functions.• The limit axiom of this is that of greatly Erdős and we use it to calibrate (...) some strengthenings of the Chang property, one of which, CC+, is equiconsistent with a Ramsey cardinal, and implies that where K is the core model built with non-overlapping extenders — if it is rigid, and others which are a little weaker. As one corollary we have:TheoremIf then there is an inner model with a strong cardinal. • We define an α-Jónsson hierarchy to parallel the α-Ramsey hierarchy, and show that κ being α-Jónsson implies that it is α-Ramsey in the core model. (shrink)

Animalism is the view that human persons are human animals – biological organisms that belong to the species Homo sapiens. This paper concerns a family of modal objections to animalism based on the essentiality of personhood (persons and animals differ in their persistence conditions; psychological considerations are relevant for the persistence of persons, but not animals; persons, but not animals, are essentially psychological beings). Such arguments are typically used to support constitutionalism, animalism’s main neo-Lockean rival. The problem with such arguments (...) is that they wrongly assume that animalism is incompatible with our essentially being psychological beings. In this paper, I discuss a formulation of animalism, what I call psychologically-serious animalism, according to which human persons are essentially human animals and essentially persons. I show how the availability of this neglected formulation of animalism undermines objections based on the essentiality of personhood. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

What follows is a work of critical reconstruction of Camus' thought. It aims to answer to the wish Camus expressed in his later notebooks, that he at least be read closely. Specifically, I hope to do three things. In Part I, we will show how Camus' famous philosophy of the absurd represents a systematic scepticism whose closest philosophical predecessor is Descartes' method of doubt, and whose consequence, as in Descartes, is the discovery of a single, orienting certainty, on the basis (...) of which Camus would proceed to pass beyond the 'nihilism' that conservative critics continued to level against him (MS 34). Part II will unfold the central tenets of Camus' mature thought of rebellion, and show how Camus' central political claims follow from his para-Cartesian claim to have found an irreducible or 'invincible' basis for a post-metaphysical ethics, consistent with the most thoroughgoing epistemic scepticism. Part III then undertakes to show that the neoclassical rhetoric and positioning Camus claimed for his postwar thought—as a thought of moderation or mesure, and a renewed Greek or Mediterranean naturalism—is more than a stylistic pretension. It represents, so I argue, a singular amalgam of modern and philosophical classical motifs which makes Camus' voice nearly unique in twentieth century ideas, and all the more worth reconsidering today. So let us proceed. (shrink)

Carol Gilligan has identified two orientations to moral understanding; the dominant justice orientation and the under-valued care orientation. Based on her discernment of a voice of care, Gilligan challenges the adequacy of a deontological liberal framework for moral development and moral theory. This paper examines how the orientations of justice and care are played out in medical ethical theory. Specifically, I question whether the medical moral domain is adequately described by the norms of impartiality, universality, and equality that characterize the (...) liberal ideal. My analysis of justice -oriented medical ethics, focuses on the libertarian theory of H.T. Engelhardt and the contractarian theory of R.M. Veatch. I suggest that in the work of E.D. Pellegrino and D.C. Thomasma we find not only a more authentic representation of medical morality but also a project that is compatible with the care orientation's emphasis on human need and responsiveness to particular others. (shrink)

This inquiry is situated at the intersection of two enigmas. The first is the enigma of the status of Kant's practice of critique, which has been the subject of heated debate since shortly after the publication of the first edition of The Critique of Pure Reason. The second enigma is that of Foucault's apparent later 'turn' to Kant, and the label of 'critique', to describe his own theoretical practice. I argue that Kant's practice of 'critique' should be read, after Foucault, (...) as a distinctly modern practice in the care of the self, governed by Kant's famous rubric of the 'primacy of practical reason'. In this way, too, Foucault's later interest in Kant - one which in fact takes up a line present in his work from his complementary thesis on Kant's Anthropology - is cast into distinct relief. Against Habermas and others, I propose that this interest does not represent any 'break' or 'turn' in Foucault's work. In line with Foucault's repeated denials that he was interested after 1976 in a 'return to the ancients', I argue that Foucault's writings on critique represent instead both a deepening theoretical self-consciousness, and part of his project to forge an ethics adequate to the historical present.
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Edmund Pellegrino has argued that the dramatic changes in American health care call for critical reflection on the traditional norms governing the therapeutic relationship. This paper offers such reflection on the obligation to do no harm. Drawing on work by Beauchamp and Childress and Pellegrino and Thomasma, I argue that the libertarian model of medical ethics offered by Engelhardt cannot adequately sustain an obligation to do no harm. Because the obligation to do no harm is not based simply on a (...) negative duty of nonmaleficence but also on a positive duty of beneficence, I argue that it is best understood to derive from the fiduciary nature of the healing relationship. (shrink)

This paper examines Slavoj Zizek’s reading of Immanuel Kant. Its undergirding argument is that Zizek’s work as a whole- up to and including his politically radical statements, which have become more and more prominent since 1997- is conceivable as a project in the rereading of the Kantian ‘Copernican Revolution’ via Lacanian psychoanalysis. Critics now agree that Zizek’s orienting aim is to write a philosophy of politics, as more recent texts, like The Ticklish Subject make clear. (Kay, 2003; Sharpe, 2004; (...) Dean 2006) If Zizek’s philosophy is ultimately a philosophy of politics, however, Zizek’s political philosophy is grounded in a wider post or ‘neo’-Kantian philosophy of subjectivity.
The essay has three major parts. Part I gives Zizek’s reading of Kant on the subject of apperception. Part II recounts Zizek’s pivotal reading of Kant on the sublime, which he ties closely to the problematics of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ of the first Critique. Part III then examines Zizek’s conception of subjectivity in terms of the faculties (and especially the faculty of imagination) that Kant argues are involved in the transcendental constitution of objects in the first half of The Critique of Pure Reason.
In the Conclusion, the force of the paper’s subtitle—‘Politicising the Transcendental Turn’—will become manifest. I lay out three principles of Zizek’s ‘neoKantian/Hegelian’ ontology. These also make clear how his philosophy of political agency is grounded in this apparently suprapolitical or solely philosophical reading of Kant.
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Eleonore Stump has recently argued that Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy of mind is consistent with a nonreductive physicalist approach to human psychology. Iargue that by examining Aquinas’s account of the subsistence of the rational soul we can see that Thomistic dualism is inconsistent with physicalism of every variety. Specifically, his reliance on the claim that the mind has an operation per se spells trouble for any physicalist interpretation. After offering Stump’s reading of Aquinas and her case for the supposed consistency with (...) nonreductive physicalism, I use Aquinas’s discussion of the mind’s operation per se to argue that the human mind is incapable of being physically realized. To support this general argument, I offer a detailed examination of Stump’s use of two criteria of physicalism drawn from contemporary functional analyses of the mind and argue that both are inconsistent with Aquinas’s theory. (shrink)

Structural properties are properties something has in virtue of its mereological structure in that they are properties whose instantiation by a particular involves the parts of the particular being propertied and related in the appropriate way. Most of the literature on structural properties has focused on problems that arise from the pairing of two assumptions: (1) structural properties are universals and (2) structural properties are, in some sense, composed of the properties they involve. Chief among these difficulties is David Lewis’ (...) claim that the conjunction of (1) and (2) require non-unique composition and hence entail the denial of the extensionality of parthood: butane, as well as methane, is composed of the universals carbon, hydrogen and bonded, yet they are distinct properties. This is the extensionality problem. In this paper I discuss a different problem for the conjunction of (1) and (2) and propose a single solution to both problems. First, in section two, I introduce the idea of multiple decomposition and suggest that at least some structural properties are multiply decomposable. In section three, I introduce the “problem of multiple decompositions.” This problem arises when it seems possible for a structural property to be composed of some xs and some ys even when the xs ≠ ys. Finally, in section four I show how both problems admit of a single solution by focusing on the parthood relation that holds between structural properties and their constituents. While the solution I propose is theoretically costly, I argue that this cost should be paid to retain both (1) and (2). (shrink)

Eleonore Stump has recently argued that Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy of mind is consistent with a nonreductive physicalist approach to human psychology. Iargue that by examining Aquinas’s account of the subsistence of the rational soul we can see that Thomistic dualism is inconsistent with physicalism of every variety. Specifically, his reliance on the claim that the mind has an operation per se spells trouble for any physicalist interpretation. After offering Stump’s reading of Aquinas and her case for the supposed consistency with (...) nonreductive physicalism, I use Aquinas’s discussion of the mind’s operation per se to argue that the human mind is incapable of being physically realized. To support this general argument, I offer a detailed examination of Stump’s use of two criteria of physicalism drawn from contemporary functional analyses of the mind and argue that both are inconsistent with Aquinas’s theory. (shrink)

This essay is a critique of Derrida's ethical works, using Camus's last novella The Fall as a critical sounding board. It argues that a danger pertains to any such highly self-reflexive position as Derrida's: a danger that Camus identified in The Fall, and staged in his character, Jean-Baptiste Clamence. Clamence is a successful Parisian lawyer, on top of his personal and professional life, whose equanimity is troubled after he is the unwitting passer-by as a young woman suicides one night on (...) the Seine. After this time, he comes to consider all his former virtues as concealed vices. He also becomes acutely aware of what he terms the 'duplicity' of human beings as such. In Part I, I consider how Clamence's fall from innocence can be read 'with' Derrida's deconstructive registration of a 'double bind' pertaining to our standing vis-á-vis what he terms 'logocentrism'. I argue that Derrida's is a post-lapsarian philosophy, which challenges all attempts to construct closed conceptual systems that would confer an epistemic and/or moral certitude upon their expositors. In Part II, I then enter into a more detailed exposition of Derrida's 'later' works broaching friendship, the invitation, the gift, and other 'matters moral'. I read these texts in the light of an examination of what is involved, for Camus, in being a 'judge-penitent' (what Clamence in The Fall calls his profession). I suggest that Derrida runs the risk of a certain 'puritanism of difference' in his moral reflections, which defend the aporetic formulation: 'tout autre est tout autre' [every other is every bit other] (The Gift of Death). The problem is that, while Derrida's position allows one (everywhere) to say what one is against, it problematizes any affirmative moral stance. Like Clamence, who assumes the right to judge everyone else because he has subjected himself to a severe penitence, I suggest that we have a right to wonder whether Derrida's deconstructive critique of metaphysics can validate only endless repetitions of itself. Key Words: Camus • Derrida • ethics • The Fall • innocence • 'puritanism of difference. (shrink)

Predicate logic has proved a very useful tool for the expression of theories of natural language semantics. Hurford's suggestion that predicate–argument structures mirror certain properties of the human sensorimotor architecture can be seen as an explanation of why this is so. Although I support this view, I think that the correspondences that Hurford draws between linguistic and sensorimotor structures not only involve natural language semantics, but include some elements of natural language syntax as well.

Wittgenstein's scant remarks on the roots of language in instinctive behaviour have been both difficult to interpret and controversial, not least because they may seem to incline towards forms of explanation that elsewhere he eschewed. Nevertheless, they are of importance in philosophy, not least because they bear upon age-old questions of foundationalism and concept-formation. In a recent Discussion Note in this journal, H. O. Mounce is not only attracted by but also champions such explanation – though he finds Wittgenstein's own (...) “explanations” inadequate in important respects, as evidenced in his misguided criticisms of Moore in On Certainty and in his behaviouristic remarks on the roots of the “cause and effect” language-game. In this response, I try to identify the philosophical roots of this attraction and the points at which Mounce's account departs from the elucidatory and non-explanatory path established by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's scant remarks on the roots of language in instinctive behaviour have been both difficult to interpret and controversial, not least because they may seem to incline towards forms of explanation that elsewhere he eschewed. Nevertheless, they are of importance in philosophy, not least because they bear upon age-old questions of foundationalism and concept-formation. In a recent Discussion Note in this journal, H. O. Mounce is not only attracted by but also champions such explanation – though he finds Wittgenstein's own (...) “explanations” inadequate in important respects, as evidenced in his misguided criticisms of Moore in On Certainty and in his behaviouristic remarks on the roots of the “cause and effect” language-game. In this response, I try to identify the philosophical roots of this attraction and the points at which Mounce's account departs from the elucidatory and non-explanatory path established by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that to understand Plato's philosophy, we must understand why Plato presented this philosophy as dialogues: namely, works of literature. Plato's writing of philosophy corresponds to his understanding of philosophy as a transformative way of life, which must nevertheless present itself politically, to different types of people. As a model, I examine Lacan's famous reading of Plato's Symposium in his seminar of transference love in psychoanalysis. Unlike many other readings, Lacan focuses on Alcibiades’ famous description of (...) what caused his desire for Socrates: the supposition that beneath Socrates’ Silenus-like language and appearance, there were agalmata, treasures, hidden in his belly. I argue that this image of Socrates can also stand as an image for how we ought to read and to teach Plato's philosophy: as harbouring different levels of insight, couched in Plato's philosophy as literature. (shrink)

Abstract Sankara's philosophy fails definitively at the point where he leaves the human experience??sinning and suffering??unaccounted for. What in each of us, he asks, sins and suffers? Is it the antahkarana, the ?mental organ? giving rise to the series of mental states (buddins) that file by illumined by the atman? Impossible, he says, for the antahkarana by itself is material (jada,) and therefore unconscious (acit). Then is it the ?tman, upon which the antahkarana is superimposed? Inconceivable, he says, for the (...) atman is identical with Brahman, and Brahman is by definition pure bliss?consciousness, as far removed from sin and suffering as can be imagined. Then is the atman in conjunction with the antahkarana?a partnership that Sankara calls the jiva (or soul)?the sinner and sufferer? Yes, he says, as long as you remember that the sin and suffering are ultimately illusory, as illusory as the antahkarana itself. I show why Sankara's answer fails and what the failure implies, then suggest a fruitful way to approach Sankara and teach his philsophy to our students. (shrink)

This paper stages an argument in five premises: 1. That the insight to which post-structuralist ethics responds—which is that there is an 'unmistakable particularity of concrete persons or social groups'—leads theorists who base their moral theory upon it into a problematic parallel to that charted by Kant in his analysis of the sublime. 2. That Kant's analysis of the sublime divides its experience into what I call two 'moments', the second of which involves a reflexive move which the post-structuralists are (...) unwilling to sanction in the ontological and/or ethical realm, even if they are performatively committed to doing it. 3. That, drawing on the parallel established in 1, it could be argued that the same reflexive move as Kant describes in the second 'moment' of the sublime is also at the heart of our moral experience, wherein we are faced by the Otherness of concrete Others. This amounts to the argument that asking Others to follow an impersonal or 'dumb' law which fails to do justice to their noumenal Otherness is at the same time the only possible way to respect this Otherness. 4. That what game theory shows us is that, at the limits of our ability to calculatively predict the conduct of other subjects, the only 'rational' thing to do is precisely to presume the pre-existence of impersonal social norms regulating our own conduct and that of others. 5. That, accordingly, to borrow a formulation from Slavoj Zizek, respect for the Other is always respect for their 'castration'- that is, respect for their capacity to follow norms that do not directly do justice to their concrete particularity but which, in this very 'dumbness', let this Otherness indirectly show itself. In the conclusion, I reflect on what this argument does, and upon its limits—that is, what it does not. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the notion of accountability and its historical evolution in health care. Using medical mistakes and adverse patient outcomes as my focus, I examine the interests served by particular models of accountability and argue for a model of collective fiduciary responsibility in U.S. health care today.

This paper explores the complex relationship between the plant evolutionist G. Ledyard Stebbins and the animal evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky. The manner in which the plant evolution was brought into line, synthesized, or rendered consistent with the understanding of animal evolution (and especially insect evolution) is explored, especially as it culminated with the publication of Stebbins's 1950 book Variation and Evolution in Plants. The paper explores the multi-directional traffic of influence between Stebbins and Dobzhansky, but also their social and professional networks (...) that linked plant evolutionists like Stebbins with Edgar Anderson, Carl Epling, and the 'Carnegie team' of Jens Clausen, David Keck, and William Hiesey with collaborators on the animal side like I. Michael Lerner, Sewall Wright and L.C. Dunn and other 'architects' of the synthesis like Ernst Mayr, Julian Huxley and George Gaylord Simpson. The compatibility in training, work styles, methodologies, goals, field sites, levels of analysis, and even choice of organismic systems is explored between Stebbins and Dobzhansky. Finally, the extent to which coevolution between plants and insects is reflected in the relationship is explored, as is the power dynamic in the relationship between two of the most visible figures associated with the evolutionary synthesis. (shrink)

This paper consists of two parts: the first is a brief historical summary of relevant discussions to date involving members of the panel; the second part is a discussion of the new contextualism within science studies, the consequent move towards the cultural study of scientific knowledge, and what this means for intellectual/cultural historians of science in terms of specific procedures. Thus, my role on this panel-as I understand it-- will be to play the sociologically and philosophically minded historian to the (...) sociologically and historically minded philosophers as all of us attempt to adapt cross-disciplinary procedures to our specific disciplinary needs. (shrink)

As a psychologist working with individuals, couples, and groups over the past 25 years, I have become convinced that group therapy holds effective possibilities for treatment that neither individual nor couples therapy can match. In theorizing about why group work holds such potency for changing lives, I have come to place it in a Sartrean context. I believe that group therapy offers a greater possibility for revolutionary praxis than individual or couples therapy. In saying this, I am not talking about (...) political or social revolution, but rather the possibility for radical change in a person's orientation toward the world, which groups tend to provoke and reinforce in a way that is more difficult in other forms of therapy. Sartre's concept of groups in his later philosophy, especially in Search for a Method and the Critique of Dialectical Reason, can help us to understand better this transformative power of groups. Such power is not always positive, of course, as Sartre himself recognizes—and as social and political history so amply demonstrates. But the nature of therapy groups is such that they at least have the potential for positive results. (shrink)

I argue that David Oelhoffen's 2014 film Far From Men, while departing from the letter of Camus' 1957 story, “The Guest/Host”, does remarkable cinematic justice to its spirit. Oelhoffen's Daru and the Arab character Mohamed, it is suggested, represent embodiments of Camus’ idealised Algerian “first men”, in the vision Camus was developing in Le Premier Homme at the time of his death in January 1960. Part 1 frames the film in light of Camus’ “The Guest/Host”, and Part 2 frames Camus’ (...) story in light of Camus’ agnonised struggle to come to terms with the Algerian situation. Part 3 makes the case that Oelhoffen's departures from Camus’ original story present in cinematic form Camus’ ideal of a post-colonial, post-ethnic solidarity between people, predicated on the overcoming of all arche-ideological fantasies of untained prelapsarian community. (shrink)

I shall describe yet another problem about fiction, similar in some respects to the ‘paradoxes of fiction’ on which so much ink has been spilt over the last quarter of a century. Since fictions are ‘made up’, what considerations stop us from making up our own endings to a fiction which is incomplete or whose ending we have lost or missed or whose ending is unpalatable?

In her newest book, Alex Sharpe makes a persuasive case against the bringing of sexual offence prosecutions on the basis of “gender identity fraud”. Adopting a perspective in which queer and gender non-conforming identities are acknowledged and centred rather than doubted and dissected, Sharpe aims to destabilise the conceptual foundations upon which such prosecutions depend. In this review I place Sharpe’s contribution in its legal context, and offer an overview of her argument along with some reservations.

In this note I have presented the essentials of a view of how laws are falsified, a view which has been held by some notable philosophers but which is radically opposed to that of Professor Popper. I have not scrupled to ?improve? upon it, so the view of no one philosopher is presented. I try to show that an interesting and convincing account of scientific simplicity is implicit in the theory and I conclude by suggesting how we can bring the (...) argument to bear on the problem of the logical status of laws of nature, showing that through their manner of falsifiability, laws share some characteristics with necessary statements as well as with empirical generalizations. (shrink)

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders? And even if one were to suddenly take me to its heart, I would vanish into its stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear, and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains to destroy us...."So what are you telling me, there's no God, but there's you?"Peter Weir's film Fearless appeared in 1993 to critical acclaim and middling (...) box office fortune. The film draws on all of Weir's considerable art, a stunning sound track, and powerful performances by Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez, and Isabella Rossellini. Based on the... (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas’ aesthetics has been critically discussed much less than other components of his philosophy. In one way, this is not surprising, given Levinas’ wider post-war project. Nevertheless, in the late 1940s, the very time his influential later philosophy was taking shape, Levinas published a series of papers on literary criticism, and on the nature of art. istents and Existence, the text where Levinas first announces his project of “leaving the climate” of Heidegger’s thought, contains in its heart a remarkable (...) discussion of modernist painting. 2 Levinas’ aesthetics, moreover, represents a provocative standpoint within modern aesthetic theory in its own right. As such, it stands as a partial corrective to the comparative and surely surprising – dearth of phenomenological analyses of art, which at the same time contrasts markedly with Heidegger’s renowned position in “The Origin of the Work of Art.” From a critical perspective, however, an examination of Levinas’ aesthetics is interesting in another, and perhaps deeper way. As critics have intimated, 3 Levinas’ aesthetics arguably marks what could be called a “supplement” within his texts. As is well known, Levinas’ post-war works defend his own post-Husserlian version of what Kant called “the primacy of practical reason” which he calls – in a more classical vein – “ethics as first philosophy.” 4 In this light, Levinas’ texts feature an axiological devaluation of aesthetics in comparison with the ethical encounter with the Other. What this paper will argue – in line with but beyond Derrida’s masterful “Violence and Metaphysics” 5 – is that aesthetic experience as analysed by Levinas has an uncanny structural proximity to his analyses of “ethics.” And recognition of this primacy might well cause us to reconsider Levinas’ classically “Greek” as much as Judaic devaluation of aesthetics as one dimension of human experience. Part I takes a poem as the basis to construct Levinas’ account of the aesthetical or art-quality of artworks. Part II examines what Levinas takes his analysis of the work of art to point towards in terms of a more general [de]ontology, wherein the reality given in phenomenological perception is doubled by its own “shadow.” Part III questions not Levinas’ aesthetics but how it signifies in terms of his avowed project of elevating ethics as “first philosophy.” –. (shrink)

Michael Ruse's writings explore what sociobiology says about morality. Further, he claims that sociobiology undermines the base for Christian morality. After responding to criticisms of Ruse, especially those of Arthur Peacocke, I lay a base for meeting his challenge.

Compatibilists respond to the problem of causal exclusion for nonreductive physicalism by rejecting the exclusionist’s ban on overdetermination. By the compatibilist’s lights there are two forms of overdetermination, one that’s problematic and another that is entirely benign. Furthermore, multiple causation by “tightly related” causes requires only the benign form of overdetermination. Call this the tight relation strategy for avoiding problematic forms of overdetermination. To justify the tight relation strategy, modal compatibilists appeal to a widely accepted counterfactual test. The argument of (...) this paper is that the counterfactual test fails to legitimize the tight relation strategy as it fails to adequately distinguish between problematic and benign overdetermination. Contrary to modal compatibilists, modal dependence does not suffice for benignity. I conclude by arguing that adequately addressing overdetermination worries requires a much heavier metaphysical burden than modal compatibilists have typically recognized. (shrink)

For John Ziman, 'the essence of the human condition' is the 'two-way, interactive character' of interpersonal relationships, and he argues that '[t]he bias towards atomic individualism not only bedevils the human and social sciences: it also distorts the whole philosophy of nature.' But in spite of his recognition of the importance of 'escap[ing] from the Cartesian cage' of the 'solipsist stance', Ziman himself has not entirely escaped the influence of a residual Cartesianism. This is evident in his tendency to over-intellectualize (...) the character of interactive relationships with talk of 'a theory of mind' and to imply that such relationships are only possible with other people like ourselves. Both of these ideas stem from the Cartesian position that knowledge starts from an introspective awareness of one's own mental states and that the mental states of others can only be inferred by analogy. Having first observed that my mental state x is accompanied by behaviour y, my observation of behaviour y in another is taken as an indication that he is experiencing mental state x. I will argue that our ability to understand the behaviour of others depends neither on a theory of mind nor on their being 'like us'. (shrink)

To support faculty who teach sections of a new general education course that focuses on ethical reasoning skills, I offered a three-day Ethics Across the Curriculum (EAC) workshop. I wanted to ground the faculty development experience by framing it in terms of expected student learning. In other words, I structured the workshop so as to put faculty in the position of students for the workshop. This student-based experience was supported by having a student serve as co-facilitator of the workshop. The (...) decision to make the EAC workshop a faculty-student collaboration proved to be the most important one I made in the design of the workshop. This essay will document parts of this faculty-student collaboration and review some of the important faculty learning that took place as a result of student involvement and leadership. (shrink)

In his book _The Moral Case against Religious Belief_, the author argued that some important virtues cease to be virtues at all when set in a religious context, and that, consequently, a religious life is, in many respects, not a good life to lead. In this sequel he takes up the theme again because 'the intervening decade has brought home to us the terrible results of religious conviction'. He writes in the Introduction: ‘Most religious people are conventionally devout. Religion does (...) not play a huge part in their everyday lives and their moral life is not continuously under its gaze. I regard this as a thoroughly good thing.... My suspicion is that the more intense the religious devotion the more the morality is in danger.’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article claims that today’s reading of Francis Bacon’s Essayes as a solely literary text turns upon philosophers’ having largely lost access to the renaissance culture which Bacon inherited, and the renaissance debates about the role of rhetoric in philosophy in which Bacon participated. The article has two parts. Building upon Ronald Cranes’ seminal contribution on the place of the Essayes in Bacon’s ‘great instauration’, Part 1 examines how the subjects of Bacon’s Essayes need to be understood as Baconian contributions (...) to ‘morrall philosophye’ and ‘civile knowledge’, rather than rhetorical or poetic exercises. In Part 2, contesting the interpretations of Crane, Fish, Ferrari and others, I will argue that the Essayes’ striking rhetorical form needs to be conceptualized in light of Bacon’s renaissance account of the ‘duty and office’ of rhetoric in any moral and civil philosophy that would look to actively cure mental afflictions and cultivate the virtuous or canny conduct it extols. Bacon’s Essayes, in this light, are best understood as a legatee and transformation of the popular early modern genre of books of apothegms and maxims designed to guide conduct. (shrink)