This book offers a detailed study of political argument in early eighteenth-century England, a time in which the politics of virtue were vigorously pursued - and just as vigorously challenged. In tracing the emergence of a privately orientated conception of civic virtue from the period’s public discourse, this book not only challenges the received notions of the fortunes of virtue in the early modern era but provides a promising critical perspective on the question of what sort of politics of virtue (...) is possible or desirable today. (shrink)

This is the first of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the self-definitions of traditional cultures and to find ways of avoiding a confrontation with differences. For example, Shelley Burtt argues that the liberal state has good reason to be far more accommodating of traditional groups than liberals commonly recognize. She contends that liberal (...) autonomy, properly understood, is not threatened in any special way by traditional religious or cultural groups, and that traditional cultures are as capable of fostering autonomy as their more cosmopolitan counterparts. Most strikingly, she maintains that it is a good thing, from the perspective of liberal autonomy, to be encumbered by unchosen attachments and loyalties such as those that we might expect to be most fully developed within religious communities. The essay is in two main parts: Part One takes up the challenge of the notion that liberal theorists have missed the chance to describe in detail the possibilities for autonomous thought from within a comprehensive education to a particular way of life or understanding of the good, offering several reasons why the central demand of autonomy – to think and know for oneself – is well within the reach of individuals who receive this sort of ‘grounded’ education; Part Two looks more closely at liberal theories of autonomy, particularly aspects of those accounts that encourage the idea that comprehensive educations are at odds with the development of autonomy, arguing that such characterizations overstate the difficulties that exist, and concluding by reaffirming the possibility of combining an education for autonomy with education toward a comprehensive vision of the good life. (shrink)

Shelley Burtt,Jérémie Duhamel | : Quelles sont les sources psychologiques de la vertu civique dans la tradition républicaine? Cet article en identifie trois : l’éducation des passions, la manipulation des intérêts et la contrainte du devoir. L’auteure explore chacune de ces sources et conclut qu’une meilleure appréciation de ce qui les distingue est porteuse de nouvelles possibilités pour raviver la vertu républicaine dans le monde moderne. | : What are the psychological sources of civic virtue in the republican (...) tradition? This article identifies three: the education of the passions, the manipulation of interests, and the compulsion to duty. The author explores each and concludes that an appreciation of their distinctions suggests possibilities for reviving republican virtue in the modern world. (shrink)

The ’new familists’ argue that sociological evidence on the relation between traditional two‐parent nuclear family and positive outcomes for their children justifies public‐policy measures aimed at promoting this type of family. But the success of such families is due to the fact that many other institutional arrangements advantage this type of family. Such a family typically involves a sexist division of domestic labour. A ’critical theory of family structure’ identifies the developmental needs of children and examines the ways in which (...) various family structures can function to meet these needs. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay criticizes recent trends in disability policy as restrictive of individual liberty and informed by too narrow a definition of what constitutes human flourishing. I defend the value of intentional community settings as one legitimate residential option for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Recent federal regulations (HCBS Final Rule) define intentional communities or disability-specific housing as presumptively institutional in nature, misunderstanding the positive, noninstitutional features of intentional, integrated communities created by and for people with developmental disabilities. In addition, (...) current disability policy, despite its stated concern for the autonomy of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, limits individual liberty by strictly defining the types of settings eligible for Medicaid waiver funding, expressly excluding agricultural communities, disability-specific residential settings, and intentional communities. A robust commitment to the autonomy of people receiving Medicaid waiver services would allow them to choose to direct their program dollars, recognizing that some individuals may choose a life in intentional community or with others facing similar challenges to themselves over an illusory “integration” into a wider society that remains too often unwelcoming and difficult to navigate. (shrink)

The book roots corruption in the idea of a departure from conventional standards, and thus offers an account not only of its corrosiveness but also of its malleability and controversiality. In the course of a broadranging exploration, it examines various links between private and public corruption, connecting the latter with other social and political structures.

A substantial body of evidence suggests that autobiographical recollection and simulation of future happenings activate a shared neural network. Many of the neural regions implicated in this network are affected in patients with bipolar disorder , showing altered metabolic functioning and/or structural volume abnormalities. Studies of autobiographical recall in BD reveal overgeneralization, where autobiographical memory comprises primarily factual or repeated information as opposed to details specific in time and in place and definitive of re-experiencing. To date, no study has examined (...) whether these deficits extend to future event simulation. We examined the ability of patients with BD and controls to imagine positive, negative and neutral future events using a modified version of the Autobiographical Interview that allowed for separation of episodic and non-episodic details. Patients were selectively impaired in imagining future positive, negative, and neutral episodic details; simulation of non-episodic details was equivalent across groups. (shrink)

This paper argues that the behaviorist label yields a caricature of Ryle's position in The Concept of Mind that cannot be adequately fleshed out by reference to the larger corpus of Rylean texts. On the interpretation of Ryle that I offer here, he is best characterized as an "ontological agnostic." Ryle's aim, I believe, is to develop a nondenotational theory of meaning for mental-conduct terms--a theory of meaning which does not presuppose any metaphysical or ontological theory and, hence, does not (...) presuppose behaviorism. (shrink)

BackgroundHIV prevention research in resource-limited countries is associated with a variety of ethical dilemmas. Key amongst these is the question of what constitutes an appropriate standard of health care (SoC) for participants in HIV prevention trials. This paper describes a community-focused approach to develop a locally-appropriate SoC in the context of a phase III vaginal microbicide trial in Mwanza City, northwest Tanzania.MethodsA mobile community-based sexual and reproductive health service for women working as informal food vendors or in traditional and modern (...) bars, restaurants, hotels and guesthouses has been established in 10 city wards. Wards were divided into geographical clusters and community representatives elected at cluster and ward level. A city-level Community Advisory Committee (CAC) with representatives from each ward has been established. Workshops and community meetings at ward and city-level have explored project-related concerns using tools adapted from participatory learning and action techniques e.g. chapati diagrams, pair-wise ranking. Secondary stakeholders representing local public-sector and non-governmental health and social care providers have formed a trial Stakeholders' Advisory Group (SAG), which includes two CAC representatives.ResultsKey recommendations from participatory community workshops, CAC and SAG meetings conducted in the first year of the trial relate to the quality and range of clinic services provided at study clinics as well as broader standard of care issues. Recommendations have included streamlining clinic services to reduce waiting times, expanding services to include the children and spouses of participants and providing care for common local conditions such as malaria. Participants, community representatives and stakeholders felt there was an ethical obligation to ensure effective access to antiretroviral drugs and to provide supportive community-based care for women identified as HIV positive during the trial. This obligation includes ensuring sustainable, post-trial access to these services. Post-trial access to an effective vaginal microbicide was also felt to be a moral imperative.ConclusionParticipatory methodologies enabled effective partnerships between researchers, participant representatives and community stakeholders to be developed and facilitated local dialogue and consensus on what constitutes a locally-appropriate standard of care in the context of a vaginal microbicide trial in this setting.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN64716212. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to invigorate debate concerning the nature of analogy, and to broaden the scope of current conceptions of analogy. We argue that analogizing is not a single or even a fundamental cognitive process. The argument relies on an analysis of the history of the concept of analogy, case studies on the use of analogy in scientific problem solving, cognitive research on analogy comprehension and problem solving, and a survey of computational mechanisms of analogy comprehension. Analogizing (...) is regarded as a macrocognitive phenomenon having a number of supporting processes. These include the apperception of resemblances and distinctions, metaphor, and the balancing of semantic flexibility and inference constraint. Psychological theories and computational models have generally relied on (a) a sparse set of ontological concepts (a property called “similarity” and a structuralist categorization of types of semantic relations), (b) a single form category (i.e., the classic four-term analogy), and (c) a single set of morphological distinctions (e.g., verbal vs. pictorial analogies). This article presents a classification based on a “naturalistic” exploration of the variety of uses of analogical reasoning in pragmatically distinct contexts. The resultant taxonomy distinguishes pre-hoc, ad-hoc, post-hoc, pro-hoc, contra-hoc, and trans-hoc analogy. Each will require its own macrocognitive modeling, and each presents an opportunity for research on phenomena of reasoning that have been neglected. (shrink)

This essay examines the logic of greatness attributions in general and the implications of aesthetic positions taken by Hume, Shelley, and T. M. Greene in order to show how the attitude of faith, i.e. a disposition for unbounded personal growth, can constitute greatness in experiences or in objects or occasions of experience. On this basis the role of great experiences in education is elucidated. It is argued that faith takes a distinctively free aesthetic form in the educational frame of (...) reference so that great experiences may abound. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Destruction and Transcendence in W. G. SebaldMark R. McCullohIFor all the Saturnine pessimism of W. G. Sebald's application of Walter Benjamin's view of historical process (an attitude toward history expounded upon at length in an influential work by Susan Sontag), the author's sense of irony about the human predicament is irrepressible. 1 Human beings seem destined to remain prisoners of various paradoxes—they both create and destroy, they are capable (...) of acts of love as well as bitterness and hate, they make efforts to document and communicate, but at the same time they tend to forget and are given to suppressing the truth, they are driven by ideals, yet remain hobbled by imperfection. Art and music, passed on from generation to generation, seem to be the most common way that human beings transcend the strictures of their imperfections, inadequacies, and their finitude. And to the extent that art indeed survives over time, and continues to be perceived and appreciated by beholders, the aesthetic enterprise succeeds. However, ultimately, as the Book of Ecclesiastes and Shelley's "Ozymandias" remind us, all human endeavor is in vain, and, to assume the perspective of physical cosmology for a moment—and in this regard Benjamin's cosmic vision appears painfully accurate—our speck of earth, dwarfed by a vast universe the true immensity of which has been revealed by the Hubble Telescope, will one day be ground to dust and debris like the rings of Saturn, and our sun will exist only as a burned-out hulk. But such a future world, devoid of beholders, and devoid of creators and their artifacts, is not Sebald's primary subject, even though it clearly forms the teleological backdrop for his third novel, The Rings of Saturn (1995, English version 1998). Rather, Sebald pursues his art in spite of a terminal prospect that will ultimately confront our [End Page 395] planet and solar system. His primary subject, the effect of trauma on individual and collective experience, is instead closely linked with the passing of Europe as a tradition, as an idea—as an idiosyncratic and innovative, but inherently corrupt contributor to cultural history. In the course of his narratives he also addresses the redemptive role of art in memorializing the past and attempting to capture the passing present. In both respects he attends to the humane and the sublime as well as the tragic and the grotesque.Paraphrasing the art historian Svetlana Alpers, one early reviewer of Sebald's novel Austerlitz (2001) points out the self-contradictory nature of preserving the transient moment in art:Why create visual art at all when everything on earth must be represented in its inexorable transitoriness; why paint earthly scenes with such incredible care and precision as if they were permanent? 2The care and precision of the painter's craft (in this case, the Dutch still-life painter David Bailly) are devoted to the representation of a scene that is by its very nature transient and even tenuous—like the scenes of sublime beauty in Sebald's fiction, the artist's depiction "courts and admits" its own fragility. What Bailly does visually, Sebald attempts in words. Take, for instance, the following passage from Vertigo, Sebald's first novel, which was titled in German (with considerably more irony) Schwindel. Gefühle 3 :At a hairpin bend I looked out of the turning bus down into the depths below and could see the turquoise surfaces of the Ferstein and Smaranger lakes, which, even when I was a child, on our first excursions into the Tyrol, had seemed to me the essence of all conceivable beauty.(p. 176)The author has already prepared the reader for this moment of awe by remarking on the otherworldly "slow-motion quality" of the waterfalls descending from the mountain cliffs and on the boulders in their screes spreading downwards into the wooded hillsides, "screes which reached from the mountains down into the forests like pale fingers into dark hair..." (p. 176). Examined closely, the passage in question suggests both the enduring power of natural beauty and, especially with its precise reference to an automobile long since out of production and unfamiliar to... (shrink)

Christopher Hamel | : Dans cet article, je tente de montrer que la vertu civique repose sur le souci du bien commun, sans être exclusive des intérêts personnels. À cette fin, j’examine les travaux que Shelley Burtt a consacrés à l’élaboration d’une conception privée de la vertu civique. Burtt juge cette conception privée compatible avec les prémisses réalistes de la citoyenneté contemporaine, car contrairement à la conception publique de la vertu civique héritée des Anciens, la conception privée (...) fonde la vertu civique dans la poursuite des intérêts personnels. Je montre que les reproches que Burtt adresse à la conception publique sont équivoques et que leur clarification ne permet pas de défendre la conception privée de la vertu. Je soutiens ensuite qu’en voulant faire l’économie du souci du bien commun, la conception privée échoue à assurer ce pour quoi elle est conçue : la stabilité des institutions libres. Je montre enfin que dans son explicitation de la conception d’esprit privé, Burtt présuppose en fait l’esprit public qu’elle cherche à écarter. Je conclus que la vertu civique est nécessairement enracinée dans l’esprit public, et propose des éléments définitionnels de la vertu civique dans ses rapports au bien commun et à la satisfaction des intérêts personnels. | : I argue that while civic virtue relies on the concern for the common good, it is not exclusive from self-interests. To do so, I scrutinize Shelley Burtt’s works that elaborate a private conception of civic virtue. She takes it to be compatible with the premises of contemporary citizenship, because unlike the public conception of civic virtue, the private conception grounds civic virtue in the pursuit of self-interest. I show that Burtt’s criticisms to the public conception are equivocal and that their clarification does not stand up for the private conception of civic virtue. I then claim that by trying to do without the concern of the common good, the private conception fails to provide what it is conceived for: the stability of free institutions. Finally, I show that in her own exposition of the case for the private conception, Burtt presupposes indeed the public spirit that she wanted to dismiss. I conclude that civic virtue is necessarily grounded in public spirit and I propose some definitional elements of civic virtue in its connexion with the common good and the satisfaction of self-interests. (shrink)

This is the second of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the self-definitions of traditional cultures and to find ways of avoiding a confrontation with differences. Melissa Williams examines citizenship as identity in relation to the project of nation-building, the shifting boundaries of citizenship in relation to globalization, citizenship as shared fate, and the role of (...) multicultural education within the view of citizenship-as-shared-fate. She argues the other side of the same coin to that presented by Shelley Burtt in the previous chapter: according to Williams, the liberal state often demands too much in the way of loyalty from traditional groups, and when it does, it runs a strong risk of becoming oppressive and illiberal. Moreover, she holds that there is no need for a single shared identity among citizens of the liberal state. Her conception of people tied together by a shared fate is to this extent compatible with Burtt’s attempt to make liberalism’s commitment to autonomy more hospitable to groups of individuals encumbered by unchosen attachments, but her notion of citizenship as shared fate also goes further than that, and possibly stands in some tension with, Burtt’s view, since it allows and even encourages people to develop primary affiliation to all kind of groups – traditional as well as global. (shrink)

If we are to posit, as do many liberal theorists, that autonomy is an educational goal that the state should endorse across cultural difference, key questions remain: What type of autonomy should we strive for, exactly, and how should this goal be achieved? Many liberal philosophers of education have argued that autonomy should enable cultural choice and that the development of autonomy requires students to be exposed to different beliefs and traditions. Shelley Burtt has challenged this dominant position, (...) however, insisting that autonomy (properly understood) can be developed within a “comprehensive education” that does not seek to sympathetically expose students to cultural difference. In this essay, Bryan Warnick responds that Burtt's arguments are inconsistent and lack cultural imagination, and that her underlying concept of autonomy is inadequate, primarily because it lacks a compelling picture of cultural self-criticism. There is a lack of appreciation, he argues, for how frameworks of cultural comparison are necessary in the development of this self-criticism. At the same time, Warnick argues that there is much to be learned from Burtt's analysis about the tough choices that need to be made as liberals seek to champion autonomy as an educational end across cultural difference. (shrink)

An understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and natural philosophy - or, as we might now say, between philosophy and science - is fundamental to understanding the rise of the "new science" of the seventeenth century. Twentieth-century scholarship on this relationship has been dominated by the thoughbt of Ernst Cassirer, E. A. Burtt, A. N. Whitehead, and Alexandre Koyre. These authors found a common core in the mathematization of nature, which they ascribed to a common Platonic or Pythagorean metaphysical (...) presupposition, on the part of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes, that the book of nature is written in mathematical characters. Taking Burtt as its primary stalking horse, this chapter challenges this view by finding significant differences in the relations to metaphysics of major actors such as those just named. It does this in part by recognizing that, in the seventeenth century, metaphysics was an intellectual practice that one engaged in wittingly. By contrast, Burtt adopted a historiographical approach in which metaphysics consists of the nonempirical presupposition of an age (a position advanced by R. G. Collingwood). That approach, although valid within its limits, distorts or omits from consideration the witting practice of metaphysics by figures such as Kepler and Descartes. And it makes metaphysicians of Copernicus and Galileo, who are better classified as a mathematical astronomer and a mathematical natural philosopher and writer on astronomy. The chapter ends with some reflections on purportedly aphilosophical history of science. (shrink)

Modern bilimin kuruluş sürecinde, Grek menşeli atomcu felsefenin bir etkisinin olup-olmadığı ya da olduysa hangi bakımlardan olduğu bir tartışma konusudur. Söz gelimi E. Burtt, A. Koyré ve T. Kuhn gibi bilim filozofları, modern bilimin kuruluşunda atomcu felsefenin, bariz bir etkisinin olmadığını ileri sürerlerken, A. Chalmers ve D.C. Lindberg gibi düşünürler ise belirli bir düzeyde etkisinin olduğunu iddia etmişlerdir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, modern bilimin oluşum sürecinde Grek menşeli atomcu öğretinin ne türden bir etki ve öneme sahip olduğunu araştırmaktır. Bu maksatla (...) öncelikle Grek menşeli atomcu öğretinin temel görüş ve tezleri, kısaca ortaya konulmuş daha sonra bu görüşlerin tarihsel süreç içerisindeki seyri betimlenmiş ve nihayetinde bu öğretinin modern dönemde özellikle de P. Gassendi, R. Boyle ve I. Newton gibi düşünürler üzerinde ne türden bir etkisinin olduğu ortaya konulmuştur. Nihayetinde modern bilimi nihai formuna ulaştıran düşünürün I. Newton olduğu kabul edildiğinde, Epikuros üzerinden alınan atomcu öğretinin, Newtoncu bilim tasarımını oldukça şekillendirdiği söylenebilir. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has both exposed and created deep rifts in society. It has thrust us into deep ethical thinking to help justify the difficult decisions many will be called upon to make and to protect from decisions that lack ethical underpinnings. This paper aims to highlight ethical issues in six different areas of life highlighting the enormity of the task we are faced with globally. In the context of COVID-19, we consider health inequity, dilemmas in triage and allocation of (...) scarce resources, ethical issues associated with research, ethical considerations relating to tracing apps, and exit strategies such as immunity passports and COVID-19 vaccines. Finally, we consider environmental issues in light of COVID-19. The paper also offers some ethical reflection on these areas as many parts of the world contemplate the recovery phase. (shrink)

Background Scientific and technological advancements in mapping and understanding the interrelated pathways through which biological and environmental exposures affect disease development create new possibilities for detecting disease risk factors. Early detection of such risk factors may help prevent disease onset or moderate the disease course, thereby decreasing associated disease burden, morbidity, and mortality. However, the ethical implications of screening for disease risk factors are unclear and the current literature provides a fragmented and case-by-case picture. Methods To identify key ethical considerations (...) arising from the early detection of disease risk factors, we performed a systematic scoping review. The Scopus, Embase, and Philosopher’s Index databases were searched for peer-reviewed, academic records, which were included if they were written in English or Dutch and concerned the ethics of (1) early detection of (2) disease risk factors for (3) disease caused by environmental factors or gene-environment interactions. All records were reviewed independently by at least two researchers. Results After screening 2034 titles and abstracts, and 112 full papers, 55 articles were included in the thematic synthesis of the results. We identified eight common ethical themes: (1) Reliability and uncertainty in early detection, (2) autonomy, (3) privacy, (4) beneficence and non-maleficence, (5) downstream burdens on others, (6) responsibility, (7) justice, and (8) medicalization and conceptual disruption. We identified several gaps in the literature, including a relative scarcity of research on ethical considerations associated with environmental preventive health interventions, a dearth of practical suggestions on how to address expressed concerns about overestimating health capacities, and a lack of insights into preventing undue attribution of health responsibility to individuals. Conclusions The ethical concerns arising with the early detection of risk factors are often interrelated and complex. Comprehensive ethical analyses are needed that are better embedded in normative frameworks and also assess and weigh the expected benefits of early risk factor detection. Such research is necessary for developing and implementing responsible and fair preventive health policies. (shrink)

_Winner of the Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize._ Julian Dodd defends the view that, in musical work-performance practice, interpretive authenticity is a more fundamental value than score compliance authenticity. According to him, compliance with a work’s score can be sacrificed in cases where it conflicts with interpretative authenticity. Stephen Davies and Andrew Kania reject this view, arguing that, if a performer intentionally departs from a work’s score, she is not properly instantiating that work and hence not producing an authentic performance (...) of it. I argue that this objection fails. A detailed analysis of work-performance practice reveals, first, that the normative scope of interpretive authenticity encompasses the practice of composing musical versions and that, second, when performers sacrifice score compliance to maximize interpretive authenticity, they are performing the target work by means of performing a version of it. By means of the nested types theory, I then show how performances produced in this way can be properly formed instances, and hence authentic performances, of their target work. (shrink)

In "Realism and Reason" Hilary Putnam has offered an apparently strong argument that the position of metaphysical realism provides an incoherent model of the relation of a correct scientific theory to the world. However, although Putnam's attack upon the notion of the "intended" interpretation of a scientific theory is sound, it is shown here that realism may be formulated in such a way that the realist need make no appeal to any "intended" interpretation of such a theory. Consequently, it can (...) be shown that realism is immune to Putnam's criticism and that attempts at reformulating this criticism are not likely to meet with success. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction to the Special SectionFranklin G. MillerHappy is a female elephant who has been confined at the Bronx Zoo for over 40 years. In 2018 the Nonhuman Rights Project sued the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the zoo, seeking habeas corpus for Happy in order to release her to an elephant sanctuary. Numerous amicus curiae briefs were filed in favor and against the petition on behalf of Happy. The (...) case reached the highest court in New York State, which denied the petition of the plaintiff in June 2022.This special section includes views on the case of Happy by David DeGrazia, Martha Nussbaum, and Christine Korsgaard, three distinguished moral philosophers who have made significant contributions to animal ethics. The essays by Martha Nussbaum and Christine Korsgaard are drawn from the amicus briefs that they filed in the legal proceedings, which they agreed could be published here.Professor Nussbaum applies her "capabilities approach" as a foundation for promoting wellbeing and recognizing rights to Happy and to elephants in general. She argues that Happy is a being with a meaningful life and is entitled to be treated with respect and dignity, which is incompatible with her conditions of confinement at the zoo. Professor Korsgaard applies her understanding of the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to the case of Happy—a "cognitively sophisticated [End Page 1] animal" which, like human beings, should be treated as an end in herself and not merely as a means to the purposes of human beings. Professor DeGrazia, in an invited essay, analyzes the meanings of "person" and examines the pertinent characteristics of elephants that make them at least "borderline persons," with the moral status of possessing basic rights.While Happy remains confined at the Bronx Zoo, these three incisive contributions challenge readers to reflect on the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals, especially those with complex and rich capacities of intelligence and emotion. [End Page 2]Franklin G. MillerWeill Cornell Medical College, New YorkCopyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imperfect Men in Perfect Societies:Human Nature in UtopiaGorman BeauchampIUtopists view man as a product of his social environment. Nothing innate in the psychic make-up of man—no inherent flaw in his nature, no inheritance of original sin—prevents his being perfected, or at least radically ameliorated, once the social structure that shapes character can be properly reordered. Utopists, in short, deny that there is such a thing as "human nature"—if, as (...) John Plamenatz suggests, to say that something is human nature is just another way of saying that it cannot be changed.1 To accept the psychic constitution of man as fixed, immutable, is anathema to utopists, who agree rather with Ortega y Gasset: "Man has no nature. What he has is history."2 The social conditions that have obtained historically, that is to say, have made man what he has been—anything but utopian; but if man's history could be changed, so could his "nature." The idea of Progress, so pervasive in the West from the seventeenth century on, lends some credence to this contention. W. D. Howells's Altrurians, their creator notes, "get some sad amusement out of the fact that the capitalist world believes human nature cannot be changed, though cannibalism and slavery and polygamy have all been extirpated in the so-called Christian countries, and these things were once human nature, which is always changing...."3 Utopia is merely a means, then, of imaginatively expediting, directing, culminating the historically progressive creation of a morally exemplary race of men.The environmentalist psychology espoused by utopists springs from one of two anterior assumptions (although in the creation of many fictional idola the distinction between them is often blurred). The first [End Page 280] assumption is formulated most famously by Rousseau in the Discourse on Inequality: that "man is naturally good, and only by his institutions is he made bad."4 The second assumption is formulated most famously by Locke in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding: that the mind—and by extension the character—is a tabula rasa that takes impression from the stimuli exerted by the external world and thus is neither innately good or bad, but plastic, malleable.5 An intriguing conflation of these two theories operates, for instance, in the psyche of the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the long middle section of the book, where the monster's side of the story is presented sympathetically, his character develops in a text-book demonstration of Lockean psychology; yet, at the same time, this lumbering tabula rasa quivers with enough benevolence (the implausible provenance of which mystifies) to put most saints to shame. He becomes evil and destructive only after being persecuted unmercifully for his misshapen appearance.6 Indeed, the criminal career of Mary Shelley's monster rehearses the common utopian argument that society's injustice to man (or monster) is the source of his crimes. "With our present state of society," writes James Casey in A New Moral World (1885), "we manufacture criminals and then punish them for being so."7 H. G. Wells, in A Modern Utopia (1905), concurs: "Crime and bad lives are the measure of the State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community."8 And both are but restating the charge of Sir Thomas More's Raphael Hytholoday, leveled several centuries earlier in the original Utopia (1519): "If you allow people to be badly brought up and their habits to be corrupted little by little from childhood and if you then punish them for crimes to which their early training has disposed them, what else is this, I ask, but first making them thieves and then punishing them for it?"9 Evil deeds, then, to reiterate the utopist's point, result not from some vicious mole in human nature, but from the malfunctioning of society itself. Utopia, by contrast, is—or theoretically ought to be—a world without crime.Rousseau's concept of the innate goodness of man and the evil of his institutions most often informs primitivist models of utopia, exotic worlds inhabited by noble savages uncorrupted by civilization. The idealized Indians of Montaigne's essay... (shrink)

Criticises G. E. Moore’s highly influential proposal that ascriptions of agent ability implying freedom of choice or action, what the agent could do, are analyzable as conditional statements regarding what the agent would do under certain circumstances. Austin objects against Moore that some uses of ‘if’ are non-conditional and goes on to examine the uses of these non-conditional cases. Moore’s proposal also lies at the heart of some compatibilist theories of free will and determinism. Austin argues determinism to be a (...) pseudo-problem, so long as it remains a notion that is not itself clear cut. (shrink)

This paper provides new elements for reconstructing Heinrich Hertz's conversion from an electrodynamic concept to a concept of field theory, a process that took place between September 1887 and February 1888. First of all, it is argued that, contrary to what one could deduce from Hertz's own presentation in his Untersuchungen (or Electric Waves), paper N∘ 5 was actually written after the first publication of papers N∘ 6 and N∘ 7; this fact is illuminated by Hertz's unpublished correspondence (Section 1). (...) Following this reordering, an approximative process of Hertz's conversion based only on his published papers is described (Section 2). Second, by complementing Hertz's published Erinnerungen (or Memoirs, Letters, Diaries) with his unpublished Versuchsprotokolle (Laboratory notes), a much finer description of this conversion process is discussed (Section 3). It is finally concluded that Hertz's idea of “air waves” belongs at the very end of this process, and was mainly attained through experimental hints found within Helmholtz's theoretical framework. (shrink)

Consider three widely shared claims that have not been discussed vis-à-vis one another. In his Proslogion, Saint Anselm argued that the claim “God exists” is true. If an intuition that a claim c is a useful a-priori justificatory resource, this can only be because such an intuition is a justification that c is true. And if an intuition that c is a justification that c is true, c can stand, not only for mathematical or logical claims, but also for controversial (...) philosophical ones, e.g., “God exists”. This essay addresses to while dialoguing with the literature on Anselm and intuition and articulating an alternative reading of the Proslogion. The alternative reading is that regardless of whether the Proslogion backs up or aims to back up the claim that “God exists” is true, it implicitly articulates the Meaning Argument whose conclusion is that all persons of faith are able to understand that the claim “God exists” is meaningful. This argument, it is argued, is evidence that an intuition that c may be a useful a-priori justificatory resource even if such intuition does not track truth, but merely meaning in being a justification for taking c to be meaningful. It is also supported that an intuition that “God exists” is not a justification that this claim is true. This is an indication that there may be reasons for thinking that the same applies to other controversial philosophical claims. (shrink)

On Roger Bacon's life and works, by A. G. Little.--Der einfluss des Robert Grosseteste auf die wissenschaftliche richtung des Roger Bacon, von Ludwig Baur.--La place de Roger Bacon parmi les philosophes du XIIIe siècle, par François Picavet.--Roger Bacon and the Latin vulgate, by Francis Aidan, cardinal Gasquet.--Roger Bacon and philology, by S. A. Hirsch.--The place of Roger Bacon in the history of mathematics, by David Eugene Smith.--Roger Bacon und seine verdienste um die optik, von Eilhard Wiedemann.--Roger Bacons lehre von der (...) sinnlichen spezies und vom seḣvorgange, von Sebastian Vogl.--Roger Bacons art des wissenschaftlichen arbeitens dargestellt nach seiner schrift De speculis, von J. Würschmidt.--Roger Bacon et l'horreur du vide, par Pierre Duhem.--Roger Bacon, his relations to alchemy and chemistry, by M. M. Pattison Muir.--Roger Bacon and gunpowder, by H. W. L. Hime.--Roger Bacon and medicine, by E. Withington. (shrink)