This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Marx launched a revolution in social thought that has been largely ignored. We locate this revolution in the context of two major reassessments of modern philosophy, Heidegger’s Being and Time and Donald Davidson’s new anti-subjectivism. We argue that the philosophical significance of Marx’s critique of the capitalist mode of production—his critique of the bourgeois horizon—has been overlooked. The paper exposes the bourgeois mindset that runs through political economy, “traditional” Marxism, and much of modern and postmodern philosophy. Bourgeois thinking is (...) marked by a series of “purist splits,” conceptual distinctions that are mishandled as actual separations: conceptual vs. empirical, conceptual scheme vs. thing in itself, individual vs. society, production vs. distribution, preference vs. the preferred object, and subjective vs. objective. Marx shows how capitalist social forms that produce the notion of “value added” inculcate the purist, bifurcating bourgeois horizon. (shrink)

Marx launched a revolution in social thought that has been largely ignored. We locate this revolution in the context of two major reassessments of modern philosophy, Heidegger’s Being and Time and Donald Davidson’s new anti-subjectivism. We argue that the philosophical significance of Marx’s critique of the capitalist mode of production—his critique of the bourgeois horizon—has been overlooked. The paper exposes the bourgeois mindset that runs through political economy, “traditional” Marxism, and much of modern and postmodern philosophy. Bourgeois thinking is (...) marked by a series of “purist splits,” conceptual distinctions that are mishandled as actual separations: conceptual vs. empirical, conceptual scheme vs. thing in itself, individual vs. society, production vs. distribution, preference vs. the preferred object, and subjective vs. objective. Marx shows how capitalist social forms that produce the notion of “value added” inculcate the purist, bifurcating bourgeois horizon. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Appeal to Immediate Experience: Philosophic Method in Bradley Whitehead and Dewey The insight and guidance of Professor John Herman Randall, Jr. have made this book possible. Rather than merely acknowledge my debt to him I would like to express my gratitude here for his unfailing kindness, his penetrating criticism of my efforts, and the help he has given me in clarifying the complex problems of this subject-matter. I wish also to acknowledge the kindness of the following publishers (...) in permitting me to quote from their publications: F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, by Allen and Unwin Ltd.; J. H. Randall, Jr. and J. Buchler, Philosophy: An Introduction, by Barnes Noble, Inc.; F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality and Essays on Truth and Reality, by Clarendon Press, Oxford; F. J. E. Woodbridge, Nature and Mind, by Columbia University Press; R. W. Church, Bradley's Dialectic, by Cornell University Press; John Dewey, The Man and His Philosophy, by Harvard University Press; J. Dewey, Logic and Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, by Henry Holt Company; R. Kagey, F. H. Bradley's Logic, by R. Kagey; J. Dewey, Nature in Experience and Whitehead's Philosophy, by Longmans, Green & Co.; A. N. Whitehead, Symbolism, Modes of Thought, Adventures of Ideas, Process and Reality, T. M. Forsyth, English Philosophy, and J. H. Muirhead, Bradley's Place in Philosophy, by the Macmillan Company; A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature-and An Equiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, by the Macmillan Company and the Cambridge University Press; H. B. Haldane, Human Experience, by John Murray Ltd.; J. Goheen, Whitehead's Theory of Value, by Northwestern University Press; J. Dewey, Experience and Nature, by Open Court Publishing Co.; G. Santayana, Realm of Essence and Scepticism and Animal Faith, by Charles Scribner's Sons; and J. Dewey, "How is Mind to be Known?" The Objectivism-Subjectivism of Modern Philosophy," M. Gross, The Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead," and M. C. Otto, The Journal of Philosophy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Appeal to Immediate Experience: Philosophic Method in Bradley Whitehead and Dewey The insight and guidance of Professor John Herman Randall, Jr. have made this book possible. Rather than merely acknowledge my debt to him I would like to express my gratitude here for his unfailing kindness, his penetrating criticism of my efforts, and the help he has given me in clarifying the complex problems of this subject-matter. I wish also to acknowledge the kindness of the following publishers (...) in permitting me to quote from their publications: F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, by Allen and Unwin Ltd.; J. H. Randall, Jr. and J. Buchler, Philosophy: An Introduction, by Barnes Noble, Inc.; F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality and Essays on Truth and Reality, by Clarendon Press, Oxford; F. J. E. Woodbridge, Nature and Mind, by Columbia University Press; R. W. Church, Bradley's Dialectic, by Cornell University Press; John Dewey, The Man and His Philosophy, by Harvard University Press; J. Dewey, Logic and Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, by Henry Holt Company; R. Kagey, F. H. Bradley's Logic, by R. Kagey; J. Dewey, Nature in Experience and Whitehead's Philosophy, by Longmans, Green & Co.; A. N. Whitehead, Symbolism, Modes of Thought, Adventures of Ideas, Process and Reality, T. M. Forsyth, English Philosophy, and J. H. Muirhead, Bradley's Place in Philosophy, by the Macmillan Company; A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature-and An Equiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, by the Macmillan Company and the Cambridge University Press; H. B. Haldane, Human Experience, by John Murray Ltd.; J. Goheen, Whitehead's Theory of Value, by Northwestern University Press; J. Dewey, Experience and Nature, by Open Court Publishing Co.; G. Santayana, Realm of Essence and Scepticism and Animal Faith, by Charles Scribner's Sons; and J. Dewey, "How is Mind to be Known?" The Objectivism-Subjectivism of Modern Philosophy," M. Gross, The Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead," and M. C. Otto, The Journal of Philosophy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Finally, in four chapters greatly expanded for this edition, Griffin considers the latest scientific research on animal consciousness, pro and con, and...

Semmelweis’s investigations of puerperal fever are some of the most interesting in the history of medicine. This paper considers Hempel’s analysis of the Semmelweis case. It argues that this analysis is inadequate and needs to be supplemented by some Kuhnian ideas. Kuhn’s notion of paradigm needs to be modified to apply to medicine in order to take account of the classification schemes involved in medical theorising. However with a suitable modification it provides an explanation of Semmelweis’s failure which is argued (...) to be superior to some of the external reasons often given. Despite this success in applying Kuhn’s ideas to medicine, it is argued that these ideas must be further modified to take account of the fact that medicine is not a natural science but primarily a practice designed to prevent and cure diseases. (shrink)

In American Heat, Donald Brown critically analyzes the U.S. response to global warming, inviting readers to examine the implicit morality of the U.S position, and ultimately to help lead the world toward an equitable sharing of the burdens and benefits of protecting the global environment. In short, Brown argues that an ethical focus on global environmental matters is the key to achieving a globally acceptable solution.

Semmelweis’s investigations of puerperal fever are some of the most interesting in the history of medicine. This paper considers Hempel’s analysis of the Semmelweis case. It argues that this analysis is inadequate and needs to be supplemented by some Kuhnian ideas. Kuhn’s notion of paradigm needs to be modified to apply to medicine in order to take account of the classification schemes involved in medical theorising. However with a suitable modification it provides an explanation of Semmelweis’s failure which is argued (...) to be superior to some of the external reasons often given. Despite this success in applying Kuhn’s ideas to medicine, it is argued that these ideas must be further modified to take account of the fact that medicine is not a natural science but primarily a practice designed to prevent and cure diseases. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscientists have anticipated the union of neural and behavioral science with ethics (Gazzaniga 2005). The identification of an ethical rule—the dictum that we should treat others in the manner in which we would like to be treated—apparently widespread among human societies suggests a dependence on fundamental human brain mechanisms. Now, studies of neural and molecular mechanisms that underlie the feeling of fear suggest how this form of ethical behavior is produced. Counterintuitively, a new theory presented here states that it (...) is actually a loss of social information that leads to sharing others' fears with our own, thus allowing us to treat others as we would like to be treated. Adding to that hypothetical mechanism is the well-studied predilection toward affiliative behaviors. Thus, even as Chomsky hypothesizes that humans are predisposed to utter grammatical sentences, we propose that humans are 'wired for reciprocity'. However, these two neural forces supporting ethical behavior do not explain individual or collective violence. At any given moment, the ability to produce behavior that obeys this ethical rule is proposed to depend on a balance between mechanisms for prosocial and antisocial behaviors. That balance results not only from genetic influences on temperament but also from environmental effects particularly during critical neonatal and pubertal periods. (shrink)

This volume is part one of a two-volume set. Volume I: From the Puritans through Transcendentalism. Volume I: From the St. Louis Hegelians through C. I. Lewis.

In 2014, Morten Tønnessen and the editors of Biosemiotics officially launched the Biosemiotic Glossary Project in the effort to: solidify and detail established terminology being used in the field of Biosemiotics for the benefit of newcomers and outsiders; and to by involving the entire biosemiotics community, to contribute innovatively in the theoretical development of biosemiotic theory and vocabulary via the discussions that result. Biosemiotics, in its concern with explaining the emergence of, and the relations between, both biological ‘end-directedness’ and semiotic (...) ‘about-ness’, would seem a fertile field for re-conceptualizing the notion of intentionality. The present project is part of a systematic attempt to survey and to document the current thinking about this concept in our field. (shrink)

Donald Broom argues that morality and the central components of religion are of great value, and presents two central ideas. He asserts that morality has a biological foundation and has evolved as a consequence of natural selection, and that religions are essentially the structures supporting morality. Many philosophers and theologians write about morality and its origins without reference to biological processes such as evolution. Likewise, biologists discuss phenomena of importance to human morality and religion without taking account of the (...) thoughts of others on these subjects. (shrink)

The _Philebus_ is hard to reconcile with standard interpretations of Plato’s philosophy and in this pioneering work Donald Davidson, seeks to take the _Philebus _at face value and to reassess Plato’s late philosophy in the light of the results. The author maintains that the approach to ethics in the _Philebus _represents a considerable return to the methodology of the earlier dialogues. He emphasizes Plato’s reversion to the Socratic elenchus and connects it with the startling reappearance of Socrates as the (...) leading voice in the _Philebus_. (shrink)

This paper presents a computer model of cortical broadcast and competition based on spiking neurons and inspired by the hypothesis of a global neuronal workspace underlying conscious information processing in the human brain. In the model, the hypothesised workspace is realised by a collection of recurrently inter-connected regions capable of sustaining and disseminating a reverberating spatial pattern of activation. At the same time, the workspace remains susceptible to new patterns arriving from outlying cortical populations. Competition among these cortical populations for (...) influence on the workspace is effected by a combination of mutual inhibition and top-down amplification. (shrink)

Faced with the liability of newness, a scarcity of resources, and concerns of survival, new firms frequently encounter difficult ethical decisions and might be pressured to make choices that run counter to the tenets of more developed ethical and moral reasoning. This study explores the impact of newness and entrepreneurial orientation on the ethical climate of firms. Data collected from 304 individuals across 37 firms indicated that firm newness was more strongly related to ethical climate than was an entrepreneurial orientation. (...) Results also revealed that firm newness may be usefully conceptualized in both continuous and categorical terms, with each operationalization holding a somewhat different relationship with climate. Finally, results revealed that firm size was related to several types of ethical climates. (shrink)

Given the interest in analytic theology circles about following “conciliar Christology,” this article describes three different patterns by which patristics scholars have interpreted the relations between the Ecumenical Councils in the past 150 years, patterns that I label as “pendulum swing,” “synthesis of emphases,” and “Cyrillian/traditional.” The article argues that whereas much analytic theology work on Christology belongs in the “synthesis of emphases” pattern, the ascendant paradigm in patristics scholarship is Cyrillian/traditional. It makes a case that the councils understood themselves (...) as moving in a straight line of development from one to another and as proclaiming a broadly Cyrillian Christology, in which the person of the Incarnate Logos is the subject of all actions and experiences of the incarnate Christ. Given the significance of this issue for analytic theology discussions of Christ’s human freedom (is it the freedom of the human nature to act independently of the Logos, or the human freedom of the Logos to accomplish his earthly mission?), analytic theologians would do well to be aware of these currents in patristics scholarship on the Ecumenical Councils. (shrink)

It has been suggested, recently and not so recently, by a number of analytic epistemologists that reliabilist and externalist accounts of justification and knowledge are inadequate responses to the goals of traditional epistemology and other goals of inquiry. But philosophers of science decry reliabilism and externalism because they are connected to traditional, analytic epistemology, an outmoded and utopian form of inquiry. Clearly, both groups of critics cannot be right. I think both groups are guilty of conceptual confusions that, once clarified, (...) should allow the naturalization project to stand forth in a rather attractive light. (shrink)

Alfred North Whiteheadrsquo;s critique of modern naturalisms suggest that they betray reason by ignoring the vast extent and depth of the problematic of symbolism. This is partly borne out by the still unexplained fact that highly abstract systems of symbolism, as in mathematics, can throw light on the hidden workings of nature. But since these include ordinary perception itself, and since symbolisms always mediate between minds and nature, all reasonings about truth or reality elicit references to mysterious natural powers. Good (...) reasoning in natural philosophy thus requires an artful dialectic which is primarily concerned not with exact analyses of meanings but rather with the element of creativity in their ongoing production. Such a dialectic must be based on a polar logic that is opposed to the modern tendency to treat fundamental conceptual contrasts, such as nature-culture, subject-object, matter-spirit, and so on, as separable. (shrink)

If there is one rationality there must be a plurality of them. This conclusion follows, I argue, partly from the extreme and ineradicable vagueness of the fundamental concepts that every would‐be rational explanation must presuppose. Logicistic/scientistic assaults on this vagueness are doomed to fail partly because they are unable to acknowledge the imaginative dimension of rational thought. Being limited to the play of “outward appearances,” scientific investigations are also dependent on “inward imaginings” on their speculative side. The upshot is that (...) schools of philosophy should be characterized by the kind of imaginary they adopt rather than by their logics. In which case, every attempt to get and tell something right about the world is bound to incorporate mythopoeic elements in its explanations. (shrink)

A consumer society that has embraced global capitalism while striving to preserve all the comforts and conveniences provided by technoscience is arguably fatally ill. Much support for this gloomy diagnosis is provided by, among others, Hannah Arendt, Northrop Frye, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Their reflections on the health of a human culture point up the urgency of the need to rethink the idea of good reasoning that predominates in the West. However, they also indicate that a healthier, more life-enhancing conception of (...) good reasoning will arise only when a concern for justice and wisdom displaces the traditional ideals of pure and certain knowledge or eternal truths. To this end, Nietzsche recommends that philosophy ought now to concentrate on producing `cultural physicians' who would strive to fashion a philosophy of concern. This type of philosophical therapist requires a radically nonmodern approach to philosophy that must pivot on a vitalistic metaphysics capable of overcoming pervasive nihilistic ideologies which illustrate a globally spreading mythology of unconcern. Hence an effective and lasting cultural therapy will depend on the emergence of a general will/desire to broaden the conception of good reasoning beyond the narrow perspectives established by modern science. And this will depend in turn on the education of future educators who stress above all the importance of cultivating the mythopoeic imaginations of the young. (shrink)

Samuel Butler, a contemporary critic of Charles Darwin, proffered an alternative, vitalistic account of evolution. At the same time, he put into question all modern naturalistic treatments of this fundamental idea which presuppose that evolution is mainly a scientific problem. On the contrary, Butler in effect insists, this extremely vague idea calls for not an `explanation' but rather a fairly comprehensive, plausible story that helps elucidate an inherently complex idea. Butler can thus be read as outlining an anthropomorphic metaphorics that (...) evokes a living Cosmos wherein it might be possible to do justice to the problem which Darwin left unresolved---the problem of heredity. In this picture of the Cosmos Butler links the fundamental notion of organization not to the allegedly universal and immutable `laws of nature,' as the moderns would have it, but rather to dynamically evolving relationships between only more or less stable habits. The variations in extant habits that emergence elicits are moreover the products of quasi-intelligent responses to new challenges from the environment. For Butler follows Lamarck in holding that all organisms possess powers capable of responding to felt needs and/or desires to make alterations in the habits (or instincts) that characterize their modes of existence. He thus in the end effectively bequeaths to his readers a challenge to extend and amplify, if possible, his outline of a promising metaphysical imaginary that can take into account some highly unorthodox conjectures. Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}. (shrink)