bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Concept of Hierarchy
Authors: Kolnai Aurel
Published: February 2009

The Concept of Hierarchy, as well as various problems, aspects and doctrines attaching to it, was preposterously overrated in Greek philosophy, especially Platonic and Neo-platonic; probably even more so in medieval Scholastic philosophy which attempted to rationalize its supernaturalistic obsession with arguments taken from Greek, chiefly Aristotelian and thus semi-Platonic perfectionalism as a putative “natural” basis for it. Some great exponents of the modern German philosophy of Value, Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann, represent the same tradition in a doubtless more critical and more properly philosophic, less naively metaphysical, but still in a pretty dogmatically intuitional fashion. The counterpart to this we find to be rampant in modern English-speaking philosophy dominated by the thought-style of Logical Positivism, though many of its more recent representatives would disown that label. Mouthpieces of an egalitarian, machine-ridden and (at least apparently) utilitarian and functional society intolerant of the idea of kings, aristocrats, slaves, serfs, even rich and poor nay literate and illiterate, these thinkers idolize human “wanting” as such, whatever its contents and characteristics, would reduce all value to “needs” or “desires” and their different “intensities” and in their turn, I venture to say, seek preposterously to evade the very concept of Hierarchy, not only on the plane of social philosophy but also in the context of Axiology. They postulate a flattened world from which the experience of Verticality is all but wholly excluded.
Confucius: His Life And Teaching
Authors: Dubs Homer H.
Published: February 2009

The third of October, 1949, was the 2,500th anniversary of Confucius’ birth. This date has been under dispute for more than 2,000 years. Early and reliable accounts state that the birth was on a certain day of the Chinese sixty-day cycle and that it was fifty days after an eclipse of the sun. But those same accounts list eclipses of the sun in two successive months, something that is impossible in China. Only recently has any one bothered to calculate which eclipse actually occurred and discover that, in a period of twenty years before and after the birth, only one eclipse of the sun occurred on that day of the cycle and was visible at Confucius’ birthplace. So this date can be fixed accurately by modern scientific methods.1
Locke And The Problem Of Personal Identity
Authors: Flew Antony
Published: February 2009

Locke's contribution to the discussion was fourfold:First, he saw the importance of the problem;Second, he realized that the puzzle cases, the “strange suppositions,” were relevant;Third, he maintained “same” had a different meaning when applied to “person” from its meaning in other contexts; and,Fourth, he offered his much criticized solution of the problem.
‘Is it True What They Say About Tarski?’
Authors: Haack Susan
Published: February 2009

Popper welcomes Tarski's theory of truth as a vindication of the ‘objective or absolute or correspondence theory of truth’:

Tarski's greatest achievement, and the real significance of his theory for the philosophy of the empirical sciences, is that he rehabilitated the correspondence theory of absolute or objective truth … He vindicated the free use of the intuitive idea of truth as correspondence to the facts …
The Nature of Aesthetic Experience
Authors: Listowel
Published: February 2009

The traditional business of Aesthetics has been the study of the aesthetic experience and activity of mankind, in order to show what it is and how it can be distinguished from other experiences and activities. The assumption commonly made is that we ourselves, like others before us, have had a specifically aesthetic experience in the enjoyment of art or the beauty of nature, or have been engaged in the making of something unquestionably artistic. This basic assumption has been challenged recently by I. A. Richards, who calls aesthetic experience “a phantom.” His view is shared by other contemporary philosophers, who also maintain that there is no appreciable difference between an aesthetic reaction and any other frame of mind, or between artistic behaviour and other forms of creative work. We can certainly appeal to experience for the support of a postulate usually taken for granted and say that most artists, authors, and ordinary people in fact regard their aesthetic experience as something entirely distinct from what they do or feel at other times. Analysis will show whether this common-sense opinion is illusory.
The Ontological Argument of St. Anselm
Authors: Grave S. A.
Published: February 2009

The first aim of this paper is to try and determine what St. Anselm meant in his original argument in the Proslogion (ch. 2). This needs to be done because not only are the writers who expound his demonstration divided in their interpretations of it, and these interpretations quite different, but, very strangely, one does not find that they mention that there is any ambiguity and that other writers construe Anselm's words differently from themselves. Since there are in fact two arguments in the classical formulation of his proof, I want to try and disentangle them, decide which of them Anselm intendedand what is its connection with the demonstration in the third chapter of the Proslogion, and thus to offer an opinion on what exactly the ontological argument of St. Anselm is. Then on the basis of the clarification, I hope to show what it was that Gaunilo and St. Thomas attacked, to touch briefly on the relation of the 17th century ontological argument to Anselm's, and in general to indicate the curious round-aboutness of the historical criticism of Anselm. Anselm argued and Gaunilo and Thomas refuted something, though not, I think, precisely what Anselm meant, or, at any rate, not all that he meant. Actually it was Descartes that Thomas refuted by refuting half of Anselm. Kant refuted the other half of Anselm in an irrelevant criticism of Descartes. So that it could properly be said that Anselm's proof has been broken by philosophers who were either only partly aware of what he was maintaining, or who never had him in mind at all. Finally, because the important thing about the ontological argument, in my opinion, is not whether it is a demonstration of God's existence, but whether its refutation is a demonstration of the impossibility of God's existence, and because this question seems to arise most sharply in connexion with Anselm's position, I want to say something about that.
Philosophy in France
Authors: Acton H. B.
Published: February 2009

It is not easy for an Englishman to acquire a competent knowledge of French philosophy. For one thing there are so many French philosophers writing so many books, and for another the multiplicity of men is matched by the variety of views. In a country where a knowledge of philosophy is expected of any cultivated man, and where the flourishing of philosophy in school and university curricula is regarded as a condition of intellectual freedom, this variety is accepted as part of the cultural background. Professor Bréhier's Transformation de la Philosophie Française (Flammarion, Paris, 1950) must, even so, be of great value to French readers, because of the author's capacity-so admirably shown already in a History of Philosophy that is unquestionably the best now obtainable-to pick out what is essential in a welter of theories, arguments, and mere pronouncements. To English readers, whose knowledge of the background is necessarily limited, this book is particularly valuable, not only for the clarification it brings, but also for a bibliography that is closely related to the text. M. Bréhier observes that French philosophers of the generation that followed and criticized Durkheim, Bergson and Brunschwicg showed themselves acutely conscious of the discontinuities of things, and puritanically averse to the construction of philosophical systems. (We may compare the roughly contemporaneous reaction in this country against the systems of Bosanquet and Alexander, though the arguments were for the most part very different.) M. Bréhier, however, does not take this anti-systematic, pluralist tendency at its own valuation. French philosophy, he thinks, is in a phase that makes it comparable to medieval philosophy. It was characteristic of medieval philosophy that it comprised no individually constructed systems like those, for example, of Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, which have grown up and died away in Europe since the Renaissance. The main reason for this was that Christianity itself provided a common system which was never to be questioned, so that philosophers concerned themselves not with systems, for that would have led to heresy, but with particular problems. Part of M. Bréhier's parallel with modern times is that some Christians and all Marxists aim to produce the same condition.
Science and Art (II)
Authors: Alexander S.
Published: February 2009

It has been explained how science, with the freedom which makes it an art, uses ideas of its own construction, and that they are verified by nature shows them to be, directly or indirectly, at differing degrees of remoteness, congenial to and so far inherent in the material which is the subject-matter of the science. Take, for an instance, velocity. It is expressed by the ratio of two integers which measure distance and time respectively. Now a ratio is a construction of the mind, and it does not exist in external things in the sense in which universals must be said to belong to them and have in one way or another been held to belong to them since the time of Socrates, or at least Plato. Even if we agree that the integers themselves are given to mind and not created by mind, their ratio implies the intervention of mind, and does not inhere in the integers themselves. But though velocity does not inhere in things, it corresponds to and stands for something which is found alike in all moving things and varies in the moving tram and the sea-plane in a Schneider race.
Causal Determination: its Nature and Types
Authors: Turner J. E.
Published: February 2009

The problem of the nature and scope of Causation has again been raised into prominence by recent research on atomic structures and processes, the result being that many physicists maintain that the causational principle must now be restricted to macroscopic changes regarded as the averaged outcome of microscopic events, each of which alone may not be causally determined, or at least not completely so. Of this markedly new departure Professor Eddington is perhaps the best-known advocate. “Physics,” he asserts, “is no longer pledged to a scheme of deterministic law; the search for a scheme of strictly causal law (is) not practical politics.” But the issue concerns not Physics only, for Dr. Eddington at once proceeds to interpret his viewpoint by contending that “science withdraws its opposition to free will”; and thus the realms of consciousness and conduct are once more brought into intimate connection with the realm of physical phenomena. It must of course be recognized that the question still remains highly debatable; for, as Sir Oliver Lodge has recently urged, “break down causality, and we are left with chance. That is wholly unsatisfactory. Chance is no solution”; and he likewise expands his survey beyond Physics by adding, “not in that way would I aim at freedom.” It is scarcely necessary to refer to current controversy in the biological sphere, between those who regard living processes as falling, if only to some degree, outside the domain of causal action, and those who insist that such action is universal, the indubitable proof of their position being prevented only by the difficulties of investigation.
Locke, Butler and the Stream of Consciousness: and Men as a Natural Kind
Authors: Wiggins David
Published: February 2009

Locke defined a person as ‘a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” (Essay, II, xxvii, 2). To many who have been excited by the same thought as Locke, continuity of consciousness has seemed to be an integral part of what we mean by a person. The intuitive appeal of the idea that to secure the continuing identity of a person one experience must flow into the next experience in some ‘stream of consciousoness” is evidenced by the number of attempts in the so-called constructionalist tradition to explain continuity of consciousness in terms of memory, and then build or reconstruct the idea of a person with these materials. The philosophical difficulty of the idea is plain from the failure of these attempts. Hindsight suggests this was as inevitable as the failure of the attempt (if anyone ever made it) to make bricks from straw alone—and as a failure just as uninteresting. Which is not to deny that the memory theorist might get from it a sense that some of the difficulties in his programme have arisen from his leaving flesh and bones, the stuff of persons, out of his construction.
The Moral Point of View
Authors: Stewart Carole
Published: February 2009

In his discussion of morals in the Third Book of the Treatise, Hume claims that the taking of what I shall call a general point of view is a necessary condition of the arousal of moral feelings. This aspect of Hume's theory has not received much attention from his commentators before now, although its implications for the theory as a whole might be regarded as significant.
Is There Happiness After Death?
Authors: Solomon Robert C.
Published: February 2009

Must no one at all, then, be called happy while he lives; must we, as Solon says, see the end? Even if we are to lay down this doctrine, is it also the case that a man is happy when he is dead? Or is not this quite absurd, especially for us who say that happiness is an activity? But if we do not call the dead man happy, and if Solon does not mean this, but that one can then safely call a man blessed, as being at last beyond evils and misfortunes, this also affords matter for discussion; for both evil and good are thought to exist for a dead man, as much as for one who is alive but not aware of them; e.g. honours and dishonours and the good or bad fortunes of children, and in general of descendants. And this also presents a problem; for though a man has lived happily until old age and has had a death worthy of his life, many reverses may befall his descendants—some of them may be good and attain the life they deserve, while with others the opposite may be the case; and clearly too the degrees of relationship between them and their ancestors may vary indefinitely. It would be odd, then, if the dead man were to share in these changes and become at one time happy, at another wretched; while it would also be odd if the fortunes of the descendants did not for some time have some effect on the happiness of their ancestors.
The Mechanism of Life
Authors: Johnstone James
Published: February 2009

Consider two fairly simple, natural occurrences: a storm at sea and an earthquake. Many descriptions of these things have been made, but what interests us here are their scientific descriptions. In the first case, then, we have to deal with changes in the pressure and temperature of the atmosphere, with violent motions of the air and with waves in the sea. In the second case we deal with stratified rocks that are in a state of severe strain. When this strain exceeds a certain limit the rocks are fractured and waves are set up in the elastic materials of the earth's crust. In most cases storms and earthquakes happen when we do not expect them, and so there is usually little time to investigate them in an adequate manner. But there is no doubt whatever that if we could make all the researches that are practicable we could “ explain” individual storms and earthquakes. “Explanation” means re-describing the phenomena in the simplest manner possible, that is, in terms of space, time, gravitation, energy-transformations, chemical constitution of the materials concerned, etc. Such explanations can be (and indeed have been) made of the occurrences mentioned above, and the physical ideas we have noted are all that are included in the explanations.
The Problem of Colour in Relation to the Idea of Equality
Authors: Lugard Frederick
Published: February 2009

The subject of discussion this evening is “ The Problem of Colour in Relation to the Idea of Equality,” and though the last seven words would seem to indicate some special limitation, it is in fact difficult to divide this question into watertight compartments. For the basis of all philosophical study is accuracy of definition, and we must therefore begin by forming a precise conception of what the phrase “ Colour problem ” connotes before we proceed to discuss its bearing from a physiological, political, or sociological “ equality ” point of view. Thus at the outset we find ourselves in the very heart of a controversy, for it is difficult to find two people who will agree as to the definition of the Colour problem. Physiologically there is no line of demarcation, for of the inhabitants of North Central Asia many are as light—and indeed lighter—in the colour of their skin, their hair and their eyes than the Southern races of Europe, and the same may be true of Creoles, Quadroons, and Octaroons.
Green, Rousseau, and the Culture Pattern
Authors: Monro D. H.
Published: February 2009

There are, I think, three distinct senses in which Rousseau uses the term “general will.” He means by it, as the nineteenth century Idealists used to point out, something very like Kant's “good will,” which all men have in common and which cannot conflict with itself. But he also means, quite as often, the Utilitarian compromise, The mean between divergent interests which takes account of all of them and satisfies as many as possible. And, thirdly, he means something like the “culture pattern” of the modern anthropologists. I want to show that Green inherits this ambiguity, and that his argument in the Principles of Political Obligation is plausible only because he does not distinguish between these three meanings of “general will.”
Pain and Evil
Authors: Kemp John
Published: February 2009

The concepts of pleasure and good, both separately and in their relation to one another, have for centuries been a favourite and fruitful subject of philosophical discussion. The contrasting concepts of pain and evil, however, though by no means entirely neglected, have been, and still are, less popular among philosophers. The reason for this disparity is not altogether clear. The title of a recent autobiography, “Philosophers lead sheltered lives,” might support the explanation that philosophers are (no doubt very properly) reluctant to write on matters of which they have little or no first-hand knowledge. Pleasure and good, it may be said, form part of their own personal experience: but their academic seclusion has little place for either pain or evil. A more serious reason is the assumption, often made but rarely defended, that, since pain and pleasure, evil and good, are in some sense pairs of “opposites,” a full discussion of all four concepts is unnecessary. The nature of pain, it is thought, can easily be inferred from the nature of pleasure, and that of evil from that of good. But even if this were true, it ought not to be taken for granted; the belief (it is more often implicit than explicit) that these concepts are symmetrically disposed opposites ought to be held (if at all) only after an investigation into all of them. And in fact the belief is not true. It does not need profound insight or observation to see that we cannot (as some of the utilitarians once thought) construct a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as a plus, and pain as a minus quantity. Contemporary hedonists have often paid more attention to the psychological complexities involved in this problem than did their classical predecessors. A. L. Hilliard, for example, distinguishes carefully between pain and unpleasantness. Pain he describes as a sensitivity, “correlated with the excitation of specific receptors in the nervous system”: unpleasantness is an affectivity (i.e. roughly, an emotion) to which physiological correlates, though they must be assumed to exist, have not yet been discovered.
Natural and Scientific Language
Authors: Hutten Ernest H.
Published: February 2009

(I) Whenever we speak with someone in everyday life, when we write a letter or read a novel, we are said to use natural language. We have a historically given language like English or French; we consider familiar things and events; and we use the language more or less as most members of the same community use it.
Three-Valued Ethics
Authors: Cohen Jonathan
Published: February 2009

I Wish to suggest both that three (and not two) values are often used for the appraisal of moral judgments and also that there are some generally shared purposes which would be furthered if this usage became even more common. In doing this I shall by-pass two problems which have been not infrequently discussed in recent years:
Moral Pragmatism
Authors: Henderson G. P.
Published: February 2009

I want to explore the possibility of an a posteriori approach to the elucidation of certain moral notions. These are: (a) the notion of a duty, some specific thing which it is incumbent on me to do, and (b) the notion of something that is a good thing for me to do. I want to consider these notions, so far as I can, independently of rules. There is a certain sense in which having a duty to do this or that is a function of circumstances, and in which this or that's being a good thing to do is likewise a function of circumstances. I shall suggest specific examples in which this is a conspicuous feature of ‘my duty’ or of what I can, beneficially, do. In these examples what I ought to do, and what it is good to do, can be represented as special ways in which what I am to do presents itself.
On the Logic of Being a Democrat
Authors: Schiller Marvin
Published: February 2009

The central purpose of this paper is to sketch the logic of being a democrat. That is, what is involved in being a democrat will be defined and delineated. I shall proceed by first examining Richard Wollheim's alleged paradox of democratic theory. Wollheim's solution to the paradox will then be shown to be unsatisfactory. Next, the concept of being a democrat will be clarified. The stage will then be set for showing that Wollheim's alleged paradox of democratic theory dissolves upon discerning what a democrat qua democrat is committed to believe. In the process of clarifying what is involved in being a democrat and dissolving the alleged paradox of democratic theory, it will become evident that one popular argument often levelled against resistance to democratic law is without foundation. This is the argument that any democrat who conscientiously disobeys valid democratic law is necessarily behaving inconsistently with his democratic principles; and, therefore, if someone does conscientiously disobey valid democratic law, it proves he is not ‘really’ a democrat after all.
Adam Smith's Philosophy of Riches
Authors: West E. G.
Published: February 2009

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the name of Adam Smith was popularly associated with the sort of ‘laissez faire’ policy that is expounded with all the fervour of a religious faith. Smith, so the story ran, in his eagerness to combat the excessive mercantilist government intervention of his day, had resorted to supra-natural claims in his general onslaught against central control and planning by governments. Such intervention was ‘unnatural’ and conflicted with Deistic Design. Only through private actions could mankind reach satisfying and ‘natural’ fulfillment. Action through private self-interest was twice blessed; it. blessed him who profited and his fellows who were ‘profited from’. True there was a kind of central planning that was of supreme importance; but it had a divine origin and it worked not through governments but through individual free trade. Private actions in fact were directed by an Invisible Hand which brought society into a grand and spontaneous Natural Harmony.
The Right to Criticise
Authors: Downie R. S.
Published: February 2009

We are accustomed to the claim that appropriate backing must be available if criticism is to be justifiable. For example, if someone criticises a film he must be prepared to cite the criteria he is using and to show how they are or are not satisfied by the film. Such processes of evaluation have frequently been investigated: what has been less thoroughly sexplored is the right to criticise itself. Certainly, questions of the appropriate backing for critical utterances have bearing on the right to criticise (as I shall show), for one way of denying that a person has that right is to deny that he can provide the appropriate backing for his criticism. But the question of his right is a wider one, since the attempt to criticise may be blocked before the question of backing can arise at all. It is therefore worthwhile to explore the right to criticise with a view to discovering in what circum-stances it is defeasible. I shall be concerned mainly with the moral right to criticise as investigation of the legal right would raise issues for specialists in the laws of libel and slander.
“Did Hume Really Follow Berkeley”
Authors: Conroy Grapham P.
Published: February 2009

The Bishop of Cloyne, George Berkeley, was the sort of philosopher who, although most genial himself, was quite apt to embroil opponents and critics of his time and of our own in long-lasting and sometimes unresolved controversies. In attacking the “infidel mathematicians”, the “minute philosophers” among the scientists, Berkeley initiated a controversy on behalf of religion by taking to task the theory of fluxions held by Sir Isaac Newton, his friends, and followers which, beginning with Berkeley's Analyst and replies to it by Jurin and Walton, was continued on over one hundred years by subsequent writers. Florian Cajori in his History of Mathematics, commenting on the affair has written:

‘We must not neglect to express our appreciation of the fact that Berkeley withdrew from the controversy after he had said all that he had to say on his subject. Some of the debates that came later were almost interminable, because the participants continued writing even after they had nothing more to say.’
Does St Anselm Beg the Question?
Authors: Devine Philip E.
Published: February 2009

The following objection to the ‘ontological’ argument of St Anselm (Proslogion II) has a continuing importance. The argument begs the question by introducing into the first premise the name ‘God’. In order for something to be truly talked about, to have properties truly attributed to it—it has been said—it must exist; a statement containing a vacuous name must either be false, meaningless, or lacking in truth-value, if it is not a misleading formulation to be explained by paraphrase into other terms. In any case the question of the divine existence is begged.
Moral Weakness
Authors: Evans Donald
Published: February 2009

Discussions of moral weakness in recent and even not so recent ethics have generally neglected large areas of the moral life. In some cases, it may be argued, such neglect has been accidental in that the philosopher or philosophers concerned have set out to examine problems thrown up by a class or classes of actions without purporting to present an exhaustive account of moral weakness. In other cases such neglect is pernicious in that if not designed to protect a certain philosophical position it has by the doctrinaire delimitation of the range of examples considered had precisely that effect. This delimitation has often arisen out of unexamined presuppositions as to the nature of moral weakness. They are embodied in the following general framework suggested as an account not of some cases of weakness but of all cases:

In a case of weakness a man does something that he knows or believes he should (ought) not do, or fails to do something that he knows or believes he should do, when the occasion and the opportunity for acting or refraining is present, and when it is in his power, in some significant sense, to act in accordance with his knowledge or belief.
Form in Aristotle: Universal or Particular?
Authors: Sykes R. D.
Published: February 2009

In this paper I ask whether in Aristotle's metaphysical system the form of a non-living sensible substance, such as the form of this house, is or is not universal. I argue that his position as it stands is self-contradictory, and then try to give some account of the pressures that led to this central contradiction in Aristotle's metaphysical thought.
Understanding and Experience: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Mind
Authors: Palmer Anthony
Published: February 2009

The ways in which mental concepts can seem problematic are various, and consequently the idea of a coherent body of issues forming one part of philosophy, namely the philosophy of mind, is highly misleading. When Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle inaugurated the flood of recent writings about the concept of mind there was some similarity, although not identity, in the problems which led them to concentrate their attention on mental concepts. Wittgenstein saw that lack of clarity about such notions as willing, thinking, feeling and imagining generated powerful but misleading pictures about logic—about the difference between sense and nonsense —so that if we were to become clear about one we should have to become clear about the other. Worries about logic generated his interest in what it is to have a mind. In the case of Ryle, if we are to accept his own autobiographical remarks, an exposition of the logic of mental concepts was undertaken to illustrate whatever clarity had already been achieved by him and others with regard to logic and logical investigations. ‘The Concept of Mind was a philosophical book written with a meta-philosophical purpose’ (Gilbert Ryle, ‘Autobiographical’, in Ryle: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Oscar P. Wood and George Pitcher, 1970). Although I think it should be open for speculation just why specifically mental notions were singled out by him for such an illustrative purpose. In each case questions about logic prompted writing about the mind. There remains an echo of this in some of the books under review, but, as often with deepseated changes, the original impetus can soon be lost, and debates about distinctions in which it was first embodied can take on a life of their own.
Descartes' “Simple Natures”
Authors: Hartland-Swann John
Published: February 2009

It is one of the unfortunate habits of great philosophers to leave behind them unclarified points of doctrine which give headaches to those anxious to view their systems as coherent wholes, and often lead to considerable confusion, or even contradiction, in attempts at critical exposition. An outstanding example of this is furnished by Descartes' treatment of “simple natures.”

To interpret what Descartes really meant by simple natures as described in the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, and to integrate this with what he said in his published works (where they are not mentioned as such) is by no means an easy task—as the differing views of various critics clearly indicate. One has only to compare, say, the expositions of Chevalier, Boyce Gibson and Keeling to see that there is little unanimity of opinion as to the actual connotation of simple natures, their proper role in the Cartesian metaphysic, their terminological equivalents in the Meditations and Principles, and their ontological as opposed to epistemological status. Many critics, as Dr. Keeling complains, have seen fit “to discuss them when treating of his (Descartes') method, and omit all reference to them thereafter.” To make any comprehensive attempt to sort out this critical Verwirrung, however, would require considerable space. What I shall do here, therefore, will be to state the problem as simply as I can and then offer a solution in the light of the evidence available—although I admit that short of recalling Descartes from his grave there can be no final solution.
Wittgenstein and Zen
Authors: Canfield John V.
Published: February 2009

Wittgenstein's later philosophy and the doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism integral to Zen coincide in a fundamental aspect: for Wittgenstein language has, one might say, a mystical base; and this base is exactly the Buddhist ideal of acting with a mind empty of thought. My aim is to establish and explore this phenomenon. The result should be both a deeper understanding of Wittgenstein and the removal of a philosophical objection to Zen that has troubled some people.
Collingwood and Historical Testimony
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: February 2009

Although there are many different philosophical hares that could be started by the use of the term ‘historical fact’ I am interested in pursuing one that is related to the historian's attitude to testimony. By way of preliminary, however, I should say something about my use of the word ‘fact’. A contrast that sets off my use best is probably that between fact and theory. This distinction is at once methodological and epistemological in that it concerns the structure of inquiry as well as the structure of secure belief. As far as inquiry is concerned it is plausible to suppose that an investigation begins with a problem or a puzzle, the delineation of which requires certain data in the form of propositions that are known to be true, or are taken for granted or commonly agreed upon as sufficiently secure to provide a grounding for the inquiry. It is to cover such data that I am using the word ‘fact’ and hence it will not refer to just any true proposition. Theories however stand as the outcome of inquiry and involve generality and inference and classification in a way that facts do not. It is interesting that the term ‘datum’ came into use in English at the same time (the middle of the seventeenth century) that the word ‘fact’, which had meant ‘a deed or action’, acquired the sort of meaning that interests me here.
The Irrationality of the Good
Authors: Joad C. E. M.
Published: February 2009

The theories of most writers on Ethics, with whose works I am acquainted, appear to be based upon the assumption of the unique character of goodness or The Good. By the word unique these writers mean, I think, among other things that goodness cannot be analysed into or described in terms of anything other than itself, that it can be and is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of some other thing which is not goodness, and that the apprehension of or desire for goodness is a distinct and specific character of our mental states. By asserting, however, that the state of mind constituted by the apprehension of goodness, or that the state of emotion aroused by the desire for goodness, is distinguished by a specific and unique property, they do not, I think, necessarily mean that this property is the same as the specific property of goodness itself. Most writers on Ethics have also believed that man is free to desire goodness, and to act in accordance with his desire, that is to say, they have held in some form or other the doctrine of free-will.
The Meaning of Life
Authors: Russell L. J.
Published: February 2009

The question I shall deal with is often put in the form “What is the meaning of life?” I shall consider this form later on, but I do not want to begin with it, partly because it assumes that life has a meaning which can be called “the” meaning, an assumption which will have to be looked into, and partly because I want to start with something which looks very much more vague.
The General Nature of a Moral Duty
Authors: Rees W. J.
Published: February 2009

I propose in this article to reconsider, in the light of some recent developments in the theory of knowledge, certain general questions about the nature of duty. In particular, I propose to consider the question of the relation between our moral duties on the one hand, and our knowledge or ignorance of facts and of moral principles on the other.
Life and Pleasure (II)
Authors: Joseph H. W. B.
Published: February 2009

Further, we come here to what for the purpose of our present argument is the most important consideration of all, viz. that if we could show that there were two kinds of neural or physiological processess, occurring respectively on all occasions of pleasure and pain, the fact would be valueless for proving that life must be predominantly pleasant. It is perhaps intelligible that to succeed or fail in purposive activity should bring respectively contentment and discontent rather than vice-versa; but that of two kinds of neural or physiological process, one should be accompanied by pleasure and the other by pain, is no more intelligible than if the connection were reversed. If the behaviour of any creature is affected by desires and aversions, by judgments, by feelings: if its desires and aversions or its judgments are connected with or affected by its pleasures and pains, then indeed the question with what bodily conditions its pleasures and pains are connected is part of the problem that interests the biologist—viz. what the conditions are under which the species can continue. But in that case the biologist must not claim that all the conditons of life and reproduction can be found in what happens in the body. Pleasures and pains, desires and aversions, purposes are not events that happen in the body. If they are the mere “apparence or sense” of what happens there, and alone determines survival or extinction, then what happens there to determine survival might, for all we can see, equally appear as pain or pleasure.
Ethics, Psychology, and Sociology
Authors: Garvie Alfred E.
Published: February 2009

(1) It is a commonly accepted view that men think to live, and do not live to think, that conation, and not cognition, is the primary object of living. Impression, affect, and expression constitute the complete psychic process. The term philosophy, the love of wisdom, also suggests that man's thought has a practical and not a theoretical objective. In this connection, however, two errors must be avoided: on the one hand an exaltation of the intellect as in rationalism, and on the other hand a depreciation of the intellect as in pragmatism.
Aristotle's Definition of Moral Virtue, and Plato's Account of Justice in the Soul
Authors: Joseph H. W. B.
Published: February 2009

Nicolai Hartmann, in an interesting discussion of Aristotle’s account of moral virtue, has called attention to the difference between the contrariety of opposed vices and the contrast of certain virtues. The äκρa or extremes, somewhere between which Aristotle thought that any morally virtuous disposition (with the possible exception of justice) must lie, are not conciliable. The same man cannot combine or reconcile, in the same action, cowardice and bravery, intemperance and insensibility, stinginess and thriftlessness, passion and lack of spirit. These are pairs of contraries, between which a virtue lies; but the virtue is not a synthesis of the extremes in a pair.
Fear: Its Nature and Diverse Uses
Authors: Smith N. Kemp
Published: February 2009

The “Hyde” character of fear has been so widely, and generally so exclusively, dwelt upon, that a review of what can be truthfully said in praise of its “Jekyll” character is, I trust, not untimely. I shall proceed on the assumption that all the natural passions, with-out exception, are essential, ineradicable factors in our human make-up, each allowing of both use and abuse. This, as I shall endeavour to show, is no less true of fear than of what we quite justly call the higher emotions.
Truth and Modern Dictatorship
Authors: Donsky I.
Published: February 2009

The Epistemology of dictatorship! This expression couples terms which seem to be utter strangers to each other. How could a political régime which is an eminently practical, often violent, hard-striking thing be concerned with a science which is an essentially unpractical, introspective business of secluded and subtle contemplation?
Great Thinkers (II) Plato
Authors: Field G. C.
Published: February 2009

It is really impossible to say anything worth saying about Plato in general within the limits of a single article. Indeed, the more one studies Plato the more impossible does it become—if the concept of degrees of impossibility may be used in a philosophical journal. The reasons for this are manifold. The first lies in the supreme greatness of Plato as a thinker. Hardly anyone who has made a serious effort to study Plato has escaped receiving the impression of him as probably the greatest thinker of all ages. The difficulty is intensified by the particular form in which his greatness is conveyed to us. One may make a distinction, a relative distinction at least, between different philosophers in this respect. With some, their message is conveyed to us with comparative rapidity, even perhaps on the first careful reading, and subsequent study adds little except in the way of detail. Among these it would perhaps not be unfair to place Hume. Others, on first reading, will appear obscure and difficult, sometimes even repellent. It is only after a much more careful study that their real greatness emerges, and they may go on increasing in stature at every subsequent reading. Such, I believe, to be the experience of the majority of readers with Kant. Plato is almost unique in that he makes his impression in both ways. Almost everyone is captivated by him at first reading, but it is only to those who take the trouble of reading him again and again with the intellectual effort that he himself would have demanded
The Psychology of Ethical Empiricism
Authors: Fox A. C.
Published: February 2009

The bearing of certain psychological doctrines upon ethical theory is important, and has been made use of especially by those who espouse empiricism in Ethics. It is the purpose of this paper to examine some of these leading doctrines and the ethical theory which has been connected with them. In doing so, it is appropriate to select for examination the views of Professor W. McDougall, as expressed principally in his Social Psychology and Outline of Psychology; and this for two reasons. One is, that these views are significant of much more than the opinions of one man. They may be taken quite fairly as representative, in the main, of a definite body of doctrine concerning the nature and development of moral experience.
Thank Goodness that's Over
Authors: Prior A. N.
Published: February 2009

In a pair of very important papers, namely “Space, Time and Individuals” (STI) in the Journal of Philosophy for October 1955 and “The Indestructibility and Immutability of Substances” (IIS) in Philosophical Studies for April 1956, Professor N. L. Wilson began something which badly needed beginning, namely the construction of a logically rigorous “substance-language” in which we talk about enduring and changing individuals as we do in common speech, as opposed to the “space-time” language favoured by very many mathematical logicians, perhaps most notably by Quine. This enterprise of Wilson's is one with which I could hardly sympathize more heartily than I do; and one wishes for this logically rigorous “substance-language” not only when one is reading Quine but also when one is reading many other people. How fantastic it is, for instance, that Kotarbinski1 should call his metaphysics “Reism” when the very last kind of entity it has room for is things—instead of them it just has the world-lines or life-histories of things; “fourdimensional worms”, as Wilson says. Wilson, moreover, has at least one point of superiority to another rebel against space-time talk, P. F. Strawson; namely he (Wilson) does seriously attempt to meet formalism with formalism—to show that logical rigour is not a monopoly of the other side. At another point, however, Strawson seems to me to see further than Wilson; he (Strawson) is aware that substance-talk cannot be carried on without tenses, whereas Wilson tries (vainly, as I hope to show) to do without them. Wilson, in short, has indeed brought us out of Egypt; but as yet has us still wandering about the Sinai Peninsula; the Promised Land is a little further on than he has taken us.
The Place of Tradition in the Moral Life
Authors: Baillie Sir James
Published: February 2009

The term tradition is frequently used in the narrow sense of oral transmission from one generation to another; occasionally in the wider sense of transmission of any kind, written or oral or forms of behaviour, derived from a preceding generation. Sometimes it includes custom; sometimes it does not. At times it refers to the process of transmitting; at other times to the result transmitted.
Great Thinkers: (III) Aristotle
Authors: Smith J. A.
Published: February 2009

In the history of human thought the name of ARISTOTLE must be written in capital letters. Of few of the Great Thinkers of history is it so true that he was one of what William James called “the folio editions of mankind.” In speaking of him, whether in praise or dispraise, it has been found almost impossible to avoid superlatives. The later ancients ranked the disciple level with his master Plato as occupying the twin summits of philosophical attainment. Since then they have divided the allegiance of the thinkers of the Western World. No doubt it is a rather wild judgment of Coleridge's that every man is born either a natural Platonist or a natural Aristotelian, but it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that no man has attained any width of knowledge or depth of reflection who is not driven to recognize, and often to express, a preference for the one over the other.
Some Points in the Philosophy of Physics: Time, Evolution and Creation
Authors: Milne E. A.
Published: February 2009

When I agreed to lecture to-night I stipulated that I might be allowed to interpret the subject announced so as to let my treatment relate less to the subject in general than to some particular aspects which happen to have been interesting me lately. Professor Whitehead, Sir Arthur Eddington, and Sir James Jeans have given to the world brilliant accounts of the present position of physics in relation to mathematics and philosophy. What I have to say bears to their writings, the humble relation of an example to a piece of book-work, or of an application of a theorem to the theorem itself.
Probably
Authors: Smart Ninian
Published: February 2009

The chief point in Professor Flew's reply is this. God could have made men perfectly good, not by altering their inclinations, as I suggested in my main Utopia, but by boosting the forces which resist temptations. All men would need is more strength of character and more sense of duty. Perhaps I was psychically blind not to go into this. Let us do so now. (1) Flew seems to have a monolithic idea of the concepts sense of duty and strength of character, as though these have nothing to do with particular dispositions like courage (which I did discuss).
Minds, Machines and Godel:
Authors: George F. H.
Published: February 2009

I Would like to draw attention to the basic defect in the argument used by Mr J. R. Lucas (Minds, Machines and Gödel, Philosophy, July 1961, p. 112).

Mr Lucas there states that Gödel's theorem shows that any consistent formal system strong enough to produce arithmetic fails to prove, within its own structure, theorems that we, as humans (‘minds’), can nevertheless see to be true. From this he argues that ‘minds’ can do more than machines, since machines are essentially formal systems of this same type, and subject to the limitation implied by Godel's theorem.