Examining Thomas Hill Green's moral philosophy, Thomas defends a radically new perception of Green as an independent thinker rather than a devoted partisan of Kant or Hegel. Green's moral philosophy, argues Thomas, includes a widely misunderstood defense of free will, an innovative model of deliberation that rejects both Kantian and Humean conceptions of practical reason, a barely recognized theory of character, and an account of moral objectivity that involves no dependence on religion--all of which yield a coherent (...) body of moral philosophy that raises important problems neglected in contemporary ethics. (shrink)

A comprehensive yet concise introduction to central topics, debates, and techniques of moral philosophy in the analytic tradition, this volume combines a thematic, issue-oriented format with rigorous standards of clarity and precision. Thomas introduces fundamental concepts and terms, proceeding through a step-by-step exploration of five general areas of debate: the specification of moral judgment; moral judgment and the moral standard; the justification of moral judgment; logic, reasoning, and moral judgment; and moral judgment and moral responsibility. Key historical and contemporary (...) figures in moral philosophy, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Mill, Hare, Ross, Nagel, Foot, Stevenson, and Dancy, are used effectively as a means of examining the topics themselves. (shrink)

1. Bosanquet, who relished paradox, does not disappoint us about history. The late nineteenth century was a golden age of historical inquiry. Historians — Ernst Curtius, J.G. Droysen, Theodor Mommsen in Germany, William Stubbs, E.A. Freeman and F.W. Maitland in England, Jules Michelet and others in France — were establishing history as a credible and esteemed academic discipline. This increasing respectability of the practice of history was matched by a sophisticated theorisation of history, a theorisation which took two directions. On (...) the one hand were Marx’s brilliant and bewitching historical projections. On the other the logic and methodology of history as an autonomously valid form of knowledge and inquiry were being elaborated. This last was largely a process in which the hermeneutic inquiries of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Droysen and Wilhelm von Humboldt came to fruition in the work of such writers as Philip August Boeckh, Wilhelm Dilthey and — not to forget The Presuppositions of Critical History — our own F.H. Bradley. (shrink)

Bernard Bosanquet has not had a good twentieth century. Though he wrote on virtually the full range of philosophical subjects from logic, epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, through political theory and ethics, to aesthetics and the philosophy of religion, attention to his work remains subdued. He has certainly not benefited to anything like the extent of F.H. Bradley, T.H. Green, and R.G. Collingwood from the recent modest revival of interest in late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British Idealism.

Written mainly as a text book, but also for the general reader, this book aims to provide an introduction to the subject of political philosophy. All important past political philosophers make their appearence in the text including Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx and John Stuart Mill. Contemporary philosophers such as Rawls, Dworkin and Nozick are also included. The book introduces 12 central political concepts - power, the state, sovereignty, law, authority, justice, equality, rights, property, freedom, democracy and the (...) public interest. Each of these topics are analyzed, theories about them explained, and problems discussed. (shrink)

Bernard Bosanquet has not had a good twentieth century. Though he wrote on virtually the full range of philosophical subjects from logic, epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, through political theory and ethics, to aesthetics and the philosophy of religion, attention to his work remains subdued. He has certainly not benefited to anything like the extent of F.H. Bradley, T.H. Green, and R.G. Collingwood from the recent modest revival of interest in late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British Idealism.

The idea of an inevitable conflict between science and religion was decisively challenged by John Hedley Brooke in his classic Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. Almost two decades on, Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives revisits this argument and asks how historians can now impose order on the complex and contingent histories of religious engagements with science. Bringing together leading scholars, this volume explores the history and changing meanings of the categories 'science' and 'religion'; the role of publishing and (...) education in forging and spreading ideas; the connection between knowledge, power and intellectual imperialism; and the reasons for the confrontation between evolution and creationism among American Christians and in the Islamic world. A major contribution to the historiography of science and religion, this book makes the most recent scholarship on this much misunderstood debate widely accessible. (shrink)

Neuroscientists and psychologists have proposed a variety of well-supported theories to explain addiction. Many of these theories suggest that addiction results from a single process or dysfunction across all of its forms. The authors of the current review, in contrast, have used a well-defined theoretical account of decision-making to outline the variety of dysfunctions that could account for addictive behavior.

A team of renowned philosophers and a new generation of thinkers come together to offer the first book-length examination of the relationship between philosophical anthropology and animal studies.

A team of renowned philosophers and a new generation of thinkers come together to offer the first book-length examination of the relationship between philosophical anthropology and animal studies.

The crisis in donor organ and tissue supply is one of the most difficult challenges for transplant today. New policy initiatives, such as the driver's license option and requiredrequest, have been implemented in many states, with other initiatives, such as mandatedchoice and presumedconsent, proposed in the hopes of ameliorating this crisis. At the same time, traditional acquisition of organs from human cadavers has been augmented by living human donors, and nonheartbeating human donors, as well as experimental animal and artificial sources. (...) Despite these efforts, the crisis persists and is perhaps most tragic when it threatens the lives of children, driving parents to sometimes desperate measures. Herein, we address one very controversial step some parents have taken to obtain matching tissue or organs for their needy children—that is, having a child, in part, for the purpose of organ or tissue procurement. (shrink)

This paper describes the application of eight statistical and machine-learning methods to derive computer models for predicting mortality of hospital patients with pneumonia from their findings at initial presentation. The eight models were each constructed based on 9847 patient cases and they were each evaluated on 4352 additional cases. The primary evaluation metric was the error in predicted survival as a function of the fraction of patients predicted to survive. This metric is useful in assessing a model’s potential to assist (...) a clinician in deciding whether to treat a given patient in the hospital or at home. We examined the error rates of the models when predicting that a given fraction of patients will survive. We examined survival fractions between 0.1 and 0.6. Over this range, each model’s predictive error rate was within 1% of the error rate of every other model. When predicting that approximately 30°K of the patients will survive, all the models have an error rate of less than 1.5%. The models are distinguished more by the number of variables and parameters that they contain than by their error rates; these differences suggest which models may be the most amenable to future implementation as paper-based guidelines. (shrink)

In this essay, I first extend the insights of virtue ethics into environmental ethics and examine the possible dangers of this approach. Second, I analyze some qualities of character that an environmentally virtuous person must possess. Third, I evaluate “humility” as an environmental virtue, specifically, the position of Thomas E. Hill, Jr. I conclude that Hill’s conception of “proper” humility can be more adequatelyexplicated by associating it with another virtue, environmental “openness.”.

In this essay, I first extend the insights of virtue ethics into environmental ethics and examine the possible dangers of this approach. Second, I analyze some qualities of character that an environmentally virtuous person must possess. Third, I evaluate “humility” as an environmental virtue, specifically, the position of Thomas E. Hill, Jr. I conclude that Hill’s conception of “proper” humility can be more adequatelyexplicated by associating it with another virtue, environmental “openness.”.

Did Hobbes's political philosophy have practical intentions? There exists no "Hobbist" school of thought; no new political order was inspired by Hobbesian precepts. Yet in Behemoth Teaches Leviathan Geoffrey M. Vaughan revisits Behemoth to reveal hitherto unexplored pedagogic purpose to Hobbes's political philosophy.

Did Hobbes's political philosophy have practical intentions? There exists no 'Hobbist' school of thought; no new political order was inspired by Hobbesian precepts. Yet in Behemoth Teaches Leviathan Geoffrey M. Vaughan revisits Behemoth to reveal hitherto unexplored pedagogic purpose to Hobbes's political philosophy.

This paper sets out to examine the changes which took place in Thomas Young's concepts of the ether between 1799 and 1807. During the earlier part of this period he supposed the ether to consist of mutually repelling subtle particles which are attracted to particles of matter. Hence, he considered that the ether is denser within dense bodies than in rare ones. Furthermore, Young proposed that the ether density does not change abruptly at an interface; instead the denser ether (...) extends beyond the geometrical limit of a body to form an atmosphere around it. As this hypothesis of an atmosphere of dense ether surrounding material bodies will be the central subject of this paper, I shall in future refer to it as the ether distribution hypothesis. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes denied both that opinion provides access to truth and that it ought to be protected from political manipulation. Hobbes knew that his contempt for opinion put him at odds with the classical tradition of political philosophy. What he could not have known was that it also would put him at odds with modern, liberal democracy, which protects opinions—the opinions of the public—that it cannot invest with truth value.

In his recent survey of the “dialectic of creation” in seventeenth-century philosophy, Thomas Lennon has suggested that Descartes’s assumptions about causality encourage a kind of “pantheistic emanationism”. Lennon notes that Descartes regularly invokes the principle that there is nothing in the effect which was not previously present, either formally or eminently, in the cause. Descartes also believes that God is the continuous, total, and efficient cause of everything. From these assumptions it should follow that everything that exists in the (...) created world is previously present in God. Indeed, Descartes embraces the emanationist doctrine explicitly when, at the end of his replies to the Second Set of Objections, he arranges the arguments of the Meditations in “geometrical fashion.” The demonstration of Proposition III includes a sub-proof of the proposition that “he who preserves me has within himself, either formally or eminently, whatever is in me”. Since God preserves the entire universe, it follows that everything is in him, either formally or eminently. While far from the radical Spinozistic view that God and the world are identical, the notion that everything in creation is also in God would seem to have its own unwelcome theological consequences, at least from a Cartesian point of view. In particular, it implies that extension, and hence divisibility, are in God. But, as Descartes himself cautions, “being divisible is an imperfection” and so completely foreign to God. (shrink)

RésuméDans sa présentation récente de la «dialectique de la création» dans la philosophie du XVIIe siècle, Thomas Lennon suggère que les hypothèses de Descartes concernant la causalité conduisent à un dilemme : Descartes doit accepter soit une certaine sorte d'émanationnisme panthéiste, soit l'émergence de la réalité ex. nihilo. Dans cet article, je défends en détail cette suggestion de Lennon. Au cœur de la question se trouve la notion cartesienne de la possession éminente. Si cette notion est interprétée dans ce (...) que j'appelle un sens «réaliste», ainsi que Descartes lui-mêmesemble l'avoir fait, alors il n'y a pas moyen d'éviter l'émanationnisme panthéiste. Si la possession est interprétée dans ce que j'appelle un sens «réductionniste», comme l'ont fait la plupart des commentateurs récents, alors le principe causal fundamental de Descartes se révèle soit arbitraire soit trivial. (shrink)

This paper discusses the issue of German moral responsibility for the Holocaust in the light of the thesis of Daniel Goldhagen and others that inherited negative stereotypes of Jews and Jewishness were prime causal factors contributing to the genocide. It is argued that in so far as the Germans of the Third Reich were dupes of an ''hallucinatory ideology,'' they strikingly exemplify the ''paradox of moral luck'' outlined by Thomas Nagel, that people are not morally responsible for what they (...) are and are not responsible for. The implications of this paradox for the appraisal of German guilt are explored in relation to the views of a number of recent writers on the Holocaust. (shrink)

ExcerptThe concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political1Is such a relation still possible between the state and the political? If the primacy of the state is challenged, what becomes of the status of the political? How was this relation originally conceived, and what are the consequences of its dissolution? To facilitate a continued questioning of the state and the place of politics, this essay executes an unlikely juxtaposition of Thomas (...) Hobbes and Alain Badiou. Hobbes is a seventeenth-century English philosopher confronting the anarchy of religious…. (shrink)

Thomas Elsaesser _Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary_ London and New York: Routledge, 2000 ISBN 041501235X 480 pp.

While evolutionary thinking is increasingly becoming popular in fields of investigation outside the biological sciences, it remains unclear how helpful it is there and whether it actually yields good explanations of the phenomena under study. Here we examine the ontology of a recent approach to applying evolutionary thinking outside biology, the generalized Darwinism approach proposed by Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen. We examine the ontology of populations in biology and in GD, and argue that biological evolutionary theory sets ontological (...) criteria that GD fails to meet. We suggest two options to revise the population concept in GD: reformulating the concept in terms of inheritance and reproduction such that it comes to pick out individuals similar to evolving populations, or trying to build an adequate population concept on a principle of differential retention instead of differential reproduction. 1 Introduction2 Generalized Darwinism2.1 What is generalized Darwinism?2.2 Darwinian principles3 The Ontology of Generalized Darwinism: What Are Populations?3.1 The population concept of generalized Darwinism3.2 The population concept in evolutionary theory4 Locating Evolving Systems in Generalized Darwinism5 Conclusion. (shrink)