_An Introduction to Metaphysics_ offers an engrossing survey of central metaphysical topics, including truth, universals, the nature of mind, personal identity, free will, time, and the existence of God. The book is pitched at an intermediate undergraduate level and is suitable for students without background knowledge in these areas. Topically organized, it examines a variety of historical and contemporary positions relevant to each of the included themes. Memorable and amusing drawings by Gillian Wilson are interspersed throughout the text to illustrate (...) concepts and examples. (shrink)

This book introduces the central issues of metaphysics and epistemology, from skepticism, justification, and perception to universals, personal identity, and free will. Though topically organized, the book integrates positions and examples from the history of philosophy. Plato, Descartes, and Leibniz are discussed alongside Quine, Kripke, and Haslanger. Peripheral ideas and related historical asides are offered in boxes interspersed within the text, providing further depth without disrupting the author’s lucid explanations of central themes and arguments. Original illustrations by Gillian Wilson are (...) included throughout, giving interesting and clear visual representations of many of the book’s examples and thought experiments. (shrink)

This essay is a reconstruction and defense of Davidson''s argument against the intelligiblity of the notion of conceptual scheme. After presenting a brief clarification of Davidson''s argument in On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme, I turn to reconstructing Davidson''s argument. Unlike many commentators, and occasionally Davidson, who hold that the motive force of the argument is the Principle of Charity (or the denial of the Third Dogma), I argue that there is a further principle which underlies the argument. (...) This principle I call the Strong Discrimination Principle.But the argument of the paper is not purely exegetical. Not only do I show how the Strong Discrimination Principle meets certain objections to Davidson''s argument, but I show how the Principle clarifies the realist position. In particular, I show how a line of argument advanced by Rorty and Putnam against (metaphysical) realism can be rejected. (shrink)

The second edition of Jack Crumley's An Introduction to Epistemology strikes a balance between the many issues that engage contemporary epistemologists and the contributions of the major historical figures. He shows not only how philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, and Kant foreground the contemporary debates, but also why they deserve consideration on their own terms. A substantial revision of the first edition, the second edition is more even more accessible to students. The new edition includes recent (...) work on contextualism, evidentialism, externalism and internalism, and perceptual realism; as well, the chapter on coherence theory is substantially revised, reflecting recent developments in that area. New to this second edition is a chapter on feminist epistemology, which includes discussions of major positions and themes, such as feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint epistemology, postmodern epistemology, and feminist critiques of objectivity. It presents the important contributions of philosophers such as Sandra Harding, Helen Longino, Genevieve Lloyd, and others. Each chapter ends with a list of study questions and readings for further study. (shrink)

The second edition of Jack Crumley’s _An Introduction to Epistemology_ strikes a balance between the many issues that engage contemporary epistemologists and the contributions of the major historical figures. He shows not only how philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, and Kant foreground the contemporary debates, but also why they deserve consideration on their own terms. A substantial revision of the first edition, the second edition is even more accessible to students. The new edition includes recent work (...) on contextualism, evidentialism, externalism and internalism, and perceptual realism; as well, the chapter on coherence theory is substantially revised, reflecting recent developments in that area. New to this second edition is a chapter on feminist epistemology, which includes discussions of major positions and themes, such as feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint epistemology, postmodern epistemology, and feminist critiques of objectivity. It presents the important contributions of philosophers such as Sandra Harding, Helen Longino, Genevieve Lloyd, and others. Each chapter ends with a list of study questions and readings for further study. (shrink)

Crumley introduces four core areas in contemporary philosophy of the mind: the mind/body problem, mental content , mental causation, and the nature of consciousness. The book is distinctive in its further coverage of such fascinating topics as the nature of mental images, theories of concepts, and whether or not computers can think.

This essay is a reconstruction and defense of Davidson's argument against the intelligibility of the notion of conceptual scheme. After presenting a brief clarification of Davidson's argument in 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', I turn to reconstructing Davidson's argument. Unlike many commentators, and occasionally Davidson, who hold that the motive force of the argument is the Principle of Charity (or the denial of the Third Dogma), I argue that there is a further principle which underlies the argument. (...) This principle I call the Strong Discrimination Principle. But the argument of the paper is not purely exegetical. Not only do I show how the Strong Discrimination Principle meets certain objections to Davidson's argument, but I show how the Principle clarifies the realist position. In particular, I show how a line of argument advanced by Rorty and Putnam against (metaphysical) realism can be rejected. (shrink)

In a comprehensive, carefully argued book comprising six chapters, Ekstrom articulates and defends an incompatibilist view. In the first chapter, Ekstrom considers various reasons for interest in the problem of free will. Chapters 2 and 3 survey arguments for incompatibilist and compatibilist positions, respectively. The pivotal chapter 4 examines incompatibilist positions; it is here that Ekstrom develops and defends her own unique incompatibilism. Chapter 5 considers various accounts of moral responsibility. Chapter 6 provides a detailed treatment of recent “Frankfurt-style cases,” (...) held by many to undermine “PAP,” the principle that attributions of moral responsibility require that alternative possibilities are open to an agent. Defended throughout is the familiar intuition of incompatibilism: A world in which the past and the laws of nature determine our actions precludes free will. Free will requires the availability, at least at some times, of various futures, any one of which might be realized by the agent; this “forking-paths” model is at odds with acceptance of determinism. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill was one of the most influential English-language philosophers during the Victorian era. His autobiography recounts his rigorous tutelage under a domineering father, his mental health crisis at age twenty, and his struggle to regain joy amid self-reflection and a reassessment of theories he once believed to be true.

Psychologism in logic holds that logic is a branch of psychology. This view has been vigorously defended by John Stuart Mill and by a number of German philosophers of logic, notably Erdmann. Its chief critics have been Husserl and Frege and, to a lesser extent, Russell. Husserl set forth a profound and detailed critique of psychologism in Logical Investigations. This paper examines this critique. First, I explain why the psychologistic theory is attractive. Then I show that Husserl's critique is (...) not convincing, partly because he does not take the theory in its most plausible form and partly because he ignores certain important distinctions (for example, between what a statement is about and what it is true in virtue of). Then I raise two new objections to the psychologistic theory. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the psychologistic theory remains an important and serious position from which we can learn much about the status of logic. (shrink)

What I wish to do in this paper is to look at a part of John Stuart Mill's ‘one very simple principle’ for determining the limits of state intervention. This principle is, you will remember, that ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.’.

A completely non-statistical non-linear non-unitary framework in which "God does not play dice..." that describes the physical foundations of consciousness is presented for the first time. At its core is the insight that the missing link between current physical descriptions of reality and a credible physical framework for consciousness is provided by post-quantum mechanics : the extension of statistical linear unitary quantum mechanics for closed systems to a locally-retrocausal[i] non-statistical non-linear non-unitary theory for open systems through the introduction of a (...) back-reaction potential and its implications. PQM is to orthodox QM as General Relativity is to Special Relativity. PQM and GR both share the same metaphysical organizing principle that one-way actions without a compensating reaction or back-reaction means an incompleteness in the theoretical model leaving out important physical phenomena. We gleaned the final piece in the puzzle of how consciousness arises from the material world from a result relating to long range collective excitations in microtubules described by Stuart Hameroff in a recent Fetzer Foundation conference in London. Herbert Fröhlich suggested that almost any many-particle system when properly pumped far off thermodynamic equilibrium can be put into a robust macro-quantum coherent state immune from environmental decoherence. Indeed, we suggest that all life forms are an example of Frohlich coherence that is intimately connected with locally-retrocausal PQM back-reaction's violation of the de Broglie guidance equation that was assumed by Bohm in his 1952 pilot wave theory. Using nature as a guide combined with nano-technology points the way to the construction of naturally conscious artificial intelligence machines capable of hacking into current-day quantum cryptographic networks. Furthermore, one can imagine attaining the transhumanist agenda. For example, the consciousness of a genius like Stephen Hawking could be uploaded to the post-quantum Cloud and then downloaded to a healthy body or android. (shrink)

This review considers Stuart Jeffries’s Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. Providing a detailed account of the work and lives of the Frankfurt School, Jeffries is commended for his ability to present an illustrative biography of the school’s members and associates as well as the variety of topics that their work engaged with. However, while Jefferies manages to merge biography and academic theory in a readable and at times detailed and engaging narrative, such work is undermined (...) by a tendency to focus on the salacious gossip of a group of men whose real-life complications tend to overcome the significance of their arguments. Nevertheless, in view of the Frankfurt School’s work, it is suggested that the book’s paradoxes can serve as an important opening to contemporary topics and, more importantly, to theorizing these contradictions in light of the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill has often been charged with inconsistency in his social thinking. The reason given is usually that he tries to combine too many different traditions of thought into an ideological whole. Too deeply affected by his father and his severely purposeful early education ever to repudiate utilitarianism, he was yet too sensitive to disregard criticism of his inherited creed, and too open-minded to ignore areas of thought and experience generally allen to the utilitarian mind. Professor Robson, whose (...) editing of Mill’s works has already put social theorists and historians of ideas in his debt, disputes this view. He argues that, beneath Mill’s eclecticism, beneath his perhaps over-generous acknow-ledgements of his obligations to others, there is a basic unity of ideas. His discussion of the influences on Mill’s thought covers some fairly well-trodden ground but he brings a good deal of common sense to bear on an area where the excitement of the academic chase for sources has sometimes obscured the obvious. On the whole, he claims, the influence of Coleridge, the Suint-Simonians, Carlyle and Comte was limited; some of their specific ideas Mill accepted and used, but he was clearly aware of the differences of emphasis and context that did exist. Harriet Taylor and Tocqueville contributed more, the first by extending Mill’s vision of desirable social ends and by emphasising the difficulties of applying social theory in the world of practice, the second by his insights into democratic society and his demonstration of a proper sociological method. The deepest influence was, however, his early Benthamite upbringing and it is this life-long commitment to a utilitarian ethic that constitutes, for Professor Robson, the still, calm centre of his mind. There are other unifying ideas—his bias towards practicality and his constant concern with evolving a satisfactory methodology for the social sciences—but even these centred on a continual examination of the adequacies and inadequacies of his father’s doctrine. (shrink)

In this book of essays, he argues that morality cannot be defined solely by rational and universal principles; instead, a major place must be found for changing and conflicting ideals, values peculiar to specific times and cultures.

This book offers solutions to two persistent and I believe closely related problems in epistemology. The first problem is that of drawing a principled distinction between perception and inference: what is the difference between seeing that something is the case and merely believing it on the basis of what we do see? The second problem is that of specifying which beliefs are epistemologically basic (i.e., directly, or noninferentially, justified) and which are not. I argue that what makes a belief a (...) perceptual belief, or a basic belief, is not any introspectible feature of the belief but rather the nature of the cognitive system, or "module", that is causally responsible for the belief. Thus, even zombies, who in the philosophical literature lack conscious experiences altogether, can have basic, justified, perceptual beliefs. -/- The theories of perceptual and basic beliefs developed in the monograph are embedded in a larger reliabilist epistemology. I use this theory of basic beliefs to develop a detailed reliabilist theory: Inferentialist Reliabilism, which offers a reliabilist theory of inferential justification and which solves some longstanding problems for other reliabilist views by demanding inferential support for some—but not all—beliefs. The book is an instance of a thoroughgoingly naturalistic approach to epistemology. Many of my arguments have an empirical basis, and the view that I endorse reserves a central role for the cognitive sciences—in particular, cognitive neuroscience—in filling in the details of an applied epistemological theory. (shrink)

On 26 August 1974, Michel Foucault completed work on Discipline and Punish, and on that very same day began writing the first volume of The History of Sexuality. A little under ten years later, on 25 June 1984, shortly after the second and third volumes were published, he was dead. This decade is one of the most fascinating of his career. It begins with the initiation of the sexuality project, and ends with its enforced and premature closure. Yet in 1974 (...) he had something very different in mind for The History of Sexuality than the way things were left in 1984. Foucault originally planned a thematically organised series of six volumes, but wrote little of what he promised and published none of them. Instead over the course of the next decade he took his work in very different directions, studying, lecturing and writing about historical periods stretching back to antiquity. This book offers a detailed intellectual history of both the abandoned thematic project and the more properly historical version left incomplete at his death. It draws on all Foucault’s writings in this period, his courses at the Collège de France and lectures elsewhere, as well as material archived in France and California to provide a comprehensive overview and synthetic account of Foucault’s last decade. (shrink)

Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure takes sociology in a new direction. It examines key aspects of social structure by using a fresh understanding of emotions categories. Through that synthesis emerge new perspectives on rationality, class structure, social action, conformity, basic rights, and social change. As well as giving an innovative view of social processes, J. M. Barbalet's study also reveals unappreciated aspects of emotions by considering fear, resentment, vengefulness, shame, and confidence in the context of social structure. While much (...) has been written on the social consequences of excessive or pathological emotions, this book demonstrates the centrality of emotions to routine operations of social interaction. Dr Barbalet also re-evaluates the nature of social theory, for once the importance of emotions to social processes becomes clear, the intellectual constitution of sociology, and therefore its history, must be rethought. (shrink)

A theory of customary international law -- Case studies -- A theory of international agreements -- Human rights -- International trade -- A theory of international rhetoric -- International law and moral obligation -- Liberal democracy and cosmopolitan duty.

The history of the Frankfurt School cannot be fully told without examining the relationships of Critical Theorists to their Jewish family backgrounds. Jewish matters had significant effects on key figures in the Frankfurt School, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse. At some points, their Jewish family backgrounds clarify their life paths; at others, these backgrounds help to explain why the leaders of the School stressed the significance of antisemitism. In the post-Second World War (...) era, the differing relationships of Critical Theorists to their Jewish origins illuminate their distinctive stances toward Israel. This book investigates how the Jewish backgrounds of major Critical Theorists, and the ways in which they related to their origins, impacted upon their work, the history of the Frankfurt School, and differences that emerged among them over time. (shrink)

The last three decades have witnessed a heated debate of the merits of intelligent design (ID) as a way to understand a number of observable natural phenomena. The present dispute has its roots in a much older discussion: that of natural theology, which has always had as its goal the discernment of design(s) attributable to God in the natural world. Despite its ongoing relevance, natural theology does not have a coherent scholarly history. Turning Points in Natural Theology from Bacon to (...) Darwin deftly fills that gap, analysing the argument of design during the period from Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to Charles Darwin (1809-82), with a specific focus on those moments at which the rhetorical terms changed significantly. (shrink)

Cases of past absence involve agents noticing in retrospect that an object or property was absent, such as when one notices later that a colleague was not at a talk. In Sanskrit philosophy, such cases are introduced by Kumārila as counterexamples to the claim that knowledge of absence is perceptual, but further take on a life of their own as a topic of inquiry among Kumārila’s commentators and their Nyāya interlocutors. In this essay, I examine the Nyāya philosopher Gaṅgeśa’s epistemology (...) of past absence, according to which agents learn that a recollectable object or property was absent by inferring its past absence from failing to recall that object or property. Gaṅgeśa’s account is best appreciated against the backdrop of earlier theories and their shortcomings, and I begin by presenting historical views leading up to his. I identify two groups of views about the epistemology of past absence: recollection views, according to which cases of past absence involve agents recalling negative information; and recollection failure views, according to which cases of past absence involve agents failing to recall positive information. I reconstruct two early recollection views: a Bhāṭṭa view belonging to Uṃveka, and a competing Nyāya view belonging to Jayanta and Bhāsarvajña. I then examine Śālikanātha and Sucarita’s critiques of recollection views, following which I reconstruct a Bhāṭṭa recollection failure view belonging to Pārthasārathi. I then examine Gaṅgeśa’s critiques of Pārthasārathi’s account and the recollection failure view he constructs out of its shortcomings. (shrink)

In this book, Stuart Hampshire argues that no individual and no modern society can avoid conflicts between incompatible moral interests.

Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart explore the ability of complicated rules to generate simple behaviour in nature through 'the collapse of chaos'.

Fetal pain has long been a contentious issue, in large part because fetal pain is often cited as a reason to restrict access to termination of pregnancy or abortion. We have divergent views regarding the morality of abortion, but have come together to address the evidence for fetal pain. Most reports on the possibility of fetal pain have focused on developmental neuroscience. Reports often suggest that the cortex and intact thalamocortical tracts are necessary for pain experience. Given that the cortex (...) only becomes functional and the tracts only develop after 24 weeks, many reports rule out fetal pain until the final trimester. Here, more recent evidence calling into question the necessity of the cortex for pain and demonstrating functional thalamic connectivity into the subplate is used to argue that the neuroscience cannot definitively rule out fetal pain before 24 weeks. We consider the possibility that the mere experience of pain, without the capacity for self reflection, is morally significant. We believe that fetal pain does not have to be equivalent to a mature adult human experience to matter morally, and so fetal pain might be considered as part of a humane approach to abortion. (shrink)

In order to better understand the topic of hope, this paper argues that two separate theories are needed: One for hoping, and the other for hopefulness. This bifurcated approach is warranted by the observation that the word ‘hope’ is polysemous: It is sometimes used to refer to hoping and sometimes, to feeling or being hopeful. Moreover, these two senses of 'hope' are distinct, as a person can hope for some outcome yet not simultaneously feel hopeful about it. I argue that (...) this distinction between hoping and hopefulness is not always observed or fully appreciated in the literature and has consequently caused much confusion. This paper then sketches what theorizing about hope looks like in light of this clarification and discusses some of its implications. (shrink)

This innovative text is psychologically informed, both in its diagnosis of inferential errors, and in teaching students how to watch out for and work around their natural intellectual blind spots. It also incorporates insights from epistemology and philosophy of science that are indispensable for learning how to evaluate premises. The result is a hands-on primer for real world critical thinking. The authors bring a fresh approach to the traditional challenges of a critical thinking course: effectively explaining the nature of validity, (...) assessing deductive arguments, reconstructing, identifying and diagramming arguments, and causal and probabilistic inference. Additionally, they discuss in detail, important, frequently neglected topics, including testimony, including the evaluation of news and other information sources, the nature and credibility of science, rhetoric, and dialectical argumentation. The treatment of probability uses frequency trees and a frequency approach more generally, and argument reconstruction is taught using argument maps; these methods have been shown to improve students’ reasoning and argument evaluation. (shrink)

Philosophical debates about the metaphysics of time typically revolve around two contrasting views of time. On the A-theory, time is something that itself undergoes change, as captured by the idea of the passage of time; on the B-theory, all there is to time is events standing in before/after or simultaneity relations to each other, and these temporal relations are unchanging. Philosophers typically regard the A-theory as being supported by our experience of time, and they take it that the B-theory clashes (...) with how we experience time and therefore faces the burden of having to explain away that clash. In this paper, we investigate empirically whether these intuitions about the experience of time are shared by the general public. We asked directly for people’s subjective reports of their experience of time—in particular, whether they believe themselves to have a phenomenology as of time’s passing—and we probed their understanding of what time’s passage in fact is. We find that a majority of participants do share the aforementioned intuitions, but interestingly a minority do not. (shrink)

What is the phenomenology of hope? A common view is that hope has a generally positive and pleasant affective tone. This rosy depiction, however, has recently been challenged. Certain hopes, it has been objected, are such that they are either entirely negative in valence or neutral in tone. In this paper, I argue that this challenge has only limited success. In particular, I show that it only applies to one sense of hope but leaves another sense—one that is implicitly but (...) widely employed in the hope literature—untouched. Moreover, I argue that hope construed in this latter sense is inherently positively valenced. The paper concludes by discussing some of the implications of this defense of hope's positive phenomenology, including the ontological question of whether hope is an emotion. (shrink)

According to the standard account, to hope for an outcome is to desire it and to believe that its realization is possible, though not inevitable. This account, however, faces certain difficulties: It cannot explain how people can display differing strengths in hope; it cannot distinguish hope from despair; and it cannot explain substantial hopes. This paper proposes an account of hope that can meet these deficiencies. Briefly, it argues that in addition to possessing the relevant belief–desire structure as allowed in (...) the standard account, a hopeful person must also be able to see a way in which the desired outcome can come about and to see such a way to the outcome as a genuine possibility. (shrink)

Presupposing no familiarity with the technical concepts of either philosophy or computing, this clear introduction reviews the progress made in AI since the inception of the field in 1956. Copeland goes on to analyze what those working in AI must achieve before they can claim to have built a thinking machine and appraises their prospects of succeeding. There are clear introductions to connectionism and to the language of thought hypothesis which weave together material from philosophy, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. John (...) Searle's attacks on AI and cognitive science are countered and close attention is given to foundational issues, including the nature of computation, Turing Machines, the Church-Turing Thesis and the difference between classical symbol processing and parallel distributed processing. The book also explores the possibility of machines having free will and consciousness and concludes with a discussion of in what sense the human brain may be a computer. (shrink)