Moral and social philosophers often assume that humans beings are and ought to be autonomous. This tradition of individualism, or atomism, underlies many of our assumptions about ethics and law; it provides a legitimating framework for liberal democracy and free market capitalism. In this powerful book, David Weissman argues against atomistic ontologies, affirming instead that all of reality is social. Every particular is a system created by the reciprocal causal relations of its parts, he explains. Weissman formulates an original metaphysics (...) of nature that remains true to what is known through the empirical sciences, and he applies his hypothesis to a range of topics in psychology, morals, sociology, and politics. The author contends that systems are sometimes mutually independent, but many systems—human ones especially—are joined in higher order systems, such as families, friendships, businesses, and states, that are overlapping or nested. Weissman tests this schematic claim with empirical examples in chapters on persons, sociality, and value. He also considers how the scheme applies to particular issues related to deliberation, free speech, conflict, and ecology. (shrink)

Descartes' ideas not only changed the course of Western philosophy but also led to or transformed the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, physics and mathematics, political theory and ethics, psychoanalysis, and literature and the arts. This book reprints Descartes' major works, _Discourse on Method_ and _Meditations_, and presents essays by leading scholars that explore his contributions in each of those fields and place his ideas in the context of his time and our own. There are chapters by David Weissman on metaphysics (...) and psychoanalysis, John Post on epistemology, Lou Massa on physics and mathematics, William T. Bluhm on politics and ethics, and Thomas Pavel on literature and art. These essays are accompanied by others by David Weissman and by Stephen Toulmin that introduce the idea of intellectual lineages, discuss the period in which Descartes wrote, and reexamine the premises of his philosophy in light of contemporary philosophical, political, and social thinking. (shrink)

In_ Dispositional Properties_, David Weissman attacks a problem central to the philosophy of mind and, by implication, to the theory of being: Are there potentialities, capabilities, which dispose the mind to think in one way rather than another? The volume is arranged in the form of four arguments that converge upon a single point. First, there is an intricate discussion of the shortcomings of Hume's account of mind as ideas and impressions. Next comes a brief treatment of the arguments of (...) some of Weissman's contemporaries, including Carnap and Braithwaite. Third, Weissman discusses Wittgenstein's theories of learning and knowledge. Finally, there is a full discussion of Aristotle and his doctrine of potentialities. The question this book ultimately raises is how to steer between a doctrine of mind as no more than a series of acts, on the one hand, and a doctrine of mind as a kind of unitary object, on the other. The solution is to show first of all that there must be a potentiality in the universe, and then to show clearly and in detail that the mind is shot through with that potentiality. __. (shrink)

Differentiates inquiry from interpretation in order to secure a foundation for truth.

The assessment and management of pain is a significant public health problem in the United States. Long-term care facilities face unique barriers and challenges to pain management due to the large population of cognitively impaired residents, little physician contact and poor pain education for nurses and nurse assistants. In addition, common misconceptions about pain and pain treatment in the elderly along with health professional and resident fears of addiction and drug toxicity, add to the problem of pain management. The basic (...) principles of pain treatment in long-term care are identical to all other health care settings – utilizing a combination of drug and non-drug treatments. Recent efforts to institutionalize improved pain management practices, through assessment procedures and defined pain management policies, standards and education programming, is a promising venue for systemically improving pain treatment in long-term care settings. (shrink)

DAVID WEISSMAN DISPOSITIONAL PROPERTIES FOREWORD BY George Kimball ...

This book shows how idealism is a consequence of the intuitionist method.

_Traces the history of mind-body dualism._.

This book is an explication and defense of the author's modal realism. There are possible worlds and individuals, he says, different from the possibles realized in this world of ours. The reality of the many possibilities is a hypothesis needed for explaining the representational character of our language, as when we say that there might be talking donkeys, though there are none. It is the reality of these possibles, as worlds and individuals, that Lewis defends.

These are seven essays, four of them published before and rewritten, on issues fundamental to Leibniz's metaphysics and theory of knowledge. Rescher summarizes the matters discussed.

"Wherever possible," said Bertrand Russell, "substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities." Metaphysics in this style is the activity of formulating and applying a calculus. We are to supply a list of primitive ideas, with a specification of the rules for combining them, and a sample of complexes created by combining these simples. Every obscure idea is to be reformulated as the complex deriving from these simples. The values impelling us include economy, clarity, decidability, and fruitfulness.

Eternal Possibilities: A Neutral Ground for Meaning and Existence builds on David Weissman's earlier Dispositional Properties and makes a signal contribution to the study of metaphysics.

Some of us might think that a logician turned metaphysical has lost his way. Everyone else can enjoy the persistence and rigor of this daring book. The Faces of Existence demands that we find a place, within a physicalist ontology and a realist theory of knowledge, for many of the topics which normally baffle those theories. There are chapters or sections about subjectivity, value, God, and metaphor, all within a context where there is said to be no difference within these (...) domains without a conditioning physical difference. This is a non-reductionist physicalism: each of these faces is said to be an autonomous domain of meaning and truth. (shrink)

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein espouses a theory of mind and knowledge that is like Plato’s: he exhibits the theory as he argues that propositional signs picture states of affairs. That is the conclusion for which I shall argue in this paper.

ONE ASSUMPTION ABOUT METAPHYSICS is often shared by those who renounce it. Metaphysical theories are not true, they say, because of being neither true nor false. Opponents of one sort excoriate the theories as meaningless. Others say that truth and falsity are irrelevant to metaphysics, as they are to literature. Like novelists and playwrights, we metaphysicians are said to formulate the stories used for thinking about possible worlds, such as the imaginary ones of fiction and this actual world. Metaphysics, this (...) implies, differs from literature only because its stories have a wider scope. Where novelists devote themselves to incidents and personalities, we metaphysicians tell stories that emphasize the categorial features of a world. Either way, these activities are motivated by a single objective: we formulate interpretations in order to use them for creating thinkable worlds. All of the intelligibility credited to any possible world--all its differentiations and relations--originate within these interpretations. But no one should suppose that interpretations are true or false; for these conceptualizations are not the representations of preexisting states of affairs. They are, instead, the very condition for the existence of possible worlds. Why? Because these worlds exist only as they are prefigured within, and created by, the interpretations used for thinking them. (shrink)

I suggest that we may settle the question of their relatedness by way of two arguments. The first argument holds that two worlds might be identical in structure but different in their dispositions and subsequent behaviors. This argument loosens the relation of dispositional to structural properties; but, though plausible in itself, the argument has disastrous implications for the uniformity of processes within each world. The second argument supports our intuitive belief that the dependency of a thing’s dispositions upon its structure (...) must be complete, e.g., as the knife’s powers for cutting devolve only upon the fine edge of its rigid blade. This second argument is also a defence against the chaotic implications of the previous one. But it has these two effects only because of affirming that structural properties are, more accurately, geometrical-structural properties. Together, these arguments justify the conclusion that no theory of dispositions is comprehensive, unless it provides for these two factors: Geometrical-structural properties are necessary and sufficient to determine what a thing’s dispositions shall be; but these structural properties are distinguishable from dispositions as properties constitutive of a thing are different from its qualifications for relatedness, and especially causal relatedness, to other things. (shrink)

Abstract: The quality of peer-reviewed journals is vulnerable to the absence of declared standards for book reviews. Reviewers should agree to several simple rules before undertaking to review books and while writing them. Sensitivity to an author's aims is one requirement; familiarity with an author's previous and relevant publications is another. Critical judgment is always appropriate, but it can be set apart from an account of the ideas reviewed.

Traditional moral theory usually has either of two emphases: virtuous moral character or principles for distributing duties or goods. “Zone morality” introduces a third: families and businesses are systems created by the causal reciprocities of their members. These relations embody the duties and permissions of a system's moral code. Core systems satisfy basic interests and needs; we move easily among them, hardly noticing that moral demands vary from system to system. Moral conflicts arise because of discord within or among systems (...) but also because morality has three competing sites: personal attitudes and practices (benevolence or hostility), the moral codes of systems, and regulative principles that enhance social cohesion. A strong church or central government reduces conflict by imposing its rules. A democracy responds by encouraging persons and systems to participate in forums where claims are made; it promises fairness by requiring that all satisfy its legal procedures. (shrink)

Recognition of the harms done by free speech is a function of the social ontology presupposed. An atomist ontology implies that the harms suffered are restricted to individual people. This paper suggests an alternate ontology—one that describes systems established by the causal reciprocities of their proper parts. It proposes a consequentialist moral theory, and considers the harms suffered by these systems when speech exposes their internal, otherwise private, behaviors or features, when speech is malicious and false, and when speech is (...) monopolistic. Does the proposed ontology have objectionable implications for public policy? Alternative answers are considered briefly. (shrink)

Abstract: Science and practical life strive to identify the generating or constraining conditions for the existence and character of whatever states of affairs concern them. Yet some conditions for phenomena within nature or for nature itself may be unidentifiable because there are no empirical data testing hypotheses about them or because relevant data are inaccessible. Three conditions external to nature are considered: God, eternal possibilities, and events priori to or consequent on the Big Bang. Empirical data confirming the existence and (...) character of the first two are lacking; evidence relevant to the inception and effects of the third is inaccessible. Nature has conditions that will likely remain unknowable; the world is likely to be more complicated than we can know. Speculations about the existence and character of its silent conditions won't be deterred, though the absence of justifying empirical data entails that speculation doesn't justify belief. (shrink)