The late C. Vann Woodward was one of America's most prominent historians. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Parkman Prizes--and he has served as president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. The Future of the Past collects two decades worth of Woodward's most significant essays, addresses, and major book reviews, including two important presidential addresses--"The Future of the Past" and "Clio with Soul" --as well as essays on changing (...) historical concerns of the past decades, the value of comparative history, the South in Reconstruction times and the South today, and the use of fiction in history. Woodward has written illuminating introductory comments on each section and offers an incisive general introduction about history and the direction the profession is taking today. Whether reviewing William Safire's novel Freedom or evaluating Henry Adam's portrait of Jefferson, Woodward's essays reflect a lifetime of thought on history and historical writing, and are essential reading for anyone concerned with either. (shrink)

The text is the Russian translation of W. Whewell’s work “Novum Organon Renovatum” (Preface and Book I Aphorisms concerning ideas), which is the third edition of the second volume of his major work “The philosophy of the Inductive Sciences founded upon their History”. In the text, W. Whewell proposes his theory of scientific method and classification of the necessary scientific ideas as a basis, from where every particular scientific discipline derives. By adopting the structure of the notorious Francis Bacon’s “Novum (...) Organon”, Whewell reverses the order of scientific genesis, opposing himself to inductivism – the most influential philosophical theory of his time. (shrink)

Can God Be Free? is a penetrating study of a central problem in philosophy of religion: can it be right to regard God as free, and as praiseworthy for being perfectly good? Allowing that he has perfect knowledge and perfect goodness, if there is a best world for God to create he would have no choice other than to create it. But if God could not do otherwise than create the best world, he created the world of necessity, not freely, (...) and we have no reason to be thankful to God for creating us, since he couldn't do otherwise. William Rowe proposes the need for some substantial revision in contemporary thinking about the nature of God. (shrink)

In this study William Lyons presents a sustained and coherent theory of the emotions, and one which draws extensively on the work of psychologists and physiologists in the area. Dr Lyons starts by giving a thorough and critical survey of other principal theories, before setting out his own 'causal-evaluative' account. In addition to giving an analysis of the nature of emotion - in which, Dr Lyon argues, evaluative attitudes play a crucial part - his theory throws light on the (...) motivating role of emotions in our lives, our attitudes towards our emotions and our responsibility for them. (shrink)

The norms of simplicity, convenience, unfussiness, and self-control guide Diogenes the Cynic, Zeno of Citium, Chrysippus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius in approaching food. These norms generate the precept that meat and dainties are luxuries, so Stoics should eschew them. Considerations of justice, environmental harm, anthropogenic global climate change, sustainability, food security, feminism, harm to animals, personal health, and public health lead contemporary Stoics to condemn the meat industrial complex, debunk carnism, and select low input, plant-based foods.

This symposium collects together five essays reflecting on The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity by William H. Smith. This work is an original monograph bridging the phenomenological tradition and contemporary moral theory in an attempt to articulate a phenomenological theory of moral normativity. The first piece in the symposium, by Smith, offers a précis of the book’s argumentative structure, including its central theses, methodological commitments, and pluralistic orientation. The next three pieces provide critical assessments of the book’s major narrative turns: (...) Therese Cory writes in defense of moral realism and the third-person perspective, in response to Smith’s use of Korsgaard in the opening chapters of his book; Apple Igrek wonders whether the post-modern radicality of Levinas’s ethics have been compromised by Smith’s appropriation of Levinas; and Matthew Rellihan contends that Smith’s purported phenomenological theory of morality is inconsistent with a rigorous application of the phenomenological method. In the final piece, Smith responds to each critic in turn. This last offering defends Smith’s two-fold grounding of morality in a phenomenological account of the self and our responsibility to others, a reimagining of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology in light of Levinas’s ethical metaphysics. The theory unites authenticity with the face-to-face encounter, resoluteness with first-person reflective endorsement, and infinite responsibility to the other with second-personal address. These essays were first delivered at an author-meets-critics session hosted at Seattle University in the winter of 2012, then substantially revised and updated for this publication. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued that during the process of obtaining informed consent, physicians should try to nudge their patients towards consenting to the option the physician believes best, where a nudge is any influence that is expected to predictably alter a person’s behaviour without restricting her options. Some proponents of nudging even argue that it is a necessary and unavoidable part of securing informed consent. Here I argue that nudging is incompatible with obtaining informed consent. I assume informed consent requires (...) that a physician tells her patient the truth about her options and argue that nudging is incompatible with truth-telling. Instead, nudging satisfies Harry Frankfurt’s account of bullshit. (shrink)

What is it for a sentence to have a certain meaning? This is the question that the distinguished analytic philosopher William P. Alston addresses in this major contribution to the philosophy of language. His answer focuses on the given sentence's potential to play the role that its speaker had in mind, what he terms the usability of the sentence to perform the illocutionary act intended by its speaker. Alston defines an illocutionary act as an act of saying something with (...) a certain "content." He develops his account of what it is to perform such acts in terms of taking responsibility, in uttering a sentence, for the existence of certain conditions. In requesting someone to open a window, for example, the speaker takes responsibility for its being the case that the window is closed and that the speaker has an interest in its being opened. In Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning, Alston expands upon this concept, creating a framework of five categories of illocutionary act and going on to argue that sentence meaning is fundamentally a matter of illocutionary act potential; that is, for a sentence to have a particular meaning is for it to be usable to perform illocutionary acts of a certain type. In providing detailed and explicit patterns of analysis for the whole range of illocutionary acts, Alston makes a unique contribution to the field of philosophy of language—one that is likely to generate debate for years to come. (shrink)

Background: Locke's Conception of Freedom For how can we think any one freer than to have the power to do what we will. — John Locke n his chapter on power ...

The book falls into four segments. In the first (Chapter 1), the particular conception of deity that has been predominant in western civilization—the theistic idea of God—is explicated and distinguished from several other notions of the divine. The second segment considers the major reasons that have been advanced in support of the belief that the theistic God exists. In chapters 2 through 4 the three major arguments for the existence of God are discussed, arguments which appeal to facts supposedly available (...) to any rational person, whether religious or not. Chapter 5 considers religious and mystical experience as a source and justification for theistic belief. And in Chapter 6 we examine the role that faith may play in the formation and justification of religious belief. We also consider the important issue of whether belief in God may be entirely rational quite apart from any evidence in its behalf. The third segment undertakes an examination of the problem of evil, which some have thought to provide rational grounds for atheism, the belief that the theistic God does not exist. A number of topics quite central to theistic religion are considered in the fourth segment of the book, chapters 8 through 11. These topics include miracles, the question of life after death, problems in relating the idea of divine foreknowledge to the belief in human freedom, and problems arising from the existence of diverse religions. (shrink)

Panpsychism is the view that consciousness a sh the most puzzling and strangest phenomenon in the entire universe a sh is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the.

How do people acquire modesty? A simple answer is: if people see that modesty is a worthy trait, they will incorporate it into their character. However, sometimes the knowledge that one is modest would undermine one’s modesty. So, Driver claims that the modest person must not know his merits. If we are to accept Driver’s claim, it would be difficult for us to conceive how learners can consciously acquire this virtue. In response, Bommarito puts forward a more moderate claim. The (...) modest person does not need to be ignorant of his good qualities; even if he knows about them, he must not pay attention to them. Bommarito’s explanation opens a space for Asian philosophers to engage in the debate. Asian philosophers generally emphasize the importance of practice and how practitioners must attend to the state of their consciousness so that they are not carried away by their desires. With regard to this, I put forward two ideas in this paper. First, I propose a third account of modesty, the knowledge account. I argue that modesty, in its worthy form, requires an agent’s understanding of his temptations and weaknesses. Second, I will explain the Confucian view of moral education in regard to this discussion. I introduce strategies regarding learners’ acquisition of virtues, including self-cultivation and cultivation through following rituals in interpersonal affairs. I believe that the Confucian view of moral education would enable agents to acquire virtues without the self-denial that troubles Driver and Bommarito. (shrink)

Divine Nature and Human Language is a collection of twelve essays in philosophical theology by William P. Alston, one of the leading figures in the current renaissance in the philosophy of religion. Using the equipment of contemporary analytical philosophy, Alston explores, partly refashions, and defends a largely traditional conception of God and His work in the world a conception that finds its origins in medieval philosophical theology. These essays fall into two groups: those concerned with theological language and those (...) that deal with the nature, status, and activity of God. In Part 1, Alston develops a conceptual scheme for discussing the topic of theological language. He also argues that there is a core of literal talk about God and even a core of predicates univocally applicable to God and creatures. Furthermore, he shows that God can be referred to directly as well as descriptively. In Parts II and III, the author sketches out a middle way between a classical conception of God exemplified by Aquinas and the more recent “process” or “panentheist” conception exemplified by Hartshorne. Alston argues that such a God can act so as to have real effects in the world and can enter into genuine dialogue and otherwise interact with human beings. In addition, he defends the idea that God provides a foundation for morality. The first collection of Alston's ground breaking work in the philosophy of religion, Divine Nature and Human Language will be welcomed by scholars and students of the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, theology, and religious studies. (shrink)

It is widely agreed among philosophers of science today that no formal pattern can possibly be found in the origins of scientific theory. There is no such thing as a "logic of discovery," insists this view--a scientific hypothesis is susceptible to methodological critique only in its relation to empirical consequences derived after the hypothesis itself has emerged through a spontaneous creative inspiration. Yet confronted with the tautly directed thrust of theory-building as actually practiced at the cutting edge of scientific research, (...) this romantic denial of method in the genesis of ideas takes on the appearance of myth. It is the contention of this article that as empirical data ramify in logical complexity, they deposit a hard sediment of theory according to a standard inductive pattern so primitively compelling that it must be recognized as one of the primary forms of inferential thought. This process, here called "ontological induction," is a distillation out of unwieldly observed regularities of more conceptually tractable states hypothesized to underlie them, and is the wellspring of our beliefs in theoretical entities. Previous failure to recognize this pattern of induction has undoubtedly been in substantial measure a result of inadequate attention to the structural details of scientific propositions; for in order to exhibit the nature of ontological induction clearly, it is first necessary to make extended forays through sparsely explored methodological terrain--notably, the nature of scientific "variables," the logical form of "laws," and the type-hierarchy of scientific concepts. (shrink)

Efforts to bare the psychonomic nature of the semantic reference (representation) relation have been remarkably scanty; in fact, the only contemporary account developed with any care is the one proposed by Osgood. However, not even Osgood has looked deeply at the difficulties that beset any attempt to analyze reference in terms of common effects appropriately shared by a symbol and its significate.

I show that in Epictetus’ view (1) the wise man genuinely loves (στέργειv) and is affectionate (φιλόστoργoς) to his family and friends; (2) only the Stoic wise man is, properly speaking, capable of loving—that is, he alone actually has the power to love; and (3) the Stoic wise man loves in a robustly rational way which excludes passionate, sexual, ‘erotic’ love (’έρως). In condemning all ’έρως as objectionable πάθoς Epictetus stands with Cicero and with the other Roman Stoics, Seneca and (...) Musonius Rufus, and against the Greeks of the early Stoa. Epictetus’ conception of love excludes erotic passion because of its intrinsic excessiveness and uncontrollableness, which inevitably endanger mental serenity, but includes and emphasizes the soberly rational, purely positive joy of interpersonal affiliation. Epictetus’ account of how the Stoic Sage loves is, I think, more consistent and less problematic than that of the Greek Stoics. (shrink)

Subjunctive conditionals have their uses, but constituting the meaning of dispositional predicates is not one of them. More germane is the analysis of dispositions in terms of "bases"--except that past efforts to maintain an ontic gap between dispositions and their bases, while not wholly misguided, have failed to appreciate the semantic birthright of dispositional concepts as a species of theoretical construct in primitive science.

Aimed at undergraduates, _Contemporary Ethics_ presupposes little or no familiarity with ethics and is written in a clear and engaging style. It provides students with a sympathetic but critical guide to utilitarianism, explaining its different forms and exploring the debates it has spawned. The book leads students through a number of current issues in contemporary ethics that are connected to controversies over and within utilitarianism. At the same time, it uses utilitarianism to introduce students to ethics as a subject. In (...) these ways, the book is not only a guide to utilitarianism, but also an introduction to some standard problems of ethics and to several important topics in contemporary ethical theory. (shrink)

THE AIM OF THE VOLUME IS TO INTRODUCE STUDENTS TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION BY ACQUAINTING THEM WITH THE WRITINGS OF SOME OF THE THINKERS WHO HAVE MADE SUBSTANTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS IN THIS AREA. THIS NEW EDITION EXPANDS THE RANGE OF TOPICS BY INCLUDING AN ENTIRELY NEW CHAPTER ON DEATH AND IMMORTALITY AND A NEW SUBSECTION ON THE MORAL ARGUMENT. THERE IS ALSO SOME NEW MATERIAL ON WITTGENSTEIN AND FIDEISM, RELIGIOUS PLURALISM, AND FAITH AND THE NEED FOR EVIDENCE. ALMOST EVERY CHAPTER (...) HAS BEEN CHANGED BY DELETIONS OR ADDITIONS TO UPDATE THE SELECTIONS AND PROVIDE MORE MATERIAL THAT IS UNDERSTANDABLE TO BEGINNING STUDENTS. (shrink)

This study is the first to examine the relationships among Machiavellianism, social norms and taxpayer intentions to fraudulently overstate their deductions. We theorize and empirically document that high Machiavellian taxpayers report significantly less ethical social norms, suggesting that reported social norms are influenced by cognitive biases such as social projection and Machiavellian cynicism; reported social norms are, in general, significantly associated with tax evasion intentions; social norms partially mediate the relationship between Machiavellianism and evasion intentions. Our findings imply that experimental (...) research that controls for key personality traits such as Machiavellianism will be necessary to test the effectiveness of potential interventions designed to enhance social norms and tax compliance. Our findings also raise questions regarding the validity of certain social norm measures used in recent studies, particularly in the case of high Machiavellians. In contrast to much prior research, gender was not associated with the likelihood of committing tax fraud in our multivariate models, suggesting that the higher levels of tax compliance often associated with females may be eroding. (shrink)

In Between Facts and Norms Jürgen Habermas works out the legal and political implications of his Theory of Communicative Action, bringing to fruition the project announced with his publication of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962. This new work is a major contribution to recent debates on the rule of law and the possibilities of democracy in postindustrial societies, but it is much more.The introduction by William Rehg succinctly captures the special nature of the work, noting (...) that it offers a sweeping, sociologically informed conceptualization of law and basic rights, a normative account of the rule of law and the constitutional state, an attempt to bridge normative and empirical approaches to democracy, and an account of the social context required for democracy. Finally, the work frames and caps these arguments with a bold proposal for a new paradigm of law that goes beyond the dichotomies that have afflicted modern political theory from its inception and that still underlie current controversies between so- called liberals and civic republicans.The book includes a postscript written in 1994, which restates the argument in light of its initial reception, and two appendixes, which cover key developments that preceded the book.Habermas himself was actively involved in the translation, adapting the text as necessary to make it more accessible to English-speaking readers. (shrink)

_God and the Problem of Evil_ brings together influential essays on the question of whether the amount of seemingly pointless malice and suffering in our world counts against the rationality of belief in God, a being who is said to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good.

There is a common misconception across the lntelligence Community (IC) to the effect that information trapped within multiple heterogeneous data silos can be semantically integrated by the sorts of meaning-blind statistical methods employed in much of artificial intelligence (Al) and natural language processlng (NLP). This leads to the misconception that incoming data can be analysed coherently by relying exclusively on the use of statistical algorithms and thus without any shared framework for classifying what the data are about. Unfortunately, such approaches (...) do not yield sustainable results where we are dealing with widely distributed, highly heterogeneous and often changing bodies of data. We argue here that the needed integration requires the use of what we call an lntegrating Semantic Framework (ISF), which provldes a consistent set of categories and relationships that can be reused over and over again to tag successive bodies of data in ways which foster more coherent representation and reasoning. (shrink)

A fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and of the Royal Society, William Clifford (1845–79) made his reputation in applied mathematics, but his interests ranged far more widely, encompassing ethics, evolution, metaphysics and philosophy of mind. This posthumously collected two-volume work, first published in 1879, bears witness to the dexterity and eclecticism of this Victorian thinker, whose commitment to the most abstract principles of mathematics and the most concrete details of human experience resulted in vivid and often unexpected arguments. Volume (...) 2 shows Clifford's thorough engagement with scientific thought as a method for illuminating ethical and moral questions. Essays such as 'Body and Mind', 'On the Scientific Basis of Morals' and 'The Ethics of Belief' all variously demonstrate Clifford's core tenet: that beliefs - whether they guide human action or scientific enquiry - 'can never suffer from investigation'. (shrink)

Discourse ethics represents an exciting new development in neo-Kantian moral theory. William Rehg offers an insightful introduction to its complex theorization by its major proponent, Jürgen Habermas, and demonstrates how discourse ethics allows one to overcome the principal criticisms that have been leveled against neo-Kantianism. Addressing both "commun-itarian" critics who argue that universalist conceptions of justice sever moral deliberation from community traditions, and feminist advocates of the "ethics of care" who stress the moral significance of caring for other individuals, (...) Rehg shows that discourse ethics combines impartiality with solidarity. He provides the first systematic reconstruction of Habermas's theory and explores its relationship to the work of such contemporary philosophers as Charles Taylor. His book articulates a bold alternative to the split between the "right" and the "good" in moral theory and will greatly interest philosophers, social and legal scholars, and political theorists. (shrink)

William R. Stirton; III*—The Logical Status of ‘Exists’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 37–50, https://doi.org/.

By taking ‘existence in reality’ to be a great-making property and ‘God’ to be the greatest possible being, Plantinga skillfully presents Anselm’s ontological argument. However, since he proves God’s existence by virtue of a premise, “God (a maximally great being) is a possible being”, that is true only if God actually exists; his argument begs the question of the existence of God.