Biblical ethics -- The insights of history.

Mossner's Life of David Hume remains the standard biography of this great thinker and writer. First published in 1954, and updated in 1980, it is now reissued in paperback in response to increased interest in Hume. E. C. Mossner was Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. 'Mossner's work is a quite remarkable scholarly achievement; it will be an indispensable tool for Hume scholars and a treasure-trove of information for all students of the intellectual and literary (...) history of the eighteenth century' Richard H. Popkin in the Philological Quarterly. (shrink)

Finding a powerful ally in Bertrand Russell, who provided the foreword for this book, Gellner embarked on the project that was to put him on the intellectual ...

In what way is knowledge better than merely true belief? That is a problem posed in Plato’s Meno. A belief that falls short of knowledge seems thereby inferior. It is better to know than to get it wrong, of course, and also better than to get it right by luck rather than competence. But how can that be so, if a true belief will provide the same benefits? In order to get to Larissa you do not need to know the (...) way. A true belief will get you there just as well. Is it really always better to know the answer to a question than to get it right by luck? In part i we ponder: Is knowledge always better at least in epistemic respects? The affirmative answer is subject to doubts deriving from a conception of belief as sufficient confidence, but is defensible against such doubts. In our search for the special value of knowledge, we then explore in part ii the relation between knowledge and proper action. Part iii goes on to consider how the value of knowledge intuition acquires further interest through its equivalence with the view of knowledge as a norm of assertion. Finally, part iv steps back to examine what we might mean in saying that to know is always, necessarily better than to get it right by luck while really in ignorance. In order to defend our value-of-knowledge intuition we need first to understand it more clearly. Part iv offers an explanation. (shrink)

The first book-length study of a leading tenth-century Ismaili theoretician Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani.

Belief is considered a kind of performance, which attains one level of success if it is true (or accurate), a second level if competent (or adroit), and a third if true because competent (or apt). Knowledge on one level (the animal level) is apt belief. The epistemic normativity constitutive of such knowledge is thus a kind of performance normativity. A problem is posed for this account by the fact that suspension of belief seems to fall under the same sort of (...) epistemic normativity as does belief itself, yet to suspend is of course precisely not to perform, certainly not with the aim of truth. The paper takes up this problem, and proposes a solution that distinguishes levels of performance norrmativity, including a first order where execution competence is in play, and a second order where the performer must assess the risks attendant on issuing a first-order performance. This imports a level of reflective knowledge that ascends above the animal level. (shrink)

A telic virtue epistemology was presupposed in our treatment of insight and understanding. What follows will lay out the main elements of that telic theory and explore how it provides an epistemology of suspension.

Survey results are in the first instance utterances, which require interpretation. Moreover, when the results seem to involve disagreement in intuitive responses to a thought experiment, the results are most directly responsive to the scenario as envisaged by the particular subject, where the text of the example can give rise to relevantly different scenarios, depending on how the scenario is shaped by the subjects involved, under the guidance of the text. All of this opens up a defense of intuitions against (...) results that ostensibly imply extensive intuitive disagreement based on cultural or socio-economic background. Critics of the armchair have replied to this defense in recent publications. This paper takes up some of those replies. (shrink)

Paul Boghossian discusses critically my account of intuition as a source of epistemic status. Stewart Cohen takes up my views on skepticism, on dreams, and on epistemic competence and competences and their relation to human knowledge. Hilary Kornblith focuses on my animal/reflective distinction, and, along with Cohen, on my comparison between how dreams might mislead us and how other bad epistemic contexts can do so. In this paper I offer replies to my three critics.

This time Pritchard is on a rescue mission. Veritism is besieged and he rises to defend it. I do agree with much in his Veritism, but I demur when he adds: “So, the goodness of all epistemic goods is understood instrumentally with regard to whether they promote truth”. If Big Brother brainwashes us to believe the full contents of The Encyclopedia Britannica, then even if we suppose those contents to be true without exception, that would not make what they do (...) an unalloyed good thing, not even epistemically. But it does seem to promote truth. What might then diminish Big Brother’s action so much, so as to make it so deplorable epistemically after all, despite how powerfully it does instrumentally promote truth. At a minimum we need to say more about the relations between epistemic goods and truth, so as to better understand how it is that the epistemic good is made so good by what specific relation to the truth. I lay out a way to understand Veritism so that it can say more about the relations between epistemic goods and truth, thus enhancing our understanding of epistemic normativity. And in a second part I lay out a solution to Linda Zagzebski’s Swamping problem for reliabilism. I argue that it is a problem for process reliabilism, but not for a virtue epistemology that accepts a kind of reliabilism, but in an agential telic framework, and not in a process framework. So, I lay out one way to be a “veritist”, by defending explicitly its Axiological side, and by implication its Conceptual side as well. I have raised questions for Pritchard’s own defense and have offered in each case an alternative defense that I believe fits the words of his formulations, and is in their spirit as well. (shrink)

Fourteen healthy children (13.8±2.2 years, range 10 to 16; M:F=5:9) received 30 Hz intermittent theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (iTBS) with a stimulation intensity of 70% of resting motor threshold (RMT) with a total of 300 (iTBS300) pulses. All volunteers were free of neurologic, psychiatric and serious medical illnesses, not taking any neuropsychiatric medications, and did not have any contraindications to Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Changes in the mean amplitudes of motor-evoked potentials from baseline following iTBS were expressed as a ratio (...) and assessed from 1 to 10 minutes (BLOCK1) and 1 to 30 minutes (BLOCK2) using repeated-measures analysis of variance. All 14 subjects completed iTBS300 over the dominant primary motor cortex (M1) without any clinically reported adverse events. ITBS300 produced significant M1 facilitation (F5,65=3.165, p=0.01) at BLOCK1 and trend level M1 facilitation at BLOCK2 (F10,129=1.69, p=0.089). Although iTBS300 (stimulation duration of 92 seconds at 70% RMT) delivered over M1 in typically developed children was well-tolerated and produced on average significant facilitatory changes in cortical excitability, the post-iTBS300 neurophysiologic response was variable in our small sample. ITBS300-induced changes may represent a potential neuroplastic biomarker in healthy children and those with neuro-genetic or neuro-psychiatric disorders. However, a larger sample size is needed to address safety and concerns of response variability. (shrink)

Review of John Greco's The Transmission of Knowledge This paper responds to the Lackey objection to virtue epistemology. Its response is one that can be used to defend Greco's virtue epistemology as well as the author's own virtue epistemology.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:80 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Gilson often contrasts the God of Aquinas, who is esse, with the God of Augustine, who is essentia. This difference in terminology is taken as emphasizing the essentialist character of Augustine's thought. However, Professor Anderson maintains that essentia should not be regarded as equivalent to the Thomistic notion of essence. F,ssentia is derived, according to Augustine, from esse and is most equivalent to the Thomistic (...) ens. Hence, according to Anderson, Augustine was not ignoring or slighting the factor of existence when he referred to God as essentia. Once again, Anderson's point is valid only if we grant that esse meant "to exisff' for Augustine and could not be interpreted as meaning "to be unchangeable." That there is any doubt that esse meant "to exist" for Augustine seems to be ruled out by Anderson (p. 40). One of Anderson's most interesting theses is the suggestion that the Augustinian distinction between being and non-being is substantially the same as the Thomistie distinction between essence and existence. For Augustine God alone is esse itself, while all creatures are limited by non-esse, i.e., they share in both esse and non-esse. Similarly, for Aquinas only God is esse itself, while all creatures merely possess esse. It is evident that for both philosophers the distinction between what is esse itself and what is not csse itself provides an important way of distinguishing between God and creatures. How much more alike the two distinctions are will depend on how the notion of esse is interpreted by Augustine and Aquinas. One problem is bound to arise: If for Aquinas the "proportionality" of being is to be found in the relationship between esse and essentia in ens, while for Augustine essentia ---- ens, then either Augustine does not have a Thomistic notion of the analogy of being or it must be shown what Augustine 's equivalent for the Thomistic essentia would be. Non-being does not seem adequate for such a role. A good portion of Professor Anderson's essay is devoted to discussing Augustinian metaphysics precisely in the areas in which Gilson claims that Augustine's essentialism creates problems for Augustine the Christian. These include the problems of proving the existence of God, creation and the nature of participation. It is pointed out that many of Augustine's remarks which have frequently been supposed to be of Neoplatonic inspiration are in fact based upon Scripture as far as the Saint is concerned. Although I find some portions of his essay obscure, on the whole I should say that Professor Anderson's study is quite exciting and a considerable challenge to those who are tempted to draw striking contrasts between the "essentialism" of Augustine and the "existentialism" of Aquinas. BRUCE GARSIDE McGiU University Eight Philosophers o] the Italian Renaissance. By Paul Oskar Kristeller. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1964.Pp. ix -~ 194.$5.00.) The eight chapters constituting the main body of this volume, devoted in succession to Petrarch, Valla, Ficino, Pieo, Pomponazzi, Telesio, Patrizi, and Bruno, are based on the Arensberg Lectures which were delivered by Professor Kristeller in 1961 at Stanford University. Footnotes and bibliographical references have been added, and as an appendix there is included an essay on "The Medieval Antecedents of Renaissance Humanism" which, though delivered as a lecture on several occasions, is here printed for the first time. The purpose of the series of eight lectures, as Kristeller indicates in his short preface, was "to give a brief survey of Italian thought during the Renaissance period". The aspects of Italian Renaissance thought, represented by the authors selected for discussion, are those traditionally described as humanism, Florentine Platonism, Paduan Aristotelianism, and speculative philosophies of nature. As representatives of the humanist movement Petrarch and Valla are selected, not merely because of their prominence but in order to make clear that Renaissance humanism cannot be identified with preference for a particular philosophical tradition. Petrarch preferred Plato to Aristotle, Augustine to Aquinas, and Cicero and Seneca to the Epicureans, whereas Valla preferred the Epicurean philosophy to that of the Stoics or Platonists, and appealed to Quintilian more than to Cicero in his proposals for a reform of... (shrink)