Colin Cherry's now famous book has been reissued in a third paperback edition in order to put into our hands an economical as well as genial and perspicuous survey of the state and contours of the so-called communication sciences. Cherry's book is properly speaking a manual, as befits its subtitle: A Review, a Survey, and a Criticism. It is composed of eight synthetic and lucid chapters each of which deals with a central area of the processes of communication. Philosophers of (...) diverse persuasions will find here a handy and reliable guide through an enormous mass of materials dealing with both the formal and the material aspects of human communication. (shrink)

A most interesting attempt to weld together a Marxist and a semiotic approach to art. The Marxist insistence upon the historicity of consciousness and the categories in which it expresses itself is accompanied by a systematic semiotically oriented reflection upon the epistemological conditions of meaning. The principal target of della Volpe's project is the Crocean theme that there is something supra-rational conveyed by a work of art, some cosmic feeling or some ineffable content, accessible only to intuition. Della Volpe's position, (...) on the contrary, is rationalist, though with a very specific twist. (shrink)

Colin Cherry's now famous book has been reissued in a third paperback edition in order to put into our hands an economical as well as genial and perspicuous survey of the state and contours of the so-called communication sciences. Cherry's book is properly speaking a manual, as befits its subtitle: A Review, a Survey, and a Criticism. It is composed of eight synthetic and lucid chapters each of which deals with a central area of the processes of communication. Philosophers of (...) diverse persuasions will find here a handy and reliable guide through an enormous mass of materials dealing with both the formal and the material aspects of human communication. (shrink)

This study investigated the use of mobile telephones by males and females in a public bar frequented by professional people. We found that, unlike women, men who possess mobile telephones more often publicly display them, and that these displays were related to the number of men in a social group, but not the number of women. This result was not due simply to a greater number of males who have telephones: we found an increase with male social group size in (...) the proportion of available telephones that were on display. Similarly, there was a positive relationship between the number of visible telephones and the ratio of males to females. Our results further show that the increased display of telephones in groups with more males is not due to the ostensive function of these devices (i.e., the making and receiving of calls), although single males tended to use their phones more. We interpret these results within the framework of male-male competition, with males in larger group sizes functioning in an increasingly competitive environment. This competitive environment is suggested to be akin to a lek mating system in which males aggregate and actively display their qualities to females who assess males on a number of dimensions. We suggest that mobile telephones might be used by males as an indicator of their status and wealth (sensu “cultural ornaments”). (shrink)

Objectives To evaluate whether the requirement of “minimal risk and burden” for paediatric research without direct benefit to the subjects compromises the ability to obtain data necessary for improving paediatric care. To provide evidence-based reflections on the EU recommendation that allows for a higher level of risk. Design and setting Systematic analysis of the approval/rejection decisions made by the Dutch Central Committee on Research involving Human Subjects (CCMO). Review methods The analysis included 165 proposals for paediatric research without direct benefit (...) that were reviewed by the CCMO between January, 2000, and July, 2007. A separate, in-depth analysis of all drug studies included 18 early phase drug studies and nine other drug studies without direct benefit. Results 11 out of 165 studies were definitively rejected because the CCMO did not regard the risk and/or burden to be minimal. In three of these 11 cases (including two early phase drug studies) the requirement of minimal risk and burden was cited as the only reason for rejection. Four other early phase drug studies also involved risks and/or burdens that were not regarded to be minimal but were nevertheless approved. Conclusions The requirement of minimal risk and burden, aiming to protect research subjects, occasionally leads to rejection of protocols. Early phase drug studies relatively often do not comply with the requirement. Committees may find ways to approve important studies that formally should be rejected, but that is not a desirable solution. The regulatory framework should be revised to make such occasional exceptions to the requirement legitimate and transparent. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to illustrate the heuristic power of semiotics for the interpretation of texts. It oscillates between two poles: the concrete practical pole of encounter with specific texts and the theoretical pole of constructing a model for thematizing both the role of the reader and the structure of the text itself in the creation of meaning. The book consists of eight previously published, but widely scattered, essays of one of semiotics' most talented proponents, and it offers (...) a welcome supplement to the materials contained in his A Theory of Semiotics, whose goal was a systematic overview of the whole field of sign theory. (shrink)

The Frauchiger–Renner Paradox is an extension of paradoxes based on the “Problem of Measurement,” such as Schrödinger’s Cat and Wigner’s Friend. All these paradoxes stem from assuming that quantum theory has only unitary physical dynamics, and the attendant ambiguity about what counts as a ‘measurement’—i.e., the inability to account for the observation of determinate measurement outcomes from within the theory itself. This paper discusses a basic inconsistency arising in the FR scenario at a much earlier point than the derived contradiction: (...) namely, the inconsistency inherent in treating an improper mixture as a proper, epistemic mixture. This is an illegitimate procedure that is nevertheless endemic if quantum theory is assumed to be always unitary. In contrast, under a non-unitary account of quantum state reduction yielding determinate outcomes, the use of a proper mixture for measurement results becomes legitimate, and this entire class of paradoxes cannot be mounted. The conclusion is that the real lesson of the FR paradox is that it is the unitary-only assumption that needs to be critically reassessed. (shrink)

The internal structure of ability emotional intelligence tests at item level has been hardly studied, and if studied often the predicted structure did not show. In the present study, an a priori model for responses to EI ability items using Likert response scales with a Situational Judgement Test format is investigated with confirmatory factor analysis. The model consists of a target EI ability factor, an acquiescence factor, which is a method factor induced by the Likert response scales, and design-based error (...) covariances, which are induced by the SJT format. It is investigated whether this a priori model can account for the observed associations between the raw item responses of the Components of Emotion Understanding Test-24. The CEUT-24 is a new test developed to assess emotion understanding, a key aspect of the EI ability construct, based on the componential emotion framework. The sample consisted of 1184 participants from four European countries speaking four different languages. Findings showed that the a priori model fitted the data well in all four languages. Furthermore, measurement invariance testing gave evidence for a well-fitting configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance model. The conclusion is that within a regular CFA framework using raw observed items responses, method factors can be disentangled from the targeted EI ability factor. (shrink)

We propose a new approach for tracing value change. Value change may lead to a mismatch between current value priorities in society and the values for which technologies were designed in the past, such as energy technologies based on fossil fuels, which were developed when sustainability was not considered a very important value. Better anticipating value change is essential to avoid a lack of social acceptance and moral acceptability of technologies. While value change can be studied historically and qualitatively, we (...) propose a more quantitative approach that uses large text corpora. It uses probabilistic topic models, which allow us to trace values that are latent. We demonstrate the approach for five types of value change in technology. Our approach is useful for testing hypotheses about value change, such as verifying whether value change has occurred and identifying patterns of value change. The approach can be used to trace value change for various technologies and text corpora, including scientific articles, newspaper articles, and policy documents. (shrink)

Here, I should like to tell a story, beginning with how the works of Aristotelian philosophy came to exist in Latin translations, then moving to the project of transforming Christian theology into an Aristotelian “science.” After that, I would like to look a bit more closely at the case of Br. Thomas of Aquino and his dependence upon the Muslim philosopher Ibn Sīnā. Finally, I shall end by drawing some wider conclusions based upon this important example.

Those of us who were made to study Pride and Prejudice at school know that Darcy represents pride and Elizabeth represents prejudice. Those of us who have actually read the book know that the situation is a good deal more complicated than that. The motivation for a significant part of the action is Elizabeth's pride, a point that is made quite clearly and is recognized by Elizabeth herself in what sounds like a thoroughly rehearsed speech: ‘How despicably have I acted!’ (...) she cried.—‘I, who have prided myself on my discernment!—I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust.—How humiliating is this discovery!—Yet, how just a humiliation!—Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.—Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for AquinasR. E. HouserI expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. Then his successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.—Francis Cardinal George (2010)Here I propose to (...) present a feature of the ethics of Thomas Aquinas, his ethical doctrine of virtue, concentrating on the four cardinal virtues—justice, prudence or good practical judgment, courage, and temperance. Plato first selected them as the four premier virtues, but they go back at least to Homer, for whom wily Odysseus exemplified prudence, warlike Achilles courage, old Nestor justice, Penelope and Telemachus, Odysseus' wife and son, temperance. And I offer them as central to living the morally good life required to "rebuild civilization" in an America that so fair and judicious a man as Cardinal George could call a "ruined society." To see the need for Thomas's solution, we must begin with the problem. Now, all societies depend upon the deep and fundamental ideas of the most important thinkers, prophets and sages, saints, and yes, even philosophers. Their ideas "trickle down" to influence regular folk, like you and me, those who whose hard work actually makes a society thrive, or die. And when those fundamental ideas change, the moral principles of those who embrace those ideas change, and consequently their actions change, and as a result the wider society in which they live changes, for better or worse. Such effects can now be felt across America [End Page 135] by all; but most of us are unaware of the primary intellectual agents of these changes, since they operate at the level of fundamental ideas, not politics or business or day-to-day life. And often their originators have died before the ideas reach full cultural force. So, ignorance of history makes it difficult to deal with present problems caused by those ideas.My first conclusion will be that a major cause of the current coarsening of our culture is the group of ideas of the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, even though most Americans have never heard of him, and most of those who recognize his name have not read his works carefully enough to see the connection. Why Sartre? In the honors program at my university, I had a bright young lady of Muslim heritage who had gone to a lycée, one of France's elite classical secondary schools. "Did you read the classics?" "Yes." Expecting Montaigne or Pascal, I asked, "Who?" Her answer: "Sartre." So let us begin with the theory and practice of Sartre and his long-time lover Simone Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex was an intellectual spark for the women's liberation movement. Then we turn to some real-life examples of Sartrean influence on ourselves and American culture. Finally, for the best remedy for non-Christian and Christian alike, I recommend Aquinas's doctrine of virtue, when taken in its full scope.Sartre's Ethics of Absolute FreedomIn 1946, the year I was born, Sartre gave a lecture to a meeting of French librarians, which became his most popular book, Existentialism is a Humanism. There he laid out the core of his thought about God, humans, and their ethical behavior. Here I arrange his main ideas in an order that facilitates comparison with Aquinas, beginning with his view of human ontology and proceeding to its impact on the four cardinal virtues.Human OntologySartre turned his back on the traditional metaphysical view that every creature is an individual substance defined by a nature or essence it has in common with all other things of that type. In his "first principle of existentialism," Sartre skips over other animate things, plants and animals, and compares humans to inanimate objects:Let us consider... a book or a paper-cutter: here is an object made by an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept.... One cannot postulate a man who makes a paper-cutter but does not know what it is... (shrink)

All of the selections in this volume have been newly translated and many of them appear for the first time in English. The editors group well-chosen selections from the Renaissance Italian philosophers around four areas of development of philosophy passing out of the middle ages and into modern philosophy. Renaissance Humanism is represented by Petrarch, Leon Alberti, Lorenzo Valla, and Gianozzo Manetti. Renaissance Platonism includes selections from Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, and Leone Ebreo. Renaissance Aristotelianism has pieces from Pomponazzi (...) and Tasso. The Philosophers of Nature included are Telesio, Campanella, and Bruno. Courses in the History of Philosophy too often pass over the Renaissance philosophers, much in the same way as these same courses used to pass over the Middle Ages. Considering the effect that the revitalized Platonism of the Renaissance period had on Descartes and Leibniz, this gap needs to be filled in for a proper understanding of the origins of modern philosophy; this anthology, and, presumably, the companion volume to follow are welcome steps in that direction.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Aims and background: The present work assessed the impact of two decrees on ethics committees in Italy, aimed at bringing the national laws on the conduct of clinical trials into line with the rest of the EC, and regulating and facilitating not-for-profit research.Material and methods: Prospectively collected data from an Italian multicentre study were examined with respect to the ethics review process. Administrative and time elements of the review process were audited. Main outcome measures were time between the application submission (...) and the ethics committee definitive opinion, type and number of application submission forms, number of ethics committees that refused fee exemption, and time between the ethics committee approval and the administrative authorisation.Results: A total of 134 local research ethics committees were approached. Application submission procedures and application forms varied greatly; paper submission was mandatory. The median time from submission to approval was 72 days. Only two LRECs refused the fee exemption. The median time from LREC approval to administrative agreement was 50 days and only 9.6% of local authorities came to a verbal agreement with the sponsor.Conclusions: Italian LRECs are still not sufficiently efficient in complying with the Directive 2001/20/EC requirement . Better coordination of LRECs work is needed although the optimal level of coordination between them is still not known. In the meantime, national guidelines are needed concerning the application of Directive 2001/20/EC. The behaviour of Italian LRECs towards not-for-profit research was excellent although only the fee exemption was requested. (shrink)

This volume has benefited from the same care in preparation as its companion volume, Approaches to Morality, and duplicates the layout and apparatus of the former. I. The "Classical" authors remain Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas ; II. Selections from Hegel, Marx, Engels, and A. Schaff make up the section on "Dialectical" thinkers ; III. "American Pragmatic-Naturalist" material is from Peirce, James, Dewey, Santayana ; IV. "Analytic-Positivist" selections are from Hume, Carnap, Russell, Ayer, Ryle, Wittgenstein, Moore, Strawson, Hampshire ; V. "Existentialist and (...) Phenomenological Thought" includes material by Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, A. Brunner, Marcel, Heidegger. It would be difficult to find a better book of readings for an undergraduate course in philosophical psychology which covers the same or a wider variety of perspectives while offering as much background information and editorial assistance.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The 1964 Congress of the Australasian Association of Philosophy was the occasion for the delivery of the five major papers in this volume. Comments by J. J. C. Smart on four of the papers are included, since, not surprisingly, discussion of the identity theory was centered almost exclusively around Smart's formulation of it. Of the four papers upon which Smart commented, three are very critical of the identity theory while the fourth is sympathetic but uncommitted. The fifth paper, "Ryle and (...) the Mechanical Hypothesis," is a greatly expanded version of the paper Brian Medlin read to the Congress. Medlin's paper is largely an ad hoc defense of central state materialism against objections which might be raised by a Rylean. Rollins and Herbst have added replies to Medlin's paper; Herbst's comments are, in particular, quite acute in the way in which they bring out the ideological undersurface of the identity theory. In the critical papers, Gunner argues that Smart has not sufficiently clarified the notion of identity so as to make the thesis meaningful; Rollins argues that Smart has failed to notice the context-dependency of an explanation, i.e., an explanation is an explanation for some--but not necessarily all--purposes; Herbst suggests that Smart has given no intelligible account of how the identity theory could be verified without begging the question. In his "Comments" Smart reaffirms his faith in physicalism and announces his recent conversion to a Feyerabendian contextual account of a truth. This conversion solves all the difficulties of the theory. The effects are inconclusive, when not evasive.--E. A. R. (shrink)

These are the first works of Blondel to be translated into English. Blondel has been called the French Newman; but this is misleading, as Blondel was a disciplined and professional philosopher, while it would not be fair to Newman to judge him exclusively or even largely as a philosopher. In this country Blondel has tended to be overshadowed by Maritain, Gilson, and the neo-Thomists generally, to whose camp Blondel emphatically did not belong. The first of the works contained in this (...) volume is concerned with the question of the possibility of a Christian philosophy, i.e., a philosophy that is Christian in its tendency but philosophical, not theological, in its substance. The second work is Blondel's answer to the specific problem of Modernism which raged in Catholic philosophical and theological circles at the beginning of this century, but its importance may now be gauged equally in terms of its being an attempt to incorporate the core of truth included in historicism and relativism without giving up the objectivity of perspective that has always characterized the perennial philosophy. Dru and Trethowan have provided an excellent general introduction of over one hundred pages which covers the necessary biographical details of Blondel's life, as well as giving the intellectual and cultural setting of his thought. Added to this are briefer historical introductions for each of the works contained herein. A bibliography of Blondel's principal works is included.—E A. R. (shrink)

Arguing against Jaeger's contention that in his Academy days Aristotle was content to defer to the ontology of Plato, in particular the Theory of Forms, while at the same time developing the logic of the Categories which is at odds with the Theory, Owen shows that the formulation of the logical doctrine presupposed a criticism and rejection of the Platonic ontology; the more general point Owen makes is that logic and ontology were never distinct in Aristotle's mind, and his development (...) in both areas can be understood only through an appreciation of their interdependence in his intellectual Odyssey. Platonism there is in Aristotle, but it is most fruitfully traced in Aristotle's thought as a function of Aristotle's early rejection of another distinctive Platonic theme, i.e., Plato's conviction that Dialectic was a master science, and subsequent return to this theme in his later work where he installs metaphysics in the chair of first philosophy. That this return to Platonism represents an advance over Plato is due to the fact that it is conversion mediated through Aristotle's doctrine of equivocals.—E. A. R. (shrink)

"Did you ever practice eutrapelia?" So begins the final chapter of this slim volume on play. Eutrapelia is the name Aristotle gave to the virtue that is the mean between buffoonery and boorishness and it seems sufficiently aligned with the spirit of play for a treatment of it to be included in a book which deals primarily with the latter notion. As for play, Rahner gives it psycho-cosmic interpretation. Thus, play is the archetype that symbolizes the free spontaneity characteristic of (...) the Judaeo-Christian idea of God as creator. Similarly, it is the intermittent archetype for man of his lost-but-ultimately-to-be-recaptured paradisic state. One of Rahner's more interesting theses about play is his claim that the dance is the core phenomenon permeating all art and play; he extends this theory about the dance to religion also, at least so far as the latter is liturgical. The chief drawback of the book is that it does not give a critical development of the concept of play, i.e., it does not really consider possible alternative interpretations of the phenomenon of play, e.g., a Freudian interpretation of play. But the book does give a suggestive historical account of the notion of play, where the historical sources are the pre-Christian Greek and Latin writers, the Fathers of the Church, and the mystics and the Doctors of the Church of the Medieval period.--E. A. R. (shrink)

This is No. 16 in the valuable series, Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation. The importance of the question of the Eternity of the World in Mediaeval philosophy cannot be taken lightly as in many respects it served as the watershed dividing basically divergent metaphysical commitments. In this volume are included Thomas' short treatise, De Aeternitate Mundi-translated for the first time—Siger's Questions on the Eternity of the World, and selections from Bonaventure taken chiefly from the Collationes in Hexaemeron. In the section (...) on Thomas are also included chapters 31-38 from Book II of the Summa Contra Gentiles, articles 1-2 from the Summa Theologiae I, Q. 46, article 17 from De Potentia Dei, Q. 3, and chapters 98-99 from the Compendium of Theology I. Bibliographies are appended to the selections from Thomas and Siger.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A companion volume to the one above in which the only deviation from the format of the previous volume is the inclusion of four school rather than individual-chronological headings. The school headings are "American Realism," "Logical Positivism," "Existentialism," and "Ordinary Language Analysis." The individual philosophers included are James, Bergson, Lenin, Husserl, Santayana, Dewey, Whitehead, Moore, and Russell. In all other respects Volume II is like Volume I.—E. A. R.

This is a translation of the second revised edition of Geist in Welt. It was J. B. Metz, a Rahner pupil, who carried out the revision with Rahner's full approval. Metz has added a brief foreword to this translation. Also included is an excellent and jam-packed Introduction by Francis P. Fiorenza which attempts to set the background for Spirit in the World, in terms of its being an attempt to ground a metaphysics by going through Kant back to an Aquinas (...) who is now viewed through the spectacles of transcendental method. Rahner was influenced in this attempt by Maréchal, of course, but also by Heidegger. The work itself is built around an exegesis of a key text from the Summa Theologiae I, Q. 84, a. 7. The title of the article in question is "Whether the intellect can actually know anything through the intelligible species which it possesses without turning to the phantasm." Since Thomas answers no to this question, it becomes clear that metaphysics for him is possible only on the foundation of imagination. It also becomes clear, through Rahner, that the feature of Thomas' epistemology which requires the most clarification is his doctrine of sensibility. Rahner's handling of this question is not altogether satisfactory. At crucial points he switches from an intentional analysis to a metaphysical analysis. But it is not entirely clear how phenomenological otherness can be reduced to the metaphysical otherness supposedly guaranteed by differing potentialities within the formal identity between knower and known in both sensibility and intellection. The work is overpowering in the execution of its intent, however, despite what seemed to this reviewer a crucial unclarity. It is interesting to note that the contents of this book were originally Rahner's doctoral thesis finished in 1936, turned down by Rahner's director M. Honecker, but first published anyway in 1939. It is surprising that these historical facts are not presented by the translator in at least a brief introduction to this important work. It must be lamented also that no attempt was made to compile any sort of index. Finally, while the translator cannot be envied the task of having to come to grips with Rahner's German, the English we are provided with leaves a great deal to be desired.--E. A. R. (shrink)

James Collins has turned his talent for painstaking and definitive scholarship to the philosophy of religion, and nobody with an interest in this particular area of philosophy, or in the general development of modern philosophy in the hands of Hume, Kant, and Hegel, can afford to miss consulting this book. The philosophy of religion, as distinct from the older style natural theology, theodicy, and straight theological treatments of religion, is a discipline whose need was first felt when the scientific picture (...) of the universe began to declare its independence from, and possible ascendency over, the theistically ordered anthropological and cosmological harmony of the universe. As Collins details in a balanced manner, it was Hume who first formulated a program to meet this need. He did it in such a way, however, that he made religion a legitimate object of, but wholly external and even inimical in content to, philosophy, particularly epistemology and ethics. Building upon Hume, Kant defined the epistemological issue more precisely—"I have denied knowledge to save belief"—and reinterpreted the relation between morality and religion as one of complementarity rather than contradictoriness. It remained for Hegel to internalize the relation between the content of religion and the content of philosophy and thus to reduce the former to an anticipation of the latter. Collins' exposition is interpenetrated by a critical concern supplied by the dialectical development of the idea of the philosophy of religion from Hume through Kant to Hegel, and by his own proposal for integrating the genuine and irreducible insights of each of these three classical philosophies within a realistic philosophy of religion that remains basically theistic. The book is an expanded form of Collins' St. Thomas More Lectures at Yale University; it would be an impressive addition to any series of lectures.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This article reports an empirical investigation of the cognitive effort required to decide in multiattribute binary choice using a variation of the Additive Difference strategy. In contrast with other studies, this paper focuses on the effect of various context variables (rather than task variables) on cognitive effort. In order to select the context variables to be manipulated, we used the model proposed by Shugan (1980; J. Consumer Res. 75 (1980) 99). Our results indicate that there is a positive relationship between (...) the cognitive effort required to decide and the mean of the differences between the dimensions of the choice alternatives. We have also found an inverse relationship between cognitive effort and the variance of the differences between the dimensions of the choice alternatives. Finally, we have found that in negative correlation contexts the effort needed to decide is greater than in positive and null correlation contexts. (shrink)

Eighteen of Gurwitsch's papers, all previously published between 1929 and 1961; nine of the papers appear in English for the first time. With the exception of the mainly expository "The Last Work of Edmund Husserl," in which Gurwitsch limns the structure of Husserl's Krisis, all of the papers are serious forays into "constitutive" as distinguished from "existential" phenomenology. At times Gurwitsch goes about his business historically, engaging Descartes, Kant, a good deal of Hume, James, and, of course, Husserl in dialogue. (...) In almost half of the papers Gestalt psychology, the psychological and biological work of Gelb and Goldstein, and the distinctively psychological work of James are the focus. The dominant theme of all the studies is consciousness and an exploration of the logical rather than existential problematic of intentionality. Gurwitsch wishes his work to be assessed as part of the Husserlian program of radically founding in the constituting consciousness all the systematized noematic fruits, i.e., sciences, of this same consciousness.. He is, however, a self-confessed heretic from the strict Husserlian point of view, having abandoned the doctrines of hyletic data, and, more interestingly, the egological root of consciousness.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Kemp Smith was preeminently a philosopher of philosophers, which is something a bit more than an historian of philosophy. Representing this side of his work in this volume we have "The Naturalism of Hume, I and II," "Avenarius' Philosophy of Pure Experience, I and II," "Whitehead's Philosophy of Nature," "John Locke," and "Bergson's Manner of Approach to Moral and Social Questions." At other times Kemp Smith could turn his attention to "The Nature of Universals, I, II, and III," "Immortality," "The (...) Moral Sanction of Force," and the question from which the volume takes its title, "Is Divine Existence Credible?" The editors inform us that Kemp Smith took this latter question to be the central problem of philosophy. In addition to the papers mentioned, there are five other essays by Kemp Smith and a sizeable introduction by the editors: Porteous provides a biographical sketch of Kemp Smith, Maclennan a consideration of the centrality of the question of Divine existence, and Davie an account of what he takes to be the significance of Kemp Smith's philosophical papers.—E. A. R. (shrink)