Woodward's long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defenses, objections, and replies into a convincing defense of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyze causation by appeal to the notion of manipulation.

"Public Bioethics collects the most influential essays and articles of James F. Childress, a leading figure in the field of contemporary bioethics. These essays, including new, previously unpublished material, cohere around the idea of "public bioethics," which involves analyzing and assessing public policies in biomedicine, health care, and public health, often through public deliberative bodies. The volume is divided into four sections. The first concentrates on the principle of respect for autonomy and paternalistic policies and practices. The second explores (...) the tension among bioethics, public policy, and religious convictions. It pays particular attention to the role of religious convictions in the formation of public policies and to the basis and limits of exemptions of health care providers who conscientiously oppose providing certain legal and patient-sought services. The third section looks at practices and policies related to organ transplantation. Childress focuses particularly on determining death, obtaining first-person consent for deceased organ donation, and allocating donated organs effectively and fairly. The book's fourth and final section maps the broad terrain of public health ethics, proposes a triage framework for the use of resources in public health crises, addresses public health interventions that potentially infringe civil liberties, and sheds light on John Stuart Mill's misunderstood legacy for public health ethics."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

If theism is true, then there exists a being to which we appropriately refer with the term ‘God’. This point is analytic. Any object to which we appropriately refer with the term ‘God’ bears certain properties – e.g. omniscience, omnipotence and moral perfection. While the analyticity of this point may be a matter of debate, I find no problem granting its necessary truth , at least for the purposes of this paper. There are properties essential to the appropriate wearing of (...) the title ‘God’. Does it follow from these claims that the object to which we appropriately apply the term ‘God’ bears the properties in question – omniscience, omnipotence, etc. – essentially? Is God essentially God? Or is it possible that the being to whom we refer with ‘God’ exist but not be God? Many would assume that the answers to these questions are obvious – that God is God essentially, or not at all. However, I wish to argue that there may be properties essential to Godhood, but not essential to the being that is God. (shrink)

"A very good book indeed: there is scarcely an issue anyone has thought to raise about the topic which Childress fails to treat with sensitivity and good judgement....Future discussions of paternalism in health care will have to come to terms with the contentions of this book, which must be reckoned the best existing treatment of its subject."--Ethics. "A clear, scholarly and balanced analysis....This is a book I can recommend to physicians, ethicists, students of both fields, and to those most affected--the (...) patients themselves."--Edmund D. Pellegrino, John Carroll Professor of Medicine and Medical Humanities, Georgetown University Medical Center. (shrink)

The purpose of this thesis is not to present exhaustively the ethical doctrine of Plato, but to disclose one specific aspect in the development of his ethical thought. We shall attempt to show that Plato realized the necessity for a metaphysical foundation for his ethical theory. The search itself will begin in the early or Socratic dialogues, continue through such major works of the middle period as Phaedo and Symposium, and culminate in a definite resolution of the problem through the (...) doctrine of the Republic. The exposition will be developed in three stages: (1) an indication of the ways in which the need for a "metaphysical foundation of morals" is expressed or implied in the early dialogues; (2) an account of the development of Plato's metaphysical theory in dialogues of the middle period; and (3) the argument that this metaphysic was for Plato the completion and foundation of his ethical theory. (shrink)

This paper analyzes nonviolent resistance and direct action, as seen by its practitioners and theoreticians, from the standpoint of trust and risk-taking. After an examination of the nature of trust, the author indicates how it can illuminate what selected figures such as Gandhi and King have claimed about nonviolence. He offers this analysis not as a defense but as a way of understanding nonviolence that can serve as a starting point for further discussion.

Of all humanities disciplines, none is more resistant to the program of positive psychology or more hostile to the prevailing discourse of human flourishing than literary studies. The approach taken in this volume of essays is neither to gloss over that antagonism nor to launch a series of blasts against positive psychology and the happiness industry. Rather, the essays are attempts to reflect on how the kinds of literary research the contributors themselves are doing, the kinds of work to which (...) they are personally committed, might become part of an interdisciplinary conversation about human flourishing. The authors' specific fields of work are wide ranging, covering literary aesthetics, book history, digital humanities, and reader reception, as well as the important "inter-disciplines" of gender and sexuality studies, disability studies, and black studies-fields in which issues of stigma and exclusion are paramount, and which have critiqued the discourse of human flourishing for its failure to grapple with structural inequality and human difference. Taken together, the essays contribute more points of ambiguity and hesitation to the study of human flourishing than decisive advancements. Literary scholars are drawn more readily to the problematic than to the decidable. But by dwelling on the trouble spots in a field of inquiry still largely confined to the sciences, this volume provides the groundwork for new and more productive forms of interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange. (shrink)

This paper examines the dilemma of heavenly freedom. If there is freedom in heaven, then it seems that there is the possibility of evil in heaven, which violates standard intuitions. If there is not, then heaven is lacking a good significant enough that it would justify God in creating free beings, despite the evil they might cause. But then how can God be justified in omitting such a good from heaven? To resolve this dilemma, I present the Proximate Conception of (...) freedom, which holds that actions may be free though determined, but only if they have in their causal history some undetermined free actions by the same agent. I show how this conception resolves the dilemma, defend it against objections, and comment on its implications. (shrink)

History and Systems of Psychology provides an engaging introduction to the rich story of psychology's past. Retaining the clarity and accessibility praised by readers of earlier editions, this classic textbook provides a chronological history of psychology from the pre-Socratic Greeks to contemporary systems, research, and applications. The new edition also features expanded coverage of Eastern as well as Western traditions, influential women in psychology, professional psychology in clinical, educational, and social settings, and new directions in twenty-first century psychology as a (...) cognitive and a positive science. Assuming little prerequisite knowledge, the authors discuss the people, places, and concepts that have shaped psychology's story, and show that we remain fascinated by the same enduring questions that confronted our ancestors - namely, our wonder at our subjectivity and consciousness of self. The seventh edition is fully supported by robust pedagogical features, instructor resources, and a companion website to aid student learning. (shrink)

This is the first book to explore the relationship between Martin Heidegger's work and modern anthropology. Heidegger attracts much scholarly interest among social scientists, but few have explored his ideas in relation to current anthropological debates. The discipline's modernist foundations, the nature of cultural constructionism and of art ñ even what an anthropology of art must include ñ are all informed and illuminated by Heidegger's work. The author argues that many contemporary anthropologists, in their concern to return subjectivity and 'voice' (...) to their interlocutors, neglect to recognize that language and other representational practices conceal the world and human subjectivity as much as reveal it. The author also suggests that Heidegger's critique of western technology provides the basis for a return to anthropology's sociological foundations. Emerging from over ten years of original research, and drawing on a rich knowledge of Australian and Melanesian ethnography, this book reassesses the underlying framework of modern and, particularly, visual anthropology. Innovative and provocative, it will be of interest to all anthropologists, philosophers and students of art and culture. (shrink)

I Introduction: Philosophy and Social Science Men "know," but they no longer are so certain that their knowledge will not be rearranged. ...

The latter quality can be cultivated by the metaphysician through considering the intimate link between signification and being. The impossibility of separating the two is highlighted by the fact that even "non-being" is significant as a sign of the simple negative judgment, x is not. For this sign assuredly is. And a "square circle," mathematically and physically nonexistent, has the "being" of an incompatible conjunction of signs severally significant.

If the contemporary rebirth of the ontological argument had its conception in Norman Malcolm's discovery of a second Anselmian argument it had its full-term delivery as a healthy philosophical progeny with Alvin Plantinga's sophisticated modal version presented in the tenth chapter of The Nature of Necessity. This latter argument has been the centre of a huge body of literature over the last fifteen years, and deservedly so. One is impressed that this version of Anselm's jewel is valid and sound if (...) any is. (shrink)

Public health ethics, like the field of public health it addresses, traditionally has focused more on practice and particular cases than on theory, with the result that some concepts, methods, and boundaries remain largely undefined. This paper attempts to provide a rough conceptual map of the terrain of public health ethics. We begin by briefly defining public health and identifying general features of the field that are particularly relevant for a discussion of public health ethics.Public health is primarily concerned with (...) the health of the entire population, rather than the health of individuals. Its features include an emphasis on the promotion of health and the prevention of disease and disability; the collection and use of epidemiological data, population surveillance, and other forms of empirical quantitative assessment; a recognition of the multidimensional nature of the determinants of health; and a focus on the complex interactions of many factors—biological, behavioral, social, and environmental—in developing effective interventions. (shrink)

Philosophical difficulties with Augustine’s dualism, and with the scholastic “separated souls” account of the gap between personal death and supernatural resurrection, suggest that we consider two other options, each with its own attractions: (i) that the General Resurrection is immediate upon one’s death, despite initial awkwardness with common piety, and (ii) that there is a “natural metamorphosis” of bodily continuity after death and before resurrection.

Introduction: Structural realism -- Necessities : earned truth and made truth -- Real impossibility -- What might have been -- Truth -- Perception and abstraction -- Emergent consciousness and irreducible understanding -- Real natures : software everywhere -- Going wrong with the master of falsity.

analogy, the similarity along with difference, among meanings, among sorts of thinking, and among realities. Analogy theory ori­ginated with *Aristotle in its three main parts: analogy of meaning, analogous thinking, and analogy of being. There were some ante­cedents in *Plato, where the names of Forms and of participating things are the same but differ in meaning, and the notion of ‘being’ is said to differ with what we are talking about, for example Forms versus physical things (Sophist). Systematic use of (...) the three elem­ents to unify philosophy and to resolve problems is, however, Aristotle's invention along with the idea that *metaphor is a species of analogy. Aristotle distinguished what were later called analogies of attribution, based on causation, signs, symptoms, and represen­tations (medical skill, medical supplies; hat/head cover, hat/in pic­ture), from analogy based on proportionality, A: B :: C : D; where the common implicit predicate is related in meaning (supplied food. (shrink)

There are reasons of principle limiting what lexical fields can explain. As will emerge, they are not just the limitations that have encouraged "frame" semantics, or an emphasis on the "belief elements of meaning" peculiar to the lexicon of a given language, but reasons concerned with the combinatorial adaptation of words in all languages. An example of combinatorial adaptation, which I call "semantic contagion," is the italicized pair: "look down \on art; look down \at the floor".

A review of a recent publication by Raphael Lataster.

Knowledge through what others tell us not only forms a large part of the body of our knowledge but also originates the patterns of appraisal according to which we add beliefs to our present store of knowledge.1 I do not mean merely that what we add is often accepted from persons who have already contributed to our knowledge; beyond that, we have acquired habits of thought, tendencies to suspect and tendencies to approve both other-person-reports and purported perceptions, from our testimonial (...) relationships with others. For instance, who would not hesitate to say he saw a particular acquaintance (John Doe) at a visual distance of half a block, after he had just been told by someone he trusted and someone who ought to have known (e.g., John Doe’s wife) that John Doe had just telephoned from a store two hours travel time away? Yet apart from that report, one might have considered it evident that John Doe was half a block away, just because (ceteris paribus) it looked enough like John Doe; the evidence of our senses can be defeated by the authority we accord to the evidence of testimony. (shrink)

This paper provides a restatement and defense of the data/ phenomena distinction introduced by Jim Bogen and me several decades ago (e.g., Bogen and Woodward, The Philosophical Review, 303–352, 1988). Additional motivation for the distinction is introduced, ideas surrounding the distinction are clarified, and an attempt is made to respond to several criticisms.

Argues that Wittgenstein's early ethical notion of agreement with the world pivoted to become his later therapeutic notion of agreement with living forms, which satisfies the conditions necessary for a full therapeutic philosophy.

Do pacifists and proponents of justified violence share a starting point? Whether or not just war theory contains an embedded presumption against violence is an important and disputed question. Substantively it is important not only because it has implications for the possibility of dialogue among Christians of different persuasions but also because the belief that the tradition advances no moral reservations about the use of force may have the effect of lowering the moral barriers against the resort to war. Conceptually (...) it is important because it reflects a fundamental methodological disagreement concerning the meaning and resolution of conflicts among moral duties. (shrink)

Mistakes about necessity, possibility, counterpossibility and impossibility distort the notions of being and creation.1 Recently such errors cluster in the understanding of quantified modal logic (QML), a device that was for a while thought especially promising for metaphysics.2 Time has told a different story. The underlying modal platonism is gratuitous, without explanatory force and conflicts with the religion it is often used to explain. There are things to consider here that go beyond diagnosing mistakes.3..

Two dogmas of empiricism, by W. V. Quine.--In defense of a dogma, by H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson.--The analytic and the synthetic: an untenable dualism, by M. G. White.--Synonymity, by B. Mates.--The meaning of a word, by J. L. Austin.--Meaning and synonymy in natural languages, by R. Carnap.--Analytic-synthetic, by J. Bennett.--On "analytic," by R. M. Martin.--Selected bibliography (p. [188]-196).

_Considers the notable similarities between the thought of Confucius and Wittgenstein._.