bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Power of Example
Authors: O'Neill Onora
Published: January 2009

The examples of which he complained were trivial in either or both of two ways. Some were examples of the minor perplexities of life, such as returning library books or annoying the neighbours with one's music; some were examples described only in outline rather than in depth; and some examples were both minor and schematic.
Words and Terms
Authors: Palmer Humphrey
Published: January 2009

People used to think that the items referred to by one word, e.g. ‘triangle’, should all have certain features in common, which would jointly constitute ‘triangularity’: and that this ‘essence’ should enable us to decide whether any given item is a triangle or not.
How to be Sceptical about Philosophy
Authors: Nielsen Kai
Published: January 2009

Alasdair Maclntyre and Richard Rorty agree (or at least seem to agree) on two very fundamental matters, namely, to put it in Rorty's words, (1) ‘that philosophy as practised professionally today lacks any systematic unity’ and (2) that this very fact poses for us now, standing where we stand, ‘a central philosophical problem’.1 (I say ‘at least seem to agree’ because Maclntyre actually puts the matter hypothetically, but I believe this is a stylistic matter only.2) It is also true that they both have a much more historicist view of philosophy than does traditional analytic philosophy; they regard (pace Quine and Reichenbach) the study of the history of philosophy as an integral element in the study of philosophy and think that philosophy is not something to be sharply separated, as a distinct discipline, from other areas of learning.
Humanitarianism and the Laws of War
Authors: Hartle Anthony E.
Published: January 2009

That moral principles underlie and constrain the activity of members of professions such as medicine and law is generally acknowledged. Whether the same can be said of the military profession is a question likely to generate considerable uncertainty. In this paper I shall show that, like other professions, the military profession is informed by a moral teleology. The source of this teleology, for the profession of arms, is manifested in the laws of war. The laws of war, in turn, reflect two humanitarian principles:
Is the Concept of Freedom Essentially Contestable?
Authors: Day Patrick
Published: January 2009

In 1956 W. B. Gallie advanced the thesis that certain political concepts, such as that of social justice, are ‘essentially contested’.1Since then, a considerable literature on the subject has developed, some of it in support of the thesis, some of it in opposition to it.2W. E. Connolly is a leading supporter of it, and John Gray is a leading opponent of it. However, Connolly's advocacy of it in the second edition of his book is significantly more moderate than that in the first (1974) edition of it.
A Stoic Submission to Counter an Epicurean Resignation
Authors: Downin F. Gerald
Published: January 2009

In ‘Acceptance and Morality’ (Philosophy 58 (October 1983), 433–453) Sophie Botros tells us ‘The Stoics and Wittgenstein look upon acceptance as the only means of achieving freedom, in the sense of liberation from desire, in a world in which, because men are relatively or totally powerless, desire must often be unsatisfied’ (p. 434).
Moral Philosophy as Applied Science
Authors: Ruse Michael , Wilson Edward O.
Published: January 2009

(1) For much of this century, moral philosophy has been constrained by the supposed absolute gap between is andought, and the consequent belief that the facts of life cannot of themselves yield an ethical blueprint for future action. For this reason, ethics has sustained an eerie existence largely apart from science. Its most respected interpreters still believe that reasoning about right and wrong can be successful without a knowledge of the brain, the human organ where all the decisions about right and wrong are made. Ethical premises are typically treated in the manner of mathematical propositions: directives supposedly independent of human evolution, with a claim to ideal, eternal truth.
Meno's Paradox
Authors: Welbourne Michael
Published: January 2009

Hintikka has said this about questions: ‘The questioner asks his listener to supply a certain item of information, to make him know a certain thing’.1 Now this certainly seems to capture our intuitions about one kind of enquiry, a kind which I call market-place enquiry. That is, it seems to capture the speaker's aims when, in typical situations, he addresses a question to another person. But there are many uses of interrogative sentences, even some questioning uses, which Hintikka's account will not fit. It will not fit so-called rhetorical questions nor, in a perfectly straight way, the questions with which quizzing schoolteachers seek to discover what their pupils know and do not know. Above all, it will not fit those questions with which philosophers and others are wont to preface their solitary enquiries. I call these Cartesian enquiries after their most devoted practitioner; but it should be noted that Cartesian enquiries, as I understand them, may be quite mundane. I shall be engaged in one if, alone in my house, I wonder whether the post has come and go and look. Because there is no one to ask I have to find out on my own. Contrariwise, market-place enquiries, although they are often mundane may be momentous.
Mind, Brain and Mental Illness
Authors: Stevenson Leslie
Published: January 2009

The distinction between mental illness and bodily illness would seem to presuppose some sort of distinction between mind and body. But dualist theories that the mind is a substance separable from the body, or that mental events could occur without any bodily events, raise ancient conceptual problems, which I do not propose to review here. What I want to do is to examine the psychiatric implications of materialist theories, which hold that the mind is the brain, or a function of the brain. If all character has a basis in chemistry, can we still attribute some mental distress to character and some to chemistry, as if the two categories were different?
Words and Intentions
Authors: Wright Edmond L.
Published: January 2009

The relationship of word-meaning to speaker's-meaning has not been examined thoroughly enough. Some philosophical problems are solved and others made plainer if the full consequences of a proper relationship between these two is worked out.
Philosophers Discuss Education
Authors: Holland R. F.
Published: January 2009

It has come to be expected that collections issued by the Royal Institute of Philosophy will contain work that has quality or is otherwise interesting. This volume runs true to form and presents plenty of both. It gives the proceedings of the conference arranged by the Institute at Exeter in 1973, consisting of five symposia together with Chairman's remarks of about eight pages or so for each symposium, and in three cases postscripts by the first speaker. The contributors and topics are: R. F. Dearden and Elizabeth Telfer on ‘Autonomy as an Educational Ideal’ with R. M. Hare as Chairman; R. K. Elliott and Glenn Langford on ‘Education and the Development of the Understanding’ with Paul Hirst as Chairman; David Cooper and Timothy O'Hagan on ‘Quality and Equality in Education’ with R. F. Atkinson as Chairman; Mary Warnock and Richard Norman on ‘The Neutral Teacher’ with Alan Montefiore as Chairman; Stuart Brown and A. Phillips Griffiths on ‘Academic Freedom’ with R. S. Peters as Chairman.
On Giving Works of Art a Face
Authors: Shiner Roger A.
Published: January 2009

The remarks that critics make about works of art are various in character. Some of them are strictly interpretative—for instance, The Lord of the Rings may be claimed to be an allegorical representation of the Gospel Story; the slow movement of a symphony may be said to express a period of calm after a revolution; a painting may be said to depict the horrors of war. Some may be biographical—that the play was written in 1654, that the poem was written while the poet was in love, that the sculpture was commissioned by the Canada Council. Some may be autobiographical—that the 7th has always been one's favourite Beethoven symphony, that one identifies with Joe in Room at the Top, that Medea was the first tragedy one saw performed in the original Greek. Some are ‘descriptive’ in the philosopher's sense, ‘matters of fact’—that the narrator is a senior civil servant, that the painting is all in pastel colours, that the conductor has not played all the repetitions. Some invoke formal structural principles—that the doors are in classical proportions, that the work's catastrophe is deferred to the finale, that the poem is in iambic pentameters. Some are concerned with the exposition of technique—that the spaciousness is suggested by the use of open fifths, that speed is portrayed by making the moving object sharper than anything else in the picture, that the effect of a sculpture is achieved by the use of metallurgically distinct materials. I wish to concentrate on a type of remark found frequently in art criticism, which defies reduction to any of the kinds mentioned above. The following are typical instances:

That picture will not, at the first glance, deceive as a piece of actual sunlight; but this is because there is more in it than the sunlight, because under the glazing veil of vaulted fire which lights the vessel on her last path, there is a blue deep, desolate hollow of darkness, out of which you can hear the voice of the night wind, and the dull boom of the disturbed sea; because the cold deadly shadows of twilight are gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by moment as you look, you will fancy some new film and faintness of the night has risen over the vastness of the departing form (Ruskin, on Turner's The Fighting Temeraire).
Freedom and Authority in Rousseau
Authors: Lewis H. D.
Published: January 2009

It is notorious that great philosophers are apt to be misunderstood. Controversy rages about their work, and sometimes they are credited with completely contradictory views. Consider the sharply contrasted opinions of Plato's political thought by Sir Karl Popper, on the one hand, and G. C. Field and H. B. Acton on the other.
Rationality and Common Sense
Authors: Ross Jacob Joshua
Published: January 2009

In everyday arguments we often meet with such phrases as ‘That's rational, it is mere common sense’ used in conjunction to approve of or back up some particular statement. The juxtaposition of these everyday locutions embodies a profound truth, the truth, namely, that the basis of rational communication between human beings is plain common sense. I call this point profound because it has been missed in all the discussions about rationality and its basis that I know; certainly its elusiveness thus seems to indicate that participants in these discussions have not delved deeply enough. But I concede that this truth is simple and obvious, and conclude, therefore, that it has been overlooked only because its very obviousness has been taken, wrongly, to indicate superficiality and inadequacy. In suggesting that it is neither superficial nor inadequate I shall be relying on Wittgenstein's interpretation of Moore's ‘Defence of Common Sense’, to which I shall be adding a particular twist of my own.
Is Occam's Razor a Physical Thing?
Authors: Smart J. J. C.
Published: January 2009

In his discussion note ‘J. J. C. Smart, Materialism and Occam's Razor’ Peter Glassen argues that it was inconsistent of me both to assert that realism is true and that Occam's razor (or any other principle for that matter) is a reason for the materialist thesis. Glassen says that Occam's razor ‘is not a physical thing, state or process at all’. A little further down on the same page he uses the phrase ‘material or physical thing, state, or process’. It is possible, therefore, that Glassen regards the distinction between ‘material’ and ‘physical’ as unimportant in the present context. I think however that one way of replying to Glassen turns on this distinction.
A Subjectivist Reply to Swinburne
Authors: Harrison Geoffrey
Published: January 2009

A philosophical tradition is in part identified by its more durable controversies. The British tradition in moral philosophy running, roughly, from Hobbes to the present day, involves several fine examples of the type—the plausibility or otherwise of the compatibilist view of free will, the case for and against utilitarianism, and perhaps above all the implications of the fact/value distinction. It is always pleasing to find some new variation on such themes; you have a comforting sense of the inherent permanence of this corner of the intellectual universe. Thus R. G. Swinburne's paper ‘The Objectivity of Morality’ (Philosophy, January 1976) is much to be welcomed as a contribution to a well-matured debate. Even more, perhaps, it is welcome on account of its considerable clarity. But clarity often comes at a high price, and the price in this case is too high. By setting out his version of the objectivist position with such precision and lack of ambiguity Professor Swinburne has made its difficulties and weaknesses accessible to all but the meanest intellect.
Hare's Impossibilities and the Paradoxicality of Obsessionais
Authors: Reed G. F.
Published: January 2009

A prolonged (obsessive?) professional interest in the problems of obsessional disorder has led me to a consideration of Professor Hare's arguments for prescriptivism. It is perhaps a tribute to the elegance of Hare's argument and the lucidity with which it is presented that the present paper is concerned with the exceptions he cites.
More About Reason, Commitment and Social Anthropology
Authors: Midgley Mary
Published: January 2009

Can I toss a small but important and oddly neglected point into the debate between Roger Trigg and the Social Anthropologists like Professor Beattie whom it may or may not be right to call Relativists?
Romantic Love and Christianity
Authors: Letwin Shirley Robin
Published: January 2009

One of the most widely accepted explanations for the peculiarity of the modern European is his addiction to the ideal of romantic love. Its invention is supposed to have so radically transformed ethics, imagination and daily life, that we can hardly imagine the mental world of the ancients or the Orient where such an ideal of love is unknown. In the classic source for this view, The Allegory of Love, C. S. Lewis traces the modern ideal back to medieval tales of courtly love. But he sees the devotion to romantic love as a distinguishing mark of the modern individualistic consciousness, which began, he says, with a new interest in ‘the inner workings of the human heart’.
Some Grammatical States
Authors: Hunter J. F. M.
Published: January 2009

The following are not among the least puzzling remarks in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations:

572. Expectation is, grammatically, a state; like: being of an opinion, hoping for something, knowing something, being able to do something. But in order to understand the grammar of these states it is necessary to ask: ‘What counts as a criterion for anyone's being in such a state?’ (States of hardness, of weight, of fitting.)

573.… What, in particular cases, do we regard as criteria for someone's being of such and such an opinion? When do we say: he reached this opinion at that time? When he has altered his opinion? And so on. The picture which the answers to these questions give us shews what gets treated grammatically as a state here.
Aristotle on the Best Life for a Man
Authors: Hardie W. F. R.
Published: January 2009

Does Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics give one consistent answer to the question what life is best or two (at least) mutually inconsistent answers? In the First Book (E.N. I) he says that we can agree to say that the best life is eudaimonia or eupraxia (well-being or well-doing) but must go on to say in what eudaimonia consists (1097b22–24). By considering the specific nature of man as a thinking animal he reaches a conclusion: eudaimonia, the human good (agathon), is the activity of soul (psuchē) in accordance with virtue (aretē), and if there are more than one virtue in accordance with the best and most complete (teleia), and (since one swallow does not make a summer) in a complete life (1098a16–20). Aristotle states that his formula is no more than a sketch or outline (perigraphē), but that a good sketch is important since, if the outline is right, anyone can articulate it and supply details. He seems to be thinking here not just of the rest of his own treatise but of the work of pupils and successors; he speaks, as at the end of the Topics, of progress in a science.
Is it True What She Says About Tarski?
Authors: Popper Karl
Published: January 2009

In a paper ‘Is it True What They Say About Tarski?’, Dr Susan Haack explicitly denies the truth of an implicit assertion of mine, by writing ‘… Tarski does not present his theory as a correspondence theory’. My reply is to quote two brief passages from Tarski's work.
Some Animals are More Equal Than Others
Authors: Francis Leslie Pickering , Norman Richard
Published: January 2009

It is a welcome development when academic philosophy starts to concern itself with practical issues, in such a way as to influence people's lives. Recently this has happened with one moral issue in particular—but infortunately it is the wrong issue, and people's actions have been influenced in the wrong way. The issue is that of the moral status and treatment of animals. A number of philosophers have argued for what they call ‘animal liberation’, comparing it directly with egalitarian causes such as women's liberation and racial equality and suggesting that, if racism and sexism are rationally indefensible, so is ‘speciesism’. If one ought to give equal consideration to the interests of all human beings, then, so they daim, one must on the same grounds and in the same way recognize that ‘all animals are equal’, be they human or non-human. We believe that this assimilation of ‘animal liberation’ to human liberation movements is mistaken.
Duty and the Beast
Authors: Benson John
Published: January 2009

Non-human animals are as a matter of routine used as means to human ends. They are killed for food, employed for labour or sport, and experimented on in the pursuit of human health, knowledge, comfort and beauty. Lip-service is paid to the obligation to cause no unnecessary suffering, but human necessity is interpreted so generously that this is a negligible constraint. The dominant traditions of Western thought, religious and secular, have provided legitimation of the low or non-existent moral status of beasts. The rival tradition, which includes the Neo-Platonists, Plutarch and Montaigne, is eccentric and archaic. But the teleologies and hierarchies of orthodoxy are equally incredible now and owe their greater respectability and influence to the inertia of custom. Disregard for beasts is supported partly by the vestigial and unowned belief that they are intended for our use, partly by a more recent piece of lore which is not only thought to be compatible with, but is sometimes held to be integral to, an enlightened scientific outlook, namely that beasts are mere complex stimulus—response mechanisms. The latter is a vexatious obstacle to progress but despite that the state of scientific and philosophical knowledge is now enormously more propitious for a re-appraisal of the moral status of beasts. Two moral philosophers, Peter Singer and Stephen Clark, have recently published books in which such a re-appraisal is attempted. Here I try to compare and assess some of the main features of their very different approaches.
‘A Brute to the Brutes?’: Descartes' Treatment of Animals
Authors: Cottingham John
Published: January 2009

To be able to believe that a dog with a broken paw is not really in pain when it whimpers is a quite extraordinary achievement even for a philosopher. Yet according to the standard interpretaion, this is just what Descartes did believe. He held, we are informed, the ‘monstrous’ thesis that ‘animals are without feeling or awareness of any kind’. The Standard view has been reiterated in a recent collection on animal rights, which casts Descartes as the villain of the piece for his alleged view that animals merely behave ‘as if they feel pain when they are, say, kicked or stabbed’. The basis for this widely accepted interpretation is Descartes' famous doctrine of ‘animal machine’ (‘bête-machine’); a doctrine that one critic condemns as ‘a grim fortaste of a mechanically minded age’ which ‘brutally violates the old kindly fellowship of living things’.
Kant and the Maltreatment of Animals
Authors: Pybus Elizabeth M. , Broadie Alexander
Published: January 2009

In Philosophy 51, October 1976, 471–472, Professor Tom Regan takes ud to task for our attack on Kant's theory concerning the moral status of animals. The ground of Regan's criticism is that ‘… it is clear that Kant does not suppose, as… Broadie and Pybus erroneously assume that he does, that the concept of maltreating an animal, on the one hand, and, on the other, the concept of using an animal as a means, are the same or logically equivalent concepts’ (p. 471). Regan argues that Kant does not say that we should avoid treating animals as a means. Rather, he claims, Kant's view is that we have an indirect duty not to maltreat animals, since in maltreating them we treat, or run the risk of treating, as a mere means rationality in ourselves or in others.
Speciesism and Equality
Authors: Reeve E. Gavin
Published: January 2009

Professor Bonnie Steinbock (Philosophy, April 1978, 249–250) writes ‘… I am not going to discuss rights, important as the issue is’; but she adds, en passant, ‘According to the view of rights held by H. L. A. Hart and S. I. Benn, infants do not have rights, nor do the mentally defective, nor do the insane, in so far as they all lack certain minimal conceptual capabilities for having rights’.
Self-deception: A Reflexive Dilemma
Authors: Champlin T. S.
Published: January 2009

It is not easy to see how self-deception is possible because the man who deceives himself seems to be required to play two incompatible roles, that of deceiver and that of deceived. This makes self-deception sound about as difficult as presiding at one's own funeral. Many attempts have been made to remove the air of paradox from self-deception. These attempts are all unsuccessful, and they are best seen as expressions of philosophical puzzlement rather than as actual solutions. In particular, the whole of the literature on self-deception is vitiated by two serious confusions. First, deception is confused with deceit; secondly, it is wrongly assumed that every case of deceiving oneself is automatically a case of self-deception and so self-deception proper becomes confused with other things.
The Presuppositions of Survival
Authors: Flew Antony
Published: January 2009

1. Nowadays, I am told, many popular novels have anti-heroes not heroes. So perhaps it accords with the spirit of the times for my sermon to have not a text but an anti-text. This is taken from the first chapter of Our Knowledge of the External World by Bertrand Russell. It reads: ‘All the questions which have what is called a human interest—such, for example, as the question of a future life—belong, at least in theory, to special sciences and are capable, at least in theory, of being decided by empirical evidence … a genuinely scientific philosophy cannot hope to appeal to any except those who have the wish to understand, to escape from intellectual bewilderment … it does not offer, or attempt to offer, a solution to the problem of human destiny, or of the destiny of the Universe’..
Philosophy in a Developing Country
Authors: Etuk Udo
Published: January 2009

Philosophy as an academic programme is very young in higher institutions of learning in Nigeria. Third World developing countries usually have concerns other than the teaching of philosophy on their agenda when trying to disburse their meagre resources for the educational sector. They would want to clothe, feed, house and provide medical care for their teeming populations first, and then people who want to T philosophize can do so. So their priority in the area of education is not I for people who will split hairs over words and concepts and theorise about lofty ideals—the popular image of the philosopher—but for the training of agriculturalists, technicians, doctors, engineers and others who can contribute much more tangibly to the development process. For this reason, many people regard a department of philosophy in a university as a luxury item which developing countries can ill afford. For this reason too, the philosophy department, usually the latest arrival in its faculty, is added as an appendix and is the first to be eyed when a scraping becomes necessary in the face of reduced subvention to the institution.
Causation: Rejoinder to Sanford
Authors: Honderich Ted
Published: January 2009

The door's being shut caused the room to be wanner. As we can also say, a set of conditions or events which included the door's being shut caused the room to be warmer. The set of conditions or events. whatever is to be said more carefully of their ontological category, and their closer specification, can be called a causal chrwnslance. The question of causal priority, as it is named, is the question of analysing or elucidating the difference or asymmetry between cause and causal circumstance on the one hand, and, on the other hand, their effect. David Sanford does not like my answer1 and sticks to his own more original one2. I should like to say briefly why
Utilitarianism and Toleration
Authors: Harrison Jonathan
Published: January 2009

I shall (stipulatively) define a free action as one a man is able to do. Various things limit a man's freedom. The most unpopular is the government, or other people who have the power of preventing us from doing what we want. But our freedom is also circumscribed by lack of physical and mental strength or skill, including that of knowing how to manage other human beings. Other factors limiting our freedom are our ignorance, our passions and our habits. Some men say they value their freedom from these things, especially their freedom from passion, so much that they would prefer to be in prison or on the rack rather than be a slave to them, but one suspects they exaggerate.
The Relativity of Simultaneity
Authors: Herbert R. T.
Published: January 2009

In connection with the special theory of relativity, Einstein made use of a now familiar thought experiment1 involving two lightning flashes, a railway train, and an embankment. Whether he used it merely to help explain the theory to others or whether it played a role in the theory's very generation as well is perhaps a matter of conjecture. However, physicist Richard Feynman, for one, believes that Einstein first conceived his theories in the visualizations of thought experiments and developed their mathematical formulations afterwards. According to a recent magazine essay, ‘Einstein came to an understanding about relativity by imagining people going up in elevators and beaming light back and forth between rocket ships.
Orwell and the Anti-Realists
Authors: Clark Stephen R. L.
Published: January 2009

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.
Philosophy and Corruption of Language
Authors: Thompson Caleb
Published: January 2009

Most people are acquainted with the abuse of language that is involved in political propaganda. They accept that even in the best of times politicians aim, in part, to deceive their listeners, to put a good face on the worst of failures, to play down the successes of their opponents. In a general way, political language aims to guide people's perceptions of conditions and events in a way that is favourable to the interests of a politician and his party, interests which may or may not be consistent with the interest of his listeners. Such language is not meant to engender consideration of issues, but rather to free them from the burden of consideration. In the worst of times there is little or no interest in the fidelity between a speaker and his words and between words and things. The accuracy of language is abandoned in favour of its effect; truth is subordinated to ambition.
The Money and the Cow
Authors: Thompkins E. F.
Published: January 2009

In spite of his profound influence on philosophy in general, Wittgenstein has had no discernible effect upon the philosophy of education. It was not to be expected that his rejection of doctrine in favour of the clarification of language as the goal of philosophical activity would readily find favour with those for whom the medium was intrinsically less important than the message it was intended to convey. Nevertheless philosophers of education have no medium other than language and no means of identifying the subject of their discourse other than the word ‘education’. They cannot convey a clear message if the meaning of their words, ‘education’ in particular, is not clear. Accordingly they cannot take for granted but must clarify in accordance with a postulated theory of meaning the nexus between ‘education’ and education. In his early Tractatus and his later Philosophical Investigations respectively, Wittgenstein proposes alternative theories of meaning. I apply each in turn to ‘education’ and sketch my view of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of education.
Was Mill a Moral Scientist?
Authors: Heans S. J.
Published: January 2009

In The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, Alan Ryan suggests there is an underlying unity of conception in Mill's philosophical writing. He identifies this single idea as ‘inductivism’ and, in the first of the two chapters devoted to Mill's ethics, he states that ‘once we understand how this concept of rationality holds together his views on mathematics and justice’, we will find that much ‘light can be shed on the dark places of Mill's philosophy’. No mention will be made in the present essay of Mill's opinions on mathematics, and it is only incidentally concerned with his ideas about justice. However, it shares Ryan's premise that an inductivist interpretation of Mill's moral philosophy is likely to be most enlightening. In particular, our aim is to show how this approach can brighten up two undeniably murky spots in Utilitarianism: the ‘proof passage’ of chapter 4, and the distinction between higher and lower pleasures in chapter 2.
Future Generations: Present Harms
Authors: O'Neill John
Published: January 2009

There is a special problem with respect to our obligations to future generations which is that we can benefit or harm them but that they cannot benefit or harm us. Goodin summarizes the point well:

No analysis of intergenerational justice that is cast even vaguely in terms of reciprocity can hope to succeed. The reason is the one which Addison… puts into the mouth of an Old Fellow of College, who when he was pressed by the Society to come into something that might rebound to the good of their Successors, grew very peevish. ‘We are always doing’ says he, ‘something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us’.
Healthy Scepticism?
Authors: Hanfling Oswald
Published: January 2009

In his article ‘Healthy Scepticism’, James Franklin gives an admirable survey of thirteen kinds of attempts to refute what he calls ‘symmetry arguments for scepticism’, finding all of them inadequate. The symmetry argument that he proposes to test is given as follows:

Firstly, it is possible that what we perceive is entirely an illusion created by a deceitful demon. Second, there is no reason to prefer the realist hypothesis to this one (308).
Flew, Marx and Gnosticism
Authors: Allen R. T.
Published: January 2009

Professor Flew has recently sought to demolish the philosophical pretensions of Marx and the Marxists by the use of Hume's Fork and Popper's demand for falsifiable consequences. Marx tried to derive matters of ‘fact and existence’ from ‘relations of ideas’, which Hume's Fork states to be impossible. From this and not from empirical study, he derived predictions for the future course of history which neither he nor his followers have ever properly tested by empirical enquiries. Nor have they ever provided any clear, unambiguous and therefore testable formulations of those predictions. In particular, Flew claims, they have never given any concrete content to the central notion of ‘alienation’ such that an Index of Alienation could be drawn up and enquiries could be made as to whether, for example, the workers are more or less alienated under the private or public ownership of factories. Both faults stem from Marx's continuation of German, specifically Hegelian, philosophy.
Why Russell's Paradox Won't Go Away
Authors: Moorcroft Francis
Published: January 2009

In ‘The Mind's I is Illiterate’, G. S. Miller discusses several paradoxes and paradoxical sentences which Miller claims are related by a common abuse of language. The Whiteley sentence ‘Lucas cannot consistently believe this sentence’ fails to be meaningful for want of a referent outside of the sentence for the phrase ‘this sentence’; the Liar Paradox when formulated as ‘I am lying’ is similarly disposed of when it is seen that the verb is defective and the sentence fails to refer to anything outside of itself. The same point is made concerning the Russell Paradox of the set of all sets that do not belong to themselves. The moral made is that philosophers are simply to be more careful about the laneuaee that thev are usine and then the paradoxes will go away.
Historicism and Architectural Knowledge
Authors: O'Hear Anthony
Published: January 2009

Even today, apologists for modernist and post-modernist architecture frequently appeal to what, following Sir Karl Popper, I will call historicist arguments. Such arguments have a particular poignancy when they are used to justify the replacement of some familiar part of an ancient city with some intentionally untraditional structure; as, for example, when a familiar nineteenth century block of offices in a prime city site is swept away to make room for something supposedly more fitting to the ‘new millennium’, a ‘twentieth century contribution to monumental architecture’, a building ‘of substantial importance to the present age’. Similarly, those architects or consumers of architecture who fail to conform to whatever stylistic demands the age is held to demand are marginalized in many supposedly serious discussions of architecture, and made to feel out of place and out of time.
Ten Questions for Psychoanalysis
Authors: Phillips D. Z.
Published: January 2009

A psychoanalyst is said to provide the real explanation of a person's behaviour; an explanation which the person has arrived at with the help of a psychoanalyst. The person was not aware of the real character of his behaviour. It may have exhibited unconscious thoughts, beliefs, motives, intentions and emotions. In his paper ‘The Unconscious’, in Mind 1959, Ilham Dilman says, ‘What those who talked of “Freud's discovery of the unconscious” had in mind is a group of innovations which “the founder of psycho-analysis” brought to bear on the study of the human mind’ (p.446). I have ten questions concerning the relation of this ‘group of innovations’ to human behaviour.
James and Bradley on Understanding
Authors: Stern Robert
Published: January 2009

In trying to reach some view regarding the philosophical exchanges that went on between F. H. Bradley and William James at the turn of the century, it is in some respects tempting to endorse Bradley's view that ‘our differences may perhaps on the whole be small when compared with the extent of our agreement’. Indeed, in most of the articles, letters and books in which the debate between these two men was carried on, one finds the protagonists claiming to be mystified as to the grounds of the dispute, and to see no great distinction in their respective outlooks.
Stove on Gene Worship
Authors: Levin Michael
Published: January 2009

David Stove's sarcastic dismissal of sociobiology rests on a false dilemma.

Cuckoos lay their eggs in reed-warbler nests, and the large gape of cuckoo chicks so readily triggers the feeding reflex of the adult warbler that the warbler chicks go underfed. However, argues Stove, the cuckoos (or the cuckoos' genes) are ‘manipulating’ the warblers, getting them to feed cuckoo chicks, only if the cuckoos (or their genes)consciously intendtheir behaviour to have this effect: ‘The moon causally influences the tides, but it cannot manipulate them…. [C]ausal influence plus resulting advantage are not enough to constitute manipulation. The causal influence must also be purposeful and intended.’
Disgust and Moral Taboos
Authors: Kekes John
Published: January 2009

Disgust is not a pleasant subject. It is perhaps partly for this reason that it has not been much discussed in philosophical literature, or, indeed anywhere else. Disgust has considerable moral significance however, and appreciating its significance will illuminate the present state of our morality. One may be led to this view by reflecting on several recent works on pollution. The pollution in question, of course, is not of the air, soil, or water, but that of people who have violated moral taboos of their society'.
Forms, Qualities, Resemblance
Authors: Deutscher Max
Published: January 2009

Long after we have abandoned belief in a Cosmic Law Giver, still we cling to the word ‘law’ in science. It is in this same way that we cannot let go of the substantializing and pluralizing ‘universal’, even though its literal sense indicates a kind of turning, a ‘one-turning’, (uni-versal) rather than a kind of thing. Yet ‘the problem of Universals’ is supposed to have become, again, a ‘compulsory examination question’ for philosophers. Let us reveal how this tradition begins for us.
Innocence
Authors: Wolgast Elizabeth
Published: January 2009

Of all moral conditions, innocence seems easily the best and most desirable, for it means the complete absence of error and regret and all the anxieties that go with these—anxieties about avoiding guilt and making amends for instance. Against the background of guilt and traffic with wrong, innocence is indisputably better, just as something clean is better than something soiled, something fresh better than something stale.
Sport: An Historical Phenomenology
Authors: Skillen Anthony
Published: January 2009

Sport often seems to teeter on the edge, on one side of the entertainment industry, on the other of cheating violent aggression: from a make-believe simulacrum of serious play to a nasty chemically enhanced descent into a Hobbesian state of nature. Such perversions lend credibility to reductive views of sport itself as a metonymic feature of capitalism. But that sport as entertainment means fixing it to produce exciting outcomes and amplifying capacities to superhuman proportions, while sport as aggression means treating rules as mere obstacles to brute dominance, shows how far we in fact are from these abysses, even in the days of the Coca Cola/Nike Olympics, Vinny Jones and cricket sledging. In this essay, I try to delineate through history— from Homer to … Gomer?—a common culture of sport and sportsmanship that, with its excesses and perversions, continues to operate as one, albeit complex, ideal of human excellence.
Axiological Realism
Authors: Kupperman Joel J.
Published: January 2009

Many would consider the lengthening debate between moral realists and anti-realists to be draw-ish. Plainly new approaches are needed. Or might the issue, which most broadly concerns realism in relation to normative judgments, be broken down into parts or sectors? Physicists have been saying, in relation to a similarly longstanding debate, that light in some respects behaves like waves and in some respects like particles. Might realism be more plausible in relation to some kinds of normative judgments than others?
The Causal Theory of Veridical Hallucinations
Authors: Wilkie Sean
Published: January 2009

At the very heart of the causal theory of perception are the peculiar examples sometimes called veridical hallucinations. These examples originate with Grice, who used them to prove ‘conclusively’ that when we say, for example, ‘Jane saw John’, we mean that John is the cause of certain visual experiences or impressions had by Jane.
Inquiry in the Arts and Sciences
Authors: Young James O.
Published: January 2009

In his 1836 lectures to the Royal Institute, the great landscape painter John Constable stated that ‘Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.’ Landscape, he went on to say, should ‘be considered a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments.’1Constable makes two claims in this striking passage. The first is that painting is a form of inquiry. This is, by itself, a bold claim, but Constable goes on to state that painters and scientists inquire in the same way. As controversial as these views are, both of them have been sympathetically entertained in recent years by several philosophers. In particular, Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin have maintained that painting, and the other arts, are forms of inquiry, and that they are akin to the sciences in important respects.2I think, however, that Constable is only half right. Although I agree that the arts are forms of inquiry, I will argue that the arts and the sciences employ radically different methods. That the arts and the sciences are very different forms of inquiry might seem to be a point so obvious as to be scarcely worth making. We can, however, appreciate more clearly how the arts can contribute to our knowledge by contrasting its methods with those of science.
Thinking About How and Why to Think
Authors: R. L. Clark Stephen
Published: January 2009

1. Believing Enough to Think

The Scottish system of university education requires most aspirants to an Ordinary Degree to study some philosophy. Philosophers in Scottish Universities must therefore contend with enormous first-year classes, stocked with youngsters who have little real desire to be philosophers, or even to philosophize. Some years ago, at Glasgow, a question in the final exam was as follows: ‘“Philosophy is of no use, and so should not be studied.” Discuss’. A couple of hundred students answered, more or less fluently, that one should not assume that what was of no use should not be studied, since some things were worth studying in their own right, but that in any case the study of philosophy was useful since it helped one to question what authoritative figures said. No essayist, apparently, saw any paradox in this reply, which was, of course, taken word for word from the professor's lectures.
A Constructivist Picture of Self-Knowledge
Authors: Tanney Julia
Published: January 2009

How are we to account for the authority granted to first-person reports of mental states? What accounts for the immediacy of these self-ascriptions; the fact that they can be ascribed without appeal to evidence and without the need for justification? A traditional, Cartesian conception of the mind, which says that our thoughts are presented to us directly, completely, and without distortion upon mere internal inspection, would account for these facts, but there is good reason to doubt the cogency of the Cartesian view. Wittgenstein, in his later writings, offered some of the most potent considerations against the traditional view, and contemporary philosophy of mind is practically unanimous in rejecting some of the metaphysical aspects of Cartesianism. But anyone who repudiates Cartesianism shoulders the burden of finding another way to accommodate its apparent epistemological strengths.
A Curious Plural
Authors: Champlin T. S.
Published: January 2009

Statements of identity with a plural subject, of the form ‘They are (were, etc.) the same person (thing, etc.),’ as illustrated in each of the answers to the above two questions, give rise to a philosophical problem.
The Gettier Problem and the Parable of the Ten Coins
Authors: Levi Don S.
Published: January 2009

‘Where have you been?’ I expect philosophers to ask me this when I tell them that this paper is on the Gettier Problem. I found it difficult to participate in the discussion of the problem until now because instead of wanting to consider what could be done to revive the project of identifying necessary and conditions for knowledge after the apparent damage done to it by Gettier counter-examples, I wanted to question the legitimacy of the project itself.
The Quiddity of Mercy
Authors: Walker Nigel
Published: January 2009

Anatomists of criminal justice systems usually ignore the tiny organ called ‘mercy’ or ‘clemency’. Its name and shape may vary from one body politic to another, but its nature and function are uninterestingly obvious.It merely allows benign interference when the programming of the system seems to be having unacceptable effects in special cases.
A Critique of Quentin Smith's Atheistic Argument from Big Bang Cosmology
Authors: Lorca Daniel
Published: January 2009

The recently published book Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology1 has had quite an impact on the ongoing debate about the existence of God.
Desire
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: January 2009

There is a natural contrast often made in ordinary language between the actions which we do because we want or desire to do them, and the actions which we do although we do not want to do them. It is a contrast which has been ignored by much modern philosophy of mind which has seen desire as a component of all actions, and the reasons for all actions as involving desires of various kinds. The ignoring of the distinction between desire and the active component in every action (call it ‘trying’ or ‘seeking’ or ‘having a volition’) leads a man to suppose that he can no more help doing what he does than he can help his desires. But ‘desires’, in the normal ordinary language sense of the word, are natural inclinations to actions of certain sorts with which we find ourselves. We cannot (immediately) help our natural inclinations but what we can do is choose whether to yield to them, or resist them and do what we are not naturally inclined to do.
The Mind, the Brain and the Face
Authors: Cockburn David
Published: January 2009

‘Only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious’.1 ‘The human body is the best picture of the human soul’. Anyone who believes that Wittgenstein's remarks here embody important truths has quite a bit of explaining to do. What needs to be explained is why it is that enormous numbers of people, people who have never had the chance to be corrupted by reading Descartes or Dennett, are willing, with only the slightest prompting, to speak in ways which appear to conflict dramatically with Wittgenstein's thought. Many people appear to find no difficulty at all in the idea that we could ascribe thoughts, sensations, emotions and so on to things which in no way resemble or behave like a living human being—for example to disembodied ‘minds’ or ‘souls’ or disembodied brains floating in tanks. And with a little more pressing many will agree that it is never to the living human being that these states are, strictly speaking, correctly ascribed; but, rather, to one part of the living human being—the brain, for example. Now if this incredibly widespread tendency is the expression of confusion then we need an explanation of its existence. We need this partly because without it it will be difficult to undermine the tendency; and partly because we might expect that such a widespread tendency is a distortion of some truth.