Eminent moral philosopher Michael Slote argues that care ethics presents an important challenge to other ethical traditions and that a philosophically developed care ethics should, and can, offer its own comprehensive view of the whole of morality. Taking inspiration from British moral sentimentalism and drawing on recent psychological literature on empathy, he shows that the use of that notion allows care ethics to develop its own sentimentalist account of respect, autonomy, social justice, and deontology. Furthermore, he argues that care (...) ethics gives a more persuasive account of these topics than theories offered by contemporary Kantian liberalism. The most philosophically rich and challenging exploration of the theory and practice of care to date, _The Ethics of Care and Empathy_ also shows the manifold connections that can be drawn between philosophical issues and leading ideas in the fields of psychology, education, and women's studies. (shrink)

Michael Tooley presents a major new philosophical theory of the nature of time, offering a powerful alternative to the traditional "tensed" and recent "tenseless" accounts of time. He argues for a dynamic conception of the universe, in which past, present, and future are not merely subjective features of experience. He claims that the past and the present are real, while the future is not. Tooley's approach accounts for time in terms of causation. He therefore claims that the key to (...) understanding the dynamic nature of the universe is to understand the nature of causation. Time, Tense, and Causation is a landmark treatment of one of the oldest and most perplexing intellectual problems, and will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in the character of time. (shrink)

Michael Tye untangles the complex web of empirical and conceptual issues of the newly revived imagery debate in psychology between those that liken mental...

The Chomskian revolution in linguistics gave rise to a new orthodoxy about mind and language. Michael Devitt throws down a provocative challenge to that orthodoxy. What is linguistics about? What role should linguistic intuitions play in constructing grammars? What is innate about language? Is there a 'language faculty'? These questions are crucial to our developing understanding of ourselves; Michael Devitt offers refreshingly original answers. He argues that linguistics is about linguistic reality and is not part of psychology; that (...) linguistic rules are not represented in the mind; that speakers are largely ignorant of their language; that speakers' intuitions do not reflect information supplied by the language faculty and are not the main evidence for grammars; that the rules of 'Universal Grammar' are largely, if not entirely, innate structure rules of thought; indeed, that there is little or nothing to the language faculty. Devitt's controversial theses will prove highly stimulating to anyone working on language and the mind. (shrink)

Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Williams launches an all-out attack on what he calls "phenomenalism," the idea that our knowledge of the world rests on a perceptual or experiential foundation.

This 1996 book is the result of a uniquely productive union of philosophy, psychoanalysis and anthropology, and explores the complexity and importance of emotions. Michael Stocker places emotions at the very centre of human identity, life and value. He lays bare how our culture's idealisation of rationality pervades the philosophical tradition and leads those who wrestle with serious ethical and philosophical problems into distortion and misunderstanding. Professor Stocker shows how important are the social and emotional contexts of ethical dilemmas (...) and inner conflicts, and he challenges philosophical theories that try to overgeneralise and over-simplify by leaving out the particulars of each situation. In offering a realistic account of emotions and an in-depth analysis of how psychological factors affect judgments of all kind, this book will interest a broad range of readers across the disciplines of philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

Sceptical theists--e.g., William Alston and Michael Bergmann--have claimed that considerations concerning human cognitive limitations are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. We argue that, if the considerations deployed by sceptical theists are sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil, then those considerations are also sufficient to undermine inferences that play a crucial role in ordinary moral reasoning. If cogent, our argument suffices to discredit sceptical theist responses to evidential arguments from evil.

Theorizing in ecology and evolution often proceeds via the construction of multiple idealized models. To determine whether a theoretical result actually depends on core features of the models and is not an artifact of simplifying assumptions, theorists have developed the technique of robustness analysis, the examination of multiple models looking for common predictions. A striking example of robustness analysis in ecology is the discovery of the Volterra Principle, which describes the effect of general biocides in predator-prey systems. This paper details (...) the discovery of the Volterra Principle and the demonstration of its robustness. It considers the classical ecology literature on robustness and introduces two individual-based models of predation, which are used to further analyze the Volterra Principle. The paper also introduces a distinction between parameter robustness, structural robustness, and representational robustness, and demonstrates that the Volterra Principle exhibits all three kinds of robustness. *Received September 2006; revised May 2007. ‡Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Australasian Association of Philosophy, the London School of Economics, and the University of Bristol. The authors wish to thank those audiences as well as Patrick Forber, Ken Waters, Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Uri Wilensky, and Bill Wimsatt for many helpful comments. Special thanks to Giacomo Sillari for his assistance in translating Volterra's original paper and his insightful thoughts about Volterra's aims and methods. Some of the research in this paper was supported by NSF grant SES-0620887 to MW. †To contact the authors, please write to: Michael Weisberg, Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 433 Logan Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104; e-mail: [email protected]; Kenneth Reisman, Pluribo, Inc., 100 Park Avenue, Suite 1600, New York, NY 10017; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This new book by Michael Slote argues that Western philosophy on the whole has overemphasized rational control and autonomy at the expense of the important countervailing value and virtue of receptivity. Recently the ideas of caring and empathy have received a great deal of philosophical and public attention, but both these notions rest on the deeper and broader value of receptivity, and in From Enlightenment to Receptivity, Slote seeks to show that we need to focus more on receptivity if (...) we are to attain a more balanced sense and understanding of what is important to us. -/- Beginning with a critique of Enlightenment thinking that calls into question its denial of any central role to considerations of emotion and empathy, he goes on to show how a greater emphasis on these factors and on the receptivity that underlies them can give us a more realistic, balanced, and sensitive understanding of our core ethical and epistemological values. This means rejecting post-modernism's blanket rejection of reason and of compelling real values and recognizing, rather, that receptivity should play a major role in how we lead our lives as individuals, in how we relate to nature, in how we acquire knowledge about the world, and in how we relate morally and politically with others. (shrink)

A paradigm-shifting work that revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science. Captivatingly written, interwoven with tantalizing illustrations and historical vignettes ranging from Newton's alchemy to quantum mechanics to the storm surge of Hurricane Sandy, Michael Strevens's wholly original investigation of science asks two fundamental questions: Why is science so powerful? And why did it take so long, two thousand years after the invention of philosophy and mathematics, for the human race to start using science to learn (...) the secrets of nature? The Knowledge Machine's radical answer is that science calls on its practitioners to do something irrational: by willfully ignoring religion, theoretical beauty, and, especially, philosophy-essentially stripping away all previous knowledge-scientists embrace an unnaturally narrow method of inquiry, channeling unprecedented energy into observation and experimentation. Like Yuval Harari's Sapiens or Thomas Kuhn's 1962 classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Knowledge Machine overturns much of what we thought we knew about the origins of the modern world. (shrink)

Michael Wedin argues against the prevailing notion that Aristotle's views on the nature of reality are fundamentally inconsistent. According to Wedin's new interpretation, the difference between the early theory of the Categories and the later theory of the Metaphysics reflects the fact that Aristotle is engaged in quite different projects in the two works--the earlier focusing on ontology, and the later on explanation.

Conditionals has at its center an extended essay on this problematic and much-debated subject in the philosophy of language and logic, which the widely respected Oxford philosopher Michael Woods had been preparing for publication at the time of his death in 1993. It appears here edited by his eminent colleague David Wiggins, and is accompanied by a commentary specially written by a leading expert on the topic, Dorothy Edgington. This masterly and original treatment of conditionals will demand the attention (...) of all philosophers working in this area. (shrink)

Inauguration speech at chair number 18 of the Brasilian Academy of Philosophy.

Is Leo Strauss truly an intellectual forebear of neoconservatism and a powerful force in shaping Bush administration foreign policy? _The Truth about Leo Strauss_ puts this question to rest, revealing for the first time how the popular media came to perpetuate an oversimplified view of a complex and wide-ranging philosopher. In doing so, it corrects our perception of Strauss, providing the best general introduction available to the political thought of this misunderstood figure. Catherine and Michael Zuckert—both former students of (...) Strauss—guide readers here to a nuanced understanding of how Strauss’s political thought fits into his broader philosophy. Challenging the ideas that Strauss was an inflexible conservative who followed in the footsteps of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt, the Zuckerts contend that Strauss’s signature idea was the need for a return to the ancients. Through their work, they conclude that Strauss was a sober defender of liberal democracy, aware of both its strengths and its weaknesses. Balanced and accessible, _The Truth about Leo Strauss_ is a must-read for anyone who wants to more fully comprehend this enigmatic philosopher and his much-disputed legacy. “_The Truth about Leo Strauss_ is the most balanced and insightful book yet written about Strauss’s thought, students, and political influence. It dispels myths promulgated by both friends and foes and persuasively traces the conflicting paths that American thinkers indebted to Strauss have taken.”—William Galston, Brookings Institution. (shrink)

Michael J. Almeida presents a bold new defence of the existence of God. He argues that entrenched principles in philosophical theology which have served as basic assumptions in apriori, atheological arguments are in fact philosophical dogmas. Almeida argues that not only are such principles false - they are necessarily false.

In this paper I argue that we need to analyze ‘religious violence’ in the ‘post-secular context’ in a twofold way: rather than simply viewing it in terms of mere irrationality, senselessness, atavism, or monstrosity – terms which, as we witness today on an immense scale, are strongly endorsed by the contemporary theater of cruelty committed in the name of religion – we also need to understand it in terms of an ‘originary supplement’ of ‘disengaged reason’. In order to confront its (...) specificity beyond traditional explanations of violence, I propose an integrated phenomenological account of religion that traces the phenomenality of religion in terms of a correlation between the originary givenness of transcendence and capable man’s creative capacities to respond to it. Following Ricœur, I discuss ‘religious violence’ in terms of a monopolizing appropriation of the originary source of givenness that conflates man’s freedom to poetically respond to the appeal of the foundational with the surreptitiously claimed sovereignty to make it happen in a practical transfiguration of the everyday. (shrink)

Ethics is a foundational competency in healthcare inherent in everyday nursing practice. Therefore, the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence is essential to ensure ethically high-quality and sustainable healthcare. The aim of this integrative literature review is to identify the factors contributing to the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence. The review has been registered in PROSPERO (CRD42023386947) and reported according to the PRISMA guideline. Focusing on qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence, a (...) literature search was undertaken in January 2023 in six scientific databases: CINAHL, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, PubMed Medline, Scopus and Web of Science. Empirical studies written in English without time limitation were eligible for inclusion. A total of 29 full texts were retrieved and included out of 5233 citations. Quality appraisal was employed using Joanna Briggs Institute checklists and the Mixed Method Appraisal Tool. Data were analysed using inductive content analysis. Research about the factors contributing to the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence is limited and mainly explored using descriptive research designs. The contributing factors were identified as comprising two main categories: (1) human factors, consisting of four categories: individual, social, managerial and professional factors, and ten sub-categories; and (2) structural factors, consisting of four categories: educational, environmental, organisational and societal factors, and eight sub-categories. This review provides knowledge about the factors contributing to the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence for the use of researchers, nurse educators, managers, organisations and policymakers. More research about the contributing factors is needed using complex intervention, implementation and multiple methods designs to ensure ethically sustainable healthcare. (shrink)

In Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics, Michael Temelini outlines an innovative new approach to understanding the political implications of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Most political philosophers who have approached Wittgenstein have done so through the idea of therapeutic skepticism, implying politics that privilege conservatism or non-interference. Temelini interprets Wittgenstein differently, emphasizing his view that we come to understand the meanings of words and actions through a dialogue of comparison with other cases. Examining the work of Charles Taylor, Quentin Skinner, and (...) James Tully, Temelini highlights the ways in which all three, despite their differences, share a common debt to that dialogical approach.A cogent explanation of how Wittgenstein’s epistemology and ontology can shed light on political issues and offer a solution to political challenges, Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics highlights the importance of Wittgensteinian thinking in contemporary political science, political theory, and political philosophy. (shrink)

Michael Tanner; IX*—Sentimentality, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 127–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.

Michael Jacovides provides an engaging account of how the scientific revolution influenced one of the foremost figures of early modern philosophy, John Locke. By placing Locke's thought in its scientific, religious, and anti-scholastic contexts, Jacovides explains not only what Locke believes but also why he believes it.

This paper provides a phenomenological exploration of the phenomenon of collective violence, specifically by following the leading clue of war from Plato to the “new wars” of late globalization. It first focuses on the genealogy of the legitimization of collective violence in terms of “counter-violence” and then demonstrates how it is mediated by constructions of “the other” in terms of “violence incarnate.” Finally, it proposes to explore such constructions—including the “barbarian” in Greek antiquity, “the cannibal” in the context of Colonialism, (...) or the contemporary cipher of religious irrationality—as mirror effects of one’s own disavowed forms of violence. (shrink)

[Michael Tye] Externalism about thought contents has received enormous attention in the philosophical literature over the past fifteen years or so, and it is now the established view. There has been very little discussion, however, of whether memory contents are themselves susceptible to an externalist treatment. In this paper, I argue that anyone who is sympathetic to Twin Earth thought experiments for externalism with respect to certain thoughts should endorse externalism with respect to certain memories. /// [Jane Heal] Tye (...) claims that an externalist should say that memory content invoking natural kind concepts floats free of the setting where the memory is laid down and is at later times determined by the context in which the memory is revived. His argument assumes the existence of 'slow switching' of the meaning of natural kind terms when a person is transported from Earth to Twin Earth. But proper understanding of natural kind terms suggests that slow switching is likely never to be completed. Hence the situation of a person unknowingly transported to Twin Earth is not that his memories switch content but rather that he gets two natural kinds confused. (shrink)

In Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, Michael Zuckert proposes a new view of the political philosophy that lay behind the founding of the United States.

The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religions is a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the academic study of religions. Written by leading experts in the field, the volume offers an interdisciplinary survey of religious studies. Presented in seven parts, the Handbook examines conceptual issues of religion, theoretical approaches, modes, environments, topics, and an overview of the history of the discipline. Each chapter references at least two different religions, often providing fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues.

This article deals with Moritz Schlick's critical realism and its sources that dominated his philosophy until about 1925. It is shown that his celebrated analysis of Einstein's relativity theory is the result of an earlier philosophical discussion about space perception and its role for the theory of space. In particular, Schlick's "method of coincidences" did not owe anything to "entirely new principles" based on the work of Einstein, Poincaré or Hilbert, as claimed by Michael Friedman, but was already in (...) place before these principles were developed. The first part of the article is devoted to Alois Riehl's critical realism—a neo-Kantian variant which rejects the dominant interpretation of the thing-in-itself as a mere limiting concept and takes empirical theories of space perception into consideration. The second part deals with the central role of "Psychological Parallelism" for Riehl and its integration with Kant's epistemology. In the third part it is shown that Schlick's theory of knowledge is based on Riehl's intricate reworking of Kantian epistemology, physiological psychology, theory of sense perception and philosophy of mathematics. The conclusion stresses the position of the unity of consciousness in Riehl's philosophy which Schlick admittedly cannot cope with. (shrink)

Michael Bonnett; Authenticity and Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 12, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 51–61, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-97.

Michael Strawser provides a new reading of Spinoza as a philosopher of love for whom the ethically qualified conception of noble love is central. Strawser situates Spinoza’s philosophy of love within the Jewish and Cartesian traditions and shows how this active conception of love can conquer hatred and bring people together.

Neuropsychiatrist Michael T. H. Wong argues that the notions of soul, mind, brain, self and consciousness are no longer adequate on their own to explain humanity. He formulates a “third discourse” that brings philosophy neuroscience theology and psychiatry together as an innovative multilayered narrative for the person in the twenty-first century.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Leo Strauss and his alleged political influence regarding the Iraq War have in recent years been the subject of significant media attention, including stories in the _Wall Street Journal _and _New York Times._ _Time_ magazine even called him “one of the most influential men in American politics.” With _The Truth about Leo Strauss_, Michael and Catherine Zuckert challenged the many claims and speculations about this notoriously complex thinker. Now, with _Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy_, they turn (...) their attention to a searching and more comprehensive interpretation of Strauss’s thought as a whole, using the many manifestations of the “problem of political philosophy” as their touchstone. For Strauss, political philosophy presented a “problem” to which there have been a variety of solutions proposed over the course of Western history. Strauss’s work, they show, revolved around recovering—and restoring—political philosophy to its original Socratic form. Since positivism and historicism represented two intellectual currents that undermined the possibility of a Socratic political philosophy, the first part of the book is devoted to Strauss’s critique of these two positions. Then, the authors explore Strauss’s interpretation of the history of philosophy and both ancient and modern canonical political philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. Strauss’s often-unconventional readings of these philosophers, they argue, pointed to solutions to the problem of political philosophy. Finally, the authors examine Strauss’s thought in the context of the twentieth century, when his chief interlocutors were Schmitt, Husserl, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. The most penetrating and capacious treatment of the political philosophy of this complex and often misunderstood thinker, from his early years to his last works, _Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy_ reveals Strauss’s writings as an attempt to show that the distinctive characteristics of ancient and modern thought derive from different modes of solving the problem of political philosophy and reveal why he considered the ancient solution both philosophically and politically superior. (shrink)

Michael Tanner; IX*—Sentimentality, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 127–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.

Michael Walzer; Education, Democratic Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 29, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 181–189, http.

What is it about knowledge that makes us value it more highly than mere true belief? This question lies at the heart of epistemology and has challenged philosophers ever since it was first posed by Plato. Michael Welbourne's examination of the historical and contemporary answers to this question provides both an excellent introduction to the development of epistemology but also a new theory of the nature of knowledge. The early chapters introduce the main themes and questions that have provided (...) the context for modern discussions. The Platonic beginnings, Cartesian individualism and the tripartite analyses of knowledge are examined in turn. In the second half of this book, the focus shifts from conceptual analysis to an examination of the social practices surrounding knowledge, placing special emphasis on the notion of testimony. The author argues originally and persuasively that our idea of knowledge has its roots in communicative practices and that thinking about how testimony works as a source of beliefs actually gives us a handle on the very idea of knowledge itself. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in epistemology, the philosophy of language, or the intersection between the two areas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ghazali and Demonstrative Science MICHAEL E. MARMURA I MEDIEVALISLA_MICtheologians subjected Aristotle's theory of the essential efficient cause to severe criticism and rejected it. This criticism and rejection finds its most forceful expression in the writings of Ghazali (al-Ghaz~li) (d. 1111).1 In his Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), he argues on logical and empirical grounds that the alleged necessary connection between what is habitually regarded as the (...) natural efficient cause and its effect cannot be proven. He does not, however, take an agnostic stand on this question but proceeds to affirm two points: (1) that there is no causal agency in natural things; (2) that all natural events are the direct creation of God. Ghazali, moreover, does not confine such divine action to the realm of the inanimate and the irrational, in his al-Iqtis.~d fi-l-Ftiqad (The Golden Mean of Belief), he affirms the doctrine that the individual human act, like any other occurrence in the world, is also the direct creation of God. Causal efficacy resides in God alone. But the divine act, for Ghazali, is not an essential act. It does not proceed as the necessary consequence of divine essence. It is the arbitrary decree of the divine will, an attribute coeternal, but not identical with divine essence. Ghazali thus denies essential action altogether. In all this, he gives expression to the occasionalism of the Islamic school of dogmatic theology (kal~m) to which he belonged, the Ashcarite school. Ghazali had also a keen interest in logic. He wrote logical treatises for his fellow theologians, encouraging them to master this art as a tool to rebutt their doctrinal opponents. The~ treatises, in the main, sum up and explain the logic used by the Islamic philosophers--a logic that reflects the Stoic and Aristotelian traditions. Ghazali recognizes formal logic to be philosophically neutral, and hence in no way conflicting with his theology." He does not confine himself to formal logic in these expositions, however, but discusses Aristotelian demonstration. And it is in his statements on demonstration that we seem to be confronted with paradox. Demonstrative science, as understood by the Islamic philosophers, rests on the theory of essential causes and functions in terms of it. Indeed, in his reply to Ghazali's rejection of essential efficient causes in nature, Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (d. 1198) argues Texts frequently referred to in the notes will be abbreviated as follows: Demonstration: Ibn Sin~, Al-Shifa~; Logic V.; Demonstration, ed. A. E. Affifi,revised by I. Madkur (Cairo, 1956). Iqti~dd: A1-Ghaz~li, Al-Iqtisad Fi-l-ICtiqad(Cairo: no date). Metaphysics: Ibn Sin~, A1-Shif~: al-Ilah~yat (Metaphysics), ed. C. C. Anawati, S. Dunya, and S. Zayd, revised by I. Madkur (2 vols.; Cairo, 1960). MI: AI-Ghaz~lI,MiCyaral-CIlm,ed. S. Dunya (Cairo, 1961). TF: A1-Ghaz~ll, Tahafut al-Falasifa, ed. M. Bouyges (Beirut, 1927). TT: Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Tahafut al-Tahafut, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut, 1930). 2 TF., pp. 15-17. [1831 184 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that such a rejection would render demonstrative science impossible. We would have no true knowledge; at best, only opinion. 3For this staunch defender of Aristotle, the theory of natural efficient causality constitutes a necessary condition for demonstrative science. Yet Ghazali in his writings does not deny the claim that demonstration gives us certain knowledge about the natural order. On the contrary, he seems to be affirming this in both his Tahdfutand the logical treatise he appended to this work, Mi~jdral-CIlm(The Standardfor Knowledge).If Ghazali does in fact uphold this claim for demonstration, then he must either deny that the theory of essential efficient causality is a necessary condition for demonstrative science, or fall into contradiction. At first glance, Ghazali's position in the Micy~r,where he gives his most comprehensive treatment of demonstration, is highly ambiguous and suggests contradiction. He seems for the most part to be reproducing the essentials of the Aristotelian demonstrative theory. Although in one section he reaffirms his rejection of necessary causal connection in nature, he nonetheless continues to use such terms as "cause," "effect," "necessity" and "certainty" in what appear to be... (shrink)

Michael Clark; II*—The Meritorious and the Mandatory, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 23–34, https://doi.org/10.

This article describes China’s century-long concern with the professional ethics of engineers, especially a succession of codes of engineering ethics going back at least to 1933. This description is the result both of our own archival research and of “philosophical history”, the application of concepts from the philosophy of professions to the facts historians (or we) have discovered. Engineers, historians, social scientists, and philosophers of technology, as well as students of professional ethics, should find this description interesting. It certainly provides (...) a reason to wonder whether those who write about codes of professional ethics as if they were an Anglo-American export unlikely to put down roots elsewhere might have overlooked many early codes outside English-speaking countries. While code writers in China plainly learned from Western codes, the Chinese codes were not mere copies of their Western counterparts. Indeed, the Chinese codes sometimes differed inventively from Western codes in form (for example, being wholly positive) or content (for example, protecting local culture). (shrink)

This article describes China’s century-long concern with the professional ethics of engineers, especially a succession of codes of engineering ethics going back at least to 1933. This description is the result both of our own archival research and of “philosophical history”, the application of concepts from the philosophy of professions to the facts historians have discovered. Engineers, historians, social scientists, and philosophers of technology, as well as students of professional ethics, should find this description interesting. It certainly provides a reason (...) to wonder whether those who write about codes of professional ethics as if they were an Anglo-American export unlikely to put down roots elsewhere might have overlooked many early codes outside English-speaking countries. While code writers in China plainly learned from Western codes, the Chinese codes were not mere copies of their Western counterparts. Indeed, the Chinese codes sometimes differed inventively from Western codes in form or content. (shrink)

Michael Bacon gives a critical presentation of Rorty's writings on pragmatism and political theory, comparing and contrasting him with pragmatists such as Hilary Putnam and Susan Haack and liberals such as John Rawls and Brian Barry. The result is an imaginative presentation of one of contemporary philosophy's most innovative and important thinkers.

Michael Pakaluk presents the first systematic study in English of Books VIII and IX of Aristotle's masterpiece of moral philosophy, the Nicomachean Ethics; these books comprise one of the most famous of all discussions of friendship. Pakaluk accompanies his fresh and accurate translation with a philosophical commentary which unfolds lucidly the various arguments in the text, assuming no knowledge of Greek on the part of the reader.

This is a book about why Jean-Jacques Rousseau can be seen as one of the first theorists of the concept of civil society and a key source of the idea of a federal system.

Michael Jackson ’s _Lifeworlds_ is a masterful collection of essays, the culmination of a career aimed at understanding the relationship between anthropology and philosophy. Seeking the truths that are found in the interstices between examiner and examined, world and word, and body and mind, and taking inspiration from James, Dewey, Arendt, Husserl, Sartre, Camus, and, especially, Merleau-Ponty, Jackson creates in these chapters a distinctive anthropological pursuit of existential inquiry. More important, he buttresses this philosophical approach with committed empirical research. (...) Traveling from the Kuranko in Sierra Leone to the Maori in New Zealand to the Warlpiri in Australia, Jackson argues that anthropological subjects continually negotiate—imaginatively, practically, and politically—their relations with the forces surrounding them and the resources they find in themselves or in solidarity with significant others. At the same time that they mirror facets of the larger world, they also help shape it. Stitching the themes, peoples, and locales of these essays into a sustained argument for a philosophical anthropology that focuses on the places between, Jackson offers a pragmatic understanding of how people act to make their lives more viable, to grasp the elusive, to counteract external powers, and to turn abstract possibilities into embodied truths. (shrink)

Abstract: Michael Tooley’s Comments on James Sterba’s Book, Is a Good God Logically Possible? -/- My comments on Jim Sterba’s book, Is a Good God Logically Possible?, were divided into the following sections. In the first section, I listed some of the attractive features of Sterba’s discussion. These included, first of all, his use of the ideas of “morally constrained freedom” and “constrained intervention by God” to show the moral evils in our world cannot be justified by an appeal (...) to the idea of free will. Then secondly, there is his response to the claim that if God intervened to prevent horrendous evils, one would have a world without regularities. Thirdly, there are his responses to certain important religiously based attempts to answer arguments from evil, namely, those that appeal to either Christian or Jewish views that we have wronged God, and stand in need of redemption, along with his discussion, and criticism of, certain specific, central Christian doctrines. Fourthly, there are his criticisms, first, of the four solutions that Michael Murray offers for the problem posed by the suffering of non-human animals, and then, secondly, of Trent Dougherty’s use of “a version of John Hick’s theodicy of soul-making in an attempt to provide a God-justifying account of animal suffering” (Dougherty, The Problem of Animal Pain: A Theodicy For All Creatures Great And Small, 2014). -/- I then went on to offer critical comments on various aspects of Sterba’s discussion, where I discussed: (1) his negative view of the relevance of probabilistic epistemology to the problem of evil; (2) his failure, in attempting to rule out logical connections between goods and evil, to consider evils that are not moral evils, such as Peter van Inwagen’s claim that “Being massively irregular is a defect in a world, a defect at least as great as the defect of containing patterns of suffering mentally equivalent to those found in the actual world”; (3) his failure, in discussing Michael Bergmann’s skeptical theism, to point out the central weakness in the principles that Bergmann advances, namely, that they entail not only moral skepticism, but inductive skepticism as well; (4) his treatment of natural evils, where he mistakenly claims that, in contrast to the case of horrendous moral evils, all of which God could prevent, God could not eliminate all horrendous natural evils, and where he says noting about either the horrendous evils due to bacteria and viruses or those due to natural disasters, all of which could be prevented by an omnipotent and omniscient deity without our ever being aware that this was happening. -/- Finally, I concluded by raising the question of what the strongest way is of formulating a logical incompatibility argument from evil, and I argued that it should take the form of the argument I set out in The Problem of Evil (2019) so that first, it should be based on natural evils rather than on moral evils; secondly, that it should focus on the case of suffering endured by sentient non-persons; and thirdly, that a crucial part must be an argument restricting the logical connections between goods and evils, an argument based on the proposition that the only goods and evils that can exist involve properties of, and relations between, conscious beings. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper we respond to criticisms by Michael Bergmann and Michael Rea in their “In Defense of Sceptical Theism : A Reply to Almeida and Oppy,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83.