In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 29.1 (2005) 73-88 [Access article in PDF] Virgil, History, and Prophecy William Franke Vanderbilt University Virgil has been very widely acclaimed as a prophet, but the grounds of this acclaim have shifted in the course of history. From ancient and especially from medieval times, this recognition was traditionally accorded him first and foremost, if not exclusively, on the basis of a passage from the Fourth Eclogue (...) celebrating the birth of a new progeny ("progenies nova") from heaven and the consequent renewal of the world.1 This passage lent itself to Christian messianic interpretations, thanks especially to its reference to a Virgin ushering in a return of the golden age of peace on earth ("iam redit et uirgo, redeunt Saturnia regna"). Historical research reveals Virgil to have, in all probability, intended in this text to hyperbolically hail the birth of a son to a particular Roman consul.2 Yet, even apart from historical intentions and inevitable doubts about them, to pin Virgil's claim to being a prophet to this text is to miss the momentous discovery that makes him truly a prophet in a way unprecedented in pagan antiquity.Modern treatments of Virgil as prophet have not remained beholden to this Christian medieval framework and have opened suggestive avenues for more accurate elucidation of Virgilian prophecy, particularly in terms of its own historical context and the role of the Latin vates in Imperial Rome.3 What I wish to propose, however, is not a more accurately historicized understanding of prophecy in Virgil, but rather a philosophical interpretation of the conception of history as prophetic that is realized in the text of the Aeneid. This is actually analogous to the medieval Christian misprision of Virgil in that it focusses on Virgil's potential significance in a new and different historical context, our own. The justification for this approach lies in the fact that historical research into prophecy during the Augustan Empire cannot exhaustively [End Page 73] explain the significance of Virgil's text in its astonishing creation of an original conception of history as prophetic, nor in its potential to illuminate the nature of prophecy as it may concern us today. Study of Virgil can help make the concept of prophecy vital to reflection on history and the structure of time in our own post-Heideggerian era.The question of whether Virgil foresaw the birth of Christ concerns prophecy only in the relatively banal sense of being able to foretell the future. In this, Virgil would be no different from myriad seers and divines and sorcerers with which the ancient world was rife. But the originality of Virgil, his particular claim to being an authentic prophet rather than simply, like many other major Roman authors, to have incorporated prophetic topoi into his works rests on his surpassing prophecy in precisely this sense. It is Virgil's single-handed invention, as if out of nowhere, of a genuinely prophetic mode of understanding history that is the seeming miracle on which his justly deserved fame as a prophetic poet has every right to rest.Whereas the certainly rather forced Christian interpretation of the Fourth Eclogue concerns "prophecy" only in a surface sense of factually foretelling the future, the deep meaning of prophecy as it develops in Virgil and Dante and the whole lineage of prophetic poets they foster down through Tasso, Spenser, Milton, and Blake, concerns rather the interpretation of history from its endpoint and seen as a whole, so that every moment in that history receives new meaning in light of a synoptic vision. In the biblical prophetic tradition, this perspective extends even beyond history and time altogether, and this marks a crucial difference from Virgil, whose end-vision is envisaged primarily as intrahistorical rather than as eschatological or as beyond the end (eschaton) of history. Still, in Virgil, just as in the Bible, the prophetic vantage point transcends history in order to understand it as a whole. This transcendence is expressed, among other ways, in the claim to divine inspiration. Whether this claim to inspiration be understood as a figure for heightened human potency or... (shrink)

By the time of his death in 2003, Bernard Williams was one of the greatest philosophers of his generation. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is not only widely acknowledged to be his most important book, but also hailed a contemporary classic of moral philosophy. Presenting a sustained critique of moral theory from Kant onwards, Williams reorients ethical theory towards ‘truth, truthfulness and the meaning of an individual life’. He explores and reflects upon the most difficult problems in (...) contemporary philosophy and identifies new ideas about central issues such as relativism, objectivity and the possibility of ethical knowledge. This edition also includes a new commentary on the text by A.W.Moore and a foreword by Jonathan Lear. (shrink)

In Morality Bernard Williams confronts the problems of writing moral philosophy, and offers a stimulating alternative to more systematic accounts which seem nevertheless to have left all the important issues somewhere off the page.

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline , Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams (...) was one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

Research in education and cognitive development suggests that explaining plays a key role in learning and generalization: When learners provide explanations—even to themselves—they learn more effectively and generalize more readily to novel situations. This paper proposes and tests a subsumptive constraints account of this effect. Motivated by philosophical theories of explanation, this account predicts that explaining guides learners to interpret what they are learning in terms of unifying patterns or regularities, which promotes the discovery of broad generalizations. Three experiments provide (...) evidence for the subsumptive constraints account: prompting participants to explain while learning artificial categories promotes the induction of a broad generalization underlying category membership, relative to describing items (Exp. 1), thinking aloud (Exp. 2), or free study (Exp. 3). Although explaining facilitates discovery, Experiment 1 finds that description is more beneficial for learning item details. Experiment 2 additionally suggests that explaining anomalous observations may play a special role in belief revision. The findings provide insight into explanation’s role in discovery and generalization. (shrink)

This article starts from the assumption that there are various innate contributions to our view of the world and explores the epistemological implications that follow from this. Specifically, it explores the idea that if certain components of our worldview have an evolutionary origin, this implies that these aspects accurately depict the world. The simple version of the argument for this conclusion is that if an aspect of mind is innate, it must be useful, and the most parsimonious explanation for its (...) usefulness is that it accurately depicts the world. There are a number of important criticisms of this argument. These include the idea that evolutionary justifications are circular, that evolved mental content and principles are not necessarily accurate, and that, if the argument is taken seriously, it has some highly dubious consequences. These criticisms necessitate various qualifications to the initial argument. Nonetheless, it is argued that, in some cases, important conclusions can be drawn about the world from an analysis of evolved contributions to our view of the world. An evolutionary approach cannot provide an ultimate justification for any belief; however, in certain circumstances, it supports the conclusion that a given belief is a reasonable first approximation. To the extent that innate content and principles pertain to topics in metaphysics, they can be viewed as a naturalistic source of metaphysical knowledge. (shrink)

As scientific and engineering efforts become increasingly global in nature, the need to understand differences in perceptions of research ethics issues across countries and cultures is imperative. However, investigations into the connection between nationality and ethical decision-making in the sciences have largely generated mixed results. In Study 1 of this paper, a measure of biases and compensatory strategies that could influence ethical decisions was administered. Results from this study indicated that graduate students from the United States and international graduate students (...) studying in the US are prone to different biases. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for developing ethics education interventions to target these decision-making biases. In Study 2, we employed an ethics training intervention based on ethical sensemaking and used a well-established measure of ethical decision-making that more fully captures the content of ethical judgment. Similar to Study 1, the results obtained in this study suggest differences do exist between graduate students from the US and international graduate students in ethical decision-making prior to taking the research ethics training. However, similar effects were observed for both groups following the completion of the ethics training intervention. (shrink)

What is the real significance of covariance anyway, and why should it be regarded as so fundamental ? What we mean by a covariant expression is one whose ...

In this journal, Hamid Vahid argues against three families of explanation of Moore-paradoxicality. The first is the Wittgensteinian approach; I assert that p just in case I assert that I believe that p. So making a Moore-paradoxical assertion involves contradictory assertions. The second is the epistemic approach, one committed to: if I am justified in believing that p then I am justified in believing that I believe that p. So it is impossible to have a justified omissive Moore-paradoxical belief. The (...) third is the conscious belief approach, being committed to: if I consciously believe that p then I believe that I believe that p. So if I have a conscious omissive Moore-paradoxical belief, then I have contradictory second-order beliefs. In their place, Vahid argues for the defective-interpretation approach, broadly that charity requires us to discount the utterer of a Moore-paradoxical sentence as a speaker. I agree that the Wittgensteinian approach is unsatisfactory. But so is the defective-interpretation approach. However, there is a satisfactory version of each of the epistemic and conscious-belief approaches. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Inscrutability arguments threaten to reduce interpretationist metasemantic theories to absurdity. Can we find some way to block the arguments? A highly influential proposal in this regard is David Lewis’ ‘ eligibility ’ response: some theories are better than others, not because they fit the data better, but because they are framed in terms of more natural properties. The purposes of this paper are to outline the nature of the eligibility proposal, making the case that it is not ad hoc, but (...) instead flows naturally from three independently motivated elements; and to show that severe limitations afflict the proposal. In conclusion, I pick out the element of the eligibility response that is responsible for the limitations: future work in this area should therefore concentrate on amending this aspect of the overall theory. (shrink)

Inclusive fitness theory provides a compelling explanation for the evolution of altruism among kin. However, a completely satisfactory account of non-kin altruism is still lacking. The present study compared the level of altruism found among siblings with that found among friends and mates and sought to reconcile the findings with an evolutionary explanation for human altruism. Participants (163 males and 156 females) completed a questionnaire about help given to a sibling, friend, or mate. Overall, participants gave friends and mates as (...) much or more help than they gave siblings. However, as the cost of help increased, siblings received a progressively larger share of the help, whereas friends and mates received a progressively smaller share, despite the fact that participants were closer emotionally to friends and mates than they were to siblings. These findings help to explain the relative standing of friends and mates as recipients of altruistic aid. (shrink)

‘Responsibilist' approaches to epistemology link knowledge and justification with epistemically responsible belief management, where responsible management is understood to involve an essential element of guidance by recognized epistemic norms. By contrast, reliabilist approaches stress the de facto reliability of cognitive processes, rendering epistemic self-consciousness as inessential. I argue that, although an adequate understanding of human knowledge must make room for both responsibility and reliability, philosophers have had a hard time putting them together, largely owing to a tendency, on the part (...) of responsibilists, to adopt an overly demanding, hyperintellectualized conception of what epistemic responsibility demands. I trace this tendency towards hyper-intellectualism to a wish to meet scepticism head on, a wish that enforces adherence to a particular model of the structure of epistemic justification. I argue that a more humanly reasonable conception of epistemic justification suggests an alternative model. With this model in hand, we can both deflect sceptical problems and combine responsibility with reliability in a satisfying way. Philosophical Papers Vol. 37 (1) 2008: pp. 1-26. (shrink)

Worlds where things divide forever ("gunk" worlds) are apparently conceivable. The conceivability of such scenarios has been used as an argument against "nihilist" or "near-nihilist" answers to the special composition question. I argue that the mereological nihilist has the resources to explain away the illusion that gunk is possible.

This paper explores how medical practice ought to be conducted, in the face of scarcity, if our objective is to maximise the benefits of health. After explaining briefly what the cost-per-QALY criterion means, a series of ethical objections to it are considered one by one. The objectors fall into four groups: a. those who reject all collective priority-setting as unethical; b. those who accept the need for collective priority-setting, but believe it is contrary to medical ethics; c. those who accept (...) the need for collective priority-setting, and do not believe that it is contrary to medical ethics, but reject the role of QALYs in it; d. those who accept the need for collective priority-setting in principle, but are unwilling to specify how it should be done in practice. -/- The purpose of this discussion paper is to give each group a hard time! (shrink)

A brief introduction to the problem of other minds and knowledge of the world outside our own minds.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In arguing that Nietzsche's _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ is a philosophical explanation of the possibility of modernism—that is, of the possibility of radical cultural change through the creation of new values—the author shows that literary fiction can do the work of philosophy. Nietzsche takes up the problem of modernism by inventing Zarathustra, a self-styled cultural innovator who aspires to subvert the culture of modernity by creating new values. By showing how Zarathustra can become a creator of new values, notwithstanding the forces (...) that hinder his will to innovate, Nietzsche answers the skeptic who proclaims that new-values creation is impossible. _Zarathustra_ is a story of repeated clashes between Zarathustra's avant-garde, modernist intentions and figures of doubt who condemn those intentions. Through a close reading of _Zarathustra_, the author reconstructs Nietzsche's explanation of the possibility of modernism. Showing how parody, irony, and plot organization frame that explanation, he also demonstrates the central significance of Zarathustra's speeches on the body and the will to power. The author argues that Nietzsche's critique of the modern philosophy of the subject revises Kant's concept of the dynamical sublime and makes allegorical use of the myth of Theseus, Ariadne, and Dionysus. He also proposes an original interpretation of the thought of eternal recurrence. Breaking with conventional Nietzsche scholarship, the author conceptualizes the thought not as a theoretical or a practical doctrine that Nietzsche endorses, but as a developing drama that Zarathustra performs. (shrink)

Various deficits in the cognitive functioning of people with autism have been documented in recent years but these provide only partial explanations for the condition. We focus instead on an imitative disturbance involving difficulties both in copying actions and in inhibiting more stereotyped mimicking, such as echolalia. A candidate for the neural basis of this disturbance may be found in a recently discovered class of neurons in frontal cortex, 'mirror neurons' (MNs). These neurons show activity in relation both to specific (...) actions performed by self and matching actions performed by others, providing a potential bridge between minds. MN systems exist in primates without imitative and ‘theory of mind’ abilities and we suggest that in order for them to have become utilized to perform social cognitive functions, sophisticated cortical neuronal systems have evolved in which MNs function as key elements. Early developmental failures of MN systems are likely to result in a consequent cascade of developmental impairments characterised by the clinical syndrome of autism. (shrink)

I outline and motivate a way of implementing a closest world theory of indicatives, appealing to Stalnaker's framework of open conversational possibilities. Stalnakerian conversational dynamics helps us resolve two outstanding puzzles for a such a theory of indicative conditionals. The first puzzle -- concerning so-called 'reverse Sobel sequences' -- can be resolved by conversation dynamics in a theoryneutral way: the explanation works as much for Lewisian counterfactuals as for the account of indicatives developed here. Resolving the second puzzle, by contrast, (...) relies on the interplay between the particular theory of indicative conditionals developed here and Stalnakerian dynamics. The upshot is an attractive resolution of the so-called "Gibbard phenomenon" for indicative conditionals. (shrink)

This article discusses a Leverhulme residency undertaken by the author Julie Brixey-Williams in 2003–4 at the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland. Notions of medical visibility were explored through practice-led investigations under the umbrella title, Traces of the Invisible, that concentrated on making concrete, visible responses to the hidden or intangible elements of the anesthetist’s working life in areas such as sleep, breath, pain and genetic markers. Rosebud is a unique nine-foot concertina bookwork created after reading the (...) entire story of The Sleeping Beauty into an anesthetic machine. This essay expands upon the concepts and material responses that led to the making of the book with particular reference to how the book’s structure forms a relationship to language and the body-as-site, whilst operating as a sculptural object that raises the visibility of the anesthetic profession. Fairy tales and their telling, including stories of enchanted sleep, transformational qualities, magical languages and shaman healers, will be examined alongside. (shrink)

The Souls of Black Folk is Du Bois’s outstanding contribution to modern political theory. It is his still influential answer to the question, “What kind of politics should African Americans conduct to counter white supremacy?” Here, in a major addition to American studies and the first book-length philosophical treatment of Du Bois’s thought, Robert Gooding-Williams examines the conceptual foundations of Du Bois’s interpretation of black politics. For Du Bois, writing in a segregated America, a politics capable of countering Jim (...) Crow had to uplift the black masses while heeding the ethos of the black folk: it had to be a politics of modernizing “self-realization” that expressed a collective spiritual identity. Highlighting Du Bois’s adaptations of Gustav Schmoller’s social thought, the German debate over the Geisteswissenschaften, and William Wordsworth’s poetry, Gooding-Williams reconstructs Souls’ defense of this “politics of expressive self-realization,” and then examines it critically, bringing it into dialogue with the picture of African American politics that Frederick Douglass sketches in My Bondage and My Freedom. Through a novel reading of Douglass, Gooding-Williams characterizes the limitations of Du Bois’s thought and questions the authority it still exerts in ongoing debates about black leadership, black identity, and the black underclass. Coming to Bondage and then to these debates by looking backward and then forward from Souls, Gooding-Williams lets Souls serve him as a productive hermeneutical lens for exploring Afro-Modern political thought in America. (shrink)

Despite its invasive nature, specific consent for general anaesthesia is rarely sought—rather consent processes for associated procedures include explanation of risk/benefits. In adult intensive care, because no one can consent to treatments provided to incapacitated adults, standardised consent processes have not developed. In paediatric intensive care, despite the ready availability of those who can provide consent, no tradition of seeking it exists, arguably due to the specialty’s evolution from anaesthesia and adult intensive care. With the current Montgomery-related focus on consent, (...) this seems untenable. We undertook a qualitative study in a specialist children’s hospital colocated paediatric/neonatal intensive care (same medical team) in which parental acceptance of admission and entailed procedures is considered implied by virtue of that admission. Semistructured interviews were carried out with both staff and parents to investigate their views about consent, the current system and a proposedblanket consent system, in which parents actively consent at admission to routine procedures. Divergent views emerged: staff were worried that requiring consent at admission might prove a further emotional burden, whereas parents found providing consent a way of coping, feeling empowered and maintaining control. Inconsistencies were found in the way consent is obtained for your routine procedures. Practice does seem inconsistent with contemporary consent standards for medical intervention. Our findings support the introduction of a blanket consent system at admission together with ongoing bedside dialogue to ensure continuing consent. Both parents and staff expressed concern about avoiding possible harmful delays to children due to parental emotional overload and language difficulties. (shrink)

I want to discuss an approach to knowledge that I shall call simple conversational contextualism or SCC for short. Proponents of SCC think that it offers an illuminating account of both why scepti- cism is wrong and why arguments for scepticism are so intuitively appealing. I have my doubts.

This volume brings together a wide-ranging collection of seventeen essays, most of which were published elsewhere during the last ten or so years and some of which appear here in revised versions. Its subtitle is somewhat misleading, because Keeping Faith is neither a sustained philosophical discussion of American racial identities nor an extended argument to the effect that some noteworthy assumptions about race have helped to shape the history of American philosophical thought. Still, many of the book’s chapters explicitly engage (...) the theme of race, while others touch on traditional and familiar philosophical problems. (shrink)

Some argue that theories of universals should incorporate structural universals, in order to allow for the metaphysical possibility of worlds of 'infinite descending complexity' ('onion worlds'). I argue that the possibility of such worlds does not establish the need for structural universals. So long as we admit the metaphysical possibility of emergent universals, there is an attractive alternative description of such cases.

There has been a renewed interest in psychology and anthropology in the idea of altered states of consciousness. This paper begins by examining the meaning of this term and the extent to which such experiences are reported globally. The topic of shamanism is then discussed, first with respect to its social functions, and then to what is known about its psychological aspects (which is little). Far more is known about altered states of consciousness (ASCs) as they are expressed in meditation, (...) trance and possession, and channeling, and a number of studies are reviewed, both of individuals and of groups, which illustrate the full extent of ASCs. The following section then goes more deeply into the stimulus situations that are associated with ASCs. This brings the discussion into drugs, attempts at altering the sensorium (music and imagery in particular) and recent technological innovations, peculiar to our time, which deliberately alter our usual state of awareness through feedback principles. In the final section, what is known about the physiology of ASCs is reviewed and also the extent to which these phenomena, including shamanism, are regarded as pathological. As a great number of people across the world utilize the healing aspects of trance, possession and shamanic practices, this aspect is discussed, and lastly the adaptive functions of ASCs are considered, with their context in the history of psychology. (shrink)