Peter Vickers examines 'inconsistent theories' in the history of science--theories which, though contradictory, are held to be extremely useful. He argues that these 'theories' are actually significantly different entities, and warns that the traditional goal of philosophy to make substantial, general claims about how science works is misguided.

As a survey of many technical results in probability theory and probability logic, this monograph by two widely respected scholars offers a valuable compendium of the principal aspects of the formal study of probability. Hugues Leblanc and Peter Roeper explore probability functions appropriate for propositional, quantificational, intuitionistic, and infinitary logic and investigate the connections among probability functions, semantics, and logical consequence. They offer a systematic justification of constraints for various types of probability functions, in particular, an exhaustive account of (...) probability functions adequate for first-order quantificational logic. The relationship between absolute and relative probability functions is fully explored and the book offers a complete account of the representation of relative functions by absolute ones. The volume is designed to review familiar results, to place these results within a broad context, and to extend the discussions in new and interesting ways. Authoritative, articulate, and accessible, it will interest mathematicians and philosophers at both professional and post-graduate levels. (shrink)

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, developed a (...) philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)

This paper argues that early modern experimental philosophy emerged as the dominant member of a pair of methods in natural philosophy, the speculative versus the experimental, and that this pairing derives from an overarching distinction between speculative and operative philosophy that can be ultimately traced back to Aristotle. The paper examines the traditional classification of natural philosophy as a speculative discipline from the Stagirite to the seventeenth century; medieval and early modern attempts to articulate a scientia experimentalis; and the tensions (...) in the classification of natural magic and mechanics that led to the introduction of an operative part of natural philosophy in the writings of Francis Bacon and John Johnston. The paper concludes with a summary of the salient discontinuities between the experimental/speculative distinction of the mid-seventeenth century and its predecessors and a statement of the developments that led to the ascendance of experimental philosophy from the 1660s. (shrink)

This book presents the first integrated treatment of the philosophy of Robert Boyle, one of the leading English natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution.

Peter Szondi´s pathbreaking work is a succinct and elegant argument for distinguishing between a philosophy of the tragic and the poetics of tragedy espoused by Aristotle. The first of the book´s two parts consists of a series of commentaries on philosophical and aesthetic texts from twelve thinkers and poets between 1795 and 1915: Schelling, Hölderlin, Hegel, Solger, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Vischer, Kierkegaard, Hebbel, Nietzsche, Simmel, and Scheler. The various definitions of tragedy are read not so much in terms of their (...) specific philosophies, but rather in the way their views assist in analyzing tragedies with an aim to establish a general concept of the tragic. The second part presents exemplary analyses of eight tragedies: Sophocles’Oedipus Rex, Calderon´s Life Is a Dream, Shakespeare´s Othello, Gryphius´ Leo Armenius, Racine´s Phaedra, Schiller´s Demetrius, Kleist’s The Schroffenstein Family and Büchner’s Danton's Death. The readings neither presuppose a concept of the tragic determined by context (as in Hegel's idea of the conflict between two orders of right), nor do they focus exclusively on the texts´ explicit contents. Instead, they elaborate the dialectical or aporetic structures at the heart of the tragic. The works analyzed represent the four great epochs of tragic poetry: the age of Greek tragedy; the Baroque era in Spain, England, and Germany; French Classicism; and the age of Goethe. (shrink)

The emergence of experimental philosophy was one of the most significant developments in the early modern period. However, it is often overlooked in modern scholarship, despite being associated with leading figures such as Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, David Hume and Christian Wolff. Ranging from the early Royal Society of London in the seventeenth century to the uptake of experimental philosophy in Paris and Berlin in the eighteenth, this book provides new terms of reference for (...) understanding early modern philosophy and science, and its eventual eclipse in the shadow of post-Kantian notions of empiricism and rationalism. Experimental Philosophy and the Origins of Empiricism is an integrated history of early modern experimental philosophy which challenges the rationalism and empiricism historiography that has dominated Anglophone history of philosophy for more than a century. (shrink)

This paper analyses the place of natural history within Bacon's divisions of the sciences in The Advancement of Learning and the later De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum. It is shown that at various points in Bacon's divisions, natural history converges or overlaps with natural philosophy, and that, for Bacon, natural history and natural philosophy are not discrete disciplines. Furthermore, it is argued that Bacon's distinction between operative and speculative natural philosophy and the place of natural history within this distinction, are (...) discontinuous with the later distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy that emerged in the methodology of the Fellows of the early Royal Society. (shrink)

In this important new book in the IPPP series, a group of leading thinkers in psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy offer alternative perspectives that address both the scientific and clinical aspects of psychiatric validation, emphasizing throughout their philosophical and historical considerations.

Peter Anstey rejects the widespread view that all knowledge for Locke is propositional. He argues, instead, that Locke accepts a form of non-propositional knowledge. The perception of the agreement and disagreement of ideas, according to Anstey's interpretation, is akin to what Bertrand Russell called “knowledge by acquaintance.” He presents a careful, four-step analysis of Locke’s view of the acquisition of knowledge, which is designed to show how the mind proceeds from perceiving to affirming, then to assenting, and finally to (...) verbalizing propositions. This comprehensive account takes into account a variety of remarks Locke makes about perception, knowledge and true or false propositions, and Anstey claims that overall this interpretation is a better fit than the orthodox view that Locke held all knowledge to be propositional. (shrink)

Guy Rohrbaugh (2003) and Allan Hazlett (2012) have argued against the identification of musical works with sound-pattern types by arguing that musical works are.

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed: from the third century BC to the sixth century AD. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of Christian and Jewish philosophy and of ancient science. Chapters are devoted to such major figures as Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, and Augustine. But in (...) keeping with the motto of the series, the story is told 'without any gaps, ' providing an in-depth look at less familiar topics that remains suitable for the general reader. For instance, there are chapters on the fascinating but relatively obscure Cyrenaic philosophical school, on pagan philosophical figures like Porphyry and Iamblichus, and extensive coverage of the Greek and Latin Christian Fathers who are at best peripheral in most surveys of ancient philosophy. A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition also appears in the shape of Philo of Alexandria. Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy. Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe ability to regulate emotions is essential for psychological well-being. Therefore, it is particularly important to investigate the specific dynamics of emotion regulation. In a new appr...

Two medical essays in the hand of John Locke survive amongst the Shaftesbury Papers in the National Archives (National Archives PRO 30/24/47/2, ff. 31r–38v and ff. 49r–56r). Since the 1960s their authorship has been disputed. Some scholars have attributed them to the London physician Thomas Sydenham, others have attributed them to Locke. Detailed analyses of their contents and the context of their composition provide very strong evidence for Lockean authorship. This is reinforced by the application of the most recent techniques (...) of computational stylistics. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉLes œuvres musicales sont à la fois multiples et audibles. Dans le domaine de l'ontologie musicale, deux des principaux modèles conçus pour expliquer ces caractéristiques des œuvres musicales sont le modèle type/instanciation et le modèle étape/continuité. Julian Dodd a soutenu que le modèle type/instanciation a un avantage sur le modèle étape/continuité, car il peut offrir une explication directe de l'audibilité des œuvres musicales en termes de catégorie ontologique. Je défends le modèle étape/continuité contre l'argument de Dodd en invoquant une relation (...) de continuité qui unifie l’œuvre. (shrink)

According to certain models of the musical work-performance relationship, musical works persist through time. Dodd and Thomasson argue that perdurantist accounts of musical persistence—according to which musical works persist by having temporal parts at every time they exist—are untenable, and Tillman argues that musical endurantism—according to which persisting works are wholly present at each time they exist—avoids Dodd’s worries. In this paper, I argue that both Dodd’s and Thomasson’s arguments—and Tillman’s response—rely on assumptions linking theories of persistence to common-sense views (...) about musical works and, moreover, that these assumptions are unwarranted. As a result, only an attitude of neutrality towards questions about the nature of musical persistence is warranted. (shrink)

This paper argues that the construction of natural histories, as advocated by Francis Bacon, played a central role in John Locke's conception of method in natural philosophy. It presents new evidence in support of John Yolton's claim that "the emphasis upon compiling natural histories of bodies ... was the chief aspect of the Royal Society's programme that attracted Locke, and from which we need to understand his science of nature". Locke's exposure to the natural philosophy of Robert Boyle, the medical (...) philosophy of Thomas Sydenham, his interest in travel literature and his conception of the division of the sciences are examined. From this survey, a cumulative case is presented which establishes, independently of an in-depth exegesis of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the central role for Locke of the construction of natural histories in natural philosophy. (shrink)

This book draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to develop new and promising solutions to contemporary debates about perception. In providing an extension and defense of Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual content and of the relation between perception and the world, it demonstrates the enduring value of Merleau-Ponty’s insights for philosophy of perception today. -/- The author focuses on two main topics: the contents and the nature of perception. In the first half of this book, the author tackles debates about the content of (...) perception, namely, what sorts of properties or features of the world reveal themselves to us in perception and in what modes. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s description of perceptual “sense,” the author argues that perception has a unique kind of content, which cannot be adequately described in terms of sensations or concepts. He then shows how this account of perceptual sense can clarify debates about the richness of perceptual content, including whether we can perceive moral properties. In the second half, he turns to the nature of perception. Here he argues that Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual intentionality makes available a powerful combination of the core insights of two main contemporary approaches to this question: realism and intentionalism. The author shows how this combination can be developed, defends it from objections, and explains how it is equipped to deal with problems posed by the existence of illusions and hallucinations. -/- Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on phenomenology and the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

In this book, Peter Ahrensdorf explores an overlooked but crucial role that Homer played in the thought of Plato, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche concerning, notably, the relationship between politics, religion, and philosophy; and in their debates about human nature, morality, the proper education for human excellence, and the best way of life. By studying Homer in conjunction with these three political philosophers, Ahrensdorf demonstrates that Homer was himself a philosophical thinker and educator. He presents the full force of Plato's critique (...) of Homer and the paramount significance of Plato's achievement in winning honor for philosophy. Ahrensdorf also makes possible an appreciation of the powerful concerns expressed by Machiavelli and Nietzsche regarding that achievement. By uncovering and bringing to life the rich philosophic conversation among these four foundational thinkers, Ahrensdorf shows that there are many ways of living a philosophic life. His book broadens and deepens our understanding of what a philosopher is. (shrink)

Nathan Salmon has defended what might be called “weak modal anti-realism”—the view that possible-object names can refer to possible objects that neither exist nor are otherwise real. But rather than adopting a similar view in the fictional case, he instead defends fictional creationism—the view that fictional characters are existent but abstract entities created by authors of fiction. In this paper, I first argue that if weak modal antirealism is defensible then weak fictional antirealism is defensible as well. Second, I argue (...) that there is no reason to prefer fictional creationism over weak fictional antirealism but there is very good reason to prefer the latter over the former. And third, I defend weak fictional antirealism against the charge that it cannot provide a satisfactory account of statements that prima facie involve reference to or quantification over fictional characters. (shrink)

Commentary on four articles in a special issue on “theories of emotion,” comparing the theories with respect to five conceptual contrasts. The first four contrasts are essentialism versus nonessentialism, discriminative versus integrative theories, individual versus social focus, and instrumentalism versus scientific realism. Although scientific psychologists appear to have reached consensus in favor of nonessentialism and they freely use both realist and instrumentalist interpretations, there is no consensus on the other two contrasts. The final contrast explored addresses attitudes toward the use (...) of philosophy in scientific theorizing, and whether philosophy is best kept in the background or brought into the foreground. (shrink)

Cramer et al.'s critique of latent variables implicitly advocates a type of scientific anti-realism which can be extended to many dispositional constructs in scientific psychology. However, generalizing Cramer et al.'s network model in this way raises concerns about its applicability to psychopathology. The model could be improved by articulating why a given cluster of symptoms should be considered disordered.

To be beneficent, that is, to promote according to one's means the happiness of others in need, without hoping for something in return, is every man's duty. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals Almost everyone agrees that we have a moral duty to pull out a drowning child from a shallow pond even if this means getting our clothes muddy. But what are the limits of the duty of beneficence? In “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, which first appeared in 1972, (...) class='Hi'>Peter Singer attempted to specify those limits in terms of the following principle: “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” Singer went on to use this principle to argue that we ought to be doing all we can to prevent Third World hunger. At the same time, he challenged the well-established Western moral viewpoint that makes it an act of charity rather than a duty for a relatively affluent individual to give money to help feed the world's poor. Singer left open the question of whether the traditional distinction between duty and charity should be redrawn or abolished altogether, although he insisted that giving to others who are starving, even at the cost of giving up luxuries such as new clothes or a new car, is not an act of charity, but a duty. (shrink)

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of early Christian philosophy and of ancient science. A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition appears in the shape of (...) Philo of Alexandria. Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy. Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way. (shrink)

This paper presents a comprehensive study of Robert Boyle’s writings on seminal principles or seeds. It examines the role of seeds in Boyle’s account of creation, the generation of plants and animals, spontaneous generation, the generation of minerals and disease. By an examination of all of Boyle’s major extant discussions of seeds it is argued that there were discernible changes in Boyle’s views over time. As the years progressed Boyle became more sceptical about the role of seminal principles in the (...) generation of minerals and he came to reject the spontaneous generation of insects and animals from putrefying matter. It is also argued that Boyle’s notion of a generative or ‘plastick’ principle creates a tension within his mechanical philosophy. He appeals to a plastick power in order to explain those phenomena of generation that are beyond the explanatory resources of the corpuscular hypothesis. However, when pressed to explain the nature of this power he either hints, somewhat paradoxically, that it too can be explained mechanically or admits his nescience. (shrink)

This book examines what makes someone an evil person and how evil people are different from merely bad people. Rather than focusing on the "problem of evil" that occupies philosophers of religion, Barry looks instead to moral psychology—the intersection of ethics and psychology. He provides both a philosophical account of what evil people are like and considers the implications of that account for social, legal, and criminal institutions. He also engages in traditional philosophical reasoning strongly informed by psychological research, especially (...) abnormal and social psychology. In response to the popularity of phrases like "the axis of evil" and the ease with which politicians and others describe their opponents as "evil," Barry sets out to make clear just what it is to be an evil person. (shrink)

Peter Alward’s rigorous introductory text functions as a roadmap for students, laying out the key issues, positions, and arguments of academic philosophy. The book covers central topics in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. An introductory chapter presents the foundations of philosophical discourse and offers a primer on the basics of logic. Those argumentative tools are then employed to address classic philosophical issues such as the relationship between body and mind, skepticism, the possibility of free will, and the existence (...) of God. Later chapters engage issues of morality, justice, and liberty, as well as moral questions concerning abortion and the practice of punishment. Throughout, Alward aims for clarity, providing summaries, diagrams, and reflective questions to assist the student reader. (shrink)

This chapter examines Francis Bacon's influence on Buffon's and Diderot's conceptions of natural history.

This paper argues that the English philosopher John Locke, who has normally been thought to have had only an amateurish interest in botany, was far more involved in the botanical science of his day than has previously been known. Through the presentation of new evidence deriving from Locke’s own herbarium, his manuscript notes, journal and correspondence, it is established that Locke made a modest contribution to early modern botany. It is shown that Locke had close and ongoing relations with the (...) Bobarts, keepers of the Oxford Botanic Garden, and that Locke distributed seeds and plant parts to other botanists, seeds of which the progeny almost certainly ended up in the most important herbaria of the period. Furthermore, it is claimed that the depth of Locke’s interest in and practice of botany has a direct bearing on our understanding of his views on the correct method of natural philosophy and on the interpretation of his well known discussion of the nature of species in Book III of his Essay concerning human understanding. (shrink)

A common approach to drawing boundary between fiction and non-fiction is by appeal to the kinds of speech acts performed by authors of works of the respective categories. Searle, for example, takes fiction to be the product of illocutionary pretense of various kinds on the part of authors and non-fiction to be the product of genuine illocutionary action.1 Currie, in contrast, takes fiction to be the product of sui generis fictional illocutionary action on the part of authors and non-fiction to (...) be the product of assertion and other familiar kinds of illocutionary action.2 The central thesis of this paper is that the speech act approach to fictionality is simply a non-starter. Now it is, of course, commonplace to note that approaches of this kind run into difficulty accommodating nonliterary fictions3 and uncomposed or authorless fictions. What will be argued here, however, is that speech acts analyses are inadequate even understood narrowly as accounts of composed literary fiction. And the reason is that they fail to adequately attend to the distinction between composition and storytelling. (shrink)

Examines the relationship between sport and education from both social and moral points of view. The text argues that sport has such a vital role to play in society that it should be an integral part of the curriculum. It presents guidelines for an effective teaching of sports in schools.

Thomas, Bracken, and Timimi (2012) make an important contribution in critiquing the extent to which the profession of psychiatry can be so bureaucratic that patients are treated as problems to be solved in an ‘efficient’ assembly line fashion rather than as individual persons. The trouble with bureaucracies is that they promote a cold and impersonal accounting approach in which critical reflection on purposes is circumvented by decision-making algorithms (Zachar and Bartlett 2009). Psychotherapy treatment manuals definitely satisfy the bureaucratic instinct, and (...) the fifteen-minute medication management session even more so (Harris 2011). Ideally, evidence-based medicine (EBM) should be used to promote the goals of .. (shrink)

We are thankful for the opportunity to reflect more on the difficult problem of the relationship between moral evaluations and the construct of personality disorders in response to the commentaries by Mike Martin and Louis Charland. We begin by emphasizing to readers that this important problem is complicated by the different perspectives of the various disciplines involved, especially, philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology. Incredulity, anger, and dismay are among the reactions we encountered in discussions of these issues, especially with some mental (...) health professionals. Strong reactions on either side of a disciplinary divide occasionally present barriers to a dispassionate discussion of the topic. .. (shrink)

Early modern experimental philosophers were opposed to speculation, and yet many endorsed speculative theories. This chapter gives a partial explanation of why this is so, using Robert Boyle’s acceptance and promotion of the corpuscular philosophy as a case study. It argues that, in addition to furnishing experimental evidence for the corpuscular hypothesis in his Forms and Qualities, Boyle attempted to establish its epistemic superiority over other speculative theories on the grounds that it is founded upon superior principles. In his ‘Excellency (...) and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis’, Boyle claims that the principles of the corpuscular philosophy are more intelligible, more parsimonious, ontologically primary, simpler and more comprehensive than those of its rivals. On grounds of comparative plausibility then, according to Boyle, the corpuscular philosophy is eminently preferable to its rivals. The final section of the chapter traces the legacy of Boyle’s appraisal of the epistemic status of the corpuscular philosophy in the writings of many of his compatriots from the mid-1660s to the Cyclopedia of Ephraim Chambers of 1728. (shrink)

Peter Gärdenfors has developed a semantics for conditional logic, based on the operations of expansion and revision applied to states of information. The account amounts to a formalisation of the Ramsey test for conditionals. A conditional A > B is declared accepted in a state of information K if B is accepted in the state of information which is the result of revising K with respect to A. While Gärdenfors's account takes the truth-functional part of the logic as given, (...) the present paper proposes a semantics entirely based on epistemic states and operations on these states. The semantics is accompanied by a syntactic treatment of conditional logic which is formally similar to Gentzen's sequent formulation of natural deduction rules. Three of David Lewis's systems of conditional logic are represented. The formulations are attractive by virtue of their transparency and simplicity. (shrink)

Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind is one of a handful of texts that began the physicalist revolution in the philosophy of mind. In this collection, distinguished philosophers examine what we still owe to it, how to expand it, as well as looking back on how it came about.

This collection presents the first sustained examination of the nature and status of the idea of principles in early modern thought. Principles are almost ubiquitous in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the term appears in famous book titles, such as Newton’s _Principia_; the notion plays a central role in the thought of many leading philosophers, such as Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason; and many of the great discoveries of the period, such as the Law of Gravitational Attraction, were described as (...) principles. Ranging from mathematics and law to chemistry, from natural and moral philosophy to natural theology, and covering some of the leading thinkers of the period, this volume presents ten compelling new essays that illustrate the centrality and importance of the idea of principles in early modern thought. It contains chapters by leading scholars in the field, including the Leibniz scholar Daniel Garber and the historian of chemistry William R. Newman, as well as exciting, emerging scholars, such as the Newton scholar Kirsten Walsh and a leading expert on experimental philosophy, Alberto Vanzo. _The Idea of Principles in Early Modern Thought_ charts the terrain of one of the period’s central concepts for the first time, and opens up new lines for further research. (shrink)