The science of evolution acutely raises the perennial question of humankind’s place in the world. How does the theological anthropology of humans as imago Dei relate to an evolutionary anthropology with human beings derived from ancestral hominid species? Evolutionary biologists disclose ever greater similarities and continuity between animals and humans. Is human distinctiveness simply continuous with other ancestral forms of life or is there any kind of discontinuity? The answers to these questions depend not only on zoological considerations but also (...) on one’s philosophy of nature. The standard anthropology within the Catholic Church is the dual-origin model: the human body originates through evolution, but the human soul is directly created by God. This formulation, however, is not without difficulties, primarily for its seeming Cartesian dualism of a body and soul as distinct substances. This paper develops the anthropology of David Braine who, drawing upon Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, clearly situates humans as animals in great continuity with them. However, as linguistic animals who think in a medium of words, humans have a form of life—a soul—that transcends bodily processes. Braine’s anthropology provides a more coherent anthropology to understand the continuity and discontinuity of the human person in phylogenetic relationship to other species within an evolutionary perspective. (shrink)

Philosophers readily talk about merely verbal disputes, usually without much or any explicit reflection on what these are, and a good deal of methodological significance is attached to discovering whether a dispute is merely verbal or not. Currently, metaphilosophical advances are being made towards a clearer understanding of what exactly it takes for something to be a merely verbal dispute. This paper engages with this growing literature, pointing out some problems with existing approaches, and develops a new proposal which builds (...) on their strengths. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to put structure on some of the different philosophical uses of ‘intuition’. It argues that ‘intuition’-hood is associated with four bundles of symptoms: a commonsensicality bundle; an a prioricity and immediacy bundle, and a metaphilosophical bundle. Tentatively suggesting that the word ‘intuition’ as used by philosophers is best regarded as ambiguous, the chapter offers a much simpler view concerning the meaning of ‘intuition’ in philosophy. With some of the attacks on ‘intuition’ as an epistemic source explored, the (...) chapter concludes that one significant kind of philosophical ‘intuition’, related to a prioricity and conceptual truth, can be defended against a range of typical epistemological challenges. (shrink)

C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.

ARISTOTLE’S chapter-long digression in the Peri Hermenias to remark a restriction of the law of the excluded middle has touched off reams of commentary, logical, metaphysical and theological. For the theologian, God’s omniscience and human freedom were each at stake; for the metaphysician, the status of time; and logicians professed to find here an application for their remote exercises in trivalent logics. But whatever be the concern of the commentator, a glance at any one of them is likely to discourage (...) a student from pursuing a question which seems destined only to further entangle itself. (shrink)

Randomized control trials (RCTs) are recognized as the preferred tool of analysis in modern development economics literature/research and policy evaluation. This may lead to methodologies, including case studies, tabular analysis, simple regressions, taking a back seat. This survey explores the implications of such a methodological hierarchy and the implications of preoccupation with a particular evidence/methodology for research and policy. Similar developments in macroeconomic modelling are also discussed. Major advantages and limitations of RCTs and the attempts to address them are highlighted. (...) The article argues that preoccupation with a methodology can sometimes lead to important inquiries for research and policy getting side-lined on methodological considerations. This leads to inferences favouring a particular technique/methodology or issue. Focusing solely on methodologies that emphasize quantifying the ‘effect’ may not be appropriate to address all questions relevant to development. As policies involve multiple and conflicting social concerns, methodological pluralism may be preferable. (shrink)

The science of evolution acutely raises the perennial question of humankind’s place in the world. How does the theological anthropology of humans as imago Dei relate to an evolutionary anthropology with human beings derived from ancestral hominid species? Evolutionary biologists disclose ever greater similarities and continuity between animals and humans. Is human distinctiveness simply continuous with other ancestral forms of life or is there any kind of discontinuity? The answers to these questions depend not only on zoological considerations but also (...) on one’s philosophy of nature. The standard anthropology within the Catholic Church is the dual-origin model: the human body originates through evolution, but the human soul is directly created by God. This formulation, however, is not without difficulties, primarily for its seeming Cartesian dualism of a body and soul as distinct substances. This paper develops the anthropology of David Braine who, drawing upon Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, clearly situates humans as animals in great continuity with them. However, as linguistic animals who think in a medium of words, humans have a form of life—a soul—that transcends bodily processes. Braine’s anthropology provides a more coherent anthropology to understand the continuity and discontinuity of the human person in phylogenetic relationship to other species within an evolutionary perspective. (shrink)

“Probably Peirce’s best-known works are the first two articles in a series of six that originally were collectively entitled Illustrations of the Logic of Science and published in Popular Science Monthly from November 1877 through August 1878. The first is entitled ‘The Fixation of Belief’ and the second is entitled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear.’ In the first of these papers Peirce defended, in a manner consistent with not accepting naive realism, the superiority of the scientific method over other (...) methods of overcoming doubt and ‘fixing belief.’” — Robert Burch, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision) -/- “Pragmatist epistemologies often explore how we can carry out inquiries in a self-controlled and fruitful way. (Where much analytic epistemology centres around the concept of knowledge, considered as an idealised end-point of human thought, pragmatist epistemology centres around the concept of inquiry, considered as the process of knowledge-seeking and how we can improve it.) So pragmatists often provide rich accounts of the capacities or virtues that we must possess in order to inquire well, and the rules or guiding principles that we should adopt. A canonical account is Peirce’s classic early paper ‘The Fixation of Belief‘. Here Peirce states that inquiry is a struggle to replace doubt with “settled belief“, and that the only method of inquiry that can make sense of the fact that at least some of us are disturbed by inconsistent beliefs, and will subsequently reflect upon which methods of fixing belief are correct is the Method of Science, which draws on the Pragmatic Maxim described above. This contrasts with three other methods of fixing belief: i) refusing to consider evidence contrary to one’s favored beliefs (the Method of Tenacity), ii) accepting an institution’s dictates (the Method of Authority), iii) developing the most rationally coherent or elegant-seeming belief-set (the A Priori Method).“ — Catherine Legg, “Pragmatism,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision). (shrink)

This is one of the seminal articles of the pragmatist tradition where C.S. Peirce sets out his doctrine of doubt and belief --and their relationship to inquiry and clarity of our concepts. Originally published in the Popular Science Monthly; and widely available in reprints and collections of Peirce's writings.

That there is a personal, or private, dimension to religious and moral experience is obvious enough. On the face of things we may feel driven even to attach a sense which is essentially personal to the content of propositions relating to those areas of experience. ‘I know what I mean by what he says’, one might say. Or, it might be felt that there is a sense in which each man has a God who is uniquely his own. Just how (...) far can we push this idea of the irreducibly personal meaning, the necessarily individual content to such a moral or religious concept? Can we, in the end, give it an acceptable and unequivocal logical form? (shrink)

Soon after its publication, Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy was hailed as the favourite to become "the 'standard' text for survey courses in ancient philosophy. Over twenty years later that prediction has been borne out: Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy still stands as the leading anthology of its kind. It is now stronger than ever: This 5th Edition features a completely revised Aristotle unit, with new translations, as well as a newly revised glossary. The Plato unit offers new translations of (...) the Meno and Republic. In the latter, indirect dialogue is cast into direct dialogue for greater readability. The Presocratics unit has been re-edited and streamlined, and the pages of every unit have been completely reset. (shrink)

We present an experimental test of the validity of the Pauli Exclusion Principle for electrons based on the concept put forward a few years ago by Ramberg and Snow. In this experiment we perform a very accurate search of X-rays from the Pauli-forbidden atomic transitions of electrons in the already filled 1S shells of copper atoms. Although the experiment has a simple structure, it poses deep conceptual and interpretational problems. Here we describe the experimental method and recent experimental results, which (...) we interpret as an upper limit for the probability to violate the Pauli Exclusion Principle. We present also future plans to upgrade the experimental apparatus using Silicon Drift Detectors. (shrink)

C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.