Friendship plays a central role in Augustine's thought. It also played a crucial role in structuring the political and social world of the ancient Greeks. Augustine's treatment of friendship, especially in his Confessions, retains some of the terminology that was central to the Greek account, but it simultaneously transforms friendship, and with it the relationship between individual and community. Augustine's formulation of the inner life is reflected in his transformation of friendship, which loses its inherently social character and political dimension (...) even as it sets the stage for the introduction of political thinking based on the primacy of the individual. (shrink)

Several themes of David Lewis's theory of counterfactuals, especially their sensitivity to context, pave the way for a viable theory of non-trivial counterpossibles. If Lewis was successful in defending his account against the early objections, a semantics of counterpossibles can be defended from similar objections in the same way. The resulting theory will be extended to address 'might' counterfactuals and questions about the relative "nearness" of impossible worlds.

Die Idee zu der in diesem Band dokumentierten Tagung ist im Rahmen des disziplinübergreifenden Nachwuchswissenschaftsnetzwerkes THESIS entstanden. Der Dialog über die fachlichen und disziplinären Grenzen hinweg hat bei THESIS seit dessen Gründung im Jahre 1990 stets einen großen Raum eingenommen. Anderen Fächern Respekt und Interesse entgegenzubringen und sich nicht von stereotypen Vorurteilen leiten zu lassen, ist konstitutiver Bestandteil im Selbstverständnis des Netzwerkes. Selbstverständlich gibt es in einem solchen Verbund eine Reihe von Gelegenheiten (darunter auch den einen oder anderen entwicklungsfördernden Konflikt), (...) das eigene Bild vom Anderen und das andere Bild vom Eigenen zur Sprache zu bringen und zu hinterfragen. Auf der Basis dieser bestehenden Kommunikationsstrukturen trafen sich am 11. Oktober 2003 in Göttingen 12 junge Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler zwischen, über und auch auf den Grenzen ihrer eigenen Herkunftsdisziplinen, um den Trendbegriff [alpha]Transdisziplinarität" auf seine Substanz zu prüfen. (shrink)

Perfect for students with no background in logic or philosophy, Simple Formal Logic provides a full system of logic adequate to handle everyday and philosophical reasoning. By keeping out artificial techniques that aren’t natural to our everyday thinking process, Simple Formal Logic trains students to think through formal logical arguments for themselves, ingraining in them the habits of sound reasoning. Simple Formal Logic features: a companion website with abundant exercise worksheets, study supplements (including flashcards for symbolizations and for deduction rules), (...) and instructor’s manual two levels of exercises for beginning and more advanced students a glossary of terms, abbreviations and symbols. This book arose out of a popular course that the author has taught to all types of undergraduate students at Loyola University Chicago. He teaches formal logic without the artificial methods–methods that often seek to solve farfetched logical problems without any connection to everyday and philosophical argumentation. The result is a book that teaches easy and more intuitive ways of grappling with formal logic–and is intended as a rigorous yet easy-to-follow first course in logical thinking for philosophy majors and non-philosophy majors alike. (shrink)

Plausibly, no agent ever performs an action without some desire to perform that action. If so, a regress argument shows that, given incompatibilism, we are only rarely free. The argument sidesteps recent objections to this thesis.

Against the historically widespread view that divine conservation is a continuation of the act of creation, William Lane Craig argues that conservation is a different kind of act since, unlike creation ex nihilo, it is diachronic and it acts on a patient. Timothy Miller poses a timing objection against Craig's view, arguing that on such a view either the existence of a conserved entity is discontinuous, or the conserving activity overdetermines its effect, or the conserving activity is not continuous. The (...) present paper explores the options that remain for a diachronic, agent-patient account of conservation. It includes several models of conservation on which divine activity is continuous but not overdetermined since its effect at each time is something less specific than the existence of a created being at a time. (shrink)

In this article, the authors utilize the philosophical methodology developed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri to formulate a theory of educational realism. The goal is to posit an embodied form of education that emerges from within the movements of the multitude. The connection between multitudinous movement and education is the concept of choreography, which destabilizes habituated movements, unleashing creative alternatives. The paper concludes with several examples of choreography as an exopedagogy for cultivating embodied, swarm intelligence from the work of (...) noted choreographer William Forsythe. (shrink)

A recently advanced argument for purgatory hinges on the need for complete sanctification before one can enter heaven. The argument has a modal gap.The gap can be exploited to fashion a competing account of how sanctification occurs in the afterlife according to which it is in part a heavenly process.The competing account usefully complicates the overall case for purgatory and raises questions about how the notion ought to be understood.

The best arguments for possible worlds as states of affairs furnish us with equally good arguments for impossible worlds of the same sort. I argue for a theory of impossible worlds on which the impossible worlds correspond to maximal inconsistent classes of propositions. Three objections are rejected. In the final part of the paper, I present a menu of impossible worlds and explore some of their interesting formal properties.

Offering a unique and wide-ranging examination of the theory of knowledge, the new edition of this comprehensive collection deftly blends readings from the foremost classical sources with the work of important contemporary philosophical thinkers. Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches, 3/e, offers philosophical examinations of epistemology from ancient Greek and Roman philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus); medieval philosophy (Augustine, Aquinas); early modern philosophy (Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Kant); classical pragmatism and Anglo-American empiricism (James, Russell, Ayer, Lewis, Carnap, Quine, (...) Rorty); and other influential Anglo-American philosophers (Chisholm, Kripke, Moore, Wittgenstein, Strawson, Putnam). Organized chronologically and thematically, Human Knowledge, 3/e, features exceptionally broad coverage and nontechnical selections that are easily accessible to students. An ideal text for both undergraduate and graduate courses in epistemology, it is enhanced by the editors' substantial general introduction, section overviews, and up-to-date bibliographies. The third edition offers expanded selections on contemporary epistemology and adds selections by Thomas Reid, Richard Rorty, David B. Annis, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, Ernest Sosa, Barry Stroud, and Louise M. Antony. Human Knowledge, 3/e, offers an unparalleled introduction to our ancient struggle to understand our own intellectual experience. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Metaphysical Club, a gathering of intellectuals in the 1870s associated with Harvard, is widely recognized as the crucible where pragmatism, America's distinctively original philosophy, was refined and proclaimed. Louis Menand's bestseller about the group was a dramatic publishing success. However, only three actual members - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles S. Peirce, and William James - appear in this book, alongside other thinkers such as John Dewey who were never in the Club. The Real Metaphysical Club tells the full (...) story of how this influential group shifted the course of philosophy in America. In addition to pioneering pragmatism, the group explored radical empiricism and idealism, and formulated personalism and process philosophy, equally important developments. This volume contains thirty-seven important writings dating from 1870 to 1885 by the real members of the Metaphysical Club. The first section centers on pragmatism and science; the second part collects writings of the lawyers; and the third part covers idealist and personalist philosophers. Many of these writings have never been reprinted before, and nothing like this impressive collection has ever been attempted. A general introduction provides a narrative history, and the editors' three introductions to the volume's sections vividly bring to life the intense meetings, sustained debates, and pioneering thought from the Metaphysical Club. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called “adverse consequences”. The argument from adverse consequences can be seen as an argument that is intended to be pragmatic ‐ about what we should do, not about what is true ‐ but then comes to the wrong kind of conclusion. In many genuinely pragmatic arguments, however, adverse consequences are relevant to the conclusion and no fallacy is committed. So it is important to notice exactly what the conclusion (...) of the argument is. (shrink)

This entry provides a brief exposition and formal reconstruction of the argument for possible worlds in David Lewis's _Counterfactuals_.

The theory of possible worlds has permeated analytic philosophy in recent decades, and its best versions have a consequence which has gone largely unnoticed: in addition to the panoply of possible worlds, there are a great many impossible worlds. A uniform ontological method alone should bring the friends of possible worlds to adopt impossible worlds, I argue, but the theory's applications also provide strong incentives. In particular, the theory facilitates an account of counterfactuals which avoids several of the implausible results (...) of David Lewis's account, and it paves the way for the analogues of Kripkean semantics for epistemic and relevant logics. On the theories of possible worlds as abstract objects, worlds bear a strong resemblance to propositions. I contend that if there are distinct necessarily false propositions, then there are likewise distinct impossible worlds. However, one who regards possible worlds as concrete objects must not recognize impossible worlds, in part because concrete worlds cannot misrepresent certain features of reality, as some impossible worlds must. Accordingly, I defend and develop a theory of impossible worlds as maximal impossible states of affairs. Impossible worlds perform admirably in the analysis of counterfactuals with impossible antecedents. I argue that, contrary to standard accounts, not all counterpossibles are trivially true, and I develop a Lewis-style semantics which allows this result. The point is crucial, since many views presuppose that some counterpossibles are substantive philosophical truths. Finally, I show that impossible worlds hold great promise for doxastic and relevant logics. Epistemic logic needs a domain of propositions which is not closed under strict implication to avoid the problem of logical omniscience, and relevant logic needs such a domain to avoid the famous paradoxes of implication. In sum, impossible world theory promises natural, elegant solutions to philosophical problems in numerous areas where possible worlds alone flounder. These solutions come to most possible world theorists at no cost, since the existence of impossible worlds is entailed by theses they already hold. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey was the greatest of the remarkable generation of Cambridge philosophers and logicians which included G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes. Before his tragically early death in 1930 at the age of twenty-six, he had done seminal work in mathematics and economics as well as in logic and philosophy. This volume, with a new and extensive introduction by D. H. Mellor, contains all Ramsey's previously published writings on philosophy and the foundations of mathematics. The (...) latter gives the definitive form and defence of the reduction of mathematics to logic undertaken in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica; the former includes the most profound and original studies of universals, truth, meaning, probability, knowledge, law and causation, all of which are still constantly referred to, and still essential reading for all serious students of these subjects. (shrink)

IntroductionBurnout is a growing problem among young researchers, affecting individuals, organizations and society. Our study aims to identify burnout profiles and highlight the corresponding job demands and resources, resulting in recommendations to reduce burnout risk in the academic context.MethodsThis cross-sectional study collected data from young researchers at five Flemish universities through an online survey measuring burnout risk, work engagement, sleeping behavior, and the most prominent job demands and resources. We conducted Latent Profile Analysis to identify burnout profiles in young researchers (...) and subsequently compared these groups on job demands and resources patterns.ResultsFive burnout profiles were identified: High Burnout Risk, Cynical, Overextended, Low Burnout Risk, and No Burnout Risk. Each burnout profile was associated with a different pattern of job demands and resources. For instance, high levels of meaningfulness decreased the odds to being classified in the Cynical profile.ConclusionOur findings show that the Cynical profile corresponds to a relatively high number of young researchers, which may imply that they are particularly vulnerable to the cynicism dimension of burnout. Additionally, work-life interference and perceived publication pressure seemed the most significant predictors of burnout risk, while meaningfulness, social support from supervisor and learning opportunities played an important protective role. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss an important but neglected controversy in which the Stoics sought to discredit Epicurus' teaching on justice by showing that the Epicurean wise man, if immune from detection or punishment, will commit injustice whenever he may profit from it. Under the influence of this criticism, tradition has developed a view of Epicurus' position that makes it so weak and vulnerable that it is difficult to see how Epicureans could have defended it over the course of several (...) centuries. There is decisive evidence, however, that Epicurus' critics seriously misrepresented his position, and that the tradition influenced by their polemic stands in need of fundamental revision.1 My purpose here is to prove that the Epicurean wise man will not commit injustice, secretly or openly, because it is in his self–interest to be just; to reconstruct Epicurus' arguments for this teaching; to show how he defends his position against natural right theorists; and to clarify the larger issues at stake in his controversy with the Stoics. I begin by sketching the Stoic criticisms and the Epicurean response. (shrink)

We attempt to extend the nominalistic project initiated in Hartry Field's Science Without Numbers to modern physical theories based in differential geometry.

This article rebuts Ramsey's earlier theory, in 'Universals of Law and of Fact', of how laws of nature differ from other true generalisations. It argues that our laws are rules we use in judging 'if I meet an F I shall regard it as a G'. This temporal asymmetry is derived from that of cause and effect and used to distinguish what's past as what we can know about without knowing our present intentions.

Space, Time, and Stuff is an attempt to show that physics is geometry: that the fundamental structure of the physical world is purely geometrical structure. Along the way, he examines some non-standard views about the structure of spacetime and its inhabitants, including the idea that space and time are pointless, the idea that quantum mechanics is a completely local theory, the idea that antiparticles are just particles travelling back in time, and the idea that time has no structure whatsoever. The (...) main thrust of the book, however, is that there are good reasons to believe that spaces other than spacetime exist, and that it is the existence of these additional spaces that allows one to reduce all of physics to geometry. Philosophy, and metaphysics in particular, plays an important role here: the assumption that the fundamental laws of physics are simple in terms of the fundamental physical properties and relations is pivotal."--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

An introduction to informal logic, critical thinking and rhetoric utilizing actual public discourse .

We pose and resolve several vexing decision theoretic puzzles. Some are variants of existing puzzles, such as 'Trumped' (Arntzenius and McCarthy 1997), 'Rouble trouble' (Arntzenius and Barrett 1999), 'The airtight Dutch book' (McGee 1999), and 'The two envelopes puzzle' (Broome 1995). Others are new. A unified resolution of the puzzles shows that Dutch book arguments have no force in infinite cases. It thereby provides evidence that reasonable utility functions may be unbounded and that reasonable credence functions need not be countably (...) additive. The resolution also shows that when infinitely many decisions are involved, the difference between making the decisions simultaneously and making them sequentially can be the difference between riches and ruin. Finally, the resolution reveals a new way in which the ability to make binding commitments can save perfectly rational agents from sure losses. (shrink)

Historicism -- Time -- Interpretation -- Representation -- Reference -- Truth -- Meaning -- Presence -- Experience (I) -- Experience (II) -- Subjectivity -- Politics.

I argue that it may well be the case that space and time do not consist of points, indeed that they have no smallest parts. I examine two different approaches to such pointless spaces : a topological approach and a measure theoretic approach. I argue in favor of the measure theoretic approach.

Suppose that two geysers, about one mile apart, erupt at irregular intervals, but usually erupt almost exactly at the same time. One would suspect that they come from a common source, or at least that there is a common cause of their eruptions. And this common cause surely acts before both eruptions take place. This idea, that simultaneous correlated events must have prior common causes, was first made precise by Hans Reichenbach (Reichenbach 1956). It can be used to infer the (...) existence of unobserved and unobservable events, and to infer causal relations from statistical relations. Unfortunately it does not appear to be universally valid, nor is there agreement as to the circumstances in which it is valid. (shrink)

The common cause principle states that correlations have prior common causes which screen off those correlations. I argue that the common cause principle is false in many circumstances, some of which are very general. I then suggest that more restricted versions of the common cause principle might hold, and I prove such a restricted version.

I argue that standard decision theories, namely causal decision theory and evidential decision theory, both are unsatisfactory. I devise a new decision theory, from which, under certain conditions, standard game theory can be derived.