bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Development of Bishop Butler's Ethics: Part II
Authors: McPherson Thomas H.
Published: February 2009

Most critics of Butler's ethics have ignored the text of the Analogy, and have confined their attention to the short Dissertation on Virtue which is printed as an appendix to that work. This is a mistake. The Dissertation can only be really understood when it is read in its proper context. Butler tells us that the Dissertation was originally intended to form part of the third chapter of the first part of the Analogy. It is indeed an integral part of that chapter, as that chapter is an integral part of the book. The whole work must be considered if we would know Butler's mind at this time.

In seeking to follow Butler's thoughts on ethics as set out in the Analogy we are met with fewer inconsistencies than are to be found in the Sermons, but a good deal more in the way of obscurity and difficult phrasing. Butler reasons very closely, and gives few concessions to the hasty reader. Also, his cautious mind leads him to qualify his statements lest he commit himself to more than he is prepared to say, with the result that his sentences often contain many dependent clauses which cloud his meaning. But, although there may be passages of a contrary tendency, the view which will be developed here seems to represent the general drift of the Analogy.
Ethical Intuitionism
Authors: Strawson P. F.
Published: February 2009

North.—What is the trouble about moral facts? When someone denies that there is an objective moral order, or asserts that ethical propositions are pseudo-propositions, cannot I refute him (rather as Moore refuted those who denied the existence of the external world) by saying: “You know very well that Brown did wrong in beating his wife. You know very well that you ought to keep promises. You know very well that human affection is good and cruelty bad, that many actions are wrong and some are right”?

West.—Isn't the trouble about moral facts another case of trouble about knowing, about learning? We find out facts about the external world by looking and listening; about ourselves, by feeling; about other people, by looking and listening and feeling. When this is noticed, there arises a wish to say that the facts are what is seen, what is heard, what is felt; and, consequently, that moral facts fall into one of these classes. So those who have denied that there are “objective moral characteristics” have not wanted to deny that Brown's action was wrong or that keeping promises is right.
Intuition in Christian Philosophy
Authors: Stead G. C.
Published: February 2009

The object of this paper is to examine the concept of intuition and to determine what part, if any, it should play in Christian philosophy. It is a complex inquiry, and I shall have to save space by a certain economy of purely historical detail, and also, if you will allow me, by by-passing the vexed question of Revelation and Natural Theology. It seems to me that whatever the issue of this debate may prove to be, it will not prevent philosophers from plying their trade; and whether they, or some of them, are to be dignified with the title of Natural Theologians is a problem they can leave to others. The only remaining question is, whether it is lawful for a Christian minister to engage in philosophy. As philosophy is not an openly scandalous pursuit, and there is no canon against it, I take the answer to be “Yes.” I would have you regard this paper as an essay in philosophy and allow me to investigate certain aspects of human knowledge, and the light they throw on man's knowledge of God, without presupposing a self-revelation of God to man. Without presupposing, but also without excluding it; revelation cannot be a primary datum for the philosopher, but it may well turn out to be his only ultimately satisfactory conclusion.

Adopting this standpoint, we shall inevitably be traversing that current of thought which reached England about fifty years ago and which, with its eddies and counter-currents, is still a moving force: I mean the insistence on religious experience, and more particularly the analysis of religious experience by the methods of psychology. In practice this method tended to concentrate on the experiences of the individual, and to disregard the far richer store of experience which lay crystallized in historic documents and liturgies—except in so far as these acted as a stimulus to individual piety.
The Aesthetic and Science
Authors: Gregory Joshua C.
Published: February 2009

When a rainbow spans the sky the eye may rest with simple rapture on the arch of colours, or the mind may interpret it as an interplay between raindrops and light. This perceptibly separates the aesthetic relish of the colours from the scientific understanding of the bow. Archbishop Temple distinguished the restfulness of art from the restlessness of science. This applies to the wider aesthetic which includes natural products, such as snow-scenes or daffodils or rainbows, with the pictures, statues, buildings, poems, and other products of man-made art. The rainbow clearly separates the understanding sought by science from the immediate contemplative aesthetic satisfaction with the colours.
The Relevance of Psychical Research to Philosophy
Authors: Broad C. D.
Published: February 2009

I will begin this paper by stating in rough outline what I consider to be the relevance of psychical research to philosophy, and I shall devote the rest of it to developing this preliminary statement in detail.
The Moral Situation
Authors: Robinson N. H. G.
Published: February 2009

Modern ethics has been chiefly concerned with the analysis of the conditions and principles of morality; and, in particular, one of its most important achievements has been the further elucidation of the Kantian dictum that “I ought” implies that I can. On the face of it Kant's contention seems perfectly straightforward, but, on examination, it becomes apparent that the simple word “can” covers a somewhat complicated ambiguity. When it is said that I ought to do act A, it may rightly be taken that I can do act A; but the question arises whether or not this in turn involves that I am aware that I can do act A. There is clearly some significance in the assertion that I can do many acts which, however, never occur to me, either because I am ignorant of certain facts or because I have a mistaken opinion about the facts. On the other hand, it may quite properly be said that I cannot perform any act of the possibility of which I am unaware. The problem then is to determine and examine the sense of the word “can” which is a pre-condition of moral obligation.
A Reasonable Theory of Morality: (Alexander and Whitehead)
Authors: Hooper Sydney E.
Published: February 2009

During the later years of his life, the late Professor Alexander devoted much of his time to the study of our aesthetic and moral experience. In regard to the latter, Alexander was impressed by Adam Smith's treatment of the Moral Sentiments and especially with what he considered his sure insight in seeking for the ground of obligation in the causes of conduct, rather than in its effects. These causes were the passions. In this he was in sympathy with his contemporary Hobhouse, who asserted with conviction that action rested on impulse feeling, and that it was useless to look for anything whether it was called Practical Reason or anything else, that stood outside the body of impulse feeling and controlled it. I think it was the considered opinion of Alexander, as it was that of Hobhouse, that if Psychology had anything to teach us bearing upon Morals, it was that the springs of human conduct must be looked for in our inherited tendencies with their associated emotions. Fear, sorrow, joy, repulsion, curiosity, pugnacity, self-assertion, the sex instinct, and (in some species) acquisitiveness and constructiveness, are present, not only in men of all living races, but also in most of the higher animals. These specific tendencies and emotions, with certain complex passions such as admiration, reverence, scorn and the rest; together with one or two general tendencies such as sympathy and imitativeness, arising out of the nature of mental processes, must have played a leading role in the determination of human conduct, both in its lower and higher grades.
A Modern Conception of Time
Authors: Milne E. A.
Published: February 2009

I think that to Lord Kelvin is attributed the saying that the scientific attitude to a thing, if you can't do anything else with it, is to measure it. This is the attitude I propose to adopt towards Time. The situation is to some extent analogous to the situation with regard to electricity. Science is unable to say what electricity is, and so it almost denies the word any entrance into a treatise on the subject. It replaces it by the word charge, which is something that can be measured. It is important to avoid hypostatizing time into a thing-in-itself. Instead of trying to say what time is (e.g. Plato's description of it as “the moving image of eternity”) we try to find a way of measuring it.
Our Knowledge of other Persons
Authors: Jones J. R.
Published: February 2009

It seems to me certain that the perception of foreign bodies of a certain sort, although a necessary, is not the only, part of the basis of our belief in other persons. The greatest disagreement with this view that I know of has been expressed by Professor Aaron in a paper published in Philosophy, XIX, 72. He claims that, since one does not really know “what it means to be a mind in one's own case,” the question whether we can be certain that there are other minds is meaningless except as reducible to the question whether such propositions as “Robinson exists” are propositions which we can be certain about. And he tries to show that no more is involved in the analysis of “Robinson exists” than would be involved in the analysis of propositions of whose truth we can be perceptually certain, such as “That table over there exists” or “The Eiffel Tower exists.” My assurance that Robinson exists is not the assurance that something called Robinson's mind exists. It is the perfectly ordinary perceptual assurance that ‘the person over there’ exists. “You ask me how I am certain that Robinson exists and I answer, ‘Well, look, there he is.’ It would be absurd for anyone to say that he does not exist when I see him here before me and hear him talk and watch him move that chair.”
Scepticism and Meaning
Authors: Hampshire Stuart
Published: February 2009

1. It is a commonplace that contemporary empiricism, or antimetaphysical philosophy, at least in this country, is a re-statement of the essentials of Hume's position with the aid of the more complete analysis of a priori reasoning provided by logicians within the last fifty years; what logical empiricism has most substantially added to Hume's sceptical method is the means of stating and applying his distinction between purely analytic sentences and sentences conveying information about matters of fact more precisely than he was able to state or apply it. It was Hume's governing purpose in every part of his writing to defend what is now generally called the language of common-sense, which is essentially what he called natural belief, against every kind of philosophical theory, whether rationalist or professedly sceptical. By “philosophical theory” is meant in this context any attempt by the use of logical or a priori arguments either to justify or to amend our common-sense beliefs or assertions; Hume tries to show that all such attempts are mistaken in logic and ineffective in fact. The work of the genuine sceptic, who is the true philosopher, is repeatedly to draw attention to the limits of human reason; to draw attention to the limits of human reason is to point to the logical impossibility of answering philosophical demands for some general, and therefore non-empirical, justification of our natural beliefs; such demands involve the substituting of some single, imposed criterion of justification in the place of the various and shifting criteria which we in fact habitually use.
Is There a Case for the General Will?
Authors: Mayo B.
Published: February 2009

It is fashionable nowadays to discredit the theory of the general will, and an attempt to rehabilitate it is not likely to receive much sympathy. Nevertheless, I propose to give some reasons for adopting a more lenient attitude towards the theory, and to indicate some possible lines along which a rehabilitation might be conducted.
Mill on Self-Regarding Actions
Authors: Ten C. L.
Published: February 2009

In the essay On Liberty, Mill put forward his famous principle that society may only interfere with those actions of an individual which concern others and not with actions which merely concern himself. The validity of this principle depends on there being a distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions. But the concept of self-regarding actions has been severely criticised on the ground that all actions affect others in some way and are therefore other-regarding. The notion of self-regarding actions appears to be completely discredited. Very recently, however, there has been some dissatisfaction with the traditional debunking of Mill on this score. Two serious and important attempts to reinterpret the principle were made by Mr J. C. Rees in an article entitled ‘A Re-Reading of Mill on Liberty’, and by Mr Alan Ryan in two brief but extremely useful contributions. My aim is to discuss these reinterpretations of Mill, and on the basis of this, build up what I think is the correct account of Mill's notion of self-regarding actions.
The Identity of the History of Ideas
Authors: Dunn John
Published: February 2009

Two types of criticism are frequently levelled at the history of ideas in general and the history of political theory in particular. The first is very much that of historians practising in other fields; that it is written as a saga in which all the great deeds are done by entities which could not, in principle, do anything. In it, Science is always wrestling with Theology, Empiricism with Rationalism, monism with dualism, evolution with the Great Chain of Being, artifice with nature, Politik with political moralism. Its protagonists are never humans, but only reified abstractions—or, if humans by inadvertence, humans only as the loci of these abstractions. The other charge, one more frequently levelled by philosophers, is that it is insensitive to the distinctive features of ideas, unconcerned with, or more often ineffectual in its concern with, truth and falsehood, its products more like intellectual seed-catalogues than adequate studies of thought In short it is characterised by a persistent tension between the threats of falsity in its history and incompetence in its philosophy.
Piety and Justice: Plato's ‘Euthyphro’
Authors: Rosen Frederick
Published: February 2009

Piety is not a theme that normally attracts the modern mind. In our own age rebellion has a more prominent position and the theme of impiety strikes a more sympathetic note. We are led to examine Plato's Euthyphro as much for the hints we find on the subject of impiety as for whatever it might contain on the seemingly drab subject of the holy. The Euthyphro is also a dialogue concerned with justice, a recurrent theme in the Platonic corpus, and it questions the accepted relationship of justice to piety and orthodoxy. The secular implications of the argument, which seem to be the more important to Socrates, himself, are as relevant to modern politics and religion as they were to the life of ancient Athens.
The Argument from Design
Authors: Swinburne R. G.
Published: February 2009

The object of this paper is to show that there are no valid formal objections to the argument from design, so long as the argument is articulated with sufficient care. In particular I wish to analyse Hume's attack on the argument in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and to show that none of the formal objections made therein by Philo have any validity against a carefully articulated version of the argument.
Flew on Aquinas
Authors: Velecky L. C.
Published: February 2009

Prof. Flew's main purpose in God and Philosophy (Hutchinson, London, 1966) is ‘to develop and to examine a case for Christian theism’ (1, 1). But in next to no time he shows his reader that here, as with the New York Commissioner for Air Pollution, ‘for’ really means ‘against’. For Flew's aim is to attack Christian theism and to develop the argument against it. One of his fellow-humanists rightly reviewed this book under the title ‘A Case for Atheism’. As the case for atheism is being developed one quickly loses faith in the assurance that this ‘philosopher of religion has … no business to be counsel for either the prosecution or the defence’ and aspires to resemble most of all the examining magistrate (2, 3). Soon we are told that an attack should and shall be launched against the heart of the quinta via of Aquinas (3, 19, etc.). This is not just a slip of the pen for indeed the book contains a number of attacks on Aquinas. Of course Aquinas is not the only Christian theist who is attacked but he is Flew's chief individual target.
The Inexplicable and the Supernatural
Authors: Pratt Vernon
Published: February 2009

An appeal to the inexplicable has always been a favourite tactic of the Supernaturalist; and even today those Supernaturalists that remain seem to derive some comfort from it. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, the orthodox Protestant apologetic in this country laid great stress on the ‘inexplicable’ events allegedly associated with Christ's life as anthenticating the truths of revelation. (A. G. N. Flew, God and Philosophy, London, 1966, p. 142–3.) A more general thesis has been put forward as often, and even more often assumed: that the occurrence of inexplicable events demonstrates the reality of a ‘spiritual’ realm. And in current literature we can find it claimed that the hegemony of science or the tenability of materialism is threatened by those inexplicabilities which are now known as the phenomena of ESP. (See, for example, ‘A World of Spirits’, a dialogue between J. Pearce-Higgins and C. Evans in Theoria to Theory, Vol. I, No. 4.)
Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Authors: Laing B. M.
Published: February 2009

Professor Kemp Smith in providing a new edition of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, embodying all the author’s additions and corrections, has given expression to the perennial interest and fascination which this work has possessed for many minds during the odd one hundred and fifty years since it was first published by Hume’s nephew. The editor himself has performed a great service by contributing an Introduction and a clear and concise summary of the Dialogues, in both of which he expounds his own view as to how Hume’s discussion is to be interpreted. Hume employs three characters—Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes; and
Science and Abstraction
Authors: Russell L. J.
Published: February 2009

It is not only in science that abstraction is found as a method of dealing with the world, and we may profitably begin by showing its wide use in ordinary practical life.
Philosophy in Germany
Authors: Knight Helen
Published: February 2009

This survey first deals with German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century and Forms of Thought, both by Hans Leisegang. It then summarizes Theodor Ziehen's Foundations of the Philosophy of Religion. Next it refers to a revised edition of Hermann Cohen's Religion of Reason, and to two small books by Louis Anderson. Finally some shorter announcements of other new books, including Hans Reichenbach's Philosophy of the Space-Time Theory, which Einstein has praised, Nicolai Hartmann's Hegel, and a new edition of Bolzano's Theory of Science.
The Philosophical Study of Politics
Authors: Adams W. G. S.
Published: February 2009

I Venture to take as the subject for our consideration the philosophical study of politics. However imperfect the treatment of such a subject, it seems to me opportune that attention should at this point of time be directed to the question. The study of politics is of increasing importance in the curricula of our universities and in general adult education. There is also the plain fact that we live in times when a deep unrest of spirit and a great variety of experiment challenge ideas and institutions which have received wide acceptance. There has been, in short, a return to politics. It is well that we should consider afresh the value of the study and the methods by which it is studied.
Science and Morality
Authors: Taylor A. E.
Published: February 2009

Can there be such a thing as moral science, or a science of morality? And if so, what sense has the wordsciencein such a connection? In the middle of the last century such a question would probably have seemed superfluous. Utilitarians, Comtists, and not a few “evolutionists” would all have claimed to be moralists, with this advantage over the metaphysical or theological moralists of an earlier day that their own moral doctrines were “scientific” (which meant apparently that they formed an integral part of a wider view of things for which the principles of the natural sciences provided the foundations).
Organicism in Biology
Authors: Needham Joseph
Published: February 2009

THE word “ Organicism,” although it may seem unfamiliar to the younger generation of biologists, is not a new one, and has been heard of already in that shadowy limbo where philosophical and biological conceptions meet on common ground. The genius of its original minting is not known, but it figured largely in the great work of Yves Delage, the French zoologist, in which he attempted to survey and criticize every important biological theory which had ever been seriously produced. Hisl'Hérédité et les grands Problèmes de la Biologie appeared in 1903, and in it he classified all biological theories, past, present, and future, under the four heads of
On Right and Good: Preliminary Survey
Authors: de Burgh W. G.
Published: February 2009

“The object of the moral faculty,” wrote Butler in a classic passage of theDissertation on Virtue, “is actions, comprehending under that name active or practical principles: those principles from which men would act if occasions or circumstances gave them power, and which, when fixed and habitual in any person, we call his character. It does not appear that brutes have the least reflex” (i.e. reflective) “sense of actions, as distinguished from events; or that will and design, which constitute the very nature of action as such, are at all an object to their perception. But to ours they are: and they are the object, and the only one, of the approving and disapproving faculty.
Moral Positivism and Moral Aestheticism
Authors: Carritt E. F.
Published: February 2009

Mr.Ayer, in Language, Truth and Logic (p. 161), says: “Sentences which simply express moral judgments do not say anything. They are pure expressions of feeling and as such do not come under the category of truth and falsehood.... Aesthetic terms are used in exactly the same way as ethical terms."
Philosophical in Italy
Authors: de Ruggiero Guido
Published: February 2009

In1920 Bignone published an Italian translation of the writings and fragments of Epicurus in Laterza's library of Ancient and Mediaeval Philosophers which in many respects added to and improved upon Usener's classic collection, of Epicurea. He has since then zealously prosecuted these studies, and arrived at some very interesting conclusions which he has given out in two volumes published lately.1 His starting-point is the observation that the writings of Epicurus often have a polemical tone, and not only rebut the accusations of adversaries who misinterpret the new doctrine, but are often directed also against those preceding philosophers who denied to pleasure a stable and certain nature on which a system of ethics could be based. Bignone has set himself the task of particularizing these anonymous predecessors, and thereby bringing the Epicurean polemic into more striking relief. I t was easy and safe to start from the standpoint that Epicurus in his rehabilitation of pleasure had to oppose Plato and the Platonists, but at what Platonists in particular did he take aim? In answering this question Bignone has been able to make use of recent Aristotelian studies, especially those of Jaeger, which have thrown much light on the first phase of the Stagirite's philosophy, of a purely Platonic inspiration. As is well known, some exoteric dialogues belong to this phase, such as the Eudemos, the Protrepticon, and On Philosophy, which have to a large extent disappeared, though it has been found possible to reconstruct a few scattered fragments of them. The great scholastic works which reveal the full independence and maturity of Aristotle's genius have eclipsed them in the memory of posterity. But originally there were only these dialogues, the only ones published, to make Aristotle's thought known to the public outside the peripatetic school. The scholastic writings on the other hand remained unknown until the time of Sulla. What wonder, then, if Epicurus, in combating Platonism, had in mind these dialogues, which give out the fundamental conceptions of Platonism in a more decisive and dogmatic form than that of the Platonic dialogues?
Responsibility, Freedom and Determinism
Authors: Bourke John
Published: February 2009

There may in general be said to be two ways in which progress may be made in the understanding and towards the solution of a problem. The one is that of the continual development of it in the form originally given to it, by confirming this and rejecting that point in the light of fresh evidence, by clarification of concepts, and by detecting and resolving ambiguities and inconsistencies. Here it is assumed that the standpoint from which the problem has been approached is relevant and adequate. The other is entered upon when an “impasse” has been reached which can only be avoided by the realization that the original question was asked in a way which was either partially or wholly false or misleading. This is the more radical way of partial or total reformulation of the problem to be solved.
Laws and Theories
Authors: Campbell Norman
Published: February 2009

Is there any important distinction between a law and a theory? Some usages suggest that there is. Thus, everyone speaks of Boyle's Law (not theory) and of the dynamical theory (not law or laws) of gases. But the most summary inquiry will show that the distinction is not maintained consistently by individual authors, still less as between different authors; the terms “Newtonian law” and “theory of gravitation” seem to be used indifferently to denote the same proposition(s).
The Relations of Philosophy
Authors: Moore Jared S.
Published: February 2009

PHILOSOPHY, like some people, has many relations; and, as in the case of people with large family connections, it is possible to learn a good deal more about the nature of philosophy if we consider its relations with other members of the family to which it belongs. In this family are included, along with philosophy itself, two extremely important human interests, science and religion, all of which have a common concern in the fundamental problems of human experience, and attempt in various ways to satisfy man's need of adjusting himself to the universe which lies about him. Of these three related interests, Religion may be thought of as one of the parents of
Philosophy in Germany
Authors: Heinemann F. H.
Published: February 2009

It is not the purpose of a Survey to give a detailed analysis of certain books like a single review, but rather to draw the attention of the reader to works of some importance and use to him, and to indicate, if possible, some general trends of thought of to-day. Whereas our last survey was devoted to Philosophy of History, we take under review to-day some books on the Philosophy of Nature, that is philosophy of physics, chemistry, and biology, and we
finish with some historical books on the subject.
The Philosophy of Mysticism
Authors: Inge W. R.
Published: February 2009

WilliamJames'sfamous book,The Varieties of Religious Experience, appeared in 1902. Ever since that date studies of the psychology of mysticism have poured from the press. In our own country we may name Evelyn Underhill, Mrs. Herman, and von Hügel. In France, Bastide, Murisier, Récéjac, Boutroux, Delacroix, Janet, Poulain, Bremond, Bergson, Bréhier. In America, besides William James, Starbuck, Leuba, Coe, Hocking, Rufus Jones, P. E. More, Pratt, Royce, Bennett. These lists are far from complete. In Germany the subject seems to have aroused less interest; but Otto, not long before his death, published a book dealing with it.
Philosophy in Italy
Authors: de Ruggiero Guido , Allen M.
Published: February 2009

BenedettoCroce'sbook on history1is the ideal continuation of his earlier book published over a score of years ago on “La Teoria e Storia della storiografia” forming the final part of the “Filosofia dello spirito.” During this long period Croce has had the opportunity to enrich and extend his historiographical experiences with a series of volumes, of which those on the History of Naples, the History of Italy, and the History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century are the most important and have had the widest repercussions. In all this range of experience his fundamental theses on the character and value of history have not been substantially altered. They have actually developed in breadth and depth, so that in the present volume we find them with their characteristic lineaments, old and new together, rendered fuller and more vivid by the rich lymph of the concrete problems of historical life by which they are nourished. In the meantime a series of violent and tumultuous changes, provoking vehement opposing mental reactions, has brought into discussion grave doubts, raised on certain points which first appeared firmly established in the historical view of the world. The antithesis has moved Croce to reaffirm his thought with renewed polemic ardour, thereby throwing it into stronger relief, and giving it a greater sense of reality.
The Paradoxes of Kant's Ethics
Authors: Ewing A. C.
Published: February 2009

Nobody interested in philosophy need be deterred by Kant's reputation for difficulty from familiarizing himself with his ethics. While the Critique of Pure Reason and his other non-ethical works are very hard to follow, the first two chapters of the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals at least are clear and straightforward and presuppose little previous acquaintance with philosophy. The third chapter is not about ethics as such but about the metaphysical problem of freedom and should be omitted by anyone who is not familiar with Kant's general philosophy, but the first two
Spinoza
Authors: Wolf A.
Published: February 2009

February 21st will mark the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the death of Spinoza, which occurred on February 21st, 1677. The visitor to the Hague may still see, in the Paviljoensgragt, the small two-storied house in the top rooms of which Spinoza spent the last six years of his short life. A tablet placed under the top windows commemorates the fact. It was in these rooms that Spinoza completed his Ethica, which may perhaps be regarded as the greatest masterpiece in the history of Metaphysics. The house is in danger of being pulled down, and the Spinoza Society is endeavouring to secure it as a memorial to Spinoza, and a centre of philosophic studies. It is not so long since the house-breakers I had their way with the home of Erasmus in Rotterdam. It would be sad indeed if the abode of another of the greatest Humanists were to meet with a like fate. It is to be hoped that the revived I interest in Spinoza which we are witnessing now may take the I practical form of saving this precious relic, which may well serve to promote the peace and goodwill among men which Spinoza had so much at heart.
Substance
Authors: Russell Bertrand
Published: February 2009

The question of substance in the philosophy of physics has three branches: logical, physical, and epistemological. The first is a problem in pure philosophy: is the notion of “ substance ” in any sense a “ category,” i.e. forced upon us by the general nature either of facts or of knowledge? The second is a question of the interpretation of mathematical physics: is it (a) necessary, or (b) convenient to interpret our formulae in terms of permanent entities with changing states and relations? The third concerns the relation of perception to the physical world.
A Study of Santayana With Some Remarks on Critical Realism
Authors: Cory Daniel Macghie
Published: February 2009

This paper is intended to be an interpretation of what I shall venture to call—the deliberate philosophy of Santayana, as outlined in his recent and most penetrating book: Scepticism and Animal Faith. I refrain from employing the battered term metaphysics, because this candid “ lover of wisdom ” has reminded us that his system is not metaphysical, “ except in the mocking literary sense of the word.” What the vulgar (among which I count myself), however, understand by the term, he is guilty of offering in this mature work. It is my desire to try and see his philosophy under the searchlight of contemporary discussion;and I shall introduce some remarks of my own on what I consider significant Realistic issues of the day. My philosophy, however, on nearly all conditions, has been formed by, and is in concord with, the system here expounded.
The Limits of Evolution
Authors: Lossky N.
Published: February 2009

At the beginning of this article I propose to use the word “ evolution “ as it is used in biology, to mean the formation of a number of vegetable or animal species out of a few comparatively simple types, and to exclude from its connotation any idea of perfection, purpose, value, and so on.
The Dualism of Mind and Matter
Authors: Macmurray John
Published: February 2009

One of the most deeply engrained habits of the modern world is the habit of thinking in terms of a contrast, and indeed of an opposition, between something we call Mind and something we call Matter. This habit is obviously not confined to philosophy. It is built into the structure of our languages and of our ways of behaviour. It conditions our religious and moral attitudes, as well as our reflective thought in science and philosophy. It is not surprising, therefore, that much of modern European Philosophy has consisted in an effort to overcome the dualism to which this habit gives rise when we try to clarify and systematize our knowledge of Reality. This essay on the subject is an essay in scepticism.
Can Present Human Motives Work A Planned Society?
Authors: Stamp Josiah
Published: February 2009

The title I first chose for my remarks was “The Socialization of the Hedonic Impulse,” but I concluded that I had better indicate my real objective rather than the process of getting to it.
Logical Positivism and Theology1
Authors: Price H. H.
Published: February 2009

The subject of this paper is the relation of Logical Positivism to Theology. By “Logical Positivism” I mean the doctrine originated by Dr. Wittgenstein and expounded more at length by Professors Carnap, Schlick, and other members of the Viennese Circle (Wiener Kreis) in the periodical calledErkenntnis. The clearest account of it in English is that given by Mr. R. B. Braithwaite in the volume calledCambridge University Studies.
Pleasure and Conation
Authors: Shillinglaw Arthur T.
Published: February 2009

There is no subject to which the writers of ethical textbooks have devoted more attention than that of the relations between pleasure and desire, and yet it is surprising how little agreement their efforts have produced in philosophical circles. This failure seems to me to be chiefly due to the fact that the question is only one among the many problems of conation, and can only be discussed in that context. In consequence, there remains a very wide gap between what psychologists have to say about the analysis of conation and what ethical writers have to say about the problems of moral psychology.1My object in writing this article is to help to bring this deplorable state of affairs to an end by expounding a theory of the relations between pleasure and desire, which is based upon a careful analysis of the facts of conation.
Autonomy
Authors: Downie R. S. , Telfer Elizabeth
Published: February 2009

It is often said that human beings have the ability to plan and choose what to do, can think for themselves and have the freedom and the right to form their own opinions on moral questions. Such claims are sometimes expressed by saying that the human agent is autonomous. In this paper we shall try to disentangle various theses about the autonomy of the agent which the common claims do not always distinguish.
Kant or Cantor? that the Universe, if Real, Must be Finite in Both Space and Time
Authors: Huby Pamela H.
Published: February 2009

This paper has two parts. In the first, I try to show that Russell's arguments against the thesis of Kant's first antinomy are unsatisfactory; in the second, I argue that the Universe, if transcendentally real, must be finite in both space and time.
Morality As an Art
Authors: Alexander S.
Published: February 2009

In describing morality as an art, I do not merely mean that there is a fine art of conduct, of which good manners are an obvious instance: the delicate adjustment of behaviour to small or subtle changes in our circumstances, the variation of our responses with differences in the age, standing, consideration of the persons with whom we talk. That there is such an art of good life is true, but it only means that in the instruments of life, as with our microscopes and telescopes, there are fine as well as coarse adjustments. Nor do I mean merely that, as Plato said, living is a craft, like weaving or carpentering, and that virtue is its technique. I mean something more than an analogy; and that the best way to understand morality is to see what it has in common with fine art, and at the same time the differences which, leaving it still an art, separate it from fine art.
The Conception of Liberty
Authors: Burns C. Delisle
Published: February 2009

The current conception of liberty is both negative and individualistic. It rests upon obsolete assumptions. Philosophers may be conscious of the defects of such assumptions, but even that is doubtful; and clearly the average journalist or politician is by no means aware of them, for the advocates of “ liberty,” in the old sense, have a very weak case, and its opponents attack it on the wrong grounds. The controversy in the lecture-room is not important. The quarrels of commentators are trivial. But there is a mortal conflict between the advocates and opponents of liberty in the sphere of government, industrial organization, and education. In the policies of those who have social power the conflicting conceptions of liberty are operative; and the battle is still uncertain, because it is normally fought upon the basis of unexamined assumptions.
The Ethics of Communism
Authors: Laird John
Published: February 2009

There is a sense, perhaps, in which our present topic is like Mrs. Harris, or snakes in Ireland, or the reigning King of Portugal—that is to say that there is no such thing. For if by communist one means simply a “ red,” it is at least permissible to argue that Moscow and Leningrad are places where there can be no ethics at all. In saying this I do not mean to refer to any particular actions whose object has been to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, or in other words the next immediate step in the policy of these communists. What Zinoviev and others of them say is that they are engaged in a war against all bourgeois administrations, and that, being at war, they are not bound to accept the rules of French duelling,i.e. any outworn conventions, whether these are called ethical or not. Since it is admitted, I suppose, by nearly every
Philosophy in Italy
Authors: De Ruggiero Guido
Published: February 2009

Among the studies on the history of philosophy recently published in Italy, one that may be of some interest to the English reader is by DR. Abbagnano, a young pupil of Aliotta, and is devoted to the new English idealism.1 Truthfully speaking, the term ‘ new ’ is inappropriate, or partly so, because Abbagnano dedicates the greater part of his study to what we might call the ‘ old ’ idealism in England, represented by Stirling, the two Cairds, Wallace, Green, and Bradley. However, he does also pass in review the more recent doctrines, particularly those of J. H. Muirhead, G. H. Howison, D. G. Richtie, J. E. Creighton, J. B. Baillie, J. S. Mackenzie, H. Jones, W. E. Hocking, A. S. Pringle Pattison, and G. P. Adams. Abbagnano regards as a distinctive trait of English idealism inspired by Hegel as opposed to Hegel himself, this, that “for Hegel the absolute is essentially process, change and becoming; it is thought which differentiates itself and becomes articulate in a life of its own, in the threefold rhythm of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, in which each moment passes into the next. For Green, Bradley, and Royce, the absolute is on the other hand immutability, completeness, static perfection, in which each process and becoming is overcome and resolved.” At any rate, Abbagnano is equally unsympathetic towards Hegel and towards his followers, against whom he opposes, not without scholastic ingenuity, his own irrationalistic views, set out in another book whose contents are sufficiently expressed in the title.1
The Philosophy of a Biologist
Authors: Hill Leonard
Published: February 2009

With the progress of science we become more and more aware of the undiscovered, and of our feebleness to visualize or express what is dimly known to us. Geologists estimate that man evolved some 1,000,000 years ago on an earth which astronomers say is some 2,000,000,000 years old. Caution is required in accepting such figures, for we must remember how far out Lord Kelvin was in estimating the age of the earth—before the discovery of radium. Man has been civilized for some 5,000 years, and Galileo, with his telescope and revolutionary ideas, lived some 300 years ago. There may be, we are told, a million million years before the sun grows weak and the earth becomes farther from the sun so that all life freezes. Long before this man may use up the metals available for his machines, and those ready sources of energy now so wastefully used, by which he at present multiplies and swarms in cities. In such case he will return through birth control or famine, or both, to a simple, uncrowded, pastoral existence. There is little likelihood of his being able to use atomic energy, other than that which reaches the earth as sun radiation and is available directly or as energy stored in water-power, wood, coal, and oil.
The Nature of Substance
Authors: de Moubray G. A. de C.
Published: February 2009

The classical and scholastic view of things was of neutral substance to which qualities were attached as substantial adjuncts. Qualities could apparently not be conceived of otherwise than as entities: blueness, hardness, pliability, toughness, translucency, and so on. Noun substantives were the part of speech by which they could most properly be referred to. The use of adjectives did not imply that these qualities were not substantival entities, but emphasized their subordinateness to the thing itself, and were useful in giving pliability, lightness, and elegance to speech. But qualities could not be conceived of otherwise than as something superadded to the neutral substance which carried them.
Morality and the Retributive Emotions
Authors: Leon Philip
Published: February 2009

Just as the pleasant experience differs from the non-pleasant or unpleasant, and (according to many at least) the aesthetic from the non-aesthetic, internally or qualitatively, and not merely in degree, or externally or relationally, so, it is natural to expect, a moment of moral living differs from a moral or immoral moment. Indeed, from many quarters, and most emphatically from the Stoic and Christian, we have been wont to hear that if we but leave our sinful or indifferent lives and put on righteousness or goodness, we shall become new men or men reborn, even creatures of a different species. But according to many (perhaps most) analyses of morality these promises of transfiguration or translation are nonsensical lies: for the moral experience, as exhibited in these analyses, differs from the non-moral or immoral only in respect of external relations, or at the most in degree. Whether the truth resides in the promises or in the analyses is, obviously, a question of no mean import. It is also a vast one, while the time and space that can be given up to an article are brief; hence the following will be barely more than a raising of the question, or a provocation, by means of rough statements, some dogmatic, others hypothetical.
Truth in Poetry
Authors: Bodkin Maud
Published: February 2009

The nature of poetic truth, and of the belief claimed by poetry, has become for many thinkers a question of keener interest through the discussions of Dr. I. A. Richards. In a recent article in this Journal,1 Dr. Helen Wodehouse has expressed her own view, elicited in relation to that of Dr. Richards, concerning truth in poetry. She urges that “a great poem seems sometimes centrally to be showing us the full measure and nature of some aspect of the actual world.” Our response involves essentially an element of belief in something revealed as rooted in reality, laying necessity upon the poet; even though that belief may not attach to all that the poet accepted as fact, and though we may be unable to formulate in reflective terms the nature of the truth discerned.
Great Thinkers
Authors: Inge W. R.
Published: February 2009

Times have changed since Pfleiderer, in 1883, after summing up Neoplatonism in three contemptuous sentences, concludes, “In this convulsed state, entirely destitute of contents, consciousness has disappeared, and with it the very possibility of the religious relation, in favour of an orgiastic tumult of feeling.” Had Pfleiderer ever read a word of Plotinus or Proclus? If not, he had many to keep him company among the philosophers of his generation, though to be sure, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Hartmann realized the importance of the latest era in Greek philosophy. Jowett, in his introductions to Plato, never shows the slightest interest in what Platonism became under the Roman Empire. Edward Caird had certainly read Plotinus; but his lectures upon him in his Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, though highly praised at the time, are even more misleading than the ignorant neglect of writers like Pfleiderer.
The Objective Validity of the Principle of Contradiction.
Authors: Conze Edward
Published: February 2009

The present essay is intended as a contribution to the investigation of the relations between the theoretical and the practical life of man. It makes the attempt to show that our assumption or rejection of even the highest and most abstract law of thought and reality is based on and rooted in our practical attitude towards the world. It tries to show that even the principle of contradiction (P.C.) owes its validity or non-validity to decisions made by the practical and emotional part of man, and that the objective validity of the P.C. is not absolute, but that it is relative to the practical and emotional attitude you choose to assume.
Analogy Today
Authors: Sherry Patrick J.
Published: February 2009

During the last few years many writers have pointed out that notions like ‘family resemblance’, ‘open texture’ and ‘systematic ambiguity’ which play a considerable role in contemporary philosophy are akin to Aquinas' concept of analogy. Yet no one has made a thorough comparison between modern linguistic philosophy and the Thomistic doctrine of analogy. In this article I want to explore their relationship and to assess the value of the latter. Just how much has Aquinas to contribute to modern discussions about the nature of language and about God's attributes? And does modern philosophy of language destroy Aquinas' case, or can it rather be used to supplement it?