bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Life and Pleasure (I)
Authors: Joseph H. W. B.
Published: February 2009

All men desire their own happiness: which is not to say that they desire nothing else, or regulate all their actions with a view to it. But very many men are also puzzled and perhaps distressed by the fact of unhappiness, whosever it may be. For it seems evil, and evil is a problem, whether seen in animal pain, or in human unhappiness, or in wrong-doing, or in what, though not the work of man, yet seems unjust: as, for example, that one who does his duty should perish miserably. True, we should most of us say that our own interest has nothing to do with our duty; and the Psalmist blesses him that sweareth unto his neighbour and disappointeth him not, “though it were to his own hindrance.” Yet almost in the same breath he declares that such a man shall never fall, that he shall dwell in the tabernacle of the Lord, and rest upon his holy hill. Clearly he thought that, unless this were so, something would be very much amiss, though even so he might have maintained that a man ought to keep the promise which he has sworn to his neighbour. It has been impressively contended by Professor Prichard that there is no sense of “advantage” in which the question whether to keep his promise is advantageous to me is relevant to the question whether I ought to keep it, not even if I identify my own advantage with what advantages society: “our conviction that we ought to do certain actions does not in fact arise from our thought that our action will conduce to the good of society which is also our own good.” Yet the contemplation of a world in which, though men did their duty, they were always involved in misery by doing it, would be gravely disconcerting. Kant himself could not believe such a world possible, though more almost than any other moralist he insisted that our consciousness of obligation had no connection with any thought of how discharging it bore upon our happiness, nor the obligation itself with how discharging it actually did so. Rather than admit that there could in the last resort be even a partial maladjustment between virtue and happiness, he was prepared to accept what he claimed to have shown that the speculative reason could never establish, the existence of an all-powerful and all-righteous God.
Obligation and Rightness
Authors: Falk W. D.
Published: February 2009

Butler observes in the Preface to the Sermons that the subject of morals can be approached in two different ways: “One begins from enquiring into the abstract relations of things: the other from a matter of fact, namely what the particular nature of man is, its several parts, their economy or constitution; from whence it proceeds to determine what course of life it is, which is correspondent to his whole nature. In the former method the conclusion is expressed thus, that vice is contrary to the nature and reason of things: in the latter, that it is a violation or breaking in upon our own nature. Thus they both lead us to the same thing, our obligations to the practice of virtue; and thus they exceedingly strengthen and enforce each other.” In making this observation Butler raises the problem of the nature of moral obligation, and of the criteria by which the existence of a moral obligation can be known. He does so by calling attention to the divisions of opinion which existed on this issue in his own days. Samuel Clarke, the fashionable moralist of the period, sought the roots of moral obligation in the “nature and reason of things”: for an agent to know that an act is his duty is to know that it is fitting or suitable to the circumstances in which it occurs. Shaftesbury, on the other hand, and many of the adherents to the doctrine of Natural Law, like Grotius and Pufendorf, sought the roots of moral obligation in the nature of agents: for an agent, to know that an act is his duty is for him to experience a special motive to do it. Butler recognized the fundamental difference between these two approaches.
The Essential Nature of Knowledge
Authors: Hallett H. F.
Published: February 2009

Prima facie knowledge is an ineradicable monster. Conceived as a relation of a mind to objects extrinsic to it, it is chimerical: for knowledge, as such, is of the real, i.e. of things as they are in se; but the prima facie form of knowledge precludes this. Its object is a thing apprehended ab extra, i.e. as referred to a subject to which it is extrinsic. To seek to escape this impasse either by making the object intrinsic to the subject, or the subject a function of the object, is to reject the prima facie character of knowledge as a relation of compresent terms. The incoherence of prima facie knowledge is that its object must be both extrinsic and intrinsic to mind—extrinsic as independently real, intrinsic as known—yet can be neither: not extrinsic since thus its inseitas is occulted, not intrinsic since thus truth is mere appearance. And this chimaera becomes a monster because knowledge is also ineradicable. We cannot know that knowledge is impossible; and, though we may be in doubt about its extancy, that very doubt is epistemic in form. It is our acceptance of the demands of knowledge that lies at the basis of our doubt; and this applies not only to legitimate doubt about the extancy of knowledge, but also to chimerical doubt about its possibility. Doubt is an inchoation of knowledge, which is thus ineradicable.
On Knowing One Another
Authors: Gregory Joshua C.
Published: February 2009

A young boy found one of Beck's best stereoscopes, but he did not understand its use. When he looked through the two eye-pieces at the two adjacent duplicates (nearly) of each picture on each card he got a single flat picture, and he expected nothing more. Then the moment of revelation came. As he fumbled the focus onto a flat picture of Hamlet, the grave-diggers and Hamlet himself bulged out, the skull on Hamlet's palm looked like a museum piece, and the grave yawned like a real pit. The stereoscopic world of the Beck instrument had been suddenly established in the boy's experience.
In Defence of Hume on Miracles
Authors: Maidment H. J.
Published: February 2009

If, as we are told, Hume's essay on Miracles was an irrelevant insertion in his Enquiry to gain it the notoriety which the Treatise had missed, the artifice has certainly been successful. Hume's thesis has been hotly debated from that day to this. Neither side it seems can claim complete victory, for both make important concessions. Green, his mostly adverse critic, agrees with Mill and L. Stephen that the argument against miracles is “irrefragable” in itself, though not consonant, he thinks, with Hume's own principles: on the other hand, Huxley whilst declaring it on the historical side “irrefragable,” demurs at least to the presentation of the formal side.
Gestalt Psychology and Ethical Philosophy
Authors: Macdonald John
Published: February 2009

The object of the present article is to indicate where and how Gestalt psychology bears on the problems of the ethical philosopher. Unlike the other “schools” of psychology (Behaviourism, Freudianism, and Purposivism), Gestaltism has no obvious bearing on these problems; and yet, if we accept its fundamental tenet, it appears to carry important implications for ethical philosophy. This tenet concerns the primacy of totalities or wholes. I will begin with it, and then proceed to consider certain further principles of Gestalt which are of interest to the moralist.
The Existence of Other Minds
Authors: Dingle H.
Published: February 2009

In the October number of Philosophyx appears a very interesting article by Professor H. H. Price, entitled “Our Evidence for the Existence of Other Minds,” the main object of which is to formulate the grounds on which we (or I, as one should say at this stage) may claim logical justification for asserting that other minds exist. No attempt is made to “prove” the existence of other minds—an effort which is regarded as a wild-goose chase. Neither does Prof. Price seek to identify the actual process by which a particular mind accepts the existence of others as a fact; that, presumably, is a matter for the psychologist, and it may well turn out that the phenomena which give the conviction that other minds exist may vary from individual to individual and may often be logically unevidential. The object of the article, in short, is simply to state why it is reasonable to believe that other minds exist.
The Marriage of Universals (ii)
Authors: Mure G. R. G.
Published: February 2009

§ 22. Logic for Bradley, who follows the Kantian tradition, means primarily a theory of judgment. His definition of judgment is made so wide that it really covers inference as well. The “reference of an ideal content to reality,” as soon as that content is taken as complex and as not atomic, covers inference denned as ideal self-development of an object. Though the definition of judgment has a subjective flavour due to the way in which Bradley finds it necessary to distinguish it from psychical fact, he does not mean to imply that it is any less objective than inference. We learn from the second edition of the Logic that judgment so far as it is mediated is inference, and that mere unmediated judgment is nothing. Judgment, he says, though distinct from inference in form, is everywhere inference really though not explicitly; and almost the first words of the Terminal Essay on Judgment are: “Whatever else and however much else an inference may be, an inference still is a judgment.”
The Non-existence of Matter
Authors: Joad C. E. M.
Published: February 2009

It is probably true to say that the majority of philosophers have considered the universe to be mental. If the universe is really mental, it follows that matter cannot be quite real, and many philosophers have in fact brought forward cogent reasons for regarding matter as in some sense illusory. Those who hold this view are called Idealists. Idealism has historically assumed a number of different forms, between some of which there is little in common, but all forms of Idealism agree in maintaining that objects, such as chairs and tables, of which common sense believes the external world to exist, are not material.
Peace Without Victory—in Philosophy
Authors: Perry Ralph Barton
Published: February 2009

That European and American philosophy at the opening of the twentieth century should have been sharply controversial was not an accident of politics, any more than it was accidental that persecutions and inquisitions should have attended the history of Christianity. The jealous God of Christianity was by definition an only god whose claims implies the rejection or subordination of every other god. Those who were not exclusively with him were counted against him. “ Christian “ and “ anti-Christian “ constituted a complete disjunction. Similarly, the effect of the philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was to define sharp and conflicting antitheses. Its gods were jealous gods. Differences were irreconcilable oppositions, which could be overcome only through the conquest of one by another, or through their joint abdication in favour of a third party. But there are many signs of a changed temper of mind. The most recent philosophy seeks to escape such hostilities by avoiding the initial antitheses, or by bringing to light original communities and identities which have been lost sight of in the excessive sharpening of distinctions.
The Marriage of Universals (i)
Authors: Mure G. R. G.
Published: February 2009

§ 1. The purpose of this paper is to inquire what distinction can or should be drawn between logic on the one hand and on the other psychology, so far as psychology concerns itself specifically with the problem of knowledge. The suggestions I have to make are very provisional, and are based mainly on a criticism of the late Mr. Bradley's views of the nature and scope of logic and psychology. For this reason I have for my title adapted from Bradley's article on “Association and Thought” a famous phrase which seems to me to illustrate fairly well the meeting-point of these two sciences in his thinking. At the same time this very criticism is itself chiefly founded upon philosophical considerations with which Bradley at least as much as any other writer has taught me to sympathize. In short, I assume some sort of Absolute Idealism; and my excuse must be the further assumption—which I hope the reader will more readily tolerate— that the proper criticism of any theory is that which it can be shown to pass upon itself in the course of its own development.
Philosophy and Life
Authors: Joad C. E. M.
Published: February 2009

That philosophy has an important effect upon life I am convinced. This effect is, however, not a direct one, nor is it one which it is easy to describe.
The Leadership of Philosophy
Authors: Oakeley Hilda D.
Published: February 2009

The positions that I would support in regard to the question whether philosophy has any relation to practice are as follows. In the first place, there are certain problems of modern civilization, and those amongst the most crucial, with which philosophy alone can deal. In the second place, in spite of appearances to the contrary, the present age will not be deaf to the voice of philosophy, if it can speak with sufficient clearness and power to secure a hearing. The problems to which I refer do not belong to the sphere of science, in the strict modern sense. Science is triumphant in its own sphere, but it is not concerned primarily with the values of human existence, or the activity of the mind by which they are discovered, pursued, enjoyed.
Kant's Ethical Formalism
Authors: Jensen O. C.
Published: February 2009

The generally accepted interpretation of Kant's formula “act only on that maxim which thou canst at the same time will to be a universal law,” is roughly as follows:—

Our moral experience is fundamentally a consciousness of the difference between Duty and Inclination, between "doing what we ought to whether we like to or not, and doing merely what we like whether we ought to or not."1 When we have open to our choice different acts, there are some which we would like to do, others we would not like to do, and perhaps others towards which we are indifferent; or we like to do any one of them, or we may dislike all, or we may be indifferent to all. But we must ignore our inclinations, our aversions, our attractions, and our indifferences. We must ask ourselves which of the acts open to our choiceoughtwe to do, no matter what our feelings in the matter may be.
The Metaphysics of Wonder and Surprise
Authors: Feldman R. V.
Published: February 2009

Philosophers, accounted wise in their generation and even beyond their generation, have enthroned the unchanging and sung the praises of fatality and acquiescence. But there is a voice even more authoritative than that of the sages—the voice of the LifeShaper himself. Perched on the height of the human soul, he has set two watchmen, more sagacious and knowing than the Metaphysicians who weave words “About it and about” in the taverns beneath; their names are Wonder and Surprise. Wonder spies out novelty, and Surprise discerns change. Wonder arises at that which isbeyondexpectation; Surprise at that which iscontraryto expec tation. What could completely surpass expectation save the completely novel? What could so drastically dismantle expectation save the hurricane onset of change?
Knowing Involves Deciding
Authors: Hartland-Swann John
Published: February 2009

Every case of knowing that S is, was or will be P involves, when analysed, some decision or the acceptance of some decision. This applies equally when you are discussing the so-called tautological propositions of logic and pure mathematics; for you can only claim to “know” that some logical or mathematical proposition is true because you have previously decided to accept that certain meanings shall be attached to certain words, or that certain symbols shall function in a certain way. When we examine what philosophers are doing who demand that we prefix “we know” to this or that part of their analyses of perceptual situations, we find that they are often using “know” in a question-begging manner in order to buttress some particular, and usually contentious, analysis. Nor is any philosopher in a position to lay down rigid and precise rules for the proper use of “know” in ordinary conversation; although he can usefully debate the nature and cogency of the grounds on which decisions, issuing in “know”-statements, are generally made. Lastly, Austin is quite right in claiming that when I say “I know” I give my authority and pledge my word, which I do not do when I merely say “I believe”; but I give my authority and pledge my word only because I have decided, or accepted a decision, that so and so is the case.
The Hegelian Absolute and the Individual
Authors: Raju P. T.
Published: February 2009

The aim of this paper is not to enter into a detailed discussion of the nature of the Absolute and the Individual, but to show that on the Hegelian conception of the Absolute the individual self is not saved. Hegel is fond of reiterating that his Absolute is not a bare one, but a one in many, an organic whole, a perfect and harmonious system of an infinite number of individual selves. The individual, as in Spinoza and Schelling, does not lose itself in the Absolute. The latter is not a lion's den into which all animals enter but from which none returns, not a mere darkness in which all cows are black, but a system of different individuals.
Philosophy in France
Authors: Keeling S. V.
Published: February 2009

In his two volumes on Intuitive Thought Professor Edouard Le Roy continues his idealistic interpretation of spiritual creativity, and turns from its ‘products’ manifested in biological and human evolution to consider its most intimate character, as it is ‘lived through’ or directly experienced in intuitive and inventive thinking. The whole plan and its execution are determined by two characteristic themes of Bergsonism—intuition and the dynamical schema—though these are repensès in a quite original way. “Intuitive thought” and “metaphysical thought,” M. Le Roy affirms in the preface, are “one and the same”; the latter is condemned only by those who misconceive the former. So by correcting misunderstandings he seeks to
British Philosophy in the Mid-Century
Authors: Melden A. I.
Published: February 2009

In the summer of 1953 a lecture-course organized by the British Council was given at Peterhouse, Cambridge. The Faculty of Moral Science were responsible for the programme of lectures and discussions, and Miss Margaret Master man and Dr. Theodore Red path were appointed by the Faculty as joint directors. The lectures must have been well received by the teachers of philosophy who attended and participated in the discussions— representatives from the Continent, the United States and even China were on hand; and the suggestion arose quite naturally that they be published in a single volume. However, some of the lecturers wished to redraft the papers they had read and hence the essays now presented, under the editorship of C. A. Mace, in the volume British Philosophy in the Mid-Century, A Cambridge Symposium (George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1957) are in a number of instances dressed up and greatly expanded versions of the lectures actually given. Further, it is worth noting that the essay by G. E. Moore was written specifically for this volume and is based on a discussion held with some students who attended the sessions at Peterhouse. Thus it is that the papers now published vary greatly in length from the welcome ten pages contributed by G. E. Moore to the seventy-nine pages from Miss Master man. This disparity is, of course, an anomaly in a volume explicitly designed to reflect trends in very recent British philosophy and to convey, to those relatively unfamiliar with it, some reliable picture of its condition at mid-century. But this volume records a present-day Cambridge symposium and as such it must in some measure reflect quite local interests and conditions. However, most of the contributors are very well known and the essays now presented to the public contain a good deal that will interest and profit the reader.
Games, Families, The Public, and Religion
Authors: Downing F. Gerald
Published: February 2009

Wittgenstein's illustrative comparison of linguistic activities with games, his defence of a single term for items having no more than a ‘family resemblance’ and not even one common distinguishing feature, and his objections to any proposal seeming to imply an unshareably private language appear to have been accepted as interesting and important if not always as persuasive in English language philosophy. But these themes, and others introduced along with them are most often taken as separate items, belonging to distinct compartments of philosophy, and justice is not done to their inter-connections and coherence (1).
Mechanized Mentality
Authors: Laird John
Published: February 2009

Nobody should want to rid his mind of science, but why should science want to rid us of our minds? In the name of science, however, clever men have given their minds to that very enterprise, although no doubt with the explanation that they were only ridding us of what we had falsely thought to be our minds. Thus in the eighteenth century La Mettrie presented the thesis that man was a machine. In the nineteenth, Huxley tried to show that we were conscious automata. In the twentieth, Mr. Hogben,1 among others, professes to deduce from Pavlov's2 experimental results that consciousness is a superstition, being only a misdescription of conditioned reflexes. I propose, then, to examine the modish form of this persistent doctrine.
Change
Authors: Mure G. R. G.
Published: February 2009

§ 21. Until a few years ago the hope of the physicist seems on the whole to have been that he would eventually be able to exhibit a single interconnected system of perfectly deterministic causal laws. He took the relation of cause and effect in all change to be such that from a determinate antecedent state of that which changes there must necessarily follow a different subsequent state of it, and it was assumed by him that complete knowledge of the antecedent state must enable exact prediction of the subsequent state. I do not think it matters here whether that which changes was taken as a limited subject of change or as the whole physical world.
Cartesian Mechanism
Authors: Keeling S. V.
Published: February 2009

1. Those having a detailed and first-hand knowledge of Descartes’s work seem agreed that it was highly original, genuinely critical and of permanent importance in the history of thought. And though they would differ in opinion on what are the reasons best advanced in support of their estimate, a majority would seem to regard the “Cartesian revolution” as summing up what is most meritorious in Descartes’s philosophy and most lasting in his influence. They would find Professor E. Gilson speaking their mind when he declares, “Sur ce qu’il y a de nouveau et de strictement original dans sa pensée, aucun doute ne saurait subsister. Descartes est la revendication personnifiée du mathématisme universel.
Goethe's Phenomenological Method
Authors: Heinemann Fritz
Published: February 2009

Nothing makes the occupation with the great minds of the past more attractive than the fact that with the change in the whole situation of the present time, with the maturing of one’s own personality, they appear in a new light and present themselves in rejuvenated shape. I had a curious experience of this kind, when it occurred to me during the investigation of some phenomenological problems, that Goethe, though ignorant of the name, had employed a definitely phenomenological method. In occupying myself now with the revealing of this fact, it will be my leading principle to understand Goethe through himself, and I shall try not to adapt his meanings to my own theories.
Philosophy in France
Authors: Knight H.
Published: February 2009

No trait is more characteristic of contemporary philosophy in France than its continued fecundation by the physical and biological sciences. The divorce between philosophy and science that existed in the first half of last century is now regarded, by almost common consent, as an error of the great pre-war Unenlightenment. The ménage is rémonté; the vieilles traditions of Descartes and Pascal live again, though very transfigured. How long the alliance may endure, how and how much it may benefit both parties, it would be idle to prophesy. But it is significant that Boutroux and Bergson were compelled to devote much energy to acquiring a scientific competence, the one in mechanics, the other in biology. It is still more significant that a number of professional scientists (such as Milhaud, Duhem, Hannequin, Paul Tannery, Poincare, and Meyerson) should, with the passing of years, have contributed less to their sciences and increasingly to philosophy. This mutual invasion of territories has, indeed, become so considerable and enduring that philosophy in France is at present, for good or ill, almost wholly ‘philosophy of the sciences.’ It is now within this ‘internationalized’ neutral zone that the distinction between the epistemological and the ontological has to be drawn. Thus, Meyerson fairly represents the former emphasis, Bergson and Le Roy the latter. And if it is rare for one man to hold successively a chair in mathematics and a chair in philosophy, like Milhaud and Whitehead, rarer still is it for one man to hold both concurrently. But M. Edouard Le Roy has for many years lectured on mathematics and mechanics at the Faculte des Sciences in Paris; he has extended and modified Bergsonism from Bergson's former chair at the College de France.
The Unaccountable Element in Science
Authors: Polanyi Michael
Published: February 2009

I hope that it will become clear in the course of this paper what I mean by calling some elements of science unaccountable. Let me now say only that I shall speak of the contributions made to scientific thought by acts of personal judgment which cannot be replaced by the operation of explicit reasoning. I shall try to show that such tacit operations play a decisive part not only in the discovery, but in the very holding of scientific knowledge. I shall outline the structure of these acts and indicate to what extent this structure offers a justification for relying on such acts.
Religion and Science
Authors: Brown William
Published: February 2009

In considering this perennial question of the relationship between science and religion it is important to avoid any appearance—or reality—of burking the facts. When one speaks of science one speaks of science as it is understood, and as research is carried out in it, by specialists in the various fields; and it is the most honest and the wisest course to consider in each separate science what exactly the results amount to and what the theories represent.
The Location of Physical Objects
Authors: Stapledon Olaf
Published: February 2009

Common sense holds that a physical object is confined to a definite region of space, and that it endures through a definite period of time. It scatters effects through other regions and periods, but it is the cause of those effects, and is just where it is and not everywhere. Physically its existence may entail other objects, but logically it entails nothing whatever beyond the limits of a certain volume.
The Philosophy of Social Life
Authors: Burns C. Delisle
Published: February 2009

Only one adult in a hundred gets his food and clothing without doing anything directly in exchange for them. The other ninety-nine form active parts of the system of relations in society which will be called, in what follows here, economic; and even the one in the hundred who does not give, takes something, as children and imbeciles take, out of the store of services which are economic life. Boots and bread are but the bridges over which one man is connected with another, through services exchanged. The philosophy of social life, therefore, must “place” these economic relations in the whole complex unity of human experience. The science of economics analyses some of the aspects of the relations of men in exchanging services, and it provides a language which is already sufficiently current to be used here without full explanation of the terms. Therefore, without more ado, the philosophical aspects of the economic system may be considered in the terms of economic science, but outside the frontiers proper to that partial analysis.
Philosophy in France
Authors: Waterhouse E. S.
Published: February 2009

Philosophical instruction in the French Universities usually consists in more or less direct preparation for the licence-ès-lettres (the “M.A.”) and the agrigation, or in informal discussion with candidates preparing for the Doctorate. But it has for long been the practice at the Sorbonne in Paris for the Professors to deliver a course of public lectures lasting throughout a half or the whole of the academic year. And since the eleinehts of logic and philosophy are taught in the top form of every lycèe quite a large part Of the ordinary educated public is able to follow with profit the communications of the foremost philosophers. This year, Professor A. Lalande lectures on “General Methodology”; Professor Brunschvicg on “The Object in Perception and in Science”; Professor Delacroix on “Consciousness and Personality”; Dr. Wallon on “Explanation and Constructive Thought in the Child”; Professor Basch on “The Æsthetic Categories,” and on “English Æsthetics in the Eighteenth Century,” and Professor E. Gilson on “The Main Problems of Mediaeval Philosophy.” At the College de France, Professor Le Roy lectures on “The Primitive Forms of Intelligence,” Professor Pierre Janet on “The Psychological Evolution of Personality,” and Professor Pièron on “Pain and Affective Reactions.”
Meaning and Error
Authors: Campion George G.
Published: February 2009

In the problem of Meaning and Error, Epistemology, Logic, Psychology, and Etymology, all find an inevitable point of contact. It is necessary to go back little more than half a century to see something of the changes which have resulted in the present epoch of disintegration.
Science in Practice
Authors: Russell Leonard J.
Published: February 2009

The transition from a vague generalization to an accurate statement is the first step on the road to science. It is a step of great importance. Vague generalizations find a ready entrance into many minds, and produce a comfortable sense of satisfaction that is easily mistaken for knowledge, and that stops further questioning. An exact statement of fact, on the other hand, draws attention to detail, and shows itself to be set in a mass of further detail that it challenges you to explore. “Nature abhors a vacuum” sounds final; it explains why water will rise in an ordinary suction-pump rather than allow a vacuum to be produced; why the schoolboy’s “sucker” will lift a stone; and many other phenomena of a similar kind. It explains everything by a phrase and stimulates no inquiry. But when Galileo noted that the pump would raise water only to a height of about 32 feet, and pointed out that this gives a measure of the extent to which Nature abhors a vacuum in its dealings with water, new questions arose, stimulating further investigation.
The Philosophy of Social Life
Authors: Burns C. Delisle
Published: February 2009

Philosophers less subtle than those of the Middle Ages feel no difficulty about such words as “and” or such phrases as “member of”; but even to write “man and society” has committed us to an assumption which may not be justifiable, and to say that men are “members” of a community or of a trade union is so alarming a metaphor that it would startle Duns Scotus. It is unwise, however, to ask philosophers what they mean when they feel very passionately about what they say, for the confusion becomes even greater than it was if passion gets into explanation. It is supposed to be obvious that men exist and that States and Trade Unions and Churches exist; and who would be so foolish as to raise difficulties about the difference between existence and essence? Many who claim to be scientists with regard to politics or economics suppose it to be obvious that there is an “essence” called “public opinion” or “the will of the people” or “utility”; and what Occamite would now dare to say that entities are not to be multiplied ?
Subjective Aim in Professor Whitehead's Philosophy
Authors: Morgan C. Lloyd
Published: February 2009

In Process and Reality Professor A. N. Whitehead formulates a Cosmology which embodies a resolute attempt to combine in one philosophical synthesis a scientific account of Concrescence with a metaphysical explanation thereof in terms of Creativity.
Philosophy As Criticism and Point of View
Authors: Coates Adrian
Published: February 2009

Last year the B.B.C. arranged for certain eminent men to broadcast their Points of View to the public. The result was a most interesting series of talks; but for the sceptical philosopher the series was chiefly entertaining for its brilliantly illustrating the old tag: quot homines, tot sententiæ. One was struck not merely by the discrepancy of opinion, but by how each speaker was ‘true to type': the biologist, the physicist with a taste for spiritualism, the Christian Platonist, and the rest—each spoke his part and told of a world built according to his own particular measuring-rod.
Representation
Authors: Stocks J. L.
Published: February 2009

In these days, when, if the words of constitutions can be trusted, sovereign Parliaments based on manhood or adult suffrage are rapidly extending their sway over the greater part of the world, there is surely no conception more deserving of the attention of the political theorist than that of Representation. There was a time when government for most men meant monarchy, when ruler meant king or king's minister. To-day for most men ruler means Parliament or ministers responsible to Parliament, and government means representative government. In those former times the political theorist would naturally take the king or prince for his centre-piece, and devote himself to expounding the nature and attributes of the office. “For from the prince, as from a well spring, cometh the flood of all that is good or evil upon the people” (Sir T. More). In our own day he would perhaps do well to devote himself first and mainly to reflection on the meaning of this term representation, standing as it does for something which is taken by general consent to constitute the distinctive feature of the normal modern type of government. He may run the risk of speaking merely for his own day; but he should at least be sure of remaining near the centre of his subject.
Reality in History
Authors: Oakeley Hilda D.
Published: February 2009

The treatment of history by philosophers seems to have entered upon a new phase, as regards the questions both what kind of knowledge we are dealing with and what is the relation of the historic experience to reality. As Professor Guido de Ruggiero pointed out in the April number of the Journal, this interest in the problems of history has not received much recognition in English thought at present. It is the purpose of the argument of the present article to maintain that whilst there are two methods of approach to reality, the one through knowledge and speculative thought, the other through history and practical experience, a philosophical interpretation is necessary to the understanding of history, though philosophies of history as usually conceived are not possible. The dualism of experience to which reference is here made is not identical with the dualism with which Professor de Ruggiero is concerned.
The Constant and the Contingent in Human Thought and Life
Authors: Garvie A. E.
Published: February 2009

The business of philosophy is “to think things together,” so far as the reality of things and the capacity of thought allow. That reality presents many contrasts, physical, ethical, metaphysical, light and darkness, life and death, good and evil, right and wrong, the One and the many, the Infinite and the finite, the Eternal and the temporal, and what we mention as last, but not least, for our immediate purpose, Being and Becoming, the Constant and the Contingent. The contrasts need not be regarded as contradictions, negations one of another, as thought the Eleatics with their emphasis on Being, or the Heraclitics with their preference for Becoming. To our immediate scrutiny all stands and all flows may be irreconcilable oppositions; but Einstein is teaching us that there is relativity in all our interpretations of reality. We need not with Indian thought declare Brahma alone real, and all else Maya, illusion.
Great Thinkers
Authors: Hackforth R.
Published: February 2009

Any account of Socrates must necessarily begin with the admission that there is, and always will be, a “problem of Socrates”. He himself wrote nothing, and although soon after his death—possibly even before it—many of his friends and admirers began to write about him, their writings are not reports in any literal sense, but reconstructions or interpretations coloured, to a greater or less degree, by the writer's own interests and prejudices, and inevitably selective in their treatment of a complex personality. Out of the very considerable bulk of this Socratic literature there is left to us in a complete form the work of Xenophon and Plato only, together with some scanty remains of Aeschines and yet scantier fragments of Antisthenes, the reputed founder of the Cynic school. In antiquity it was Aeschines who had the reputation of giving the most faithful picture of the master, a fact which deserves to be borne in mind when we attempt to determine how much of Plato's Socrates preserves the record of the man himself.
The Need For A Social Philosophy
Authors: Macbeath A.
Published: February 2009

Some years ago a Belfast funeral undertaker was on holiday in County Down. One sunny evening he climbed to the highest point in the Ards Peninsula. The visibility was good and the view magnificent. On one side lay Strangford Lough with Slieve Croob and the Mourne Mountains in the background. On the other was the Irish Sea with the Isle of Man, the Cumberland Hills and the southern Scottish uplands in the distance.
The Meaning Of Beauty
Authors: Allen A. H. B.
Published: February 2009

Theories of beauty are often divided into the objective and the subjective. I am doubtful whether a rigid distinction between the two can be maintained. It is difficult for an objective theory to assert that the impression of beauty is received quite passively, without any reaction or co-operation on the part of the subject, which is likely to be similar in the various cases.
The Notion Of Conscience
Authors: Duncan-Jones Austin
Published: February 2009

Nowadays the word “conscience” has an old-fashioned, obsolete air. I shall try to guess at the reasons, and then I shall consider whether they are good reasons.
A Philosopher And Intelligence Tests
Authors: Mays W.
Published: February 2009

The most interesting feature about Mr. Richardson's criticism of my paper (PHILOSOPHY, October 1954) is that it reveals the typical attitude of the traditional intelligence tester which I set out to criticize. He accepts the view (1) that intelligence deals mainly with the grasping of relationships, (2) that intelligence thus defined is an innate ability, (3) that it may be relatively isolated by the use of suitably designed tests and treated independently of other abilities.
Philosophy In France
Authors: Montefiore Alan
Published: February 2009

A philosophical survey should, I take it, attempt to supply as much information as possible in a conveniently short space. When the space is as short as it must be here, the survey is in danger of turning into a catalogue. This danger can be avoided easily enough when one or two among the works under review stand far and obviously above the others in general interest and importance, for they may properly receive exclusive attention. But this is not the case, I think, as far as the works received from France and Belgium in the past year are concerned. The first need seems to be for a guide to enable some bearings to be found. Let it be added, with regret, that while it may be possible to mention some of the works that have not in fact been received by this journal, there is far from being any guarantee that there are no omissions of anyworth.
Evaluative Inference
Authors: Brown D. G.
Published: February 2009

The phrase ‘evaluative inference’ was used by Toulmin (Reason in Ethics, p. 38) for ‘that form of inference by which we pass from factual reasons to an ethical conclusion’; and the phrase has been attacked by Hare in his review of Toulmin (Philosophical Quarterly, 1951) and in his book (The Language of Morals, pp. 45 ff.). I shall try to dig out some of the questions at issue in that discussion, but to do so without the help of this technical term, or of any other that I can avoid.
Varieties Of Aesthetic Experience
Authors: Pole D. L.
Published: February 2009

The traditional business of aestheticians has been to supply an answer to the question, “What is art?” A single question is put, and apparently it is assumed—though recently the assumption has been fairly widely challenged—that there is a single answer to be supplied; that there is one definition or one essence of art from which all its properties can be shown to derive. However the problem is also quite frequently reformulated: some theorists prefer to ask, “What is aesthetic experience?” Here we find a second assumption: it seems to be taken for granted that it is appropriate to put either one question or the other, but not both; aesthetic experience having been characterized, art can be denned in terms of it, or vice versa. And it is assumed here, as before, that there is one essential answer to give. It is supposed, that is to say, that all aesthetic experience— the experience of reading War and Peace or Herrick’s two lines Of Julia, Weeping, the experience of looking at York Minster or the pattern on the carpet, if by good fortune the carpet is well designed— has some one distinguishing characteristic in all instances, in virtue of which alone they are to be called aesthetic.
The Philosophy of J. S. Haldane
Authors: McDougall William
Published: February 2009

In a little book of 155 pages the late John Scot Haldane gave the world his final message. Much as his friends and admirers must regret his recent death, we may rejoice that in these few pages he has succeeded in presenting in clear and unmistakable fashion the philosophy which, throughout his long life of highly successful detailed research in physiology combined with equally effective and untiring application of his findings to practical problems, he slowly developed into the outlines of a comprehensive and rounded system.
Formalism and Teleology
Authors: Jensen O. C.
Published: February 2009

The recent discussions on “The Right and the Good” show that the reconciliation between formalismandteleology is still a problem. Some of the contending parties lean more strongly towards formalism, others towards teleology; but neither side has, I believe, done equal justice to formalism and teleology. To review the whole discussion is beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, I propose to suggest in outline a theory which may possibly harmonize the essential tenets of both parties.
The Missing Link in Peace Plans
Authors: Muirhead J. H.
Published: February 2009

The older of us are agreed that never before within our memory has there been a time in which men's souls have been so filled with anxiety as to the condition of the world. The Afghanistan and the Boer Wars as we look back come into our minds. But these were on the outskirts of civilization, and no one really believed that they threatened that of our own country, not to speak of Europe. The period before the Great War was one of violent conflicts, but, as contrasted with those wider and more subterranean conflicts out of which the war rose, they may be said to have been household matters, and only required a little more resolute goodwill on the part of the nation itself for their solution.
With Whom are we at War?
Authors: Muirhead J. H.
Published: February 2009

Second in importance only to the question raised by the short editorial in the last number of Philosophy: Why are we at War? is that on which there is at present a lively discussion going on in The Times and elsewhere under the title of “German Rulers and People”: With Whom are we at War? On one point there is no difference of opinion: we are at war with the blood- and crimestained group that, with Hitler at their head, hold the reins of government. Difference begins when it is asked what share the people of Germany as a whole has in their crimes. On the one side are those who hold that, as you cannot, in historical words, “bring an indictment against a whole nation,” neither can you be at war with a whole people, and that the main problem we have before us is the discovery of the means to appeal to the intelligence and hearts of the mass of the nation in order to enlist it against its Government as a common enemy. On the other side are those who quote the equally historic words that “every nation gets the kind of government it deserves,” from which “it follows that it deserves no immunity for the acts of the Government by which it chooses, or allows itself, to be governed.” This argument is reinforced first by a general philosophy of war as the “natural” order of things from which man is only gradually emerging into an exceptional and precarious condition of peace; and secondly, with regard to Germany in particular, that “the lust for dominance through force is, and will be for generations, at the root of the German character.” The importance of the issue as thus stated requires no emphasis.
The Permanent Significance of Hume's Philosophy
Authors: Price H. H.
Published: February 2009

The subject of my lecture is an appropriate one for several reasons. The first is purely chronological. Hume's first and greatest work, the Treatise of Human Nature, was published in 1739, two hundred years ago. Its illustrious author was then quite unknown in the world, and as he tells us himself the book “fell dead-born from the press.” But by the end of the eighteenth century its reputation was securely established, and it has long been regarded as one of the masterpieces of European thought, and as the classical statement of the Empiricist Philosophy. It is true that, like other classics, it has had its ups and downs. During the Absolute Idealist period, which ended early in the present century, Hume was the great bogey-man, and the duty of all self-respecting philosophers was to refute him. In our own day things are different. Empiricism, despite many obituary notices, is very much alive again. And this time it is in close alliance with Natural Science, and has equipped itself with all the technique of modern Symbolic Logic; it is more vigorous in construction and more formidable in criticism than it has ever been before. Consequently Hume is no longer the bogey-man. People now read the Treatise not as an awful warning, but as a source of stimulus and illumination. Incidentally, we can now enjoy his admirable style without any qualms. It is no longer thought that if a philosopher writes in clear and entertaining English, what he writes must therefore be either superficial or false. We regard obscurity and turgidity as demerits, not as signs of profound thinking. Moreover, we have learned to appreciate the eighteenth century, of which Hume was one of the most characteristic products.