Originally published in 1937, this book presents the philosophy of James Ward, the Professor of Mental Philosophy and Logic at the University of Cambridge. Ward was primarily concerned with the perceived antagonism between science and philosophy or religion, and Murray supplies a psychological background to Ward's thinking that helps to explain his interest in this topic. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Ward or the duality of faith and reason.

The teachings, style and impact of the Qur'an have always been matters of controversy, among both Muslims and non-Muslims. But in a modern context of intercultural sensitivity, what the Qur'an says and means are perhaps more urgent questions than ever before. This major new book by one of the world's finest Islamic scholars responds to that urgency. Building on his earlier groundbreaking work, the author challenges misinterpretations of particular Qur'anic verses from whatever quarter. He addresses the infamous 'sword' verse, frequently (...) cited as a justification for jihad. He also questions the 'tribute' verse, associated with the Muslim state subjugating Jews and Christians; and the idea of Paradise in the Qur'an, often viewed by the West as emphasising merely physical pleasures, or used by Islamic fighters as their just reward for holy war. The author argues that wrenching the verses out of the context of the whole has led to dangerous ideologies being built on isolated phrases which have then assumed afterlives of their own. This nuanced, holistic reading has vital interfaith ramifications. (shrink)

Considering Pragma-Dialectics honors the monumental contributions of one of the foremost international figures in current argumentation scholarship: Frans van Eemeren. The volume presents the research efforts of his colleagues and addresses how their work relates to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation with which van Eemeren’s name is so intimately connected. This tribute serves to highlight the varied approaches to the study of argumentation and is destined to inspire researchers to advance scholarship in the field far into the future. Replete with (...) contributions from highly-esteemed academics in argumentation study, chapters in this volume address such topics as: *Pragma-dialectic versus epistemic theories of arguing and arguments; *Pragma-dialectics and self-advocacy in physician-patient interactions; *The pragma-dialectical analysis of the ad hominem family; *Rhetoric, dialectic, and the functions of argument; and *The semantics of reasonableness. As an exceptional volume and a fitting tribute, this work will be of interest to all argumentation scholars considering the astute insights and scholarly legacy of Frans van Eemeren. (shrink)

Considering Pragma-Dialectics honors the monumental contributions of one of the foremost international figures in current argumentation scholarship: Frans van Eemeren. The volume presents the research efforts of his colleagues and addresses how their work relates to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation with which van Eemeren’s name is so intimately connected. This tribute serves to highlight the varied approaches to the study of argumentation and is destined to inspire researchers to advance scholarship in the field far into the future. Replete with (...) contributions from highly-esteemed academics in argumentation study, chapters in this volume address such topics as: *Pragma-dialectic versus epistemic theories of arguing and arguments; *Pragma-dialectics and self-advocacy in physician-patient interactions; *The pragma-dialectical analysis of the ad hominem family; *Rhetoric, dialectic, and the functions of argument; and *The semantics of reasonableness. As an exceptional volume and a fitting tribute, this work will be of interest to all argumentation scholars considering the astute insights and scholarly legacy of Frans van Eemeren. (shrink)

After a chapter which is an introduction to and summary of the rest of the book, chapter 2 begins by criticizing various attempts to do away with theories, such as the Reichenbach-Salmon conception of theoretical truth in terms of observational consequences, and the Ramsey strategy of replacing first-order theoretical sentences by second-order nontheoretical ones; it then argues against hypothetico-deductivist theories of confirmation on the grounds that they are unable to handle the relevance of evidence to theory, whether or not other (...) formal constraints or even nonformal ones such as simplicity and explanatory power are added to those theories; it ends with an exposition of the Reichenbach-Carnap conventionalist thesis that the confirmation of hypotheses with evidence presupposes analytic principles connecting hypothetical and empirical concepts. Chapter 3 criticizes Bayesian theories of confirmation on such grounds as that the a priori arguments for Bayesian restrictions on beliefs are insufficient; that the Bayesian explanations of notions like variety of evidence, ad hocness, and simplicity are inadequate; and that they cannot account, without drastic revisions, for the relevance of evidence to theory, especially old evidence to new theory. Chapter 4 is an unsympathetic account of historically oriented philosophies of science; Lakatos’s notion of progressive research programs and Laudan’s theory of problem-solving effectiveness are found to be insufficiently precise and dubbed examples of "new fuzziness", while the Sneed-Stegmüller dynamics of theories is regarded as "a paradigm of misplaced rigor" ; and all three are criticized as unable to explicate the concept of evidential relevance. Chapter 5 is a formal and informal elaboration of the basic idea in Glymour’s account of theory and evidence, namely that confirmation or support is a three-term relation among evidence, hypothesis, and theory, so that evidence confirms an hypothesis only relative to a theory, and such that evidence e confirms hypothesis h relative to T if T with e implies, but T without e does not imply, an instance of h, and T with e does not imply a comparable hypothesis h’ different from h; the most interesting part of this chapter is a series of discussions showing how such an idea makes sense of the "methodological truisms" that it is possible selectively to test certain parts of a theory but not others, that a theory is supported better by a greater variety of evidence, that redundant or physically meaningless quantities are an undesirable feature of theories, that there are no inviolable rules, that a "white shoe" does not confirm "all ravens are black," that a theory is more useful and better supported than the set of its observational consequences, and that the hypothetico-deductive method often works. Since Glymour claims no originality for the conception of this general account, but only for its description, he plausibly thinks it necessary to apply it to some important historical cases of actual science; he does so in the next chapter by discussing at some length the structure and merits of Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy, of Newton’s universal gravitation, of nineteenth century atomism, of Freud’s Rat Man, and of general relativity. For example, he argues convincingly that Copernicanism was better supported by the evidence available even before the telescope because it alone, and not the Ptolemaic theory, can determine some planetary properties which are presupposed by both theories, can test and confirm some common hypotheses, and can be confirmed in an essential rather than incidental manner; and though Glymour admits that the Copernicans tended to argue in terms of explanatory rather than confirmatory superiority, he sketches an interesting account of the relation between explanation and confirmation which strengthens his case. He also analyzes the text at the beginning of book 3 of Newton’s Principia and compiles a reconstruction of the intricate details of the inferential structure of the argument to universal gravitation; his impressive reconstruction clearly shows that Newton’s method is neither the inductivist one he himself thought he was following, nor the one attributed to him by Pierre Duhem, but rather one in accordance with Glymour’s so-called "bootstrap strategy" of repeatedly using the evidence from Kepler’s second and third laws, from lunar data, and from falling bodies, together with the theory consisting of the second and third laws of motion, to arrive at increasingly general instances of the principle of universal gravitation. Glymour’s account of arguments for and against the atomic theory from Thomson to Cannizzaro is his longest historical example, but he himself admits that this illustration of the bootstrap strategy is "certainly not the neatest", and rather "diffuse, and perhaps disconnected". Chapter 7 is a detailed application of the same principles to the technique known among social scientists as "causal modeling"; since such "causal models" are essentially systems of algebraic equations, Glymour’s account shows indirectly that the bootstrap strategy is applicable to any scientific theory presented as a set of algebraic equations; this, of course is not surprising, since the formal considerations with which Glymour begins the exposition of his theory in chapter 5 involve systems of algebraic equations. Chapter 8 is an attempt to apply Glymour’s theory of evidence to the very common scientific practice of curve-fitting, where one measures values of two or more quantities and then infers a functional relationship; Glymour argues that simpler polynomials are preferred because they are tested more frequently and more severely by the data and because they are more informative; but then he criticizes his own explanation and concludes that "the bootstrap procedures of chapter 5 do not seem to help the problem much more than a whit" ; this is admirably honest, but if one wants an additional logical or methodological rationale, then one would perhaps have to go to the meta-level and say that Glymour is here testing his own theory, and he is more interested in a further illustration of the bootstrap methodology even with a failed test, than he is to claim universal or exclusive validity for it. In chapter 9 Glymour uses his bootstrap theory of confirmation to criticize geometrical conventionalism; he considers the alternative theories of space or space-time proposed by conventionalists to show the radical undetermination of geometries by evidence, for example, a non-Euclidean geometry with no universal force instead of Newtonian gravitation with Euclidean geometry; he argues that such alternatives are simply not as well tested as the originals and that their equivalence to the originals is questionable. The last chapter is a brief discussion of further problems worthy of future investigation. (shrink)

This is a volume in the so-called "Modern Masters" series, which deals with an eclectic group including such figures as Einstein, Freud, Gandhi, Chomsky, and Che Guevara. The book is a general, introductory account of Popper’s philosophy and as such useful. For though one may not agree that Popper is a "figure of world importance" and "the greatest living philosopher of science", it is true that Popper’s philosophy is important enough to deserve more attention and discussion that it has so (...) far received; and this applies both at the level of technical philosophy and of general culture. (shrink)

A collection of eighteen papers, all but three previously published, the earliest in 1952 and the latest in 1973. Johnstone’s views are well known among metaphilosophers and philosophers of rhetoric, but they deserve wider dissemination because of their greater relevance indicated below.

This is a textbook on reasoning but deserves attention because of its pedagogical novelty, because it provides the foundations for a valuable approach to logic, and because of the philosophical nature of the theory of reasoning.

This is a diligent and competent account of Popper’s philosophy of natural science primarily, and secondarily of his philosophy of the social sciences. There are discussions of such topics as the anti-positivistic origin of Popper’s views, his interpretation of probability, his theory of corroboration, his critique of Carnap, his elaboration of indeterminism, and his interpretation of quantum theory. In a chapter dealing with subjectivism, Ackermann develops Popperian arguments against the views of Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn and gives an insightful (...) elaboration of Popper’s evolutionary epistemology. (shrink)

For 150 years after Galileo's condemnation in 1633, there were many references to the trial, but no sustained, heated or polarized discussions. Then came the thesis that Galileo was condemned not for being a good astronomer but for being a bad theologian (using Scripture to support astronomical hypotheses); it began in 1784-1785 with an apology of the Inquisition by Mallet du Pan in the Mercure de France and the printing in Tiraboschi's Storia della letteratura italiana of an apocryphal letter attributed (...) to Galileo but forged by Onorato Gaetani. This thesis is not only untenable and false but inverts and subverts the truth; it proved to be long-lasting and widely accepted; so it may be labeled a myth. It was held by such writers as . Afterwards, it was generally abandoned, its death knell being pope John Paul II's speeches in 1979-1992. The myth seems to have acted as a catalyst insofar as its creation encouraged the proliferation of pro-clerical accounts and the articulation of pro-Galilean ones, thus making the discussion of Galileo's trial the cause celebre it is today. (shrink)

A collection of 24 out of the 35 papers presented at the Fourth Scandinavian Logic Symposium and First Soviet-Finnish Logic Conference, which took place simultaneously in Finland in 1976. Topics covered are proof theory, set theory, model theory, recursion theory, infinitary languages, generalized quantifiers, truthlikeness, natural language, and "philosophical logic." There is a paper by George Kreisel which discusses an intriguing distinction between the theory of proofs and general proof theory, the latter being the study of the allegedly definitional or (...) essential property of proofs, the former being the study of structural features such as length of proofs and of relations between proofs and other things. There is a paper by Hintikka in which he applies his "game-theoretical semantics" developed elsewhere to quantifiers in natural languages, e.g., the analysis of sentences like "some novel by every novelist is mentioned by every critic". I found the most interesting paper to be the one by Bengt Hansson, which studies the nature of paradoxes by articulating an analogy with mathematical equations, the crucial property about the latter being that they do not always have solutions. Almost all papers are highly technical and thus aimed at experts of the specialties mentioned in the book’s title.—M.A.F. (shrink)

This collection contains such a wealth of topics that it deserves the attention of anyone seriously interested in what its title denotes, namely the philosophy of the history of philosophy. The content of the various essays, along with their translated titles, can be described as follows. "The New Aspects of the Philosophy of the History of Philosophy" claims to be, but is not, an introduction to the other essays; it abounds in obscurities and does not even make the effort of (...) integrating the various contributions into some common themes. "Meta-philosophy and History of Philosophy" is partly a methodological discussion of the connections among philosophy, metaphilosophy, and history of philosophy, and partly a discussion from a psychological-psychoanalytical and cultural anthropological point of view of questions like the following: whether anything like progress exists in the history of philosophy, what is the meaning of the whole philosophical history, and what are its prospects for the future. "Heidegger, Schelling, and German Idealism" discusses the relations between the history of philosophy and the philosophy of existence, using primarily Heidegger’s lectures on Schelling as a case study. "Hermeneutic Experience and Philosophical Historiography" is a discussion primarily of the theory of historical interpretation in Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode, and secondarily of some of its consequences for the study of the history of philosophy; it is highly informative, but one cannot fail to lament the fact that the author reports Gadamer’s critiques of historicism without any explicit indication that, besides Dilthey’s version, there exists Croce’s brand of historicism, which in my judgment is very similar to Gadamer’s hermeneutics as reported in this essay. "History of Art as History of Philosophy?" is a thoughtful and provocative brief discussion of the divergence between the histories of art and of philosophy; it also suggests that, nevertheless, data and facts from art-history can be used by the historian of philosophy for the reconstruction of the philosophical concepts of epochs and cultures whose available historical records abound in the field of art but are lacking in the area of philosophy. "The Hegelian Left and the History of Philosophy" is an analysis of some of the historiography of the 19th century Hegelian Left. "-Philosophy and the Theology of Secularization discusses the interconnections among philosophy, history of philosophy, the contemporary historical situation, and political philosophy, developing a Gentilean critique of the theology of secularization; it argues that Gentile’s critique refutes some presuppositions of this theology, namely, the idea of the progressive character of contemporary history and that of the irreversible process of secularization. "Philosophy of Religion and History of Philosophy," though terminologically and stylistically obscure, is a very stimulating justification of the thesis that an adequate philosophy of religion is to be grounded on a philosophy of history, which in turn is to be grounded on an all-encompassing history of philosophy; independently of the adequacy of this justification, the author makes a number of very suggestive comparisons between the history and historiography of philosophy and the history and historiography of the Church, such as the following: the analogy of the relationships between theology and Church history and between philosophy and philosophical history, the analogy between the "history of ideas" and ecumenical Church history, the analogy between the position of Hegel in philosophical history and that of Jesus in Church history, and the analogy between the visible/ invisible Church distinction in religious studies and the history/theory distinction in philosophical inquiry. "Beyond the Historical Disease" discusses to what extent philosophical hermeneutics solves Nietzsche’s problem that there is a conflict between historiographical awareness and the capacity to make history; it answers that, in spite of its insights, hermeneutics fails, and that the solution lies in the direction of certain suggestions found in Sartre’s Question of Méthode. "Interpretation and Translatability of Philosophical Texts" discusses certain problems in the theory of meaning from the point of view of analytical philosophy, and in relation to the meaning of philosophical passages. "Epistemology, Hermeneutics, and Analytical-Philosophical Historiography" is an interesting mixture of a critique of the view that contemporary analytical philosophy is ahistorical, a discussion of the similarities between Popper’s epistemology and Gadamer’s hermeneutics, and a study of the interplay between Popper’s epistemology and his interpretation of Plato in The Open Society and its Enemies. "Information Theory and Philosophy" studies the relation between science and the history of philosophy by comparing and contrasting certain philosophical ideas of Leibniz and Kant with recent results in information theory. A final essay deals with "The Myth of Faust in Kierkegaard."—M.A.F. (shrink)

In this important work, Professor Walter M. Elsasser attempts to evaluate the status of one of the most puzzling scientific and philosophic problems of our time: How the basic ideas or categories of biology relate to the fundamental concepts of physics. In particular: "Is biology reducible to physics?" In turn: "Are social and mental phenomena reducible to biology?," as some of the new school of sociobiologists contend.