We develop a modified system of standard logic, Augmented Standard Logic (ASL), and we employ ASL in an effort to show that, contrary to prevailing opinion, both Aristotle and Diodorus presented impressive arguments, having valid structures and highly plausible premisses, in their famous fatalism debate. We argue that ASL, which contains standard logic and a full system of modal and temporal logic emanating from a modicum of primitives, should not only enable one to appreciate the sophisticated philosophizing which characterized this (...) ancient debate, but should prove to be quite useful in application to contemporary issues. (shrink)

A Humean Critique of David Hume's Theory of Knowledge provides the first full-length Aristotilian-Thomistic critique of Hume's most mature and familiar work. While giving Hume proper respect and appreciation for his achievement, Jeremy White engages in a thoughtful critique through an approach based in Hume's own method.

The essays in this book, by a variety of leading Augustine scholars, examine not only Augustine's multifaceted philosophy and its relation to his epoch-making theology, but also his practice as a philosopher, as well as his relation to other philosophers both before and after him. Thus the collection shows that Augustine's philosophy remains an influence and a provocation in a wide variety of settings today.

Contents: John A. HALL and Ian JARVIE: Preface. John A. HALL and Ian JARVIE: The Life and Times of Ernest Gellner. PART 1 INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND. Ji_i MUSIL: The Prague Roots of Ernest Gellner's Thinking. Chris HANN: Gellner on Malinowski: Words and Things in Central Europe. Tamara DRAGADZE: Ernest Gellner in the Soviet East. PART 2 NATIONS AND NATIONALISM. Brendan O'LEARY: On the Nature of Nationalism: An Appraisal of Ernest Gellner's Writings on Nationalism. Kenneth MINOGUE: Ernest Gellner and the (...) Dangers of Theorising Nationalism. Anthony D. SMITH: History and Modernity: Reflection on the Theory of Nationalism. Michael MANN: The Emergence of Modern European Nationalism. Nicholas STARGARDT: Gellner's Nationalism: The Spirit of Modernisation? PART 3 PATTERNS OF DEVELOPMENT. Peter BURKE: Reflections on the History of Encyclopaedias. Alan MACFARLANE: Ernest Gellner and the Escape to Modernity. Ronald DORE: Sovereign Individuals. Shmuel EISENSTADT: Japan: Non-Axial Modernity. Marc FERRO: l'Indépendance Telescopée: De la Décolonisation a l'Impérialisme Multinational. PART 4 ISLAM. Abdellah HAMMOUDI: Segmentarity, Social Stratification, Political Power and Sainthood: Reflections on Gellner's Theses. Henry MUNSON, Jr.: Rethinking Gellner's Segmentary Analysis of Morocco's Ait cAtta. Jean BAECHLER: Sur le charisme. Charles LINDHOLM: Despotism and Democracy: State and Society in the Premodern Middle East. Henry MUNSON, Jr.: Muslim and Jew in Morocco: Reflections on the Distinction between Belief and Behavior. Talal ASAD: The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. PART 5 SCIENCE AND DISENCHANTMENT. Perry ANDERSON: Science, Politics, Enchantment. Ralph SCHROEDER: From the Big Divide to the Rubber Cage: Gellner's Conception of Science and Technology. John DAVIS: Irrationality in Social Life. PART 6 RELATIVISM AND UNIVERSALS. John SKORUPSKI: The Post-Modern Hume: Ernest Gellner's 'Enlightenment Fundamentalism'. John WETTERSTEN: Ernest Gellner: A Wittgensteinian Rationalist. Ian JARVIE: Gellner's Positivism. Raymond BOUDON: Relativising Relativism: When Sociology Refutes the Sociology of Science. Rod AYA: The Devil in Social Anthropology; or, the Empiricist Exorcist; or, the Case Against Cultural Relativism. PART 7 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. William MCNEILL: A Swan Song for British Liberalism? Andrus PARK: Gellner and the Long Trends of History. Eero LOONE: Marx, Gellner, Power. Rosaire LANGLOIS: Coercion, Cognition and Production: Gellner's Challenge to Historical Materialism and Postmodernism. Ernest GELLNER: Reply to Critics. Ian JARVIE: Complete Bibliography of Gellner's Work. Name index. Subject index. (shrink)

This study examined audience perceptions of a political candidate’s credibility and likeability as a function of varying the candidate’s responses to an opponent’s nonverbal disparagement during a televised debate. 412 participants watched a purported televised debate between candidates for mayor in a small city in Utah. In all six versions, one debater engaged in strong nonverbal disagreement during his opponent’s opening statement. His opponent responded to the nonverbal behavior with one of six decreasingly polite messages. Results indicated that more direct (...) messages increased audience perceptions of the speaker’s expertise and character compared to providing no response. The results also showed a significant interaction between response type and audience member’s level of trait verbal aggressiveness. The “indirect” and “on-record with redress” responses led to stronger perceptions of speaker composure and extroversion for members high in verbal aggression and the “off the record” strategy led to higher perceptions of extroversion and composure for members low in verbal aggression. (shrink)

Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Religious considerations in medical decision-making have enjoyed newfound attention in recent years, challenging the assumption that the domains of biological and spiritual flourishing can be cleanly separated in clinical practice. A surprising majority of patients desire their physicians to engage their religious and spiritual concerns, yet most never receive such attention, particularly in cases near the end of life where such attention seems most warranted.1–3 As physicians Aparna Sajja and Christina Puchalski recently wrote in the AMA Journal of Ethics theme (...) issue on ‘Religion and Spirituality in Healthcare Practice’, modern medical training is ‘falling short of preparing physicians to help patients with the metaphysical needs of their illness’.4 It would seem then that both patients and physicians might challenge the conclusions proffered by philosophers Jake Greenblum and Ryan Hubbard in ‘Responding to Religious Patients: Why Physicians Have No Business Doing Theology’, in which they claim that physicians ought not to engage religious reasoning for medical decisions. Their conclusion relies on two core arguments: a ‘public reason’ argument and a ‘fiduciary argument’, both of which contend that theology and religious considerations have no place in medical reasoning. We find that two central errors undergird these arguments. First is the fraught notion of an epistemically and ethically normative public reason, and second is a fundamental mischaracterisation of the fiduciary nature of the patient–physician relationship and the nature of medicine itself. In response, we argue that all physicians essentially ‘do theology’ and that, rather than divorcing theology from medical practice, clinicians should make it their business to do theology well. To support the exclusion of religious reasoning from medical decision-making, the authors open with a ‘public reason argument’, suggesting that physicians serve in roles closely resembling those of public officials. As such, the physician as public official ought to limit himself …. (shrink)

What kind of persons could engage in political torture? Not only the morally impaired who lack empathy or compassion, or even the merely obedient, but also the righteous who struggle with conscience, and the realists who set morality aside.

Recent reports of the discovery of a “God module” in the human brain derive from the fact that epileptic seizures in the left temporal lobe are associated with ecstatic feelings sometimes described as an experience of the presence of God. The brain area involved has been described as either (a) the seat of an innate human faculty for experiencing the divine or (b) the seat of religious delusions.In fact, religious experience is extremely various and involves many parts of the brain, (...) including some that are prehuman in their evolutionary history and some that are characteristically human. In the continuing integration of such experiences, spiritual formation takes place. Thus the entire human brain might be described as a “God module.”Such a process is only possible because of the brain's complexity. The human brain is the most complex entity for its size that we know of. As used here, complexity is a specialized term denoting the presence of a web of interlinked and significant connections—the more intricate the web, the more complex the entity. Complex systems develop only in a milieu that provides both lawfulness and freedom, and they tend to be self‐organizing, becoming more complex and more effective as a result of both inward and outward experience. The evidence suggests that both personal growth and spiritual growth are processes of complexification of character, and of the brain itself. This thesis is tested in light of the work of William James and James W. Fowler. (shrink)

From ancient times to the present, the discovery and presentation of new proofs of previously established theorems has been a salient feature of mathematical practice. Why? What purposes are served by such endeavors? And how do mathematicians judge whether two proofs of the same theorem are essentially different? Consideration of such questions illuminates the roles that proofs play in the validation and communication of mathematical knowledge and raises issues that have yet to be resolved by mathematical logicians. The Appendix, in (...) which several proofs of the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic are compared, provides a miniature case study. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that becoming, Or passage, Is not merely paradoxical, But positively contradictory. On the assumption that events become, We are entitled to say that at certain times, Certain events are earlier or later, As the case may be, Than such temporal events as the characterization of events by presentness. But since temporal relations are permanent, They cannot be said without contradiction to obtain at any one time as opposed to another.

This paper critiques the biological race realism of Quayshawn Spencer. Spencer's recent embrace of “radical race pluralism” (RRP) is welcome but incomplete, because it needs methods that distinguish different communicative contexts for how American English speakers use “race” and related terms. I offer a pragmatic approach to identifying such contexts that combines pragmatic argumentation theory, rhetorical polysemy, and a pragmatic approach to definition. One consequence of embracing RRP is that Spencer's theory of “OMB race talk” is unsupportable because it collapses (...) three distinct communicative contexts: genomic research, legal and regulatory governance, and ordinary talk. By so doing, OMB race talk blocks attempts to fight racism and violates ethical standards that should allow people the agency to define their own identities. (shrink)

We shall get to the crux of the issue if we ask, "What is it that reason is after, and hopes to achieve?" According to Blanshard, it is the grasp of necessity; it is the knowledge not simply of what is, but also and at the same time of what in the strictest sense must be. For reason seeks a final answer to the question, "Why?"; and only when one's knowledge is necessary is a further "Why?" found to be entirely (...) superfluous. Now perfect necessity may be grasped, thinks Blanshard, only in a context of total knowledge. The final goal of reason is thus a knowledge of the world which is perfectly necessary, and by virtue of this fact perfectly complete. (shrink)

Certain facts about subjective successions support, I hold, a theory of mind?dependent sensory data. Suppose that no such theory is true and, furthermore, that as one experiences a visual subjective succession, that of which one is visually aware consists typically in a static physical array. Nevertheless one will, I hold, experience a certain change taking place within one's visual field; and under the imagined conditions, it is hard to fathom what this change could be. Various seemingly plausible and helpful suggestions (...) are examined and rejected. I conclude that neither a common?sense realism nor, in fact, any view which rejects mind?dependent sensory data can deal satisfactorily with subjective successions. (shrink)

Now language is very important for philosophizing, and, as we shall see, especially important for metaphysics. Metaphysics is reflection on the world as intellectually experienced, and this means, on the world as known and formulated and expressed in language or discourse. As Frederick Woodbridge puts it, "Telling the truth about man's intellectual experience of the world, and trying to discover what that truth implies, is the business of philosophy." Naturally, this attempt leads beyond that intellectual experience of the world, that (...) formulation in discourse, to the world itself. It leads to the context in which the world is experienced reflectively, to the "immediately" or "directly" experienced world—to the world encountered in our many other ways of experiencing it than reflective, intellectual, or linguistic. For "intellectual experience" is a way of experiencing the world, and "linguistic formulation" is a way of expressing and articulating subject-matter encountered and experienced in many other ways. (shrink)

All this has been clearly revealed by our philosophies of experience, however muddled they may have been about the nature of "experience" itself. Philosophies of experience have taught most when they have tried to place the world stated and known in the context of the world experienced in other ways, in order to learn and state more. They have taught least when, professedly most empirical, and most positivistic, they have tried to stay as close as possible to the world immediately (...) "given." There is a certain irony about the long and never-ending search for the "given," for what we supposedly start with, that is hardly dispelled by the shouts of triumph each time a new "given" is discovered. To seek to know what the world is like when it is not known, is after all intelligible only as a contribution to making the world better known. Whatever else the world may be when it is not known, it is at least not known. (shrink)

This is an analysis of the relation of green to nineteenth century thought. the author believes that green stands for three ideas. first, he is the major nineteenth century critic of utilitarianism. second, he is the main critic of laissez-faire individualism. third, he is the major critic of empiricism. green believed that experience is identical with thought; the real world is the intelligible world. the human mind, in knowing, establishes relations with the eternal mind. the author concludes that green is (...) both a platonist and an augustinian, eliminating particulars, or feelings, from philosophical importance. (staff). (shrink)

The symposium »Does the Concept of ›Truth‹ Have Value in the Pursuit of Cross-Cultural Philosophy?« hones on a methodological question which has deep implications on doing philosophy cross-culturally. Drawing on early Confucian writers, the anchor, Henry Rosemont, Jr., attempts to explain why he is skeptical of pat, affirmative answers to this question. His co-symposiasts James Maffie, John Maraldo, and Sonam Thakchoe follow his trail in working out multi-faceted views on truth from Mexican, Japanese Confucian, and Tibetan Buddhist perspectives respectively. (...) As these positions substantiate, the aforementioned non-Anglo-European traditions seem to draw on an integrated view of thinking, feeling, and living a human life. For their practitioners, truth is less of a correspondence with a given external reality. In fact, it enables human beings to strike the right path in living good, social lives. (shrink)