In this international and interdisciplinary collection of critical essays, distinguished contributors examine a crucial premise of traditional readings of Plato's dialogues: that Plato's own doctrines and arguments can be read off the statements made in the dialogues by Socrates and other leading characters. The authors argue in general and with reference to specific dialogues, that no character should be taken to be Plato's mouthpiece. This is essential reading for students and scholars of Plato.

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew. The point of departure for many of (...) those engaged in the debate has been the identification of Socratic method with "the elenchus" as a technique of logical argumentation aimed at refuting an interlocutor, which Gregory Vlastos highlighted in an influential article in 1983. The essays in this volume look again at many of the issues to which Vlastos drew attention but also seek to broaden the discussion well beyond the limits of his formulation. Some contributors question the suitability of the elenchus as a general description of how Socrates engages his interlocutors; others trace the historical origins of the kinds of argumentation Socrates employs; others explore methods in addition to the elenchus that Socrates uses; several propose new ways of thinking about Socratic practices. Eight essays focus on specific dialogues, each examining why Plato has Socrates use the particular methods he does in the context defined by the dialogue. Overall, representing a wide range of approaches in Platonic scholarship, the volume aims to enliven and reorient the debate over Socratic method so as to set a new agenda for future research. Contributors are Hayden W. Ausland, Hugh H. Benson, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Michelle Carpenter, John M. Carvalho, Lloyd P. Gerson, Francisco J. Gonzalez, James H. Lesher, Mark McPherran, Ronald M. Polansky, Gerald A. Press, François Renaud, and W. Thomas Schmid, Nicholas D. Smith, P. Christopher Smith, Harold Tarrant, Joanne B. Waugh, and Charles M. Young. (shrink)

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew. The point of departure for many of (...) those engaged in the debate has been the identification of Socratic method with "the elenchus" as a technique of logical argumentation aimed at refuting an interlocutor, which Gregory Vlastos highlighted in an influential article in 1983. The essays in this volume look again at many of the issues to which Vlastos drew attention but also seek to broaden the discussion well beyond the limits of his formulation. Some contributors question the suitability of the elenchus as a general description of how Socrates engages his interlocutors; others trace the historical origins of the kinds of argumentation Socrates employs; others explore methods in addition to the elenchus that Socrates uses; several propose new ways of thinking about Socratic practices. Eight essays focus on specific dialogues, each examining why Plato has Socrates use the particular methods he does in the context defined by the dialogue. Overall, representing a wide range of approaches in Platonic scholarship, the volume aims to enliven and reorient the debate over Socratic method so as to set a new agenda for future research. Contributors are Hayden W. Ausland, Hugh H. Benson, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Michelle Carpenter, John M. Carvalho, Lloyd P. Gerson, Francisco J. Gonzalez, James H. Lesher, Mark McPherran, Ronald M. Polansky, Gerald A. Press, François Renaud, and W. Thomas Schmid, Nicholas D. Smith, P. Christopher Smith, Harold Tarrant, Joanne B. Waugh, and Charles M. Young. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plotinus by Lloyd P. GersonGary M. Gurtler S.J.Lloyd P. Gerson. Plotinus. The Arguments of the Philosophers. London: Routledge, 1994. Pp. xviii + 338. Cloth, $59.95.This challenging account of Plotinus’ philosophy is appropriately published in a series called The Arguments of the Philosophers. Professor Gerson confronts Plotinus’ position on some major issues in the history of philosophy with an array of counterarguments, ancient, medieval, and modern. More (...) often than not, Plotinus’ position is presented cogently and sympathetically, refuting the notion that Plotinus is merely a philosophical lightweight. The book is rigorous, demanding more than passing knowledge of the history of philosophy and its current trends, especially the Anglo-American. It will thus serve to establish Plotinus as a reputable philosopher among analytic philosophers. Students of Plotinus will find it controversial. Both results will enhance the scholarly work on Plotinus that has flourished recently, indicated in Gerson’s extensive bibliography, although less apparently utilized in establishing his account of Plotinus’ philosophy.The author himself admits that the book is difficult and he indicates where he thinks Plotinus is to blame (225). It thus falls to the reviewer to indicate difficulties traceable to the author. The symptoms are easily seen in the portrait of Plotinus that emerges from these pages. It is a strange one indeed: a Plotinus who is scholastic in organization, Thomist in holding the real distinction and post-Cartesian in epistemology. The Platonic character of Plotinus’ Neoplatonism is not merely absent, but positively excluded by Gerson’s insistence on fitting Plotinus to the Procrustean bed of modern logic, eliminating experience as of dubious philosophical worth. This is most noticeable in his treatment of mysticism, but occurs also when he considers the social or intersubjective dimension of human life and, more crucially, the methodological starting point of Plotinus’ philosophy. Gerson’s method proceeds, in scholastic fashion, from the First Principle to those ontological and logical principles that are deduced from it, coming finally to consider the soul and its capacities. This inversion of Plotinus’ [End Page 128] position entails constant difficulties as Gerson drives his logical engine to make deductions where none are necessary.Attention to Plotinus’ Platonism entails two interlocking assumptions excluded in the above portrait. One concerns the nature and limits of language itself. Language and discursive thought in general are essentially images of what in some way is and they are thus subordinate to the more direct contact of experience, whether sensible or intelligible. The other concerns the nature of experience itself as the starting point of Plotinus’ reflection, moving from the immediate awareness of the empirical self (Gerson’s “endowed self”) to those conditions that make such awareness possible in the dependence both of the soul and the sensible world on the intelligible world, and ultimately on the One. That Plotinus begins with the human situation can be seen in V 3[49] 6,1–11, where he contrasts precisely the necessity of Intellect with the persuasion possible for the soul. He recognizes that whatever the allure of logical thought it is not sufficient to convince the soul. It does not take into account the status of language as an image and the experience of the soul as essentially embodied. It is characteristic of post-Cartesian philosophy, on the contrary, to read necessity into the soul and to assume that propositional thought is identical with the real and brings certitude with it. This denies the analogous character that human knowledge has for someone like Plotinus. Similar problems arise about the nature of intellect.Within the logical parameters that Gerson has set for his interpretation, the influence of Plotinus on and the claims made about him with regard to religion (203–12) and mysticism (218–24) fall by the way. This may please those who would otherwise ignore Plotinus’ philosophy, but it will not persuade people on either side of the religious divide. The issue, however, is less about a specific kind of experience than about any kind of experience that cannot be reduced to logical categories. Ultimately, the claim being made is that what cannot be captured in logical categories is no more than an empty surd. Gerson, in fact, reverses... (shrink)

"Examines ethical, religious, and aesthetic dimensions of the environment from several different disciplines related to the humanities including anthropology, literature, philosophy, religious studies, and history, with examples drawn from Confucianism, aboriginal Australia, Moby-Dick, liberal democracies, Ken Wilber, Joanna Macy, and Gary Snyder"--Provided by publisher.

This paper discusses the use of subjective health assessment in medical practice and social policy-making. The importance of recognising patients' perceptions of their health when attempting to improve patient-practitioner relationships and formulate effective health care policies is stressed. The paper describes some of the tensions that exist between objective and subjective assessments of health. It is argued that there is a need for a unifying theory to underpin the use of subjective health perceptions. Suggestions are made for the effective employment (...) of these indicators. (shrink)

A remarkable collection of photographs by an ex-Marine who worked as a lawyer in Lawrence County, Ohio, for around thirty-six years.

How does material culture matter for institutions? Material objects are increasingly prominent in sociological research, but current studies offer limited insight for how material objects matter to institutional processes. We build on sociological insights to theorize aesthetic style, a shared pattern of material object presence and usage among a cluster of organizations in an institutional field. We use formal relational methods and a survey of material objects from religious congregations to uncover the aesthetic styles that are part of the “logics (...) of god” in the United States’ Christian religious field. We argue aesthetic styles help structure an institutional field by spanning objects’ meanings across space and time, stabilizing objects’ authority, and demarcating symbolic boundaries. Our research provides a conceptual tool for understanding how objects bridge the material and symbolic dimensions of institutions and a methodological example for examining the meaning of objects across numerous organizations in an institutional field. (shrink)

This paper delineates the normative and empirical approaches to business ethics based upon five categories: 1) academic horne; 2) language; 3) underlying assumptions; 4) theory purpose and scope; 5) theory grounds and evaluation criteria. The goal of the discussion is to increase understanding of the distinctive contributions of each approach and to encourage further dialogue about the potential for integration of the field.

A fresh translation and in-depth commentary of Leibniz's seminal text, the Monadology. -/- Written in 1714, the Monadology is widely considered to be the classic statement of Leibniz's mature philosophy. In the space of 90 numbered paragraphs, totalling little more than 6000 words, Leibniz outlines - and argues for - the core features of his philosophical system. Although rightly regarded as a masterpiece, it is also a very condensed work that generations of students have struggled to understand. -/- Lloyd (...) Strickland presents a new translation of the Monadology, alongside key parts of the Theodicy, and an in-depth, section-by-section commentary that explains in detail not just what Leibniz is saying in the text but also why he says it. The sharp focus on the various arguments and other justifications Leibniz puts forward makes possible a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of his doctrines. (shrink)

In a short speech in Book 24 of the Iliad , Priam tells Hecuba of his intention to visit the camp of the Achaians in order to attempt to ransom the body of Hector. Hecuba responds with predictable consternation to this dangerous proposition.

In a short speech in Book 24 of the Iliad, Priam tells Hecuba of his intention to visit the camp of the Achaians in order to attempt to ransom the body of Hector. Hecuba responds with predictable consternation to this dangerous proposition.

Daniel C. Dennett claims that the self is nothing more than a fiction of the brain, an abstraction that has been promoted by evolutionary processes as a result of its biological and social beneficence. While concurring with Dennett with regard to simple selves, I argue for the existence of indeterminate and functional selves, and propose that such selves come about as a direct result of our believing in the reality of simple and thus fictional selves. In addition to this I (...) shall contend that Dennett is confused as to the precise nature of the self, and as a consequence ends up fluctuating between two importantly different positions. My overall aim is to ameliorate Dennett’s initial insights and hopefully come up with something more consistent and metaphysically palatable. (shrink)

The first part of the essay explores the relations between the will and practical reason or judgement. The second part takes up decision in the realm of belief, i.e. deciding that such and such is so. This phenomenon raises two questions. Since we decide that as well as to, should we speak of a doxastic will? Secondly, should we regard ourselves as active in the formation of our judgements as in the formation of our intentions? The author's answer to these (...) two further questions is ‘no’ and ‘yes’, respectively: the boundaries between the active and the passive are not marked by the will. (shrink)

Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful—being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of (...) embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution. (shrink)

Is capitalist production unjust? It is easy to think, upon first reading Marx, that he answers this question in the affirmative. And I shall argue that this naive reading is correct. This needs to be argued, however, for a more careful scrutiny of Marx's writings reveals passages in which he seems to call capitalist production just or fair. Relying upon these passages, Robert Tucker and Allen W. Wood have urged that, in Wood's words,it is simply not the case that Marx's (...) condemnation of capitalism rests on some conception of justice, and those who attempt to reconstruct a “Marxian idea of justice” from Marx's manifold charges against capitalism are at best only translating Marx's critique of capitalism, or some aspect of it, into what Marx himself would have consistently regarded as a false, ideological, or “mystified” form.What Marx regarded as false and mystified, however, is not the practice of assessing social institutions as just or unjust, but rather the picture of those institutions, and especially of capitalist production, to be found in bourgeois ideology. (shrink)

The biblical notion of dominion has often been cited as the source and sanction for Western attitudes of environmental disregard. An analysis of the Genesis passage in which dominion is mentioned reveals a curious misreading of the text: dominion is actually an ideal of human-divine intimacy and peacefulness-as one ought to expect in a paradise creation story. I analyze Genesis dominion not only as areligious concept, but also as a philosophical notion manifesting the Hebrew self-understanding of its contemporary experience with (...) the natural world. Being a verb, radah is also an action concept that connotes an ethic of environmental responsibility. Dominion authorizes a philosophical critique of Western attitudes and practices of environmental exploitation. I defend it here as an intentional expression of the Western religious consciousness that could, if it were understood as an ideal of responsible action rather than as an authorization for callous disregard of the natural world, actually promote interreligious dialogue on environmental issues. (shrink)

Prior research on ethics codes has suggested, but rarely tested, the effects of code design alternatives on the impact of codes. This study considers whether the presence of explanatory rationales and descriptions of sanctions in ethics codes affects recipients'' responses to a code. Theories of organizational justice and persuasive communication support an expectation that rationales and sanctions will be positively related to code recipients'' recall of code content and perceptions of organizational justice. Content recall is an obvious precondition of code (...) compliance; justice perceptions have multiple implications for the attitudes and actions of organizational members. Results show that explanatory rationales are associated with a statistically significant increase in perceptions of organizational procedural justice, but that rationales and sanctions generally show no relationship to distributive justice perceptions and accurate content recall. These results suggest that common prescriptions regarding ethics code design are of uncertain value apart from further research which unearths the relationships among the intended and perceived purposes of codes, the organizational settings in which they are applied, and a wide variety of code designs. (shrink)

This essay is about the difficulties of doing criminal justice in the context of severe social injustice. Having been marginalized as citizens of the larger community, those who are victims of severe social injustice are understandably alienated from the dominant political institutions, and, not unreasonably, disrespect their authority, including that of the criminal law. The failure of equal treatment and protection and the absence of anything like fair and decent life prospects for the members of the marginalized populations erode the (...) basis for its allegiance to demands of the political community. The criminal law thus occupies a problematic normative position with respect to lawbreakers in this population; in many cases, it finds itself in the position of convicting them for crimes for which the political community itself bears some significant responsibility. The attempt to administer criminal justice therefore faces a serious moral predicament; on the one hand, criminal law has a right and an.. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of psychopathy have been framed primarily in terms of psychopaths' conspicuous moral shortcomings. But despite their vaunted ‘egocentricity’, another prominent trait in the standard psychopathic profile is a characteristic failure to look after themselves; in an important way, psychopaths appear to be as careless of themselves as they are of others. Assuming that the standard profile is largely correct, the question is how these moral and prudential deficits are related. Are they linked in some non‐accidental way? This paper (...) is a sympathetic exploration and articulation of the hypothesis that psychopathy involves an incapacity for critical distance from from one's own impulses and inclinations, an incapacity that would explain the lack of both prudential and moral regard. (shrink)

This is the first title in the Key Themes in Ancient Philosophy series, which provides concise books, written by major scholars and accessible to non-specialists, on important themes in ancient philosophy which remain of philosophical interest today. In this book, Professor Gerson explores ancient accounts of the nature of knowledge and belief from the Presocratics up to the Platonists of late antiquity. He argues that ancient philosophers generally held a naturalistic view of knowledge as well as of belief. Hence, knowledge (...) was not viewed as a stipulated or semantically determined type of belief but was rather a real or objectively determinable achievement. In fact, its attainment was identical with the highest possible cognitive achievement, namely wisdom. It was this naturalistic view of knowledge at which the ancient Skeptics took aim. The book concludes by comparing the ancient naturalistic epistemology with some contemporary versions. (shrink)

Just war theory has been criticized since it so often is employed by governments and political leadership to justify uses of violent force for nationalistic, political self-serving or otherwise non-moral reasons. This paper acknowledges that reality but argues that just war thinking exemplifies a nonabsolutist mode of moral thinking that actually sets a high bar for morally justifying any use of force. The paper argues that just war thinking must be based on the presumption that force ordinarily ought not be (...) used to settle conflicts. To make the point the author examines Gandhi’s satyagraha, which Gandhi understood as a use of nonviolent force. The paper demonstrates how Gandhi implicitly appealed to the various criteria of just war in thinking about satyagraha. The author concludes that just war theory is not an enemy of peace. (shrink)

Our object is to study the interaction between mereology and David Lewis’ theory of subject-matters, elaborating his observation that not every subject matter is of the form: how things stand with such-and-such a part of the world. After an informal introduction to this point in Section 1, we turn to a formal treatment of the partial orderings arising in the two areas – the part-whole relation, on the one hand, and the relation of refinement amongst partitions of the set of (...) worlds, on the other. We emphasize a certain duality, formulated in and in Section 2, between the corresponding lattice operations – mereological joins with partition-lattice meets, mereological meets with partition-lattice joins. Section 3 presents some issues that are raised by consideration of the informally familiar idea of logical subtraction. These include, in particular, a problem about the need for a notion of independence different from the usual logical notion going by that name. The apparatus of Section 2 promises to throw some light on this problem, as we indicate in Section 4. Section 5 ties up some loose ends and suggests an area in which further work would be desirable. (shrink)

This rich and wide-ranging book defends a “tripartite theory” of responsibility. The general thesis is that responsibility-responses fall into three overlapping categories, each of which presumes distinct agential capacities. On the basis of a close examination of various sorts of marginal agency, these capacities are said to be independent and ground what deserves to be called distinct types or “faces” of responsibility. The first face, attributability, depends on a capacity for character, answerability on a capacity for judgment, and accountability on (...) a capacity for “regard”. This commentary questions the theory’s account of the relations among the types of responsibility, and its attempt to ground responsibility-responses in qualities of “will”. (shrink)

This article explores disciplinary approaches to educational studies over the past fifty years, in particular those developed by exponents of the 'foundation disciplines' of history, philosophy, psychology and sociology. It investigates the establishment of the disciplines during the first half of the period, and their consolidation, survival, and adaptation since the 1970s in a rapidly changing educational and political context. The nature of the contribution of the disciplines, both separately and together, to the study of education is assessed. The article (...) also considers the role of the disciplines in stimulating a pluralist and eclectic approach to the study of education, as opposed to the notion of a unitary and autonomous field of knowledge represented as 'educational research'. (shrink)

This paper addresses the criticism recently directed at Internet companies who have chosen to do business in China. Currently, in order to conduct business in China, companies must agree to the Chinese government's rule of self-censoring any information the government deems inappropriate. We start by explaining how some of these companies have violated the human rights of Chinese citizens to freely trade information. We then analyze whether the justifications and excuses offered by these companies are sufficient to absolve them of (...) moral responsibility. We argue that both justifications and excuses offered are insufficient. Wilfully abiding by unjust laws, albeit necessary to do business in China, should not trump moral actions that protect rights. (shrink)

The plurivalent logics considered in Graham Priest's recent paper of that name can be thought of as logics determined by matrices whose underlying algebras are power algebras, where the power algebra of a given algebra has as elements textit{subsets} of the universe of the given algebra, and the power matrix of a given matrix has has the power algebra of the latter's algebra as its underlying algebra, with its designated elements being selected in a natural way on the basis of (...) those of the given matrix. The present discussion stresses the continuity of Priest's work on the question of which matrices determine consequence relations which remain unaffected on passage to the consequence relation determined by the power matrix of the given matrix with the corresponding question in equational logic as to which identities holding in an algebra continue to hold in its power algebra. Both questions are sensitive to a decision as to whether or not to include the empty set as an element of the power algebra, and our main focus will be on the contrast, when it is included, between the power matrix semantics and the four-valued Dunn--Belnap semantics for first-degree entailment a la Anderson and Belnap) in terms of sets of classical values, in which the empty set figures in a somewhat different way, as Priest had remarked his 1984 study, `Hyper-contradictions', in which what we are calling the power matrix construction first appeared. (shrink)

Covers the philosophy of 200-800 CE and its place in literature, science, and religion. Includes a digest of all philosophical works known to have been written during the period.

My reply to Macpherson begins by addressing whether it is effects of cognition on early vision or perceptual performance that I am interested in. I proceed to address Macpherson’s comments on evidence from cross-modal effects, interpretations of linguistic effects on image detection, evidence from illusions, and the usefulness of predictive coding for understanding cognitive penetration. By stressing the interactive and distributed nature of neural processing, I am committing to a collapse between perception and cognition. Following such a collapse, the very (...) question of whether cognition affects perception becomes ill-posed, but this may be for the best. (shrink)

It is observed that a consistent congruential modal logic is not guaranteed to have a consistent extension in which the Box operator becomes a truth-functional connective for one of the four one-place truth functions.