In recent years the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein have received much attention from philosophers in general and especially from philosophers interested in religion; and there is no doubt that Wittgenstein's legacy of thought is both highly suggestive and highly problematical. It seems likely, however, that the vogue which Wittgenstein now enjoys owes not a little to his peculiar place in the development of modern philosophy and, in particular, of that empiricist tradition in philosophy which stems from what has been called (...) the revolution in philosophy in the early decades of the present century. (shrink)

In his book on Karl Barth Professor T. F. Torrance spoke at one point of ‘the great watershed of modern theology’. ‘There are,’ he wrote, 1 ‘two basic issues here. On the one hand, it is the very substance of the Christian faith that is at stake, and on the other hand, it is the fundamental nature of scientific method, in its critical and methodological renunciation of prior understanding, that is at stake. This is the great watershed of modern theology: (...) either we take the one way or the other – there is no third alter native… one must go either in the direction taken by Barth or in the direction taken by Bultmann.’. (shrink)

It is a curious fact that the much maligned ontological argument to prove the existence of God has in recent times enjoyed a revival of interest to which even Karl Barth, the arch-enemy of natural theology has contributed; but since the revival of interest has appared in a wide diversity of intellectual contexts, both philosophical and theological, the revival is itself almost as problematic as the argument itself.

Contributed articles on Buddhist doctrines and philosophy; festschrift in honor of Narayan Hemandas Samtani, Buddhist scholar.

In his article ‘Professor Bartley's Theory of Rationality and Religious Belief’ Mr W. D. Hudson has brought considerable clarification to the rather confused situation occasioned by Professor W. W. Bartley's book The Retreat to Commitment and its subsequent discussion; but the process can, I think, be carried still further.

The period between 1945 and 1952 marked the development of Professor Ryle's conception of the principles of inference as performance rules. This development has paralleled that of his now well-known distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that. Indeed, the former is a corollary to the latter. Beginning with the inaugural address to the Aristotelian Society in 1945 and reaching full fruition in The Concept of Mind in 1949, it finds its most detailed and illuminating expression in “‘If’, ‘So’, and ‘Because’,” which appeared (...) in 1950. The present essay will attempt to explore this conception of rules in some detail, in the hope of clarifying the nature of Professor Ryle's views on classical logic and on certain problems within the philosophy of logic. Professor Ryle belongs, if his views may be so labeled, to the school of informal language analysts. On the other hand, we incline more toward formalism. We tend to agree with those philosophers who consider certain schemata indispensable tools for the solution of philosophical problems. Logic and the philosophy of logic are, as everyone knows, the areas in which the formalists’ technique originated. In these areas it is accepted by virtually everybody. The only recent exception is a group of English writers, many of whom take their inspiration from Ryle. One may hope, then, that the present criticism of Ryle's view from the other standpoint will throw some light on both positions. What follows falls naturally into two parts. The first deals mainly with Ryle's objections to current logical theory, the second with his own philosophy of logic. (shrink)

Do people morally deserve what they earn in the market? More specifically, can people legitimately claim to deserve what they earn in the market in a way that counts against redistributing those earnings? As most liberal political philosophers do, I argue that the answer is no. Unlike many of these philosophers, however, I do not focus on whether or not people can be deserving. Instead, I focus on the relationship between social institutions and moral desert, and advance two claims. First, (...) in the market, desert claims are undermined by the very nature of the market even if people can be deserving in general. Second, part of the intuition that motivates accounts of moral desert may be explained instead with reference to a principle of fairness that demands the fulfillment of people's legitimate expectations as to what they will receive, and this principle places much weaker restrictions on redistributive policies than do claims of moral desert. (shrink)

Dewey's 1896 paper, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," was acclaimed 50 years later as the most important paper published in The Psychological Review in its first half-century of history. Today, Dewey's paper appears to be headed toward oblivion. Considering it worthy of resurrection, we use it as a starting point for tracing out the gradual evolution of Dewey and Bentley's formulation of their transactional viewpoint to its culmination in their book, Knowing and the Known. An exposition of the transactional (...) paradigm is developed via competing, contemporary self-actional and interactional theoretical systems. Then, the space-time postulates of self-actional, interactional, and transactional approaches are spelled out as they enter into philosophical, biological and psychological inquiry. Among prevailing theories, most of which fall into the self-actional/interactional categories, Kantor's interbehavioral viewpoint stands apart from the rest. And while it shares a certain similarity with the transactional approach, the historical record should document it as an independent and parallel development, dating back to Kantor's first publications almost seven decades ago. Furthermore, Kantor's system goes far beyond Dewey and Bentley's "unfractured observation," by providing highly refined analytic procedures in his theoretical constructs. (shrink)

This paper examines the US Atomic Energy Commission's radioisotope distribution program, established in 1946, which employed the uranium piles built for the wartime bomb project to produce specific radioisotopes for use in scientific investigation and medical therapy. As soon as the program was announced, requests from researchers began pouring into the Commission's office. During the first year of the program alone over 1000 radioisotope shipments were sent out. The numerous requests that came from scientists outside the United States, however, sparked (...) a political debate about whether the Commission should or even could export radioisotopes. This controversy manifested the tension between the aims of the Marshall Plan and growing US national security concerns after World War II. Proponents of international circulation of radioisotopes emphasized the political and scientific value of collaborating with European scientists, especially biomedical researchers. In the end, radioisotopes were shipped from the Commission's Oak Ridge facility to many laboratories in England and continental Europe, where they were used in biochemical research on animals, plants, and microbes. However, the issue of radioisotope export continued to draw political fire in the United States, even after the establishment of national atomic energy facilities elsewhere. (shrink)

Objectives To investigate risk perception relating to living kidney donation, to compare the risk donors would accept with current practice and identify influential factors. Design An observational study consisting of questionnaires completed by previous living donors and the general public. Participants selected the risk they would accept from a list of options, in various scenarios. Risk communication was investigated by randomly dividing the sample and presenting risk differently. Setting Primary care (two centres) and secondary care (one centre), London. Participants 175 (...) questionnaires were sent to patients who had previously undergone living-donor nephrectomy and to members of the public consulting a general practitioner. The living-donor sample comprised 77 consecutive donors at Guy's Hospital from May 2003 to January 2005. The general-public sample was recruited from two London healthcare centres. Of the eventual 151 participants, 61 were living donors and 90 were from the general public. Main outcome measure The amount of risk a participant would accept to donate a kidney. Results 74% of participants were willing to accept a risk of death higher than 1/3000. The most commonly accepted risk was 1/2 (29%). Those presented with a ‘chance of survival’ accepted higher risks than those presented with a ‘risk of death’ (p<0.01). Greater risks were accepted when the recipient was closely related and, for some, when the recipient's prognosis was worse. No difference was observed between the living-donor and general-public groups. Conclusions Kidney donors will accept a higher risk of death than is currently quoted, especially if risks are presented in terms of chance of survival. (shrink)

By ‘the logic of religious language’ I understand both a problem: What is the correct account of the logic of religious language? and a theme, a recurrent theme in the modern philosophical discussion of religion, which raises a related but distinguishable question: Is the approach to religion of linguistic analysis an adequate approach? Can we do justice to the logic of religious language by attending to the recognition and analysis of different linguistic forms?