bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Anaxagoras and the Theory of Everything
Authors: Curd Patricia
Published: September 2009

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae proposed a theory of everything. Like other Presocratics, Anaxagoras addressed topics that could now be placed outside the sphere of philosophical inquiry: not only did he explore metaphysics and the nature of human understanding but he also offered explanations in physics, meteorology, astronomy, physiology, and biology. His aim seems to have been to explain as completely as possible the world in which human beings live, and one's knowledge of that world; thus he seeks to investigate the universe from top to bottom. This article explores Anaxagoras's world from its basic foundations. It undertakes to show the connections among the metaphysical, epistemological, and cosmological parts of Anaxagoras's theory. The discovery and publication of new material has also enhanced the understanding of Presocratic thought. A spectacular example is the new material from Empedocles of Acragas that has become available.
Atomism's Eleatic Roots
Authors: Sedley David
Published: September 2009

Presocratic atomism was one of the most influential of the early theories: both Plato and Aristotle thought of it as a major competing theory, and it was an important source for post-Aristotelian Hellenistic theories. It has been commonplace that the atomism developed first by Leucippus of Abdera and then by Democritus of Abdera was a reaction to the Eleatic arguments of Zeno and Melissus, but the details of that influence have sometimes seemed rather hazy. This article brings them into sharper focus. This article considers the Eleatic foundations of atomism, especially the question of the importance of Zeno and Melissus for Democritus. By concentrating on some of the less-studied aspects of atomism and especially of the development of the concept of the unlimited into the notion of the infinite, it furthers the understanding of not only the development of early atomism but also the Eleatics Zeno and Melissus.
Speculating about Diogenes of Apollonia
Authors: Laks André
Published: September 2009

This article takes up Diogenes again, investigating some of the reasons Diogenes has been unappreciated, and making a case for Diogenes' mind-based teleology as a significant philosophical contribution. The sophists, too, have suffered from the charge, which goes back to Plato, of not being “real” philosophers. Diogenes did not bother himself with, or was not interested in, showing in what sense the world is organized in the best possible manner; this looked to him as something that happened as a matter of course. What did interest him, on the other hand, was to show what the thing that exercised intelligence is. From this point of view, the emphasis is definitely not on teleology, but rather on noetics. Here, primary textual evidence is available, for the fragments, as well as Simplicius's presentation of them, definitely support the view that the point of Diogenes' argumentation was to show that intelligence is air's.
The Role of Medicine in the Formation of Early Greek Thought
Authors: Eijk Philip van der
Published: September 2009

The philosophical aspects of Greek medicine are now more widely appreciated, not only by historians of science and medicine but also by students of philosophy in a more narrow sense. There has also been a greater appreciation of the fact that Greek medical writers not only reflect a derivative awareness of developments in philosophy but that they also actively contributed to the formation of philosophical thought more strictly defined, for instance by developing concepts and methodologies for the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. Yet the consequences of this for a renewed study of the formation of Greek philosophy have yet to be drawn; and disciplinary boundaries between historians of medicine on the one hand and philosophers and historians of philosophy on the other still pose obstacles to an integrated account of Greek thought that takes on board the contributions by the medical writers. Some preliminary remarks may therefore be in order.
Presocratic Cosmologies
Authors: Wright M. R.
Published: September 2009

This article explores early Greeks' cosmological speculation, showing how they explored the possibility of a “theory of everything” and human understanding of the cosmos. In the exposition of competitive cosmologies, there are three questions still unresolved: the form of most of the matter in the universe is not known; the process of beginning of the universe is not known; and whether the universe is finite or infinite is also not known. Presocratic solutions to these problems, still perplexing to the contemporaries, are tackled in this article, with the addition of a note on what is called the anthropic principle, which addresses the place of human life and human observation in the whole.
Buddhism
Authors: Heim Maria
Published: September 2009

Buddhism deals directly with the emotions as a chief concern of its doctrine and practice. The Buddha's core teaching of the Four Noble Truths begins with an emotional truth, that is, that life inevitably involves sorrow, suffering, and grief. Given their foundational concern with human vulnerability to suffering, it is not surprising that Buddhist traditions developed various systems of knowledge that explore human feeling with great subtlety, and advanced certain technologies to redress the pain in our emotional experience. In the various languages used by Buddhists, however, there is no term that corresponds exactly to the generic category “emotion,” and thus emotion as such is not theorized in Buddhist thought. This article reflects on how Buddhist thinkers have shaped human experience in distinctive ways through their analysis of affective life. It first discusses the Abhidhamma texts as the most systematic rendering of early Buddhist treatments of psychology. It then considers meditation techniques and their work with mental processes and examines the nuances of friendship and the social nature of other emotions.
Islam
Authors: Gade Anna M.
Published: September 2009

In the Islamic sciences, the most authoritative sources for Muslim thought and practice are the text of the Qur'an, the normative model of the Prophet Muhammad, and interrelated frameworks of jurisprudence and ethics. These have been applied, studied, and adopted by Muslims since the earliest development of the religious sciences in Islam. Each of these types of sources highlights emotions as a means of access to an ethical ideal. In both the ritual and social-transactional “branches” of Islamic law, the sunnah is the most authoritative guide for normative conduct after the Qur'an. This is the model of the Prophet Muhammad, and it is a legal as well as a pious category. It is known through hadith reports, which relate the expressive behavior of the Prophet in the form of his sayings, actions, and tacit approval or disapproval. Islamic ethics provides emotional comportment with added normative characteristics. This article examines emotion in Islam, focusing on the cultivation and expression of sentiment, aesthetics, and affect and performance in global systems.
Japanese Religions
Authors: Ebersole Gary L.
Published: September 2009

The topic of emotions in Japanese religions is a complicated one. Multiple religious traditions, each with its own privileged set of emotions or spiritual states, have taken root in the Japanese archipelago. These traditions include Shinto, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity, and numerous so-called new religions from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition, the historical record in Japan covers over 1,300 years, during which tremendous changes in these religions occurred, not least in terms of the emotional states that were considered to be desirable and auspicious or undesirable and inauspicious. The primary texts for any study of religious emotions in ancient Japan are the Kojiki (712), the Nihon shoki (720), and the Man'yōshū. This article also examines sources for the study of emotion in Japanese religions during the medieval period and provides a general overview of the newly founded religious groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Japan, focusing on a single aspect of the work of one scholar, Helen Hardacre.
Ritual
Authors: Klassen Pamela E.
Published: September 2009

This essay discusses politically motivated contests over the authenticity of ritualized emotion, such as weeping or visionary bliss, which can be contests internal to a community or between different communities, as in the context of charges of appropriation across traditions. It also examines scholarly debates over cognition and culture, or the relative importance of neurophysiological versus social and cultural influences on the origin, function, and meaning of ritual. It argues that the study of ritual and emotion needs to attend to embodiment and physicality, as well as to the social, historical, and cultural networks within which ritualized emotions “make sense.” But first it looks at various definitions of ritual before commenting on crocodile tears and the authenticity of ritual emotion.
Gender
Authors: Raphael Melissa
Published: September 2009

Social class or ethnicity in a given religion, as much as gender, can be the factor which inhibits or permits the release of religious emotion. Accordingly, whether or not women and men's emotional expression is either esteemed or denigrated by their religious communities is multiply determined. This essay argues that male-dominated religions tend to regulate, transcend, and thereby “masculinize” emotion by its accommodation in the sublime: in the narrative, ritual, dogmatic, and ethical scheme articulated by, and primarily for, men. Where emotion cannot be thus accommodated, male religious discourse often reduces “natural,”, “private” emotion to a function of sexual desire. This essay also discusses subversion, power, and female religious emotion. It concludes with a brief account of the religious feminist reclamation of the spiritually and politically transformative power of religious emotion.
Music
Authors: Brown Frank Burch
Published: September 2009

Music has often been regarded as the most directly emotional of the arts and the art most intimately involved with religious and spiritual life. In the endeavor to understand music's relation to emotion and religion, a variety of approaches and disciplines are relevant. There are, for example, scientific and psychological studies that can yield insight into the character of musical and emotional response, and of music's access to the affective life. Thus, multiple disciplines are pertinent, from musicology (including ethnomusicology) and history to philosophy, psychology, and various branches of religious studies, particularly theology and comparative religions. This essay deals with historical perspectives, major theories, and current issues regarding music, emotion, and religion. It begins by considering classic and exceptionally enduring images and ideas of music, including the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus. It then considers musical ethics and metaphysics in the West from antiquity through the Renaissance. The essay also examines remaining issues and unresolved tensions about music, emotion, and religion.
Ecstasy
Authors: Malinar Angelika , Basu Helene
Published: September 2009

Among the many emotions that may be evoked and sought after in religious practice, ecstasy is an emotional state reserved by definition for extraordinary occasions and fields of performance and discourse. Religious ecstasy is not only expressed in poetic language using erotic metaphors or at least metaphors of desire but also evoked in the context of textual recitations and musical performances. This inclusion of erotic and aesthetic aspects can be regarded as enhancing the potential attraction of this emotion for those who practice a religion. On the other hand, this is also one reason why the guardians of religious doctrines and ethics have tended to regard ecstatic practices with skepticism. This essay discusses ecstasy and religion, focusing on possession and shamanism, ecstasy as an emotional state, and the silent ecstasy of meditation. It also examines ecstasy as the embodiment of religious emotions in rituals such as the Caitanya tradition of the Hindus and the Rafa'i brotherhood of the Sufis.
Terror
Authors: Whitehouse Harvey
Published: September 2009

This article examines ritual ordeals that inspire terror regardless of the participants' preexisting beliefs. In such traditions, the relationship between belief and emotion is more or less the converse of that entailed by fears of supernatural punishment. Fear is a major part of the psychological processes that give rise to the gradual formation of mystical knowledge. Focusing on terrifying rituals has the advantage of picking out a generalizable feature of religion—not a feature of all religions, to be sure, but a “mode of religiosity” that is probably as ancient as our species and is still found in every corner of the globe. Given the shocking nature of the rituals in question, it is not unreasonable to refer to these practices as “rites of terror.” Two strategies, broadly speaking, have been developed in an attempt to understand the nature and origins of rites of terror. The first strategy is sociological in orientation, while the second is a psychological one. This article also discusses the rituals, memories, and motivations associated with rites of terror.
Kierkegaard
Authors: Kangas David
Published: September 2009

This essay explores the intersection of religion and emotion in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). Emotions—or, more generally, affectivity—play a central role in Kierkegaard's analyses of human existence. Coming after German idealism and Romanticism, and giving extraordinary new life to the heritage of pietism, Kierkegaard finds in the affective life of human beings the key disclosures concerning our being-in-the-world. In addition, Kierkegaardian “religion” takes shape in terms of certain affects and virtues that emerge in face of such existential disclosures. This essay examines how Kierkegaard frames the problem of emotion in terms of his understanding of selfhood. In particular, it looks at the way Kierkegaard's phenomenology challenges an understanding that links emotions to judgments (whether cognitive or evaluative). The latter understanding, an inheritance of Aristotle, depends on a classical ontology that privileges determination, measure, presence, and intentionality. For the “classical” tradition, emotions offer thematic content about the world, guide moral reasoning and decision-making, predispose one toward certain virtues or vices, and can be altered by a resolution toward right thinking.
Emotions Research and Religious Experience
Authors: Roberts Robert C.
Published: September 2009

Inquiry aims at information, understanding, and insight. Research is inquiry that is methodologically self-conscious, systematic, and sustained, and focused on particular well-formulated questions. As such, research strategies are highly specific to subject matter. This article clarifies the concept of research into religious emotions and presents examples that illustrate the ways religious emotions can be investigated. It proposes a conception of research in this field and comments on the value and limits of the various kinds of research and their relations to one another. In addition to emotions, objects of research include behavior, physiological emotions, culture and history, and normative religious emotions.
Population Thinking
Authors: Ariew André
Published: September 2009

According to Ernst Mayr, population thinking is a metaphysical theory. Mayr's essentialism, amounts to the view that types, including conceptual categories, are real while individual variation is illusionary. In contrast, population thinking entails the opposite view: Types are not real in nature, only individuals exist. According to Sober, the explanatory goal for essentialists is to find an underlying order that unites and underlies the variation one sees in nature. Population thinking as a methodological doctrine states that regularities that occur in populations such as extinction, speciation, and adaptation emerge from the collective activities of individuals. Such population phenomena were unknown until new statistical measures introduced by Laplace provided the proper resolution to detect population changes. There are two types of population thinkers, statisticians, and force theorists. Malthus and Darwin were force theorists.
Evolvability
Authors: Sansom Roger
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on evolvability. Richard Dawkins coined the term evolvability. The metaphysics of evolvability involves mutation and adaptation. It is improved by modularity. A “modular system” is one that is composed of relatively independent parts. The dynamics of evolvability involves selection for evolvability of lineages, by contrasting it with the selection for a trait value for adaptivity of an organism. A new kind of selective explanation for evolvability is the use of Hsp90 which improves organism fitness by maintaining signal pathways and interacting with denatured proteins. The view that evolution is progressive has difficulty in establishing a trend that tells us something about the process of evolution. Dawkins acknowledges that catastrophes dramatically reduce adaptivity but he failed to recognize that they greatly increase evolvability.
Chance Variation and Evolutionary Contingency: Darwin, Simpson, The Simpsons, and Gould
Authors: Beatty John
Published: September 2009

The unpredictability of evolution by natural selection was given by Stephen Gould. Darwin is associated with chance variation but Paley argued that living things are the products of design. Simpson, for each case of directional evolution, either denied the phenomenon or offered an alternative explanation that did not rely on any unknown causal processes. According to Simpson, there were two main reasons to explain why evolution is unpredictable. The first is that evolution is driven principally by natural selection of chance variations and is termed “opportunistic” as there is no plan or provision by which organisms automatically vary in ways that are adaptive. The second reason is that there are “multiple solutions” to any environmental “problem”. Gould gave the hypothesis that the traits that predominate in a population are optimal for the environment inhabited by the population, and hence if different traits prevail in different populations, this must reflect environmental differences.
Evolution of Moral Norms
Authors: Harms William , Skyrms Brian
Published: September 2009

Moral norms are the rules of morality that people ought to follow. An evolutionary explanation of the emergence of moral norms proceeds in stages. Firstly, one must give an account of how behavior according to the norms can arise. Then, once the evolution of the behavior has been explained, the next question concerns the evolution of its normative status. Next, the evolution of the language of moral judgment, along with an evolutionary account of its meaning, is given. There are different norms for different kinds of social interaction: norms of justice, norms of cooperation, and norms prescribing various kinds of altruistic behavior. This can be explained on the basis of two models: Replicator dynamics with a small amount of mutation and Theoretical models of the evolution of enforcement and punishment. Considerable progress is being made in understanding the evolution of signals.
Biology and Religion
Authors: Murphy Nancey , Schloss Jeffrey P.
Published: September 2009

This article tries to deal with the issues of biology versus religion. This relates to a conflict between evolutionary and biblical accounts of Earth's history. The most important area involves the question of a transcendent. The second involves the almost universally affirmed but differently joined religious responses to the human suffering. The third area of intersection between evolutionary and religious understandings of human nature involves the biblical notion of human uniqueness. All religions entail some notion of transcendent purpose or sacred meaning. There are developments in biology with important implications for religion because of the vast increase in knowledge of the workings of the brain. This does not prove the nonexistence of the soul, but suggests that the concept of soul as an explanatory construct has outlived its usefulness. This also plays a valuable role in ethics. Biology will prove to be a help in this case.
Feminist Philosophy of Biology
Authors: Fehr Carla
Published: September 2009

This article deals with certain areas of biological sciences related to social issues. It demonstrates the feminist and non-feminist philosophy of biology to get the science regarding sex, women, and gender right. The gender norms range from specific claims about men being suited to business and women to domestic labor. There are arguments to limit women's access to the public sphere. Sociobiologist investigated assumptions to show isomorphism between a particular theory and the world. It focuses on the assumptions that need to be tested in order to apply biological theories of sexual selection. A view known as “reductionism” is also discussed according to which things in the universe are arranged hierarchically and that causal interactions are limited to the lowest levels of this hierarchy. Feminist philosophy of biology functions to maximize the accuracy of biological knowledge claims and the clarity of biological concepts.
Introduction
Authors: Eldridge Richard
Published: September 2009

This introductory article explains the coverage of this book, which is about the relations of complementarity and opposition between philosophy and literature. This book explores the interests for human life of specific genres of literature, considers broad modes of attention that have marked off certain large cultural periods from one another, traces workings of certain central literary devices for achieving attention and evaluates the use of literature as a practice in relation to the practices of inquiry, morality and politics. It also discusses the significance of the works of some philosophers in analyzing literary practice.
Tragedy
Authors: Bernstein Jay
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the relevance of the literary genre of tragedy to philosophy. It suggests that tragedy matters to philosophy in part because philosophy at its inception attempts to authorize itself by banishing the tragic poets. There is something about tragedy that directly challenges philosophy's original self-understanding and some content or manner of tragedy requires either refutation or acknowledgment that cannot be put aside. This article examines Aristotle's Poetics and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Lectures on Fine Art and describes three tragic narratives, Oedipus the King, Hamlet, and the emergent tragic narration of the Holocaust.
Postcolonialism
Authors: Bertacco Simona
Published: September 2009

This article looks towards the influence of post-colonialism on literary theory. It discusses the reading of postcolonial text as a repository of sociological or historical information with its aesthetic dimension being put to one side as trivial and not essential to the communication of its social message. It suggests that this interpretive stance seems to contradict the notion of textual politics shaped by postcolonial theory and goes back to the question of what it means to respond to a work of literature as literature when the postcolonial qualifier enters the picture. The article also evaluates the value of the canonical literary text from a postcolonial perspective.
Style
Authors: Altieri Charles
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the history of the study of literary style. It claims that style should be seen as purposive activity inseparable from the aesthetic shaping of the work as a whole and that the best way of modeling this activity is to take the foregrounding of style as a demonstrative speech act. It analyzes the works of Dante and argues that style matters in art and life because if we fail to establish manner as substance, we have only picture thinking. If we are reduced to picture thinking, we lose any language either for the variations in intensity afforded by aesthetic experiences or for the capacity to make discriminations that having that repository of examples might afford.
Literature and Morality
Authors: Cohen Ted
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the influence of literature on morality. The idea that art or literature has or can have something to do with morality is an old and enduring idea, but today this idea appears in at least two continuing discussions. These discussions revolve around the questions of whether acquaintance with works of art can have a moral effect upon an audience and whether the moral character of a work of art is relevant in its aesthetic assessment. This article also examines whether morally objectionable features of a fiction count against its aesthetic merit.
Plato in his Time and Place
Authors: Schofield Malcolm
Published: September 2009

This article traces the circumstances, which led to Plato becoming a great philosopher. Gradual unraveling of the article brings out more of young Plato and how he became a part of Socrates' circle. Doing philosophy meant trying to understand how to live the life of a just person: getting rid of illusions about what we know or what we think we want, and coming to see what living well really consists of. That is the manifesto Socrates enunciates in his speech to the jurors in the Apology. That is the theme Plato makes him elaborate and defends on a massive scale in the Republic, the longest and most complex of all his works. Fundamental in what he took from Socrates is the idea that philosophy is an inquiry, and inquiry best pursued in conversation with someone else.
The Platonic Corpus
Authors: Irwin T. H.
Published: September 2009

This article attempts to answer certain questions that arise regarding the dialogues as penned by Plato centuries ago. The speaker or the narrator of the text happens to be Socrates, who through various conversations with his apprentices unravels the nuances of the various philosophical dialogues.
Socratic Ethics and Moral Psychology
Authors: Devereux Daniel
Published: September 2009

Plato's dialogues form the basis of Socratic Ethics and Moral Psychology. Among Plato's thirty-five dialogues there is a group of eleven or twelve that share certain features setting them apart from the rest. In these dialogues, which are considerably shorter than the others, Socrates always has the role of questioner. The questions he discusses are mostly about specific virtues and how they are related to each other: for example, piety is discussed in the Euthyphro, courage in the Laches, temperance in the Charmides, and justice and temperance in the Gorgias. A major theme of Socratic dialogues is Socrates' opposition to the “sophists,” a varied lot with different interests and claims to fame who shared certain characteristics that justified their common designation. Socrates debates the issue, if virtue is an art or skill that involves knowing what is truly good and evil, the virtuous person should be able to “size up” a situation and determine, as to what sort of action is called for to resolve a particular situation.
Plato's Epistemology
Authors: Taylor Christopher C. W.
Published: September 2009

The attempt to understand and develop Plato's philosophical views has a long history, starting with Aristotle and Plato's institutional successors in the academy towards the end of the fourth century bc. This article traces the history and development of the idea of Platonism. The development of a specifically Platonic philosophy took place mainly within the academy. As a result, the idea that Plato's dialogues already presented a well defined, comprehensive, and essentially correct philosophical system seems not to have arisen until the first century bc. And it was probably not until toward the beginning of the second century ad that a disparate set of philosophers who identified themselves as “Platonists” conceived the project of advocating and defending a specifically Platonic philosophy of this kind by systematically interpreting and explaining Plato's texts.
Plato's Ethics
Authors: Annas Julia
Published: September 2009

Ethics, is referred to as a concern to act rightly and to live a good life, is pervasive in Plato's work, and so we find Plato's ethical thinking throughout the dialogues. The article discusses the idea of ethics as propounded by Plato. Why does Plato take most people to be drastically wrong about goodness but not about happiness? The answer here lies in the notion of happiness, which is how we have hitherto rendered eudaimonia. Plato's ethical thought is, then, structured by a broad eudaimonist assumption. His main concern is to challenge the views most people have about goodness, for it is here that they go disastrously wrong in trying to live happy lives. Most people think that virtue is a minor good, or even an impediment to living a happy life. Plato considers this to be utterly incorrect; it is only by being virtuous that we can hope to be happy.
TheParmenides
Authors: Peterson Sandra
Published: September 2009

Parmenides contrasts with Plato's other works in several ways. For example, Socrates is depicted as “very young perhaps fifteen or nineteen.” Parmenides questions Socrates, who contradicts himself; in other dialogues of question and answer, Socrates typically questions others, who contradict themselves. The article deals with the philosophical dialogues had take place between Socrates and Zeno. Parmenides refutes Socrates on the topic of forms, items such as justice itself and good itself, while the older Socrates of other dialogues presents forms as central to philosophy; the dialogue thus raises the question whether its criticism of forms signals Plato's revision of views expressed in previous writings. The article also elaborates on the dialogue between Socrates and Zeno, which gradually unravels a discourse on form and likeness. Parmenides speaks of “something beautiful and just and good.” As it proceeds, the article unravels a debate that rages over things becoming like and unlike in a respect and to an extent. Both of them through their individual dialogues unfold a series of philosophical theories and treatise.
TheTheaetetus
Authors: Lee Mi‐Kyoung
Published: September 2009

The Theaetetus is a principal field of battle for one of the main disputes between Plato's interpreters. This is the dispute between unitarians and revisionists. This article focuses on Plato's ideas on unitarians and revisionists. Plato's greatest work on epistemology, in the Theaetetus, Plato has much to say about the nature of knowledge elsewhere. But only the Theaetetus offers a set-piece discussion of the question “What is knowledge?” This question is raised most vividly for readers of Plato when assessing the central epistemological claim of the Republic: that knowledge is impossible unless one grasps the forms, and also for those who do not recognize the existence of the forms. Plato adopts a complex strategy for examining the nature of knowledge in the Theaetetus: he sometimes has Socrates examine a conception of knowledge purely on its own terms. The two major ideas dealt with in the article are change and form.
Plato and Aristotle in the Academy
Authors: Shields Christopher
Published: September 2009

This article discusses Aristotle as a source of data regarding Plato's philosophy. The first pictures Aristotle beginning his intellectual life as a meek and dutiful Platonist and coming into his own as a philosopher only after the passing of his master, some twenty years beyond their earliest association. There are certain controversies regarding each other's approach towards philosophy; because Aristotle later on is seen to be disagreeing with his master on certain issues. Still less is there reason to credit the bewildering contention, common to antiquity and modernity, that Aristotle never developed to the point of grasping the rudiments of Platonic philosophy: “In the first place,” says Burnet of Aristotle, “it is certain that he never understood the teaching of the head of the Academy.” However, keeping aside the above controversies, it must be acknowledged that Aristotle does cite Plato's views in illuminating ways in some of his surviving corpus. It can be concluded that, despite certain difference of opinion, Aristotle's corpus continues to be a great source of information of his master, Plato.
Plato and Platonism
Authors: Brittain Charles
Published: September 2009

As the title suggests, the article focuses on the development of Plato and his philosophy, which is better known as Platonism. The advent of the Hellenestic schools advocated a more empirical approach to the study of philosophy as well as Platonism. And it was probably not until toward the beginning of the second century ad that a disparate set of philosophers who identified themselves as “Platonists” conceived the project of advocating and defending a specifically Platonic philosophy of interpreting Plato's works and ideas. The problem of the delayed development of Platonism is an interesting one because the general conditions for its emergence seem to have been in place from at least 50 bc. Notable among these conditions were three significant changes in late Hellenistic philosophy. The first was the demise of the skeptical academy by the middle of the first century bc, which released the interpretation of the Platonic corpus from institutional constraints, and in particular from the skeptical interpretations of Plato the academics had advocated since the third century bc. How much may the debate continue; Platonism still continues to be an integral part of present day philosophical interpretations.
The Pyrrhonian Problematic
Authors: Lammenranta Markus
Published: September 2009

This article discusses three interpretations of the Pyrrhonian problematic in relation to the work of Sextus Empiricus. It explains the shortcomings of the theoretical and psychological interpretations and argues that it is the dialectical interpretation that provides a serious skeptical challenge to our beliefs. There seems to be no satisfactory nonskeptical response to it. According to the dialectical interpretation, the proper scope of Pyrrhonian skepticism involves things we have disagreements about.
Hume's Skepticism
Authors: Williams Michael
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the skepticism of philosopher David Hume based on the philosophy contained in his A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. It investigates how the various ways in which forms of skepticism can differ and characterizes the general tendencies of Hume's skeptical thinking. It attempts to address the connection between skeptical argumentation and Hume's naturalistic science of man and the way by which Hume's naturalism subserve his critical project. It also explores whether Hume's skeptical tendencies get out of hand.
Kant's Response to Skepticism
Authors: Stern Robert
Published: September 2009

This article looks at philosopher Immanuel Kant's view and argument against skepticism. It explains that Kant's response to skepticism has come to be epitomized by an appeal to transcendental arguments and that this argument is said to provide a distinctively Kantian way of dealing with the skeptic. It suggests that at least one of Kant's transcendental arguments can in fact be understood in a way that involves very little appeal to the rest of the Kantian framework and argues that the preoccupation with transcendental arguments is not the right way to get the full picture of how Kant saw the threat of skepticism or what he took skepticism to be.
Peirce and Skepticism
Authors: Hookway Christopher
Published: September 2009

This article examines philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce's thoughts about skepticism. It discusses the concept of fallibilism and evaluates how to better understand Hilary Putnam's claim that the combination of fallibilism with antiskepticism was one of the defining marks of American pragmatism. It explores some of Peirce's views about doubt and highlights his rejection of a foundationalist account of justification, together with the rejection of some metaphysical pictures that would lead us to think that such an account of justification was required.
Moore and Skepticism
Authors: Lemos Noah
Published: September 2009

This article examines philosopher G. E. Moore's thoughts and arguments against skepticism. It explains that Moore wrestled with issues of knowledge and skepticism throughout his career, examining and responding in several influential essays to various skeptical arguments. It describes Moore's response to one form of skeptical argument and contrasts it with two alternative approaches, relevantism and contextualism. It evaluates whether Moorean response to skepticism stifle epistemological inquiry and discusses Moore's denial that skepticism is epistemically possible in the sense that it is reasonable to believe that skepticism is true.
Austin's Way with Skepticism
Authors: Kaplan Mark
Published: September 2009

This article examines philosopher J. L. Austin's argument against skepticism. It explains Austin's response to questions concerning the evaluation of Cartesian arguments in favour of skepticism and the correctness of the conclusion of the said arguments. It also mentions Austin's argument in his 1946 article that attention to everyday practice of making and challenging knowledge claims makes it clear that it is a practice in which there is a substantial constraint on what counts as a legitimate challenge to a person's claim to knowledge.
The Relativist Response to Radical Skepticism
Authors: Graham Peter J.
Published: September 2009

This article considers the response of relativism to radical skepticism. It analyzes two different versions of relativism, one about truth and one about justification, and evaluates whether common sense would stand in need of some defense. It argues that the “relativist about truth” holds a deeply implausible view which in a sense defends common sense but only at the cost of abandoning common sense. It also discusses the structure of the radical skeptic's argument and the validity of relativism about truth as a response to the radical skeptic.
Externalist Responses to Skepticism
Authors: Bergmann Michael
Published: September 2009

This article examines the epistemic externalist responses to skepticism. It focuses on two prominent theses about externalist responses to skepticism, one positive and one negative. The positive thesis holds that externalism alone avoids skepticism and the negative thesis identifies a defect of externalism that it implausibly avoids skepticism. It discusses the four objections to externalism's handling of skepticism and suggests that externalists can respond to these objections by arguing that the objections apply just as strongly to the only live option for nonexternalists which is serious moderate nonexternalism.
Internalist Responses to Skepticism
Authors: Vogel Jonathan
Published: September 2009

This article examines the key responses to internalism and skepticism. There are three primary internalist responses to skepticism, namely, apriorism, dogmatism, and explanationism. This article suggests that explanationism is the best response because we are justified on explanatory grounds in believing that skeptical hypotheses are false and that our ordinary beliefs about the world are, by and large, true. It discusses the veridicality principles and concludes that explanationism is the solution to the problem of skepticism about the external world.
Virtue‐Theoretic Responses to Skepticism
Authors: Axtell Guy
Published: September 2009

This article examines the different responses of virtue theory to skepticism. It explains that virtue theory is concerned with philosophical evaluation of human agents in their interaction with the world and its central focus in on understanding agents and the habits and dispositions through which their interactions in the world unfold allows for the acknowledgment of analogies between epistemic and ethical evaluation. It analyses the responses of the proponents of the virtue epistemology (VE) to radical skepticism, particularly the Pyrrhonian skepticism and the underdetermination-based argument. It provides suggestions on how to improve the prospects of virtue-theoretic responses to skepticism and outline a version of VE that seeks to recast somewhat how we understand the externalist turn in epistemology.
Introduction: The New Philosophy of Economics
Authors: Ross Don , Kincaid Harold
Published: September 2009

This article outlines a vision of what philosophy of economics should be. Its focus is on economic science, as opposed to the somewhat broader field taken by the philosophy of economics in general. In drawing this distinction, it follows Lionel Robbins, whose Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science had its seventy-fifth anniversary of publication celebrated in 2007. Economists are far less preoccupied with abstract, grand, unified theories than they once were. Therefore, philosophers of economics should be less interested in this, too. Led by Nancy Cartwight and others, this was a conclusion many philosophers of science had arrived at independently. But this has led many to criticize economics because they did not quickly pick up on changes taking place in economics graduate curricula or circulating working papers. The new, situational, and pragmatic economics beautifully exemplifies the themes that philosophers of sciences had recently gathered from other disciplines.
If Economics Is a Science, What Kind of a Science Is It?
Authors: Rosenberg Alex
Published: September 2009

To begin with, economics has a paradigm, as plainly exhibited by the uniformity of its textbooks. It is a commonplace that unlike every other social and behavioral science, the introductory texts in economics are all pretty much the same. By and large you could permute the problems at the ends of chapters among the five largest selling textbooks in the field and still test students' understanding of the chapters they had actually read. Second, the language of the discipline is highly mathematized. Third, the discipline has identifiable proprietary laws, albeit inexact ones, and a set of proprietary kinds, which the discipline's “discipline” requires be applied to the solution of puzzles. And it rewards most generously those who find new puzzles to which to apply the laws and concepts. This progressive expansion of the domain of economics is often decried by some social scientists as economic imperialism.
Realistic Realism about Unrealistic Models
Authors: Mäki Uskali
Published: September 2009

The special challenge the philosophy of economics must meet is to provide a scientific realist account that is realistic of a discipline that deals with a complex subject matter and operates with highly unrealistic models. Unrealisticness in economic models must not constitute an obstacle to realism about those models. This article gives a selective and somewhat abstract summary of its author's thinking about economics, outlined from two perspectives: first historical and autobiographical, then systematic and comparative. The first angle helps understand motives and trajectories of ideas against their backgrounds in intellectual history. The story of this article turns out to have both unique and generalizable aspects. The second approach outlines some of the key concepts and arguments as well as their interrelations in this chapter's philosophy of economics, with occasional comparisons to other views. More space is devoted to this second perspective than to the first.
Methodological Issues in Experimental Design and Interpretation
Authors: Guala Francesco
Published: September 2009

This article is organized around two topics: the first one is the methodology of experimental economics, a research program that is becoming increasingly influential in contemporary economic science. The second one is normative methodology, an issue that has been widely debated by philosophers of economics over the last two decades. A methodological discussion of experimental economics could simply aim at describing the methods used by experimental economists in their daily work, without asking questions of efficacy or justification. Another approach, the one that is pursued here, is to take a more direct normative stance: instead of passively observing what economists do, the philosopher steps down in the arena of scientific debate and tries to issue some cautious advice on methodological matters.
Microfoundations and the Ontology of Macroeconomics
Authors: Hoover Kevin D.
Published: September 2009

The typical concerns of macroeconomics—such as national output, employment and unemployment, inflation, interest rates, and the balance of payments—are among the oldest in economics, having been dominant among the problems addressed by both the mercantilists and classical economists, such as David Hume, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, as well as even earlier writers. These concerns co-existed with ones that are now regarded as characteristically microeconomic, such as the theory of prices exemplified in the labor theory of value of the classical economists or the theory of marginal utility of the early neoclassical economists. Questions about the relationship between these two groups of concerns could hardly be articulated until a categorical distinction between macroeconomics and microeconomics had been drawn. This article asks whether there is a successful ontology of macroeconomics. It also discusses the implications that this ontology has for practical macroeconomics.
Causality, Invariance, and Policy
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: September 2009

This article explains the puzzling methodology of an important econometric study of health and status. It notes the widespread use of invariance in both economic and philosophical studies of causality to guarantee that causal knowledge can be used to predict the effects of manipulations. It argues that the kind of invariance seen widely in economic methodology succeeds at this job whereas a standard kind of invariance now popular in philosophy cannot. It questions the special role of causal knowledge with respect to predictions about the effects of manipulations once the importance of adding on invariance is recognized. It also draws the despairing conclusion that both causation and invariance are poor tools for predicting the outcomes of policy and technology and to pose the challenge.
Subjective Measures of Well‐Being: Philosophical Perspectives
Authors: Angner Erik
Published: September 2009

The goal of this article is to explore some fundamental assumptions underlying subjective measures of well-being, as compared to more traditional economic measures. Its main thesis is that psychologists and economists have sharply different philosophical commitments, a fact that is seldom made explicit. Although it is perfectly reasonable for social and behavioral scientists to be wary of spending too much time thinking about the philosophical foundations of their enterprise, there are moments when it is eminently useful to do so. In this case, this article maintains, there is good reason to attend to these foundations, since they are directly relevant to the assessment of the various measures. A better grasp of fundamental commitments, this article argues, goes a long way toward explaining why psychologists' and economists' efforts to measure welfare or well-being are so different, and why there is relatively little fruitful communication and collaboration across fields.