This little book provides basic 7-minute yoga exercises for each day of the week. The exercises are organized by the mythological and planetary significances of each particular day.

Intention is one of the masterworks of twentieth-century philosophy in English. First published in 1957, it has acquired the status of a modern philosophical classic. The book attempts to show in detail that the natural and widely accepted picture of what we mean by an intention gives rise to insoluble problems and must be abandoned. This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

Dans Le Plaisir et la Nécessité, Pierre-Marie Morel (= M.) réunit des articles presque tous déjà publiés (neuf sur dix) au cours des vingt dernières années et traitant de multiples sujets abordés par deux philosophes qu’il connaît magistralement, Démocrite et épicure. Le livre est composé d’une introduction suivie de dix chapitres articulés en trois parties, d’un épilogue, de remerciements et d’une bibliographie sélective structurée. Il se termine par deux index témoignant de l’ampleur et de...

Anscombe guides us through the Tractatus and, thereby, Wittgenstein's early philosophy as a whole. She shows in particular how his arguments developed out of the discussions of Russell and Frege. This reprint is of the fourth, corrected edition.

Elliott Currie, Confronting Crime: An American Challenge New York: Pantheon Books, 1985, viii + 326 pp.

The intentionality of sensation -- The first person -- Substance -- The subjectivity of sensation -- Events in the mind -- Comments on Professor R.L. Gregory's paper on perception -- On sensations of position -- Intention -- Pretending -- On the grammar of "Enjoy" -- The reality of the past -- Memory, "experience," and causation -- Causality and determination -- Times, beginnings, and causes -- Soft determinism -- Causality and extensionality -- Before and after -- Subjunctive conditionals -- "Under a (...) description" -- Analysis competition--tenth problem -- A reply to Mr. C.S. Lewis's argument that "naturalism" is self-refuting. (shrink)

Based on a framework that distinguishes several types, roles and functions of values in science, we discuss legitimate applications of values in the validation of computer simulations. We argue that, first, epistemic values, such as empirical accuracy and coherence with background knowledge, have the role to assess the credibility of simulation results, whereas, second, cognitive values, such as comprehensiveness of a conceptual model or easy handling of a numerical model, have the role to assess the usefulness of a model for (...) investigating a hypothesis. In both roles, values perform what we call first-order functions. In addition, cogni¬tive values may also serve an auxiliary function by facilitating the assessment of credibility. As for a third type of values, i.e. social values, their legitimate role consists in specifying and weighing epistemic and cognitive values with respect to practical uses of a simulation, which is considered a second-order function. Rational intersubjective agreement on how to specify and weigh the different values is supposed to ensure objectivity in simulation validation. (shrink)

I IT is often declared or evidently assumed that causality is some kind of necessary connexion, or alternatively, that being caused is — non-trivially ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Field on Fire: The Future of Environmental History ed. by Mark D. Hersey and Ted SteinbergJeff HirschyA Field on Fire: The Future of Environmental History EDITED BY MARK D. HERSEY AND TED STEINBERG Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2019In the beginning, there was something. Usually filled in with more details, the phrase “in the beginning” is a universal phrase that can cross academic fields, religions, governments, (...) works of literature, and many other things. In A Field on Fire: The Future of Environmental History, the “in the beginning” is used to refer to the works of famed environmental historian Donald Worster. Using Worster’s writings as a guide, editors Mark D. Hersey and Ted Steinberg use their contributors to lead readers through an examination of the past, present, and future of the field of environmental history.The concepts from Worster that Hersey and Steinberg organize their work around include the problems of natural limits, the transnational nature of environmental issues, and questions regarding method. This framework allows the editors and contributors to examine the relationship between democracy, capitalism, technology, and the environment; the ways that environmental history can and should cross borders; and the tools and the methods of the field. The framework built around Worster’s writings allows for a rich examination of environmental history and shows that many of the ideas that Worster pioneered almost forty years ago are still valid and important.A Field on Fire is divided into three sections containing six, six, and five chapters, respectively. The first section focuses on the relationship between capitalism, the environment, and technology. The second focuses on the international nature of environmental history. The third focuses on the ways that environmental history, including its methods and tools, can be useful in other fields. Together, all three sections [End Page 133] show the richness of environmental history and the influence Worster has had, and still has, on the field.The first section of the book focuses on ideas like resource use, capitalism, and the radical roots of the field. It is driven by Worster’s desire to “get out of parliamentary chambers, out of the birthing rooms and factories, get out of doors altogether, and ramble into the fields, woods, and the open air” (2). The contributors use Worster has a guide to “get out” and examine environmental history and concepts across the United States. They show that environmental history does, in fact, have radical roots dating back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, that capitalism was the lens through which the United States usually engaged with nature, and that humans will continue to have an influence on nature in the United States and around the world. For example, in chapter 3 Frank Zelko writes, “Changing historical interpretations of humans’ impact on landscapes and ecosystems, as well as a willingness among scholars to write histories on a large spatial and temporal scale, have also contributed significantly to the managerial worldview of the Anthropocene” (49). All the authors of this section show that the field of environmental history is an important one for the changing environmental, cultural, economic, and political conditions in the United States in the early 21st century.Section two of A Field on Fire travels outside the United States and shows that Worster’s wish to create a field that could more easily cut across national borders to both enrich the field and its readers is alive and well. This section shows how examinations of things and ideas in many places, like Abaca fiber (chapter 7) or human migration (chapter 10), can tell a complex and often transnational story that can shed historical light on often overlooked ideas, peoples, and concepts. The contributors in this section show that environmental history should consider things such as migrant history, nationalism, race, and economic history. These contributors show that Worster’s ideas have merit and are taking flight in the early 21st century. Take, for example, the idea that immigrants and colonists traveling around the world take their own ideas about nature with them. This simple individual and collective act shows the transnational nature of this and many other aspects of environmental history. [End... (shrink)

One of our most distinguished intellectual historians gives us a brilliant revisionist history. The Roads to Modernity reclaims the Enlightenment–an extraordinary time bursting with new ideas about the human condition in the realms of politics, society, and religion–from historians who have downgraded its importance and from scholars who have given preeminence to the Enlightenment in France over concurrent movements in England and America. Contrasting the Enlightenments in the three nations, Gertrude Himmelfarb demonstrates the primacy of the British and the wisdom (...) and foresight of thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Edward Gibbon, and Edmund Burke, who established its unique character and historic importance. It is this Enlightenment, she argues, that created a moral and social philosophy–humane, compassionate, and realistic–that still resonates strongly today, in America perhaps even more so than in Europe. This is an illuminating contribution to the history of ideas. (shrink)

Parmenides, mystery and contradiction -- The early theory of forms -- The new theory of forms -- Understanding proofs : Meno, 85d₉-86c₂, continued -- Aristotle and the sea battle -- The principle of individuation -- Thought and action in Aristotle -- Necessity and truth -- Hume and Julius Caesar -- "Whatever has a beginning of existence must have a cause" : Hume's argument exposed -- Will and emotion -- Retraction -- The question of linguistic idealism.

One of America's foremost historians discusses the intellectual arrogance and spiritual impoverishment at the heart of structuralism and shows how they have led to a trivializing of the Holocaust. Reprint.

“Punishment,” writes J. E. McTaggart, “ is pain and to inflict pain on any person obviously [requires] justification.” But if the need to justify punishment is obvious, the manner of doing so is not. Philosophers have developed an array of diverse, often conflicting arguments to justify punitive institutions. Gertrude Ezorsky introduces this source book of significant historical and contemporary philosophical writings on problems of punishment with her own article, “The Ethics of Punishment.” She brings together systematically the important papers and (...) relevant studies from psychology, law, and literature, and organizes them under five subtopics: concepts of punishment, the justification of punishment, strict liability, the death penalty, and alternatives to punishment. Under these general headings forty-two papers are presented to give philosophical perspectives on punishment. Included are many not generally available. This book brings together in a single volume the views of such diverse writers as Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, Samuel Butler, Karl Marx, and Lady Barbara Wooten. Others are J. Andenaes, K. G. Armstrong, John Austin, Kurt Baier, Jeremy Bentham, F. H. Bradley, Richard Brandt, Clarence Darrow, A. C. Ewing, Joel Feinberg, “The Hon. Mr. Gilpin,” H. L. A. Hart, G. W. F. Hegel, Thomas Hobbs, Immanuel Kant, J. D. Mabbott, H. J. McCloskey, J. E. McTaggart, R. Martinson, G. E. Moore, Herbert Morris, Anthony Quinton, D. Daiches Raphael, H. Rashdall, John Rawls, W. D. Ross, Royal Commission on Capital Punishment Report 1949–53, George Bernard Shaw, T. L. S. Sprigge, and R. Wasserstrom. (shrink)

Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Lebens in all ihrer Lückenhaftigkeit läßt doch schon ersehen, wie sich der Intellekt kraft ununterbrochenen Fortschritts in aufsteigender Linie, über die Reihe der Wirbeltiere hin bis zum Menschen, herausgebildet hat. Sie zeigt uns in der Fähigkeit des Verstehens einen Ausläufer der Fähigkeit des Handelns, eine immer schärfere, immer mehrgliedrigere, immer geschmeidigere Anpassung des Lebewesens an die gegebenen Existenzbedingungen. Woraus zu folgern wäre, daß unser Intellekt im engeren Sinn des Worts dazu bestimmt sei, die vollkommene Verwebung unseres Körpers (...) in seine Umgebung zu sichern, die Beziehungen der äußeren Dinge aufeinander vorzustellen, kurz: dazu, die Materie zu denken. Und tatsächlich wird dies einer der Schlüsse unserer Arbeit sein. (shrink)

-- v. 2. Metaphysics and the philosophy of mind.

Among the fragments published in Zettel, one finds one of Wittgenstein's most enigmatic comments. In entry 455, he states that "the philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas. That is what makes him into a philosopher". The apparent incongruity between this entry and the thrust of Wittgenstein's later works initially draws one's attention, but the passage sustains interest because it is situated at the nexus of issues addressed in current philosophical debate regarding cultural pluralism. This paper attempts (...) to make sense of the Zettel fragment in the contexts of both Wittgenstein's own analysis and such debate. It argues that the post-Enlightenment philosopher's role entails a cosmopolitan point of view with promotes both the recognition of citizens' embeddedness in a cultural tradition and the need for a critical distancing from that tradition, occasioned by an awareness of cultural pluralism. (shrink)

Using the notion of a transfiguration of sexed bodies, this text deals with the stratifications of the gender-specific imaginary. Starting from the figurative—thus creative—force of the psyche-soma, its interaction with the configurations of a collective body will be developed from the perspectives of social philosophy and philosophy of history. At the center of my discussion is the interdependence between the individual psyche-soma, the socialized individual, and a collective bodily imaginary, on the one hand, and the strata of a gender imaginary (...) on the other. The ontological metaphor as well as the dimension of political action will be highlighted as playing a crucial role for these processes. (shrink)

A Christmas Carol: Scrooge in Bethlehem is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 19th-centruy English story, A Christmas Carol. In this merry adaptation Scrooge is the Bethlehem Innkeeper who refuses shelter to Mary and Joseph on that first Christmas night. His front desk clerk, Bob Cratchit, comes to their aid while Scrooge sleeps alone in his dark room in the inn. When God sends an angel with the Light of Salvation to Scrooge, the wretched man is forced to search his soul. (...) Gradually he realizes that he has traded his soul for money. His final redemption reflects the promise of salvation for all, both poor and rich, in the birth of Emmanuel, God with us. (shrink)

Judith Butler’s idea of gender as performative (introduced in Gender Trouble and now a commonplace in feminist theory) is brought into dialogue with feminist performance art (exemplified by Valie Export, the Austrian media- and performance-artist). Butler’s claim that gender is performative and that it can be changed only through a parodic repetition of performative acts is revisited through the lens of Export’s subversive performance pieces. This “interaction” between theory and art practice shall highlight the political potential of Butler’s work and (...) serve to expand her notion of parody as it pertains more directly to women and the female body. (shrink)

Cognitive values like simplicity, broad scope, and easy handling are properties of a scientific representation that result from the idealization which is involved in the construction of a representation. These properties may facilitate the application of epistemic values to credibility assessments, which provides a rationale for assigning an auxiliary function to cognitive values. In this paper, I defend a further rationale for cognitive values which consists in the assessment of the usefulness of a representation. Usefulness includes the relevance of a (...) representation regarding the investigation of a given problem and its practicability for the users. This rationale builds on the claim that any evaluation of scientific representations should pursue two aims: providing information about their credibility and providing information about their usefulness. Cognitive values relating to the usefulness of a representation and epistemic values relating to its credibility both perform a first-order function. Cognitive values are abstract, and several values with first-order functions may conflict in their application. Thus, in order for cognitive values to account for the sort of problem that is to be investigated by means of a representation, they need to be appropriately specified and weighed. Comprehensiveness, complexity, high resolution, and easy handling, for instance, may be required in a first-order function for model-based prediction of regional climate impacts but not for explaining how the global climate system works. Specifying and weighing cognitive and epistemic values relative to a given problem is a legitimate second-order function of social values. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe is among the most distinguished and original philosophers alive today. Her work has ranged over many areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, the philosophy of mind and action, and the philosophy of religion. In each of these areas she has made seminal contributions. The essays in this book reflect the breadth of her interests and the esteem in which she is held by her colleagues. The distinguished contributors include Michael Dunnett, Nancy Cartwright, Peter Geach and Philippa Foot; and (...) Professor Anscombe's essay 'Making True' is published here for the first time. (shrink)

SAS.1 If what I say to you today should seem to you out of place, you must blame the chairman of your executive committee and not me; for, when she asked me to contribute something for this meeting, she assured me that anything which affected the relation of medical women to society, anything which related to the advancement of science, was a proper subject of discussion at the annual meeting of the Alumnae Association. SAS.2 Herbert Spencer closes the second volume (...) of his Principles of Sociology ” with.. (shrink)

Past and Present brings together almost two dozen newly collected essays by the distinguished American historian and cultural critic, Gertrude Himmelfarb. Their common theme is the intriguing, often unexpected ways in which the past illuminates the present. The novelist William Faulkner wrote that "The past is never dead. It's not even past." In these essays, Himmelfarb shows the truth of this statement. She helps us find a new perspective on contemporary issues by bringing to bear a trenchant analysis of debates (...) and thinkers of the past. She allows the past to inform the present without distorting either past or present. The essays, unified by the common theme of present and past, are varied. The topics range from the disorders of modern democracy to the challenges of postmodernism, from the Victorian ethos to the Jewish question. The thinkers range from Edmund Burke to Leo Strauss, from Cardinal Newman to Lionel Trilling. The political figures range from Benjamin Disraeli to Winston Churchill, from the American founders to Queen Elizabeth II. The underlying premise and principle of the essays is the conviction that the pursuit of knowledge and truth, however difficult or discomforting, eminently matters, in the "practical life,"as Trilling put it,as in the "moral life."Past and Presentis a notable contribution to this endeavor-to understanding where we have been, where we are now, and where we may be-or should be-going. (shrink)

The debate on the foundations of knowledge and meaning has gained particular attention in recent philosophical discourse. A number of commentators, including Richard Rorty, have categorized leading contemporary philosophers such as Wittgenstein as being 'anti-foundationalist". In this comprehensive analysis of Wittgenstein's concept of the form of life and its implications, Professor Conway takes issue with this characterization of Wittgenstein. Instead, the author interprets Wittgenstein as continuing the discussion of foundations, while radically transforming the very understanding of foundations.