For a number of years, in the not too distant past, there was a lively debate between Plato's defenders and critics over the question of whether his Republic contained slaves. However, since the appearance of an article by Gregory Vlastos1 some twenty years ago, it seems to have been generally felt that the issue has been resolved, and the controversy has died down. Vlastos argued that the evidence admits of no doubt - Plato included slaves in his ideal state. (...) In this paper, I wish to have the case reopened, and to revive interest in what I believe should continue to be a matter of debate. In opposition to what has become the standard view, I am inclined to think, on balance, that his Republic could not contain slaves. Vlastos begins by reminding us that, on those occasions when Plato wants to propose a radical change from existing institutions, he argues for such a change. If he had intended to abolish slavery from his ideal society, this would have been a radical change, and we should have expected him to indicate clearly such an intention, and to justify it. Since no justification is forthcoming, we may presume that no change is envisaged. This line of argument I shall call the presumptive argument. One version of it is mentioned by R. B. Levinson,2 namely that the rough and dirty work, carried on behind the scene by slaves, will take place as usual, and the continuance of slavery is assumed without question. (shrink)

For a number of years, in the not too distant past, there was a lively debate between Plato's defenders and critics over the question of whether his Republic contained slaves. However, since the appearance of an article by Gregory Vlastos1 some twenty years ago, it seems to have been generally felt that the issue has been resolved, and the controversy has died down. Vlastos argued that the evidence admits of no doubt - Plato included slaves in his ideal state. (...) In this paper, I wish to have the case reopened, and to revive interest in what I believe should continue to be a matter of debate. In opposition to what has become the standard view, I am inclined to think, on balance, that his Republic could not contain slaves. Vlastos begins by reminding us that, on those occasions when Plato wants to propose a radical change from existing institutions, he argues for such a change. If he had intended to abolish slavery from his ideal society, this would have been a radical change, and we should have expected him to indicate clearly such an intention, and to justify it. Since no justification is forthcoming, we may presume that no change is envisaged. This line of argument I shall call the presumptive argument. One version of it is mentioned by R. B. Levinson,2 namely that the rough and dirty work, carried on behind the scene by slaves, will take place as usual, and the continuance of slavery is assumed without question. (shrink)

How should we think about synthetic biology—about the potential benefits and risks of these applications as well as the very idea of designed, extensively genetically modi­fied organisms? The lead article in this report sets out our thinking, but the article is rounded out with nine commentaries that sometimes expand on and sometimes argue with our perspective. Jonathan Wolff, a philosopher at the University College of London and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and Mark Bedau, a philosopher at (...) Reed College and a participant in several projects aimed at de­veloping artificial cells, discuss the potential consequences of synthetic biology and suggest some reasons for a precau­tionary approach to deliberating about the consequences. Jane Calvert, reader in science, technology, and innovation studies at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics working party on emerging biotechnologies, recommends, however, that deliberation about the governance of emerging technologies focus less on consequences than on aims and purposes.Gigi Gronvall, senior associate at the Center for Health Security in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and David Relman, a microbiologist and immunologist at the Stanford School of Medicine, offer contrasting per­spectives about a question we raise concerning “the eth­ics of knowledge”—the values at stake in generating and disseminating potentially dangerous information. Gaymon Bennett offers some ruminations on the questions we raise about how synthetic biology might change the human re­lationship to nature in morally significant ways. He argues, too, that we can think about the ethics of synthetic biology more effectively by getting “upstream” in another way—by sitting next to the bioengineers doing the work and study­ing their “everyday practice” rather than by paying attention only to what is thought and said about their work. Colleen Grogan, professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Administration and an expert on democratic partici­patory processes in governance, builds on our comments about the challenge of creating a meaningful public dialog about synthetic biology. Jim Thomas, a researcher with the ETC Group, challenges our view of how the public debate about synthetic biology is trending. And Sarah Carter, a policy analyst with the J. Craig Venter Institute, puts our discussion about synthetic biology in the context of debates about other new products and technologies. (shrink)

The article examines the effects of non-financial disclosure on corporate social responsibility. We conceptualise trade-offs between two ideal types in relation to CSR. Whereas self-regulation is associated with greater flexibility for businesses to develop best practices, it can also lead to complacency if firms feel no external pressure to engage with CSR. In contrast, government regulation is associated with greater stringency around minimum standards, but can also result in rigidity owing to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Given these potential trade-offs, we ask (...) how mandatory non-financial disclosure has been shaping CSR practices and examine its potential effectiveness as a regulatory instrument. Our analysis of 24 OECD countries using the Asset4 database shows that firms in countries that require non-financial disclosure adopt significantly more CSR activities. However, we also find that NFD regulation does not lead to lower levels of corporate irresponsibility. Furthermore, our analysis demonstrates that, over time, the variation in CSR activities declines as firms adopt increasingly similar practices. Our study thereby contributes to understanding the impact of government regulation on CSR at firm level. We also discuss the limits of mandatory NFD in addressing regulatory trade-offs between stringency and flexibility in the field of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Landini discusses the second edition of Principia Mathematica, to show Russella (TM)s intellectual relationship with Wittgenstein and Ramsey.

This commentary argues against the indictment of current experimental practices such as piecemeal testing, and the proposed integrated experiment design (IED) approach, which we see as yet another attempt at automating scientific thinking. We identify a number of undesirable features of IED that lead us to believe that its broad application will hinder scientific progress.

Technological determinism, as a position on the nature and effects of technology/technologies can be divided into optimistic and critical forms. The optimistic variety, of which contemporary cyber-utopianism is an instance, holds that the development of technology shapes or at least facilitates ameliorative alterations in society. The critical variety, on the other hand, tends to problematise or condemn the positive narrative of technological impact on human existence. Whilst the optimistic form still retains some academic credibility, especially concerning digital technologies, the critical (...) variety tends to be viewed as reductionist, essentialist and pessimistic. Furthermore, the fact that many of its leading proponents base their critiques on the analysis of industrial technology, reinforces the impression that critical technological determinism is outdated. I argue that focussing on the specific forms of technology analysed by classic technological determinists is to miss the key point of their arguments. Critical determinism warns that with the increasing integration of technology into everyday life, we run the risk of idealising technological organisation and making sociotechnical relations a model for all social relations. Drawing upon Rendueles’s (2017) analysis of the sociophobic tendencies of the online public sphere, I argue for the continuing relevance of so-called ‘Classic’ technological determinism. The danger posed by the ubiquity of the internet on this account is not that it possesses some innate quality that imposes a particular social pattern on humanity, but that the way in which we interact in cyberspace becomes the norm for social relations outside the cybersphere. (shrink)

Strict moderate invariantism is the ho-hum, ‘obvious’ view about knowledge attributions. It says knowledge attributions are often true and that only traditional epistemic factors like belief, truth, and justification make them true. As commonsensical as strict moderate invariantism is, it is equally natural to withdraw a knowledge attribution when error possibilities are made salient. If strict moderate invariantism is true, these knowledge-denials are often false because the subject does in fact know the proposition. I argue that strict moderate invariantism needs (...) an explanation of this phenomenon, but it does not have one. That is significant, for if strict moderate invariantism does not square with ordinary intuition, then it cannot rely on ordinary intuition for support. Section 1 introduces the concept of epistemic relevance blindness, which says ordinary subjects are generally insensitive to whether or not error possibilities are relevant to knowledge attributions. Section 2 focuses on Patrick Rysiew’s influential strict moderate invariantist pragmatic explanation of knowledge-denials and argues that such pragmatic explanations of knowledge-denials depend on attributors being epistemic relevance blind. Section 3 targets psychological explanations of epistemic relevance blindness offered separately by Jennifer Nagel and Mikkel Gerken. I argue that strict moderate invariantists lack a plausible explanation of epistemic relevance blindness. (shrink)

W. V. Quine was the most important naturalistic philosopher of the twentieth century and a major impetus for the recent resurgence of the view that empirical science is our best avenue to knowledge. His views, however, have not been well understood. Critics charge that Quine’s naturalized epistemology is circular and that it cannot be normative. Yet, such criticisms stem from a cluster of fundamental traditional assumptions regarding language, theory, and the knowing subject – the very presuppositions that Quine is at (...) pains to reject. Through investigation of Quine’s views regarding language, knowledge, and reality, the author offers a new interpretation of Quine’s naturalism. The naturalism/antinaturalism debate can be advanced only by acknowledging and critiquing the substantial theoretical commitments implicit in the traditional view. Gregory argues that the responses to the circularity and non-normativity objections do just that. His analysis further reveals that Quine’s departure from the tradition penetrates the conception of the knowing subject, and he thus offers a new and engaging defence of Quine’s naturalism. (shrink)

That a philosophical thesis entails a vicious regress is commonly taken to be decisive evidence that the thesis is false. In this paper, I argue that the existence of a vicious regress is insufficient to reject a proposed analysis provided that certain constraints on the analysis are met. When a vicious regress is present, some further consequence of the thesis must be established that, together with the presence of the vicious regress, shows the thesis to be false. The argument is (...) provided largely through the examination of Michael Bergmann's vicious regress argument against strong awareness internalism and a partial defense of that thesis against Bergmann. (shrink)

Successful psychopaths, defined as individuals in the general population who nevertheless possess some degree of psychopathic traits, are receiving increasing amounts of empirical attention. To date, little is known about such individuals, specifically with regard to how they respond to ethical dilemmas in business contexts. This study investigated this relationship, proposing a mediated model in which the positive relationship between psychopathy and unethical decision-making is explained through the process of moral disengagement, defined as a cognitive orientation that facilitates unethical choice. (...) The results of the study supported this model, and implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that part of what makes an event lucky concerns how probable that event is. In this paper, I argue that an epistemic probability account of luck successfully resists recent arguments that all theories of luck, including probability theories, are subject to counterexample (Hales 2016). I argue that an event is lucky if and only if it is significant and sufficiently improbable. An event is significant when, given some reflection, the subject would regard the event as significant, and (...) the event’s epistemic probability, determined by the subject’s evidence, is the only kind of probability that directly bears on whether or not the event is lucky. I conclude with some lessons that are applicable to probability theorists of luck generally, including those defending non-epistemic probability theories. (shrink)

In The Decline of the West Spengler puts forward a type of philosophical anthropology, an account of the structures of human experiential consciousness and a method of “physiognomic” analysis, which I argue has dimensions that can be understood as akin to existential phenomenology. Humanity, for Spengler, is witness to the creative flux of “Becoming” and constructs a world of phenomena bounded by death, underpinned by the two prime feelings of dread and longing and structured by the two forms of Destiny (...) (Time) and Direction (Space). Human existence, Spengler argues, is future-directed and open in the sense that there is a certain degree of freedom in the ways in which humanity can actualize its existential possibilities. In the course of elaborating the existential implications of this future-orientation, Spengler introduces the concept of care (Sorge), the fundamental experiential structure. (shrink)

The debate between instrumentalist and technological determinist positions on the nature of technology characterised the early history of the philosophy of technology. In recent years however technological determinism has ceased to be viewed as a credible philosophical position within the field. This paper uses Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to reconsider the technological determinist outlook in phenomenological terms as an experiential response to the encounter with the phenomenon of modern technology. Recasting the instrumentalist-determinist debate in a phenomenological manner enables one to reconcile the (...) apparent dualism of the instrumentalist and determinist positions through Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh. This ontology has recently been used to ground accounts of virtual embodiment. We argue that in addition to explaining away the classical form of technological determinism, it can also phenomenologically ground a novel understanding of technological determinism. Namely, a technological determinism of virtual embodiment. (shrink)

Several arguments attempt to show that if traditional, acquaintance-based epistemic internalism is true, we cannot have foundational justification for believing falsehoods. I examine some of those arguments and find them wanting. Nevertheless, an infallibilist position about foundational justification is highly plausible: prima facie, much more plausible than moderate foundationalism. I conclude with some remarks about the dialectical position we infallibilists find ourselves in with respect to arguing for our preferred view and some considerations regarding how infallibilists should develop their account (...) of infallible foundational justification. In particular, I provide an account of how propositions that moderate foundationalists claim are foundationally justified derive their epistemic support from infallibly known propositions. This is possible when a foundational proposition is coarsely-grained enough to correspond to determinable properties exemplified in experience or determinate properties that a subject insufficiently attends to; one may have inferential justification derived from such a basis when a more finely-grained proposition includes in its content one of the ways that the foundational proposition could be true. (shrink)

A half-billion years ago, a few species of single-celled protozoa stumbled irreversibly from loose social interaction into a tight, specialized interdependence. They became multi-celled metazoa, and human beings are one sort. Metazoa greatly transcend their constituent cells in lifetime, abilities, experiences and even materials (like bone). New kind of beings emerged out of the interactions of the old.

This paper argues that Carnap both did not view and should not have viewed Frege's project in the foundations of mathematics as misguided metaphysics. The reason for this is that Frege's project was to give an explication of number in a very Carnapian sense — something that was not lost on Carnap. Furthermore, Frege gives pragmatic justification for the basic features of his system, especially where there are ontological considerations. It will be argued that even on the question of the (...) independent existence of abstract objects, Frege and Carnap held remarkably similar views. I close with a discussion of why, despite all this, Frege would not accept the principle of tolerance. (shrink)

This paper argues that Oswald Spengler has an innovative philosophical position on the nature and interrelation of mathematics and science. It further argues that his position in many ways parallels that of Martin Heidegger. Both held that an appreciation of the mathematical nature of contemporary science was critical to a proper appreciation of science, technology and modernity. Both also held that the fundamental feature of modern science is its mathematical nature, and that the mathematical operates as a projection that establishes (...) in advance the manner in which an object will present itself. They also assert that modern science, mathematics and metaphysics all have their roots in the ‘mathematical’, whose essence is itself nothing numerical. (shrink)

Social media offers a platform for diffused stakeholders to interact with firms—alternatively praising, questioning, and chastising businesses for their CSR performance and seeking to engage in two-way dialogue. In 2014, 163,402 public messages were sent to Fortune 200 firms’ CSR-focused Twitter accounts, each of which was either shared, replied to, “liked,” or ignored by the targeted firm. This paper examines firm reactions to these messages, building a model of firm response to stakeholders that combines the notions of CSR communication and (...) stakeholder salience. Our findings show that firm response to a stakeholder on social media is positively and most significantly associated with what we refer to as the stakeholder’s connective power but negatively associated with the firm’s own connective power. To a lesser extent, firm response is positively associated with the stakeholder’s normative power but negatively associated with the firm’s own normative power. Firm response is also shown to be positively associated with stakeholder urgency in terms of both the originality of a stakeholder message and the expression of positive sentiment. (shrink)

Social media is changing social accountability practices. The release of the Panama Papers on April 3, 2016 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) unleashed a tsunami of over 5 million tweets decrying corrupt politicians and tax-avoiding business elites, calling for policy change from governments, and demanding accountability from corporate and private tax avoiders. The current study uses 297,000+ original English-language geo-codable tweets with the hashtags #PanamaGate, #PanamaPapers, or #PanamaLeaks to examine the trajectory of Twitter-based social accountability conversations and (...) the potential for the emergence of a longer-term social accountability user network. We propose that it is the combination of financial inscriptions and evaluative ethical utterances that incite and sustain social accountability conversations and social accountability networks. Financial inscriptions simultaneously remind audiences of both the information event that fomented the initial public reaction and the monetary magnitude of the event. Value-based ethical messaging, in turn, enunciates an ethical stance that simultaneously evaluates existing practices and emphasizes the need for accountability. It is the combining of these two types of messaging that helps to construct and sustain a normative narrative about social accountability. The results illustrate how the repetition and re-working of these two forms of messaging facilitated the construction of a normative narrative that coalesced into a social accountability network which persisted beyond the initial Panama Paper information event and which was re-activated in 2017 when the ICIJ published the Paradise Papers. (shrink)

This paper develops a semantic account of morphological number marking, specifically in the presence of numerals. In addition to accounting for number marking on basic nouns like _book_ in English, the account handles variation in patterns of number marking along two dimensions: cross-linguistically, between languages that either necessitate or prohibit singular morphology in the presence of numerals greater than ‘one’; and within one and the same language on the various nominal elements in English. Building off the presuppositional approach to morphological (...) number from Sauerland (Proc SALT 13:258–275, 2003), the proposed semantics accounts for both sorts of variation by assuming flexibility in the selection of the measure relevant to the one-ness presupposition of the morphological singular form. (shrink)

Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik offers a conception of cpLogic as the study of functions. Among functions are included those that are concepts, i.e. characteristic functions whose values are the logical objects that are the True/the False. What, in Frege's view, are the objects the True/the False? Frege's stroke functions are themselves concepts. His stipulation introducing his negation stroke mentions that it yields [...]. But curiously no accommodating axiom is given, and there is no such theorem. Why is it that some (...) of Frege's informal stipulations never made appearances as axioms? I offer an explanation that sheds new light on the Grundgesetze. No axioms should over-determination the True as a logical object. Perhaps the True = 0, as would be common in the mathematics of characteristic functions. But the logical objects that are cardinal numbers are value ranges correlated with second-level numerical concepts by a non-homogeneous second-level value-range function [...]. The existence of concepts would be ontologically circular if the True is itself a number. We find this circularity perfectly agreeable to Frege, and suggest that he had accepted that the existence of functions that are concepts in his cpLogic may well be ontologically inseparable from the existence of his value-range function. His cpLogic itself stands or falls with the viability of some value-range function. (shrink)

As the rapidly advancing possibilities of biotechnology have outstripped the adaptive capacity of current legal and ethical institutions, a vigorous debate has arisen that considers the boundaries of appropriate use of this technology, particularly when applied to humans. This article examines ethical concerns surrounding the development of markets in a particular form of human genetic engineering in which heterozygotes are fitter than both homozygotes, a condition known as heterozygous advantage. To begin, we present a generalized model of the condition, illuminated (...) by the application to sickle-cell anemia. Next, we propose a typology of related markets, some of which are currently functioning with available products and services, and others that are widely viewed as imminent. We suggest the manner in which perverse incentives may arise for firms that market genetic intervention in circumstances where heterozygous advantage is possible. Finally, we propose that this misalignment of incentives with social welfare has arisen from both ill-conceived market intervention where markets are capable of achieving efficient outcomes and the lack of market intervention where markets have failed. We offer specific legal and regulatory approaches for reform. (shrink)

This chapter aims to make Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (ITOE) more accessible both to students of epistemology without a background in Objectivism and to students of Objectivism without a background in epistemology. It begins with a discussion of some figures and issues in the history of philosophy that helps to appreciate what Ayn Rand meant by the advocacy of reason and why she saw the issue of concepts as central to epistemology. The chapter then considers Rand view of consciousness and (...) sense perception, and also discusses her view of the process by which concepts and a whole system of conceptual knowledge are built upon a perceptual foundation. Next, it looks more closely at Rand's conception of objectivity and how it relates to her theory of concepts. Finally, the chapter considers the standards that follow from Rand's theory for the proper formation and use of concepts. (shrink)

Spengler’s work is typically represented as speculative philosophy of history. However, I argue that there is good reason to consider much of his thought as preoccupied with existential and phenomenological questions about the nature and ends of human existence, rather than with history per se. In this paper I consider Spengler’s work in comparison with Heidegger’s history of Being and analysis of technological modernity. I argue that Spengler’s considerable proximity to much of Heidegger’s thought compels us to reconsider the nature (...) and scope of Spengler’s philosophical project. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relation between Carnap and Quine’s views on analyticity on the one hand, and their views on philosophical analysis or explication on the other. I argue that the stance each takes on what constitutes a successful explication largely dictates the view they take on analyticity. I show that although acknowledged by neither party (in fact Quine frequently expressed his agreement with Carnap on this subject) their views on explication are substantially different. I argue that this difference not (...) only explains their differences on the question of analyticity, but points to a Quinean way to answer a challenge that Quine posed to Carnap. The answer to this challenge leads to a Quinean view of analyticity such that arithmetical truths are analytic, according to Quine’s own remarks, and set theory is at least defensibly analytic. (shrink)

This article compares the theory of Meinongian objects proposed by Edward Zalta with a theory of fiction formulated within an early Russellian framework. The Russellian framework is the second-order intensional logic proposed by Nino B. Cocchiarelly as a reconstruction of the form of Logicism Russell was examining shortly after writing The Principles of Mathematics. A Russellian theory of denoting concepts is developed in this intensional logic and applied as a theory of the "objects' of fiction. The framework retains the Orthodox (...) early Russellian ontology of existents, possible non-existents, and properties and relations in intension. This avoids the assumption, found in Meinongian theories, of impossible and incomplete objects. It also obviates the need to preserve consistency by distinguishing a new "mode of predication", or a "distinction in kinds of predicates". Thus, it is argued that an early Russellian theory forms a powerful rival to a Meinongian theory of objects. (shrink)

This is a critical discussion of Nino B. Cocchiarella’s book “Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism.” It focuses on paradoxes of hyperintensionality that may arise in formal systems of intensional logic.

In a number of texts throughout his career, Thomas Aquinas identifies different senses of the term ‘esse’. Most notably, he notes that according to one sense, the term signifies the act of existence (actus essendi), which he famously holds is really distinct from essence in all beings other than God. Perhaps surprisingly, he also notes on a number of occasions that according to another sense, the term ‘esse’ can signify that very principle that he says is distinct from the act (...) of existence, namely, essence. In light of Aquinas's semantic theory, this paper investigates how he coherently holds within his metaphysical system that this term ‘esse’ can signify in different ways both essence and the act of existence. More broadly, what it shows is how, for Aquinas, the metaphysician can look to the modes of signification (modi significandi) of terms and as well as their modes of predication (modi praedicandi) to draw careful conclusions about the modes of existence (modi essendi) of real beings. These considerations reveal that in Aquinas's view, although the grammarian and logician in their way are also concerned with these semantic modes, it is not their job to employ them to discern the various senses of the term ‘being’ or the fundamental modes of being. In the end, this is a task for the metaphysician. (shrink)

Abstract This paper argues that the concept of authenticity has evolved since the time of Adorno’s critique in The Jargon of Authenticity, and that an analysis of tourism offers a way of grasping the altered status of the concept of authenticity and its current ideological function in the contemporary capitalist system. It is suggested that authenticity no longer refers to an existential state, but instead to a purchased experiential moment. This paper traces the alterations in the understanding of existential authenticity (...) from its origins in existential phenomenology to its current status as a key concept in tourism research. It suggests that, while Adorno’s critique of authenticity has become somewhat outdated due to changes in the social relations of modern capitalism, its central argument still holds true, in that contemporary notions of authenticity still play an ideological role in securing the socio-economic status quo by both expressing and concealing the sense of alienation caused by social relations under capitalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. By IRIS MURDOCH. Harmondsworth: Allen Lane; New York: Viking, 1992. $35.00. Dame Iris Murdoch is familiar to most people as a witty and en· gaging novelist whose twenty-four hooks of fiction can he read on a variety of levels. They are wonderful stories, hut the philosophically acute reader will also enjoy Murdoch's judgments, polemics, and inhouse jokes about philosophers and philosophical (...) views. Comparatively few people are aware of Murdoch's previous scholarly studies: Sartre, Romantic Rationalist, The Sovereignty of the Good, The Fire and the Sun; and Acastos. Even so, those familiar with these hooks will recognize the profound impact she has had on debates within moral philosophy. She has been at the forefront of the move· ment that has rehabilitated the central importance of such notions as goodness, the Good, virtue, and the moral life as a journey. So it is not surprising that Murdoch has returned to the genre of philosophical argument to advance her views on the relationship between metaphysics and morals. But it is surprising that her argument exhibits neither the clarity of thought characteristic of the analytic philosophy in which she was trained nor the dramatic narrative of her novels. Indeed the hook reads like a collage of lecture notes, complete with extensive quotations from other people's thoughts with minimal com· mentary. Further, the chapter titles (e.g., " Fact and Value," " Schopenhauer," " Consciousness and Thought-I," " Derrida and Struc· turalism," " Consciousness and Thought-II," "Notes on Will and Duty," " Axioms, Duties, Eros," " Void ") shed little light on the overall structure or argument of the hook. One cannot help hut have the impression that Murdoch spent less time crafting the argument of this hook than she does in crafting the story line and characters of her novels. This is not to say, of course, that there is not much to he learned from Murdoch's perspective. She is remarkably erudite, and her discussion of various themes, figures, and issues often yields fascinating insights. But the whole is considerably less than the sum of its often interesting parts. I have already suggested that this is partly because of the structure and style in which the hook is written. But the hook 687 688 BOOK REVIEWS is also disappointing, and perhaps more determinatively, because of the overall perspective she seeks to deploy and defend. Readers of Murdoch's work have heretofore often wondered about the relationship between her avowed Platonism and her interest in Christianity. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals has the virtue of clarifying that relationship, hut the result is unpersuasive. At the heart of Murdoch's Platonism is her recasting of the allegory of the cave from The Republic. The moral life is an arduous struggle to ascend from the cave (represented, as in her earlier works, by " the fat, relentless ego ") by a dispossession of the self so that we can apprehend a little less imperfectly the perfect form of the Good. As Murdoch puts it, Plato assumes the internal relation of value, truth, cogmtion. Virtue (as compassion, humility, courage) involves a desire for and achievement of truth instead of falsehood, reality instead of appearance. Goodness involves truth.seeking knowledge and ipso facto a discipline of desire. ' Getting things right ', as in meticulous grammar or mathematics, is truth-seeking as virtue. Learning anything properly demands (virtuous ) attention. Here the idea of truth plays a crucial role (as it does also in Kant) and reality emerges as the object of truthful vision, and virtuous action as the product of such vision. This is a picture of the omnipresence of morality and evaluation in human life (p. 39). Such a depiction ought to resonate quite deeply with Christians, something not lost on Murdoch when she writes a few pages earlier: "There are innumerable points at which we have to detach ourselves, to change our orientation, to redirect our desire and refresh and purify our energy, to keep on looking in the right direction: to attend upon the grace that comes through faith " (p. 25). But Murdoch's "grace" and her "truth-seeking as virtue," among other themes, involve something quite different from what Christians... (shrink)

"There is a growing unease among geographers with the notion of geography as spatial analysis but, as yet, no book has appeared which is able to assimilate and develop the profound methodological developments and changes in philosophy which have occurred since the sixties. Ideology, Science and Human Geography re-examines the nature of geography after the positivist revolution and provides a critique of the discipline from the perspective of the social sciences in general. For Gregory, the new geography's commitment to (...) the paradigms of natural science was simply a reaffirmation of the Victorian tradition of geography. The ideological consequences of this are discussed in relation to recent changes in the social sciences to argue that a scientific geography must provide explanations which are at once structural, reflexive and committed. In questioning many of the assumptions of quantitative methodology the book seeks, above all, to reinstate man into the study of geography." -- Publisher's description. (shrink)

According to Thomas Aquinas, the ideas in the mind of God serve two distinct although interrelated roles: (1) as epistemological principles accounting for God’s knowledge of things other than himself, and (2) as ontological or causal principles involved in God’s creative activity. This article examines the causal role of the divine ideas by focusing on their relation to natural agents. Given Thomas’s observation that from God’s intellect “forms flow forth (effluunt) into all creatures,” the article considers whether the causality of (...) the divine ideas excludes that of natural agents, or whether both modes of causality can somehow produce one and the same effect. (shrink)