bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Language and Philosophy Some Suggestions for an Empirical Approach
Authors: Basson A. H. , O'Connor D. J.
Published: February 2009

Preoccupation with language is a notable feature of modern philosophy. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the influence of language on thought, and particularly its influence on philosophical thought, is a leading topic of philosophical discussion in this century. Every philosopher of any note, no matter what his general interests may be, has found it necessary to define his attitude to this problem. The attitude usually adopted consists of an admission that language does have a great influence on thought, and on philosophical thought in particular. More accurately, it is claimed that the structure and grammatical categories, and perhaps the vocabulary, natural to a particular language, determine the lines of thought and speculation open to any thinker who uses that language (Note 1).This determination is unimportant in many cases, because the results of our thinking are usually subject to check by appeal to empirical facts. In philosophical thinking, however, no such check is available by the very nature of the case. Accordingly, we cannot tell if the difficulty or apparent insolubility of a philosophical problem is due to the problem itself, or simply due to inadequacies in our language. In a different language, so it is suggested, the problem which is difficult for us might very easily be solved. Indeed, there might not then be any such problem, or its solution might be self-evident in this other language. This is the moderate attitude to the language difficulty in philosophy, and it is fair to say that it is almost universally adopted at the present day. In some circles it has acquired the prestige of an indisputable dogma.
The Perennial Philosophy
Authors: Inge W. R.
Published: February 2009

The phrase philosophia perennis is said to have been first used by Leibniz. It has been adopted and freely employed by the Catholic Neo-Thomists, for whom it means a development of the Aristotelianism, modified by strong Neoplatonic elements, which Arabian scholars transmitted to the first Renaissance in the West. It claims also to be a return to the early Christian philosophy of religion, a fusion of Hellenistic and Jewish thought, the latter itself a syncretistic religion with many Persian and other borrowings. The controversy, directed against various modern philosophies, has been conducted with great ability by such writers as Gilson, Maritain, Sheen, Watkin, Dawson and D'Arcy, whose books would perhaps have received more attention from independent thinkers, but for the suspicion which surrounds apparent attempts to revive the methods and inhibitions of the medieval schoolmen.

There has been a parallel movement in the Orthodox Eastern Church, represented in Russian by Frank, Bardyaeff, Solovioff and Lossky. These writers are more Platonic and more fearlessly mystical than the Thomists. Origen in the East has more weight than Augustine.
“The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” By Adam Smith, 1759
Authors: Bonar J.
Published: February 2009

To this, his first book, the author owed the opportunities of travel and leisure which enabled him to perfect his second, the Wealth of Nations, 1776. It has needed all the fame of the second to keep alive the memory of the first. The Moral Sentiments founded no school, and is usually passed over with the faint praise due to the author's reputation. Yet Burke welcomed its theory as “in all its essential parts just” (Annual Register, 1759, p. 484; Rae's Life of Adam Smith, p. 145); and it was treated by Lessing with respect, though not agreement, in the Laocoon, 1766 (ch. iv).
Freedom and Determinism
Authors: Laing B. M.
Published: February 2009

THE question which I am to raise for discussion is one which has long been debated by philosophers, and consequently I consider it doubtful whether anything very new can be said on the matter. But it may be profitable to review once more the present position of the controversy and to have in mind the reasons which at present make the question of interest and of importance.
The Basis of Politics: Aristotle and the Scientists
Authors: Barraclough G.
Published: February 2009

There is so much truth in the conception of the state as a natural organism and of man as a political animal, as commonly contrasted with the various theories of the state as an artificial formation based on contract, or implied contract, that Aristotle's proposition is rarely criticized from any other standpoint. When Aristotle said that man was a political animal, that is that political life was his nature, and consequently that the state, as the ultimate development of his nature, was a natural institution, or, as we should say, an organism, he was, we may say with a good deal of certainty, speaking in the light of this contrast. But his theory must be judged on its own merits, and not on the demerits of that which he was attacking. We may grant that the state is natural; but we may nevertheless mean by “natural” something other than Aristotle means. And if our conception of Nature is different from his, it will follow that our agreement about the state is one of words only.
The Necessity of Analytic Truths
Authors: Locke Don
Published: February 2009

The problem of necessity is fundamentally a problem of knowledge: how can we know not just that something is so but that it must be so, not just that a statement is true but that it must be true? The problem arises the moment we make two fairly familiar assumptions: that all knowledge comes, in the end, from experience; and that experience can tell us only that something is so and not that it must be so. From these it follows immediately that there can be no knowledge of necessary truths. Yet obviously we do have such knowledge: we know that bachelors must be unmarried and that the angles of a Euclidean triangle must total 180°. It seems equally obvious that we do not learn such facts from experience, from observing bachelors and triangles, so it seems clear which of the assumptions is mistaken. Whatever may be the success of Locke's attack on innate knowledge, it seems undeniable that we do have knowledge which does not come from experience. We do possess some a priori knowledge, viz. knowledge of necessary truths.
The Picture Theory of Meaning in the Tractatus as a Development of Moore's and Russell's Theories of Judgment
Authors: Hope V.
Published: February 2009

The so-called Picture Theory of Meaning of the Tractatus (‘the PT’, for short) offers interesting parallels with two earlier theories of judgment, given by Moore in Mind, 1899, and Russell in Philosophical Essays, 1910, and The Problems of Philosophy, 1912. Indeed, it may be a combination of them, although this is not entirely obvious, because it is not quite certain what the PT says about the constituents of elementary propositions (EPs) or about their logical character. A further limitation is imposed by the weakness of the Russellian concept of ‘order’ whose role is very like one of the roles of ‘logical form’ in the Tractatus.
Promising, Prescribing and Playing-Along
Authors: Holborow L. C.
Published: February 2009

Several recent attempts to isolate the fallacy in the view that I am committed to particular moral principles merely by describing a man as having promised seem to me to have erred through excess of zeal. The argument which commits the fallacy is at its most explicit in an article by Professor Searle, and the attempted refutations with which I am concerned fasten upon the first step in his ‘deduction’, which moves from

(1) Jones uttered the words ‘I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars’

to

(2) Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars

by way of the ‘fact about English usage’ which Searle states as:

(1a) Under certain conditions C anyone who utters the words (sentence) ‘I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars’ promises to pay Smith five dollars (p. 44).
True
Authors: Lucas J. R.
Published: February 2009

“Ich liebe dich 3” the swains in mountain valleys of Austria inscribe on their presents to those to whom they plight their troth. The pun is a rare one in German. Only in remote valleys does the word for ‘three’ rhyme with joy; and the word for ‘true’ is usually ‘wahr’ not ‘treu’ ‘Wahr’ is more propositional, less evaluative than our ‘true’. So too in Latin and the romance languages ‘verum’, ‘Vrai’ ‘vera’ ‘verdadero’ carry a lighter load of feeling. Only the Hebrews resembled us in giving their word for ‘true’ strong moral overtones, and using the same or some cognate word to praise him who had used no deceitfulness to his neighbour as to recommend some statement as being meet to be believed.
Sense-Data
Authors: Whiteley C. H.
Published: February 2009

When I began to study philosophy sense-data were in the fashion; everybody had some. Nowadays talking about sense-data, like distinguishing between “shall” and “will”, is apt to be regarded as an indication that one has stopped moving with the times. Before abandoning this old habit, I want to consider whether there may not after all be something in a doctrine adopted by so many leading philosophers in pre-war England.
McTaggart and the Neo-Positive Entropists
Authors: Shea William R.
Published: February 2009

John King-Farlow's ‘The Positive McTaggart on Time’ (Philosophy, 49, 1974, pp. 169–178) brings out extremely important likenesses between ‘abstract’ metaphysicians and ‘concrete’ philosophers of science. These striking similarities illustrate a perennial human quest for Something More Basic than Time, a quest which characterizes not only mystics who rejoice in contradictions but hard-headed philosophers who submit to the rigours of logic. King-Farlow is largely concerned with the McTaggart of 1908 and his motivation for writing ‘The Unreality of Time’. I should like to explore further the surprising bond between the Search for Something Deeper in the later McTaggart of The Nature of Existence and the writings on Time of Hans Reichenbach and Adolf Grünbaum. Reflection on this similarity should enable us better to evaluate the view that our vulgar, if practically useful, assertions about Time's Arrow must be reinterpreted by the wise in terms of chastened logical constructions out of statements about Something Deeper—logical constructions which are alleged, if chaste enough, to be eliminable.
What is Represented in Representative Government?
Authors: Handcock W. D.
Published: February 2009

It is an odd thing that after two and a half centuries' experience of representative government—if we take the 1688 Revolution as ourstarting point—we have still no very certain or coherent theory of what it represents. The easy-going eighteenth-century idea that their own sense of political responsibility and the ties of political sympathy uniting them to the people at large enabled representatives chosen from among the “natural” leaders of the nation adequately to fulfil their representative role, despite the meagre measure of choice exercised in their denomination; and the rather later notion that the function of a representative system was to reflect the class structure and dominant interests of the nation, have both failed to survive criticism at the hustings, and the spread of political consciousness associated with the rise of democracy. Modern ideas identify representative government with self-government, and insist on applying to it Colonel Rainboro's dictum that “the poorest he (or she) that is in England hath a life to live, as the richest he.” On the subject of what representative government represents there may nowadays be distinguished two views; what may be called the popular, or hustings view, and the academic theory, which, while different in form, preserves the same general character as the hustings view.

The hustings view is unqualified majoritarianism. Representative government is government by the will of the majority. Certain ideas underlying, or associated with this view may profitably be distinguished. The most important is that of individual right. Majoritarianism is no respecter of tradition, or birth, or inborn talents, or acquired experience; it is no respecter of persons at all, only a counter of them. In its view there is no species of authority that gives one person or class of persons the right to push others around; everyone, indeed, has a presumptive right not to be pushed around.
Is The Prelude a Philosophical Poem?
Authors: Gallie W. B.
Published: February 2009

Is The Prelude a philosophical poem? It is, of course, many things besides: it is an autobiography; it contains profound reflections on psychology, education and politics; and there are passages of an almost purely lyrical character. Does it also contain philosophical poetry?

On this question, the critics of Wordsworth are divided. Coleridge and Raleigh answer Yes; Arnold, Bradley, Dr. Leaves, from their different points of view, agree in answering No. I believe that the first answer is right, although it has usually been supported by the wrong reasons. I believe the second answer to be wrong, although many of the arguments that are supposed to lead to it are in themselves sound enough. Those who say that The Prelude is not a philosophical poem, usually mean that it does not offer a coherent system of philosophy—that it expresses an original outlook and a personal wisdom, but that the only systematic philosophy in it comes at second-hand from Hartley or Coleridge and contributes not at all to the poem. And this is largely true. But the mistake is, to identify philosophy with system, philosophizing with “a philosophy.” This is a mistake that has been repudiated again and again by many of the greatest philosophers, from Socrates and Plato to Locke and Kant and others.

I shall argue that The Prelude achieves philosophical poetry, because in it Wordsworth grapples with philosophical problems—problems which arise out of the story of his own early life—which are actually forced upon him by the poem itself; and because he tries to answer these problems in a way which would be possible only in poetry.
Welcome Threats and Coercive Offers
Authors: Lyons Daniel
Published: February 2009

In American legal journals over the last decade there were hundreds of pages of articles worrying over threats to justice and freedom arising from the power to withhold benefits. Government officials have tremendous discretion to offer or withhold foreign aid, ration-books, government contracts and jobs, welfare subsidies, public housing, tariff protection, academic grants, alien resident status, paroles, or exemption from conscription or combat, from arrest or prosecution or imprisonment. Right-wing economists have worried about welfare-state emphasis on administrative discretion rather than the rule of law. And left-wing economists have worried about the rich man's power to intimidate the poor man by threatening to cut off his productive work.
Economic Art and Human Welfare
Authors: Hobson John A.
Published: February 2009

While there have always been schools of religious and ethical thought favourable to poverty, or a simple life, the general opinion of mankind has always regarded the increasing wealth of an individual or a community as conducive to human happiness. Qualifications have commonly been attached to this judgment in recognition of a certain danger and deceitfulness of riches, especially when rapidly acquired and lavishly expended, but the presumption still stands that wealth in general conduces to well-being. The nature, degree or conditions of this correspondence have, however, received singularly little attention from those thinkers who have given closest study to economic processes. Many of the founders of economic science in this and other countries were manifestly concerned for the general welfare of their fellowmen, and were active workers in many fields of social reform. But, in formulating the concepts and laws of their science, they deemed it unnecessary to give any close or continuous thought to the relations between economic wealth and human welfare. This was due, partly, no doubt to the natural desire to make the subject-matter and the treatment of a new science as definitely concrete and measurable as possible. It was this desire that made monetary valuation paramount in all economic estimates.
Physical Agencies and the Divine Persuasion
Authors: Bodkin Maud
Published: February 2009

The intention of this article is to examine the concept of the Divine persuasion as presented within the system of Dr. A. N. Whitehead. An attempt will be made to indicate the distinctive value of the concept in relation to certain relevant aspects of the religious thought of our time.
Symbol and Myth
Authors: Altmann Alexander
Published: February 2009

There are two ways in which Symbol and Myth are related to each other. Firstly, a certain class of symbols represents the remnant of myths. Such figures as, e.g. the Dragon, Leviathan, etc., which we find in Biblical literature, are not used in the full sense of the underlying mythological conception, but in a metaphorical sense. They are chosen by the author because of their mythical associations, but not in their mythical meaning. Ametaphor of this kind is, as H. J. D. Astley put it, “broken-down mythology.” There are a great many symbols both in poetry and mysticism which must be understood as the relics of mythical thought. We owe a great deal to ethnology for having thrown light on this relation. The microcosm-macrocosm symbolism, for instance, becomes more intelligible if we consider that in primitive mythology the world emerged from the body of primordial man. The gifts to the dead appear in later forms of sacrificial cults as purely symbolical, but there is no doubt that originally they were intended for the real use of the dead. In these and in numerous other cases the symbol has only a reduced value as compared with the original-myth from which it is borrowed. It is not self-evident, but relies on the mythical conception, without, however, taking it seriously. It is “merely” a symbol, and has no truth of its own.
What Would Happen if Everybody Acted like Me?
Authors: Ewing A. C.
Published: February 2009

In this paper I shall use terms such as “intrinsically good” which may be deemed old fashioned by many readers and which certainly to my own mind presuppose an objective non-naturalistic theory of ethics. I still hold such a theory and I have not mastered the new jargon by which a sort of higher synthesis between that and other theories is supposed to have been effected, but I do not think that such a view as mine of ethics in general is necessarily presupposed if one is to understand or even agree with the contentions of my article. These relate to a specific problem as to certain ethical actions, which will arise on any view that admits the possibility of giving any sort of legitimate reasons for ethical judgments, as we all do in practice. After all a naturalist can easily translate “intrinsically good” into his own terms, say, valued for its own sake by most people who experience it, and there will still be a question as to what is intrinsically and what is merely instrumentally good and other questions as to what is the logical nature of certain arguments in ethics.
Berkeley and Ryle: Some Comparisons
Authors: Miles T. R.
Published: February 2009

This paper is divided into two sections. The first aims at showing in a general way that the programme and methods of Berkeley and Professor Ryle are to a large extent similar. The second deals with one problem only. It is an attempt to provide interpretation and commentary on Berkeley's attack on “absolute existence” and on Ryle's attack (which comes to the same thing) on the view that there can be different “kinds of existence,” “kinds of status,” or a number of different “worlds.”
Plato as Poet: a Critical Interpretation
Authors: Hartland-Swann John
Published: February 2009

In my previous paper I endeavoured to illustrate the different ways in which Plato used poetry for philosophical purposes, and it now remains to attempt a final appraisal of the success or failure of Plato considered specifically as a poetic philosopher. But before I embark on what will prove a somewhat complicated task it is necessary for me to refer briefly to certain theories concerning Plato's use of myth, since they vitally affect (though in different ways) the philosophical significance of his poetic method—and it is this philosophical significance which is our principal problem in any final evaluation.
The Logical Basis and Structure of Religious Belief
Authors: Walker Leslie J.
Published: February 2009

Belief is the affirmation of reality, but not all affirmations of reality are beliefs, for if we have, or have had, perceptual experience of a reality, we do not say, “I believe,” but “I see, hear, perceive, or remember.” Similarly, of the realities involved in our inner experience, we say, “What I had in mind, desired, hoped, or felt was…” or else say, more simply, “I was much moved, was in pain, felt affection or hatred, longed for, was thinking about, knew.” On the other hand, there are realities of the perceptual order in which we may express belief, as when we say, “I believe that New Zealand exists, that nitrogen is a gas, that the earth is round, that William the Conqueror crossed the Channel in 1066, that Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again.” The realities in which we thus express belief are not realities which we ourselves have observed, but are such that they could have been observed by a person appropriately situated in time and in place. Hence in this case it is not the nature of the realities affirmed that differentiates belief from experience of either the perceptual or the inner type. The difference lies elsewhere. When we affirm a reality of which we ourselves have, or have had, perceptual experience, it is the reality itself, present to our perceiving mind, which alike determines the content of our affirmation and justifies us in making it.
Meaning and Verifiability
Authors: Barnes W. H. F.
Published: February 2009

It is a widely held doctrine at the moment that metaphysical propositions are meaningless, are, in fact, not genuine propositions at all. This doctrine is supported by the contention that only propositions which are verifiable are significant: and it is held that metaphysical propositions do not fulfil this condition, and are consequently pseudo-propositions. Those who hold this view divide propositions into three classes: (I) Tautologies; which are analytic, certain, and are guaranteed by the principle of contradiction. (2) Factually significant propositions; which are synthetic, hypothetical, and are capable of empirical verification. (3) Pseudopropositions, which only appear to be propositions and are, in reality, meaningless nonsense.
Analysis of Some Ethical Concepts
Authors: Broad. C. D.
Published: February 2009

In this paper I propose to take certain notions which we constantly use in our judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, and to analyse them so far as I can and bring out their connexions with each other. The subject is, of course, rather a hackneyed one; but I cannot help thinking that there still remains a good deal which may profitably be said about it. I do not suppose for a moment that my analysis is adequate, and it may well be in part positively mistaken. But I am inclined to think that it may be useful as a beginning of a more adequate and more correct analysis.
Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic
Authors: Crock Senator B.
Published: February 2009

The dominant feature of eighteenth-century aesthetic is the inquiry and discussion concerning the theory of “taste.” There is material or bibliographical evidence of this in the rapid sequence of treatises, essays, inquiries, observations, and controversies on this subject, extending from the close of the seventeenth to the last years of the eighteenth century, and bearing the names, in France, of Dacier, Bellegarde, Bouhours, Rollin, Seran de la Tour, Trublet, Formey, Bitaubé, Marmontel, and, still more eminent, of Montesquieu, Voltaire, d’Alembert; in England, of Addison, Hume, Gerard, Home, Burke, Priestley, Blair, Beattie, Percival, Reid, Alison; in Italy, of Muratori, Calepio, Pagano, Corniani; in Germany, of Thomasius, J. U. König, Bodmer, A. von Schlegel, Wegelin, Heyne, Herz, Eberhard, J. C. König, and, by German influence in Hungary, Szardahely; and, greatest of all, Immanuel Kant, whoseCritique of Judgmentconsists in the main of a critique of the aesthetic judgment of taste.
Change
Authors: Mure G. R. G.
Published: February 2009

§ 1. Of all the subjects which for well over two thousand years have remained the more or less constant topics of philosophical discussion, I can think of none which has not at some time by some philosopher been dismissed as a nonentity or an illusion. The history of philosophy seems to show that we cannot begin fairly to estimate the nature of any element in the universe until we have steadily contemplated a universe from which that element has been hypothetically eliminated.
The Categorical Imperative and the Golden Rule
Authors: Hirst E. W.
Published: February 2009

Is the assimilation of these two formulations of the moral principle by Kant and some of his expositors justified?

In the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason Kant claims that his view of morality agrees with the ancient command that man should love his neighbour as himself. Also in the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals he regards the Golden Rule as a deduction, though with several limitations, from the second version of the Categorical Imperative.
Moralists and Gamesmen
Authors: Lucas J. R.
Published: February 2009

Professor Braithwaite’s inaugural lecture, here published in book form,1 is a trial run at a Platonic definition of the concept of dianemetic justice; or, as he himself would put it, a rational reconstruction of the concept “sensible-prudent-and-fair”. Aristotle left it that dianemetic justice was an equality and a matter of ratios. A just distribution of őoα µεριστ? τoς κoινωνoσι τς πoλιτείαѕ2 (Greek for “Co-operators’ Surplus”) was one in which each had an equitable share, no one having either more or less than he should. Professor Braithwaite goes further and replaces Aristotle’s ordered scale of the-more-and-the-less in which only imprecise and unhelpful answers could be given, by a numerical scale in which he can frame the question “Exactly how much is a fair share?” and propound his s own solution.
Mr. J. Kemp and æSthetic Judgments
Authors: Smith Constance I. , Kemp J.
Published: February 2009

I agree with most of Mr. Kemp's paper, “Generalization in the Philosophy of Art” (Philosophy, XXXIII, 1958) but on his position at one point I should like briefly to comment.
Language, Meaning and God
Authors: MacKay D. M.
Published: February 2009

The burden of the Christian religion is not primarily that certain attitudes are desirable nor that certain practices are comfortable, but that certain things are true. Certain facts have to be faced, certain claims recognized. Questions of the meaningfulness and truth-status of religious language are thus central to Christian apologetic. However much emphasis we give to the vital link between true belief and action - and for the Bible the two are inseparable - there is no escaping the obligation to enquire into the meaning and truth of Christian affirmations as well as their personal or social effectiveness.
Truth and the “Religious Language-Game”
Authors: Sherry Patrick
Published: February 2009

The publication of two new books by Professor D.Z. Phillips (2) provides a suitable opportunity to consider some recent attempts to apply Wittgenstein's philosophy to religious issues. I shall concentrate mainly on Phillips' work, with particular reference to his treatment of the question of religious truth, but I shall also discuss some other writers and topics.
Self-evidence and Matter of Fact
Authors: Stout G. F.
Published: February 2009

The distinction tentatively drawn by Mr. Porteous at the last meeting of the Society between logical and causal necessity depends on the more general distinction between what is known or capable of being known as self-evident and what is known only as matter of fact. That there are three cows in a field is a matter of fact. That 1 + 2 = 3 is self-evident and necessarily true (if it is true at all). So soon as the question is raised it is seen that there can be no alternative to its being true—otherwise it is not self-evident. But there is no necessity that a field should have cows in it, or that if it has they should be just three in number. Similarly, it does not seem self-evident that an unsupported stone must fall to the ground.
Time, Space and Reality
Authors: Green Peter
Published: February 2009

Some time ago I had a shock. I was reading, in the Mathematical Gazette for March 1931, Sir A. S. Eddington's presidential address to the Mathematical Association in 1930. And quite suddenly I came on the statement that the number of protons in the universe is either 7 or 14 with 78 noughts after it. My breath was taken away. Readers of R. L. Stevenson's story, Providence and the Guitar, will remember the maiden lady who, after hearing what the Commissary said when he was woken up in the night, felt her maiden modesty so outraged that she doubted if she ranked any longer as a maiden lady. I felt just like that. I felt that my philosophic modesty had been so outraged that I doubted if I ranked any longer as a humble student of philosophy. Sir Arthur has certainly not counted them. Then how in the world does he know that they are what he says they are?
Mechanism, Purpose and the New Freedom
Authors: McDougall William
Published: February 2009

The problem of the relation between mechanism and purpose is of profound theoretical interest. It is the most fundamental of the great perennially disputed problems. And, unlike some other of the great unsolved problems, it is also of far-reaching and profound practical importance. The kind of answer we give to the question affects in a multitude of ways the conduct of our lives, the form and working of all our institutions, our science, our law, our politics, our economics, our morals, our religion.
Sir Arthur Eddington and the Physical World
Authors: Stace W. T.
Published: February 2009

Sir arthur edington's brilliantly phrased article, “Physics and Philosophy,” which appeared in the January 1933 issue of Philosophy, seems to me to contain a number of things which are calculated to be provocative to the mere philosopher. And I propose in this article to discuss what appears to be one of the most important of these provocative things, namely, Sir Arthur's view of the status of the physical world.
Are Ninian Smart's Temptations Irresistible?
Authors: Flew Antony
Published: February 2009

Mr Ninian Smart distinguishes what he calls the Utopia Thesis from the Compatibility Thesis. The latter he formulates as the contention: ‘that causal determinism (i.e. the claim that all human actions are the results of prior causes) is compatible with free will.’ The former is ‘the assertion that God could have created men wholly good’. Smart clearly has his doubts about the truth of this Compatibility Thesis. But his sole aim in ‘Omnipotence, Evil and Supermen’ is to try to show ‘that the Utopia Thesis does not follow from the Compatibility Thesis, despite appearances.’
German Philosophy
Authors: Heinemann F. H.
Published: February 2009

Bridging the gulf between East and West, between developed and underdeveloped countries, between white and coloured races, between the six and the seven, has become a cluster of urgent political problems which have to be solved if disaster is to be avoided. All these problems have ideological implications since the antagonisms are based on different beliefs, ideas, prejudices, theories, and philosophies. Bridging the gap between antagonistic philosophies may strike the politician as being of minor importance, but may, nevertheless, in certain cases be a considerable help.
The Case for Emergent Evolution
Authors: Morgan C. Lloyd
Published: February 2009

The word “emergent” was suggested by George Henry Lewes for specialized use in contradistinction to “resultant.” Little came of the suggestion, so far as I know, for some forty years.

All that Lewes had to say on the matter is comprised within half a dozen, or at most eleven, pages, at the close of a long-winded, but at that time not negligible, discussion of Force and Cause, and is preceded by a section on Hume's Theory of Causation. This leads up to the statement: ‘There are two classes of effects markedly distinguishable as resultants and enter gents.’ Even here there was nothing new save in the adoption and adaptation of the word ‘emergent’ in place, let us say, of John Stuart Mill's ‘heteropathic effects.’
The One and the Many
Authors: Joad C. E. M.
Published: February 2009

The belief that the universe is fundamentally a unity, that there is, in other words, some fundamental principle from which all the variety of nature and experience can be derived, has been entertained in some form or another by the majority of philosophers. It is also the presupposition of most religions. If we hold that the universe is really one, or really a unity, it will follow that there is a distinction between reality and appearance. For the universe certainly appears as a plurality; it certainly seems, that is to say, that there are many things in the universe, chairs and tables and people and numbers and thoughts about them, which are really different one from another. If, then, the universe is really one, this appearance of plurality will be in some sense an illusory appearance, and it will be necessary to explain how this illusory appearance arises.
Philosophy in Germany
Authors: Waterhouse E. S.
Published: February 2009

Summary: In this survey I first consider two introductory books—the one an introduction to the theory of knowledge, the other an introduction to log—by August Messer and Arthur Drews respectively. I then proceed to E. v. Aster's very interesting History of English Philosophy, to a phenomenological study by Arnold Metzger, and to a discussion of pluralism monism, and dualism, by Boris Jakowenko. I conclude with notices o important new editions of Hegel, Franz Brentano, and Cusanus, and with a reference to the death of Max Scheler.
Emotion, Feeling and Religion
Authors: Flower J. Cyril
Published: February 2009

I do not propose to attempt in this article to make any exact or exhaustive definition of religion, but rather to call attention to one of its outstanding psychological characteristics. At the outset, then, I take it for granted that religion is primarily a feeling experience. We make use of the term ‘religion,’ it is true, for many things in addition to immediate feeling experiences, and it is inevitable that we should do so. But it will be well to bear in mind that when we describe Buddhism or Christianity (as a system of beliefs and practices) as ‘a religion’ we are using the term in a secondary fashion. A man may accept the tenets, and to some extent practise the commandments, of a religion in this sense without being religious.
The Ethics of Punishment
Authors: Ross W. D.
Published: February 2009

The question of punishment is one which has always interested and usually puzzled moralists, and which forms a crucial example for the testing of moral theories. A utilitarian theory, whether of the hedonistic or of the ‘ ideal ’ kind, if it justifies punishment at all, is bound to justify it solely on the ground of the effects it produces. The suffering of pain by the person who is punished is thought to be in itself a bad thing, and the bringing of this bad thing into the world is held to need justification, and to receive it only from the fact that the effects are likely to be so much better than those that would follow from his non-punishment as to outweigh the evil of the pain.
Philosophy of Social Life: III. Culture and Institutions
Authors: Burns C. Delisle
Published: February 2009

Poppies in a field of corn may annoy a farmer and rejoice an artist. Clearly they are not in their right place, if the standard of judgment be immediate utility; but it is better that they should be accidentally there than nowhere at all to be found. The political organization of social life and, still more obviously, the economic, does not promote devotion to other purposes than those which appear to be practical in the eyes of men who cannot see very well. To suppose, for example, that beauty or truth is not useful is the result of philosophical nearsightedness. But there are some men, women, and children who are moved deeply by beauty and the divine whose emotion is not easily understood in political terms and is altogether unintelligible in terms of exchange-value.
Mind and Body
Authors: Joad C. E. M.
Published: February 2009

I propose in this article to consider the question of the relation between mind and body. This question raises some of the most difficult issues in philosophy and constitutes the main problem of psychology.
Moral Values
Authors: Stocks J. L.
Published: February 2009

A study of moral values is a study of the values relevant to character and conduct. Since conduct consists of actions (including refusals to act) and character is exhibited in and inferred from actions, the phrase “values relevant to actions” would perhaps suffice. The term “values” needs little amplification. But it is necessary to observe that there are on the face of it two sets of values relevant to actions, namely (1) those which actions themselves possess, so that we differentiate them as good and bad actions—a differentiation which may be made by a spectator in regard to a process in which he himself takes no part; (2) those asserted implicitly by an agent in his action considered as an interference with the course of events. In the most obvious and typical cases this second set of values attach themselves, not to actions, but to
the environment of action as modifiable by it; in particular, to states or events which action may help to maintain or bring about. Thus the act of tidying a room implies a preference under the given circumstances for a tidy rather than an untidy room.
An Outline of Genetic Psychology According to the Theory of Inherited Mind
Authors: Rattray R. F.
Published: February 2009

One of the great difficulties in effecting a synthesis of experience is the contradiction of the apparently mechanical character of the physical universe on the one hand, and the sense of freedom we associate with life on the other. In our own persons, we are told by medical science, or some of it, we are governed by physiological laws which are mechanical, as distinct from vital, in their nature. The best reconciliation of these with freedom, in the writer's opinion, is the philosophy of Samuel Butler. In studying freedom as experienced by human beings Butler pointed out that a large number of practices which are apparently mechanical are really habits that have become stereotyped, and he drew attention to the fact that human actions can be classified as follows:—
Philosophical Survey
Authors: Keeling S. V.
Published: February 2009

There are, I imagine, five considerations that will serve as a point d'appui to the future historian of our century's philosophy, aiding him to interpret with fair adequacy the working faith and working postulates of one large and influential group of present thinkers. The members of this group, he will point out, however much they differ in other respects, accept in common and act upon this five-fold assumption, namely, that progress in philosophy depends upon (i) it abandoning its traditional claim to being systematic and final, in favour of “more modest” attempts at the piecemeal solution of particular problems; (ii) these piecemeal attempts being conceived as essentially co-operative undertakings, calling for assistance from men of science no less than from philosophers, so that (iii) the character of philosophical research is broadly not very dissimilar to that of scientific research; that this, in turn, necessitates (iv) an abandonment of the claim to, and the search for, “necessary” and certain knowledge, and an acceptance of knowledge that is probable as rationally sufficing; from all of which it follows, lastly, as something very like a corollary, that (v) philosophers can deal profitably only with “hypothetical questions,” seeking to discover, from certain things provisionally taken as true, what other things may or must also be true. It is by these methodological convictions, by some declared, by others not, that much of the best work in Britain and America during this first third of our century has been inspired.
Definition of Value
Authors: Osborne H.
Published: February 2009

Any attempt to construct a philosophy of Value must presuppose some general understanding of what Value is. And so it might seem natural to begin with a precise definition of the concept we are about to investigate. What, we might ask ourselves, is the characteristic peculiar to all those situations in the description of which we are accustomed to use the word “value” or its cognate terms, and distinguishing them as a class from all those situations to which we do not apply the word? Proceeding empirically in this way, from an inspection of the “field of application” of the word “value” we might reasonably hope to discover a “highest common factor” of all the data, which would be the required definition of the concept “Value.” But we should be met at the outset by radical differences of opinion about the scope of the relevant data.
Tercentenary of Spinoza's Birth: Spinoza's Synoptic Vision
Authors: Wolf A.
Published: February 2009

A System of philosophy, a comprehensive world-view, is a work of art, although it is also more than that. Already Plato described the philosopher as a poet, and Plato himself was a great poet as well as a great philosopher. In recent years Professor Alexander has explained, on various occasions, that there is artistry involved in all scientific and philosophic thought. They demand creative intellectual construction of a high order. In so far as this is true, as I believe it is, it should be possible, sometimes at least, to contemplate a great system of philosophy as a work of art, to enjoy it in a spirit of detachment, above the noise and the tumult of conflicting personal convictions.It is more or less in this spirit that I propose on this occasion to deal with some of the fundamental ideas of Spinoza. That, I believe, is in accordance with his own wishes. He wanted his works to be published anonymously, so that his philosophy might be considered impersonally, entirely on its own merits. Such a method of treatment may in any case be most suitable on this occasion when, in spite of probably great divergences in our individual views, we have come together to do honour to his memory. This kind of personal tribute may be contrary to his own wishes. But we owe it to ourselves, and to mankind at large, to keep alive the remembrance of one of the greatest masters of the art of high thinking and plain living.
On the Conflict Between Religion and Science
Authors: Lodge Oliver
Published: February 2009

It is often said that there can be no conflict between the two great departments of human interest, called Religion and Science, because they deal with different themes in totally different ways, and therefore never overlap, so that there is no possibility of a fight—the kind of thing that used to be said about Nations before 1914. But this is an exaggeration; no human being can always be satisfied with any one department of knowledge; there are times when he must seek a more comprehensive view. The alternative is to keep your thoughts from straying out of the region to which you are attending, and concentrate on one side only at a time. This has been the practice of many good people, and it is certainly one way of avoiding conflict.But it is not a philosophic or permanently satisfying way. Between the two great regions there is a frontier, and there squabbles and conflicts may occur, unless there be some way of reconciling the frontier inhabitants of the two regions. Our senses tell us that there is a material world full of things which we can investigate; our instincts and intuitions tell us that there is a mental and spiritual world where also we can feel at home. But the object of this article is to show that there is also an etheric or metetheral world, which spreads over both the other regions, and may be the means of reconciling them or of enabling us to attend to either or both without dislocation or shock.
Belief
Authors: Langley G. H.
Published: February 2009

Much has recently been written on the subject of “belief,” but since the mental attitude indicated by this term is so pervasive and important it may be useful again to reflect upon its nature and significance.
Croce's Theory of Economic Action
Authors: De Burgh W. G.
Published: February 2009

While reflecting recently on what the historian means by greatness, I was led to examine Croce's theory of economic action. It seemed to promise an answer to the troublesome problem of the relationship between greatness and moral goodness. How those hopes were disappointed will be explained presently, but Croce's theory must first be considered on its merits. I shall confine the discussion as far as possible to Croce's philosophy of the practical, avoiding any detailed reference, e.g., to the somewhat artificial parallelism within the dialectic of the spirit between the forms of theoretical and those of practical activity. Since, however, Croce teaches—and his practice is in accordance with his teaching—that any severance of part from whole does violence to philosophy, it will be necessary to touch on certain larger questions before we close.
A Pluralistic View of History
Authors: Coates Adrian
Published: February 2009

History presents us with a unity which is also a plurality. Both materialism and idealism subordinate the plurality to the unity, interpreting the particular either in terms of racial and social laws, or in terms of a unitary Idea or Spirit; and both, when developed to their logical conclusion, lead to a denial of significance to individual personality. According to the opposite point of view ‘objective spirit’ and economic ‘laws’ are equally abstractions of an individual’s mind, whose existence as a separately willing and experiencing self is prior and irresolvable. The problem is then to account for the unity of history in terms of individuals who are historically related but essentially (or existentially) separate.