Augustine—for all of his influence on Western culture and politics—was hardly a liberal. Drawing from theology, feminist theory, and political philosophy, Eric Gregory offers here a liberal ethics of citizenship, one less susceptible to anti-liberal critics because it is informed by the Augustinian tradition. The result is a book that expands Augustinian imaginations for liberalism and liberal imaginations for Augustinianism. Gregory examines a broad range of Augustine’s texts and their reception in different disciplines and identifies two classical (...) themes which have analogues in secular political theory: love—and related notions of care, solidarity, and sympathy—and sin—as well as related notions of cruelty, evil, and narrow self-interest. From an Augustinian point of view, Gregory argues, love and sin constrain each other in ways that yield a distinctive vision of the limits and possibilities of politics. In providing a constructive argument for Christian participation in liberal democratic societies, Gregory advances efforts to revive a political theology in which love’s relation to justice is prominent. _Politics and the Order of Love _will provoke new conversations for those interested in Christian ethics, moral psychology, and the role of religion in a liberal society. (shrink)

I argue that Augustine's concept of time implies that the continuity of temporal experience is not adequately explainable in physical terms and that persons (or at least a core component of persons) are enduring substances rather than perduring wholes composed of suitably related physical parts. In the latter part of the essay, I suggest that an enduring account of persons is in some important respects explanatorily better than some contemporary varieties of the perduring account of persons.

This paper illustrates the need for a more integrated theoretical account of two large but typically isolated subjects in twentieth century Augustine studies: love and the ambiguous relation of Augustinianism to liberalism. The paper is divided into three parts. First, by aligning Augustinian caritas with a feminist "ethic of care," it presents a morally robust ethics of liberalism that differs from both liberal-realist and antiliberal extrapolations of the Augustinian tradition. Second, and most extensively, it presents Hannah Arendt's provocative reading (...) of Augustine that issues both "Kantian" and "Nietzschean" challenges to a political ethic that moves beyond liberal reciprocity and relates love for neighbor to love for God. Finally, and more tentatively, it argues that Augustine's much maligned categories of "use" and "enjoyment" should be redeemed by those who defend a version of Augustinian liberalism that does not sentimentalize or privatize love. (shrink)

This essay on Richard Miller’s Friends and Other Strangers (2016) locates its arguments in the context of how the practice of religious ethics bears upon debates about normativity in the study of religion and the cultural turn in the humanities. After reviewing its main claims about identity and otherness, I focus on three areas. First, while commending Miller’s effort to analogize virtuous empathy with Augustine’s ethics of rightly ordered love, I raise questions about his use of Augustine and (...) his distinctive formulation of Augustinian “iconic realism.” Second, I suggest his discussion of public reason is at odds with the dialogical spirit of the book and may distract from the democratic solidarity required by our political moment. Third, more briefly, I highlight the practical implications of Miller’s vision for higher education at both the graduate and undergraduate level. (shrink)

Augustine—for all of his influence on Western culture and politics—was hardly a liberal. Drawing from theology, feminist theory, and political philosophy, Eric Gregory offers here a liberal ethics of citizenship, one less susceptible to anti-liberal critics because it is informed by the Augustinian tradition. The result is a book that expands Augustinian imaginations for liberalism and liberal imaginations for Augustinianism. Gregory examines a broad range of Augustine’s texts and their reception in different disciplines and identifies two classical (...) themes which have analogues in secular political theory: love—and related notions of care, solidarity, and sympathy—and sin—as well as related notions of cruelty, evil, and narrow self-interest. From an Augustinian point of view, Gregory argues, love and sin constrain each other in ways that yield a distinctive vision of the limits and possibilities of politics. In providing a constructive argument for Christian participation in liberal democratic societies, Gregory advances efforts to revive a political theology in which love’s relation to justice is prominent. _Politics and the Order of Love _will provoke new conversations for those interested in Christian ethics, moral psychology, and the role of religion in a liberal society. (shrink)

Qu'en est-il de la philosophie élaborée par quelqu'un, Augustin, qui finit par rompre avec la philosophie ? Et qu'en est-il du mode de partage entre positions philosophiques et positions religieuses ? L'étude du cas particulier des relations d'Augustin avec le scepticisme académicien permet à la fois de poser ces questions et celles qui leur sont afférentes, et d'y répondre. À partir de l'étude du livre V des Confessions, puis de la présentation de la doctrine académicienne par Cicéron, E. Dubreucq précise (...) ce que furent les relations d'Augustin avec ce scepticisme académicien fait de doute fondamental dans le rapport à la vérité avec, pour risque, le désespoir dont l'auteur des Confessions fit l'expérience. Dans l'itinéraire augustinien, les doctrines académiciennes et néoplatoniciennes ne servent que de temps intermédiaire dans la quête de l'union au Christ auquel elles étaient finalement orientées. What can be said about the philosophy elaborated by some one like Augustine, who ended up by breaking with philosophy ? What can be said about the mode of separation between philosophical and religious positions ? A study of the particular case of Augustine’s relationship with academic scepticism permits us both to ask these questions and others related to them, and to answer them. Starting with a study of book V of the Confessions, followed by a presentation of academic doctrine by Cicero, E. Dubreucq explains what Augustine’s relationship was with this academic scepticism, a fundamental doubt of fact in the rapport to truth, with, as a risk, the despair which the author of the Confessions experienced. In the Augustinian itinerary, academic and Neoplatonic doctrines only serve as an intermediary time in the search for union with Christ, to which they were finally oriented. (shrink)

Augustin a commencé de s'intéresser aux questions de l'âme, de sa nature, de son origine et de son destin sous le double horizon des croyances manichéennes, auxquelles le tenait attaché son obsession du problème du mal et du salut, et des doctrines néoplatoniciennes, en qui il trouvait une certaine parenté avec la spiritualité chrétienne. Le néoplatonisme l'aidait à concevoir l'immortalité de l'âme, mais en rejetant sa consubstantialité avec Dieu, à écarter aussi le dualisme manichéen tout en professant la dualité ontologique (...) de Dieu et du créé, et de l’âme et du corps. Mais l'Écriture se dissocie du platonisme quand elle montre que l'âme ne peut pas remonter par ses seules forces jusqu'au vrai et au bien et qu'elle a besoin du secours de la grâce et des sacrements. L'Écriture érige des réalités d'ordre sotériologique étrangères aux spéculations des philosophes, elle fait du péché une réalité originelle et universelle, dont la transmission relance la question de l'origine des âmes : préexistantes, ou créées à la naissance ou issues de celles des parents ? Augustin noue ainsi l'une à l'autre les deux questions de l'origine du mal et de celle de l'âme, notamment dans le troisième livre du traité Du libre arbitre, entre 391 et 395. Il pense que ni l'Écriture ni la philosophie ne permettent de trancher entre le créationisme et le traducianisme, mais il s'efforce de concilier, sans y parvenir tout à fait, le plan anthropologique avec le plan sotériologique. Augustine began his interest in the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul under the double influence of Manichaean beliefs , and Neoplatonic doctrines, in which be found a certain relation with Christian spirituality. Neoplatonism helped him to conceive the immortality of the soul, but by rejecting its consubstantiality with God, and also to set aside Manichaean dualism while professing the ontological duality of God and the created, as well as the soul and body. But Scripture disassociates itself from Platonism when it shows that the soul cannot, by its own power, arise to the true and the good, but needs help from grace and the sacraments. Scripture builds its realities around soteriology, which is foreign to the speculations of philosophers. It makes sin an original and universal reality, whose transmission brings up again the origin of souls : pre-existent, created at birth, or issuing from those of its parents ? Augustine thus ties together the two questions of the origin of evil and that of souls, especially in the third book of the treatise On Free Will . He thought that neither Scripture nor philosophy helped to decide for creationism and traducianism, but he made an effort to reconcile, without complete success, the anthropological dimension with the soteriological dimension. (shrink)

Peter Winch's philosophy of religion is controversial, accused of mere “perspectivism” and fideism, and for avoiding discussion of any existential reference for the object of belief. This essay examines what Winch meant by a “perspective.” It first deals with problems of first person propositions of belief. For Wittgenstein and Winch belief and the fact it believes are inextricably bound together. Thus Winch argues that what is said cannot be divorced from the situation of the sayer; understanding requires making shifts in (...) perspective. Finally I compare Winch's use of religious language to Augustine's doctrine of the “inner word,” arguing that there are important parallels in Winch to pre‐Lockean theological understandings of faith. (shrink)

This article investigates the new attitude toward the reception and use of Augustine in the early thirteenth century as seen in the works of Helinand of Froidmont and Robert Grosseteste. Both scholars were products of the Twelfth Century Renaissance of Augustine, represented in Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the Glossa Ordinaria, and Gratian’s Decretum. Yet both Helinand and Grosseteste reconstructed Augustine’s texts for their own purposes; they did not simply use Augustine as an authority. Detailed and thorough textual (...) analysis reveals that the early thirteenth century was a high point in Augustine’s reception, and one which effected a transformation of how Augustine’s texts were used, a fact often been obscured in the historiographical debates of the relationship between “Augustinianism” and “Aristotelianism.” Moreover, in pointing to the importance of Helinand’s world chronicle, his Chronicon, this article argues for the importance of compilations as a major source for the intellectual and textual history of the high Middle Ages. Thus, the thirteenth century appears as the bridge between the Augustinian Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, and that of the Fourteenth, making clear the need for further research and highlighting the importance of the early thirteenth century for a thorough understanding of the historical reception of Augustine. (shrink)

Peter Winch's philosophy of religion is controversial, accused of mere “perspectivism” and fideism, and for avoiding discussion of any existential reference for the object of belief. This essay examines what Winch meant by a “perspective.” It first deals with problems of first person propositions of belief. For Wittgenstein and Winch belief and the fact it believes are inextricably bound together. Thus Winch argues that what is said cannot be divorced from the situation of the sayer; understanding requires making shifts in (...) perspective. Finally I compare Winch's use of religious language to Augustine's doctrine of the “inner word,” arguing that there are important parallels in Winch to pre‐Lockean theological understandings of faith. (shrink)

In so-called Christian countries an increasing number of people openly reject Christian morality. It is a commonplace that they do this for values that can be shown to be Christian. How did this state of affairs come about? An examination of the beginning of Christian ethical thought shows that, within great personal variety, certain patterns or concepts remain constant. Righteousness, discipleship, faith and love are traced in this book from the New Testament through to Augustine. There is a necessary (...) tension between high ideals and practical performance, or between perfection and contingency. When this tension is lost, Christian ethics can easily go wrong. The amoral perfectionism of second-century Gnostics is remarkably similar to the mysticism of communal movements; the opposite threat of legalism has always been present in conservative forms of Christianity. Dr Osborn is concerned to explain rather than to defend, to look at the way conclusions are reached, and to show the rich diversity of early Christian thought. Successive chapters deal with the New Testament, Clement of Alexandria, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and Augustine. (shrink)

St. Augustine’s tremendous influence on Western thought continues to provide scholars from all fields with fresh insights and new connections to the philosophical and theological questions posed by modernity. The twenty essays collected here attempt not only to discuss perennial problems as found in Augustine—human willing, the nature of time, sin and free will, the soul’s relationship to the body—but also bring Augustine’s mind to bear on many post-Patristic concerns such as the alliance between theology and philosophy, (...) linguistic analysis, the insights of various ethical systems, as well as the fundamental tenets of modern liberal thought. (shrink)

Contemporary scholars are engaged in a debate over whether Charles Augustin Coulomb’s results that he presented in his 1785 and 1787 memoirs to the Paris Academy of Sciences were attained experimentally or theoretically. In this paper, we study Coulomb’s famous 1785 electric torsion balance experiment through analysis of relevant texts and, more importantly, through a replication that is more faithful to Coulomb’s original design than previous attempts. We show that, despite recent claims, it has so far proved impossible to obtain (...) the same results reported by Coulomb in his paper of 1785, Coulomb’s published results are most likely atypical, and electric torsion balance experiments degenerate quickly when parameters are altered by small amounts. Acknowledgements: We wish to thank Jed Buchwald for generously making available the glass pieces of a torsion balance identical to that used by Alberto Martinez. Special thanks also to Paolo Palmieri for his important roles in replicating the electric torsion balance, discussing results and recording trials, as well as for the invaluable comments given on earlier drafts of this paper. A part of this paper was presented at the 2008 History of Science Society Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. We thank the participants of that meeting, especially Alberto A. Martinez, for helpful discussion and comments. Thank you also to Peter Heering for recent discussion and feedback. This research was supported by the Wesley C. Salmon fund, History and Philosophy of Science department, University of Pittsburgh. (shrink)

Reaching from the decline of the Greek Polis to Saint Augustine, this first volume of Eric Voegelin's eagerly anticipated History of Political Ideas fills the gap left between volumes 3 and 4 of Order and History.

Eric Voegelin's Political Readings fills a critical void by providing a original approach to studying the work of Eric Voegelin, one of the major political philosophers of the twenty first century. Across six chapters a group of experts guide the reader from classical to modern times presenting six political philosophers who have had an impact on the life and philosophical production of Eric Voegelin. Philosophers examined include Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Hobbes, Weber and Kelsen. Through this (...) innovative structure the chapters collectively illustrate how Voegelin was an exceptional thinker through his engagement with political philosophers both modern and antique. The plurality of unique, academic perspectives and voices enriches our understanding of Voegelin's own thought while also encouraging a re-think of ancient and modern thinkers, and the transformation and continuity between these. Designed for students and scholars alike, Eric Voegelin's Political Readings will appeal to all those with an interest in Voegelin as well as readers familiar with classical and modern political philosophers. (shrink)

Eric Voegelin and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy provide an interesting and important contrast in their Augustinian diagnoses of modernity and the role of revolution and faith in salvation in history. For Eric Voegelin the desolation of modern humanity springs from its unreal elevation of the self – its Gnostic inheritance – and its immanentization of God and the eschaton into history and progress. In keeping with this is the moderns’ failure to appreciate that the symbolic order required for a fulfilling (...) human community and experience relies upon the necessity of maintaining God as a beyond in relation to society, man and world. Rosenstock-Huessy is also concerned that the failure of the moderns to understand the sign and significance of God is disastrous. And like Voegelin he is deeply opposed to modern Gnosticism and the pathologies that emerge from it, but Rosenstock-Huessy is also interested in something that is not Voegelin’s primary concern – mainly the role of providence in history. (shrink)

In his New Science of Politics, Eric Voegelin offers an analysis of modernity: at its heart, it is a radicalization of Christianity—a radicalization that counts as a betrayal. Like other movements of its time, Christianity judged this world in terms of another—one wherein all of us were brothers and sisters, wherein justice mattered more than victory and mercy more than justice. But rather than endure in patience their own limitations, those whom Voegelin calls “gnostics” tried to build heaven on (...) earth—inevitably, by violence. This serves as his postmortem on the twentieth century: liberalism, communism, and fascism are all, according to Voegelin, trying to do what cannot be done—specifically, to do what Voegelin calls “immanentizing the eschaton.” Each is, in its own way, a revolt against the human condition—and so a revolt against God. -/- But these gnostics would hardly have seen themselves in this demonic light. Indeed, they often called themselves “rationalists” and saw themselves as a brave few who might lead humanity out of the madness of the past. Of course, Voegelin would hardly grant that Plato or Saint Augustine were less rational than, say, Thomas Hobbes. But he would certainly grant that the gnostics hoped to render the world “rational” by abolishing whatever aspects of the human condition were “irrational”—in the case of Hobbes, our capacity for mystical experience of God. -/- Of course, this is hardly how contemporary political scientists would explain Hobbes. In the introduction to his New Science of Politics, though, Voegelin offers an indirect explanation of this. He warns that the social sciences are prisoners of their idolatry of the natural sciences: they ignore any data that cannot be rendered in language that is entirely descriptive—insisting as they do so that this methodology is only “rational.”. (shrink)

From the time of Locke, discussions of personal identity have often ignored the question of our basic metaphysical nature: whether we human people are biological organisms, spatial or temporal parts of organisms, bundles of perceptions, or what have you. The result of this neglect has been centuries of wild proposals and clashing intuitions. What Are We? is the first general study of this important question. It beings by explaining what the question means and how it differs from others, such as (...) questions of personal identity and the mind-body problem. It then examines in some depth the main possible accounts of our metaphysical nature, detailing both their theoretical virtues and the often grave difficulties they face. The book does not endorse any particular account of what we are, but argues that the matter turns on more general issues in the ontology of material things. If composition is universal--if any material things whatever make up something bigger--then we are temporal parts of organisms. If things never compose anything bigger, so that there are only mereological simples, then we too are simples--perhaps the immaterial substances of Descartes--or else we do not exist at all (a view Olson takes very seriously). The intermediate view that some things compose bigger things and others do not leads almost inevitably to the conclusion that we are organisms. So we can discover what we are by working out when composition occurs. (shrink)

Consider the following three claims. (i) There are no truths of the form ‘p and ~p’. (ii) No one holds a belief of the form ‘p and ~p’. (iii) No one holds any pairs of beliefs of the form {p, ~p}. Irad Kimhi has recently argued, in effect, that each of these claims holds and holds with metaphysical necessity. Furthermore, he maintains that they are ultimately not distinct claims at all, but the same claim formulated in different ways. I find (...) his argument suggestive, if not entirely transparent. I do think there is at least an important kernel of truth even in (iii), and that (i) ultimately explains what’s right about the other two. Consciousness of an impossibility makes belief in the obtaining of the corresponding state of affairs an impossibility. Interestingly, an appreciation of this fact brings into view a novel conception of inference, according to which it consists in the consciousness of necessity. This essay outlines and defends this position. A central element of the defense is that it reveals how reasoners satisfy what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition and do so without engendering regress. (shrink)

Concepts: Core Readings traces the develoment of one of the most active areas of investigation in cognitive science. This comprehensive volume brings together the essential background readings on concepts from philosophy, psychology, and linguistics, while providing a broad sampling of contemporary research. The first part of the book centers around the fall of the Classical Theory of Concepts in the face of attacks by W.V.O. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Eleanor Rosch, and others, emphasizing the emergence and development of the Prototype Theory (...) and the controversies it spurred. The second part surveys a broad range of contemporary theories—Neoclassical Theories, the Prototype Theory, the Theory-Theory, and Conceptual Atomism. (shrink)

Eric Gregory's Politics and the Order of Love takes up an audacious project: enlisting Saint Augustine in order to "help imagine a better liberalism." This article first provides a summary of Gregory's argument, focusing on his emphasis on love as a "motivation" for neighborly care, and hence democratic participation. This involves tracing the theme of motivation in the book, which is tied to his articulation of liberal perfectionism and an emphasis on civic virtue. In conclusion I raise the (...) question of whether his project has ignored a key aspect of Augustine's account of love, namely, the role of the Holy Spirit, thereby demarcating the limits of Gregory's "rational reconstruction" of Augustine. (shrink)

I argue that to have an attitude is, primarily, (1.) to have a dispositional profile that matches, to an appropriate degree and in appropriate respects, a stereotype for that attitude, typically grounded in folk psychology, and secondarily, (2.) in some cases also to meet further stereotypical attitude-specific conditions. To have an attitude, on the account I will recommend here, is mainly a matter of being apt to interact with the world in patterns that ordinary people would regard as characteristic of (...) having that attitude. I contrast this view with alternative views that treat having an attitude as a matter of possessing some particular internally stored representational content or some other "deep" structural feature. (shrink)

Rationalization, in our intended sense of the term, occurs when a person favors a particular conclusion as a result of some factor (such as self-interest) that is of little justificatory epistemic relevance, if that factor then biases the person’s subsequent search for, and assessment of, potential justifications for the conclusion. Empirical evidence suggests that rationalization is common in people’s moral and philosophical thought. We argue that it is likely that the moral and philosophical thought of philosophers and moral psychologists is (...) also pervaded by rationalization. Moreover, although rationalization has some benefits, overall it would be epistemically better if the moral and philosophical reasoning of people, including professional academics, were not as heavily influenced by rationalization as it likely is. We discuss the significance of our arguments for cognitive management and epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

We present evidence that mainstream Anglophone philosophy is insular in the sense that participants in this academic tradition tend mostly to cite or interact with other participants in this academic tradition, while having little academic interaction with philosophers writing in other languages. Among our evidence: In a sample of articles from elite Anglophone philosophy journals, 97% of citations are citations of work originally written in English; 96% of members of editorial boards of elite Anglophone philosophy journals are housed in majority-Anglophone (...) countries; and only one of the 100 most-cited recent authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy spent most of his career in non-Anglophone countries writing primarily in a language other than English. In contrast, philosophy articles published in elite Chinese-language and Spanish-language journals cite from a range of linguistic traditions, as do non-English-language articles in a convenience sample of established European-language journals. We also find evidence that work in English has more influence on work in other languages than vice versa and that when non-Anglophone philosophers cite recent work outside of their own linguistic tradition it tends to be work in English. (shrink)

Unconscious logical inference seems to rely on the syntactic structures of mental representations (Quilty-Dunn & Mandelbaum 2018). Other transitions, such as transitions using iconic representations and associative transitions, are harder to assimilate to syntax-based theories. Here we tackle these difficulties head on in the interest of a fuller taxonomy of mental transitions. Along the way we discuss how icons can be compositional without having constituent structure, and expand and defend the “symmetry condition” on Associationism (the idea that associative links and (...) transitions are perfectly symmetric). In the end, we show how a BIT (“bare inferential transition”) theory can cohabitate with these other non-inferential mental transitions. (shrink)

Philosophers tend to be pretty impressed by human self-knowledge. Descartes (1641/1984) thought our knowledge of our own stream of experience was the secure and indubitable foundation upon which to build our knowledge of the rest of the world. Hume – who was capable of being skeptical about almost anything – said that the only existences we can be certain of are our own sensory and imagistic experiences (1739/1978, p. 212). Perhaps the most prominent writer on self-knowledge in contemporary philosophy is (...) Sydney Shoemaker. The central aim of much of his work has been to show that certain sorts of error are impossible (1963, 1988, 1994). David Chalmers has likewise attempted to show that, for a suitably constrained class of beliefs about one’s own consciousness, error is impossible (2003, sec. 4.1). Even philosophers most of the community thinks of as pessimistic about self-knowledge of consciousness seem to me, really, to be fairly optimistic. Paul Churchland, famous for his disdain of ordinary people’s knowledge about the mind, compares the accuracy of introspection to the accuracy of sense perception – pretty good, presumably, about medium-sized, nearby matters (1985, 1988). Dan Dennett, often cited as a pessimist about introspective report, actually says that we can come close to infallibility when charitably interpreted (2002). The above references concern knowledge of the stream of conscious experience, but philosophers have also tended to be impressed with our self-knowledge of our attitudes, such as our beliefs and desires. Consider this: Although I can be wrong about its being sunny outside, I can’t in the same way be wrong, it seems, about the fact that I think it’s sunny outside. Some.. (shrink)

In On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World from 1975, Quine formulated a thesis of underdetermination roughly to the effect that every scientific theory has an empirically equivalent but logically incompatible rival, one that cannot be discarded merely as a terminological variant of the former. For Quine, the truth of this thesis was an open question. If true, some would argue that it undermines any belief in scientific theories that is based purely on their empirical success. But despite its potential (...) significance, surprisingly little has been done by way of establishing or refuting it. My aim is to establish the thesis for as large a class of theories as possible. Under various precisifications of the concepts involved, I show that it holds for all consistent and recursively axiomatizable theories that postulate infinitely many theoretical entities. (shrink)

On an intellectualist approach to belief, the intellectual endorsement of a proposition (such as “The working poor deserve as much respect as the handsomely paid”) is sufficient or nearly sufficient for believing it. On a pragmatic approach to belief, intellectual endorsement is not enough. Belief is behaviorally demanding. To really, fully believe, you must also “walk the walk.” This chapter argues that the pragmatic approach is preferable on pragmatic grounds: It rightly directs our attention to what matters most in thinking (...) about belief. (shrink)

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably (...) reliable, elegantly readable presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

Eric Martin and Daniel N. Osherson present a theory of inductive logic built on model theory. Their aim is to extend the mathematics of Formal Learning Theory to a more general setting and to provide a more accurate image of empirical inquiry. The formal results of their study illuminate aspects of scientific inquiry that are not covered by the commonly applied Bayesian approach.

Je suis celui qui suis : tel est le Nom de Dieu révélé par le livre de l'Exode. " Dieu est Amour " affirme par ailleurs saint Jean. Comment concilier l'Etre suprême et la Miséricorde infinie, la transcendance du Dieu de Moïse et sa proximité en Jésus-Christ? Telle est la question abordée par Etienne Gilson dans ce livre méconnu, réédité pour la première fois depuis sa parution à Montréal, en 1947. Prenant appui notamment sur les Confessions, les Sermons 6 et (...) 7, le Traité 38 sur Jean, ainsi que le Commentaire du Psaume 51, Etienne Gilson montre que pour saint Augustin, Dieu n'est pas " que " l'Etre pur, subsistant comme intouchable : Il est encore le " Dieu d'Abraham, d'Isaac et de Jacob ", comme le révèle également le récit de l'Exode, le Dieu qui Est, mais " qui est avec toi ". En Dieu, le nom de la substance et le nom de la miséricorde coïncident. Ce n'est plus seulement la tradition aristotélicienne qui voit son entreprise philosophique confirmée, mais aussi la voie platonicienne, pour laquelle Dieu est le Bien. Etre et Bien que saint Augustin voit réunis dans une Personne : le Verbe divin ; dans un Nom : Jésus-Christ. Deux textes de saint Augustin viennent compléter cet essai d'Etienne Gilson : la Lettre 18, traduite par Marie-Anne Vannier, et le sermon Contre les païens, retrouvé par François Dolbeau en 1990 à Mayence, traduit ici pour la première fois en français par Eric Rebillard, chercheur au CNRS. (shrink)

Can large language models produce expert‐quality philosophical texts? To investigate this, we fine‐tuned GPT‐3 with the works of philosopher Daniel Dennett. To evaluate the model, we asked the real Dennett 10 philosophical questions and then posed the same questions to the language model, collecting four responses for each question without cherry‐picking. Experts on Dennett's work succeeded at distinguishing the Dennett‐generated and machine‐generated answers above chance but substantially short of our expectations. Philosophy blog readers performed similarly to the experts, while ordinary (...) research participants were near chance distinguishing GPT‐3's responses from those of an “actual human philosopher”. (shrink)

Once again available in paperback, Plato is the first half of Eric Voegelin's Plato and Aristotle, the third volume of his five-volume Order and History, which ...

In this book, Eric Havelock presents a challenging account of the development of the idea of justice in early Greece, and particularly of the way justice changed as Greek oral tradition gradually gave way to the written word in a literate society. He begins by examining the educational functions of poets in preliterate Greece, showing how they conserved and transmitted the traditions of society, a thesis adumbrated in his earlier book Preface to Plato. Homer, he demonstrates, has much to (...) say about justice, but since that idea is nowhere in the epics directly stated or expressed, it must be deduced from the speech and actions of the characters. Havelock's careful reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey is original and revealing; it sheds light both on Homeric notions of justice and on the Archaic Greek society depicted in the poems. As Havelock continues his inquiry from Hesiod to Aeschylus, his findings become more complex. The oral Greek world shades into a literate one. Words lose some kinds of meanings, gain others, and steadily become more suited to the conceptualization that Plato strove for and achieved. This evolution of language itself, Havelock shows, was one of the principal accomplishments of the Greek world. Lucidly written and forcefully argued, this book is a major contribution to our knowledge of ancient Greece--its politics, philosophy, and literature, from Homer to Plato. (shrink)

One big question in biology is what life is, but another is how life divides into living things. This is the problem of biological individuality. Proposed statements of the problem have been vague and incomplete. And proposed theories of biological individuality are not detailed enough to solve the problem even if they are correct. The root of these troubles is that their authors have not recognized the metaphysical claims presupposed in their statement of the problem. Making these claims explicit will (...) enable us to see better what the problem is and what form a solution to it would need to have. (shrink)

Trust me: my chair isn't big enough for two. You may doubt that every rational, conscious being is a person; perhaps there are beings that mistakenly believe themselves to be people. If so, read ‘rational, conscious being’ or the like for 'person'.

Preface -- Introduction -- How to value democracy -- Paper stones, the ethics of participation -- Philosophers-citizens -- Superdeliberators -- What is it like to be a citizen? -- Democracy's ethics of belief -- The division of democratic labor -- Representing principles -- Democratic complicity -- Not in my name, macrodemocratic design.