bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On the Idea of Importance
Authors: Emmet Dorothy M.
Published: February 2009

The idea of Importance has received scanty treatment in philosophical literature, yet it is always turning up. Whitehead has, indeed, spoken of “the sense of importance” as “nerving all civilized effort”; and elsewhere he names “importance” and “matter of fact” as “two ultimate notions.” But the passage where he considers these is all too short and elusive, and I know of no other direct discussion of the meaning of importance. Plenty of attention has, of course, been paid to the notion of interest. But “interest” does not cover the whole notion of importance; it covers at most that aspect which I shall call “relational importance.” “Importance” I shall suggest is a bridge notion, used to refer both to what matters in relation to some interest, and to what, as we say, “really matters.” It might therefore be worth considering its merits as a candidate for the position of generic term for value, since it can be subdivided so as to express both its relational and its absolutist aspects.
Duty
Authors: Macbeath A.
Published: February 2009

The tendency towards analysis and criticism, realism and pluralism, which has been evident in general philosophy during the present century has had important effects on recent ethical discussion. Its influence is to be seen in the two theories which on account of their prominence and the number of their disciples may be said to be most characteristic of the period—Ideal Utilitarianism and the New Intuitionism—theories which no less an authority than Sir David Ross described as the rival theories. However different these theories are in many respects they have a tendency towards ethical pluralism, if not atomism—a tendency not only to emphasize distinctions but even to harden the distinguishable elements into independent, if not even unrelated, entities. The one leaves us with a series of independent goods and the other with a series of prima facie duties, with the result that neither gives us any unitary principle to help us in one of the principal tasks of the moral life, the attempt to discover what in particular circumstances we ought to do.
Whitehead's Philosophy: The World as Process
Authors: Hooper Sydney E.
Published: February 2009

This paper will endeavour to present an outline of the Organic Philosophy associated with the name of Whitehead. Whitehead resembles Spinoza and Leibniz in that he is a philosopher who has tried to construct a world-outlook that will do justice to science and to the other aspects of life and knowledge. Moreover, just as in his day Leibniz was an eminent mathematician and scientist, so Whitehead in our day enjoys the same distinction. But Whitehead's philosophy differs both from that of Spinoza and from that of Leibniz. Spinoza based his philosophy upon the monistic substance, of which the actual events in the world are the inferior modes. Whitehead bases his philosophy upon the actual events themselves and derives the solidarity of the world as a whole from their mutual interplay. Thus the organic philosophy is pluralistic in contrast with Spinoza's monism. In comparing Whitehead's philosophy with that of Leibniz, we find that they agree in both being pluralistic, but they differ in the emphasis placed upon the notion of mentality. Leibniz's monads are best conceived as generalizations of the notion of mentality, and the conception of physical bodies only enters into his philosophy subordinately and derivatively. Whitehead, however, in his philosophy of organism endeavours to hold the balance between the physical and mental more evenly, and thus does justice to both aspects of reality.
Conflict of Ideologies
Authors: Mabbott J. D.
Published: February 2009

This paper contains the substance of a lecture delivered to the Institute under the title “World Peace and World Morals” in November 1947. It is now published in Philosophyon the suggestion of members of the audience at that lecture.
The Choice of a World Outlook
Authors: Emmet Dorothy M.
Published: February 2009

I Take it that my part in this series is not to set forward some particular world outlook, or even to describe different kinds of world outlook. That will have been done already much more adequately by the lecturers who precede me. My part is to discuss what in general is meant by world outlooks, why it is so difficult to arrive at agreement on them, and what kind of considerations should be taken into account in deciding for one rather than another.
“Thinking and Meaning”
Authors: Price H. H.
Published: February 2009

Professor Ayer's lecture is not only a most auspicious inauguration; it is also an important contribution to philosophy. It is perhaps the best and the most exciting work he has written, and that is saying a good deal. There is a certain theory about thought and its objects which is often hinted at in the utterances and the writings of contemporary empiricist philosophers, but so far as I know it has never before been stated in print. Mr. Ayer has stated it, clearly and in detail, with all his well-known force and felicity of style. It is a strange and rather shocking theory, very different (in appearance at any rate) from the one which most philosophers hitherto have believed. But if we are shocked by it, the shock will be salutary. The dragon has at last come clearly into view. If we resolve to accustom ourselves to it and treat it kindly, we may hope that it will transform itself by degrees into a nice gentle domestic pet, as other philosophical dragons have before.
On the Foundations and Application of Finite Classical Arithmetic
Authors: Whitrow G. J.
Published: February 2009

“ ‘Tell me, Protagoras,’ he said, ‘does a single grain of millet or the ten-thousandth part of a grain make any sound when it falls?’ And when Protagoras said it did not, ‘Then,’ asked Zeno, ‘does a bushel of millet make any sound when it falls or not?’ Protagoras answered that it did, whereupon Zeno replied, ‘But surely there is some ratio between a bushel of millet and a single grain or even the ten-thousandth part of a grain'; and when this was admitted, ‘But then surely,’ Zeno said, ‘the ratios of the corresponding sounds to each other will be the same: for as the bodies which make the sounds are to one another, so will the sounds be to one another. And if this is so, and if the bushel of millet makes a sound, then the single grain of millet and the ten-thousandth part of a grain will make a sound.’ This was the way Zeno used to put his questions”
Logical Necessity
Authors: Hampshire Stuart
Published: February 2009

It may sometimes be useful in philosophy to state a method of argument in very simple and even over-simplified terms; it may at a certain stage be useful to ignore for the moment the details and difficulties of particular philosophical arguments, and to try to state simply what is commonly assumed in a variety of different and even opposing arguments.
Freedom, Discipline and Bondage
Authors: Cranston Maurice
Published: February 2009

I believe we could learn more about freedom if we talked less about freedom. Because “freedom” is a word with singular prestige, various moral philosophers have embodied it in their teaching and claimed to set forth its true characteristics. Many words employed in philosophical controversy are ambiguous. “Freedom,” I think, is one of the most troublesome. I propose to attempt some disentanglement.

To begin with, there is a sense in which the meaning of “freedom” seems to present no difficulties. This sense occurs in such a remark as: “That animal was in captivity and now it is free.” I shall call this “simple freedom” and what it means is the absence of constraint. Thus applied there would probably be general agreement about the word. The difficulties arise when we come to consider freedom as pertaining to human persons. Here the distinction between simple freedom and the more philosophical definitions of the word will emerge.

On the simple definition a man is free if constraint is absent, and that is all there is to it. But this will not do for most philosophers.

It is pointed out that man is a special case in that he experiences conflicting desires. He wills a thing and he does not will it; or he wills something and at the same time he wills something else which is incompatible with it. Man, we are reminded, is a rational creature, but besides his rational will he is subject to the solicitations of impulses and desires which are not rational. Therefore, it is argued, the mere absence of constraint is not a sufficient condition of human freedom and hence not a sufficient definition of the word “freedom” as applied to human persons.
Personality and Liberty
Authors: Stapledon Olaf
Published: February 2009

Two rival passions are at work in men's hearts to-day, the cult of individuality and the cult of society. They give rise all too often to extravagant praise of liberty and to a no less extravagant insistence on discipline for society's sake.

It is impossible to form a balanced idea of the functions of liberty and discipline, or of the right relation between the individual and his social environment, without having a clear view of the nature of personality and community. I offer a brief and dogmatic sketch of this subject.

A personality is the product of the impact of the objective universe, past and present, on a particular experiencing subject.

I do not wish to imply that a “subject” is necessarily a substance (in the philosophical sense) or a metaphysical ego, or an immortal soul. Whether such eternal individual spirits exist or not, I do not pretend to know. I do not even, by the word “subject,” pledge myself to what Professor Broad has called a “centred theory” of the nature of mind, I do not know whether a mind is a system of experiences united in an enduring centre, as the spokes of a wheel are united in the hub; or whether it is a centreless “net” of experiences all related together in a special way. By “subject” I mean only “that which experiences,” whatever the true philosophical account of it. I mean the seeming focus or centre of experience and action. This focus is in some sense located in time and space, in fact it is located within the organism. For my purpose the subject is simply that to which experience happens, and that which responds with conscious behaviour. I do not wish to raise the epistemological problem. I merely assume the rejection of solipsism, and the reality of an objective universe which the individual experiences, however imperfectly.
The State of Philosophical Studies in India
Authors: Raju P. T.
Published: February 2009

Contemporary philosophical activity in India is influenced not only by India's traditional philosophy but also by Western Philosophy. One of the results of the introduction, by Macaulay, of the Western system of education into India is the popularization of the study of Western Philosophy, and Indians took to it quite enthusiastically. Sanscrit philosophical texts were at first regarded as sacred, and Europeans could have no access to them. But in time, the prejudice abated, and Sanscrit texts began to be translated into English. At the beginning, the motives behind Western interest in Indian Philosophy were mainly of two kinds: the rulers wanted to understand the culture and religions of the ruled in order to govern them without hurting their religious sentiments, and thus with the least friction; and secondly. Christian missionaries wanted converts and studied the religions and philosophies of the latter in order to find out defects in them and uphold the superiority of Christianity. But whatever be the motives and however biased the scholarship in the beginning, genuine academical interest in the philosophical literature of India came to be evinced, thanks to the work of men like Max Müller, Deussen, Rhys Davids, etc., and vast stores of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina philosophical literature were unearthed not only in India but also outside. It should, however, be said that academical philosophers of the West did not take serious interest in Indian Philosophy as such; and not a single Indian philosophical concept has entered till now the discussions of Western technical philosophy, Schopenhauer was an exception: he made serious use of the concept of Maya.
Some Common Fallacies in Political Thinking
Authors: Broad C. D.
Published: February 2009

I Want to discuss and illustrate in this paper certain fallacies which we are all very liable to commit in our thinking about political and social questions. Perhaps “thinking” is rather too high-sounding a name to attach to the mental processes which lie behind most political talk. It is at any rate thinking of a very low grade, for a considerable proportion of such discussion in Press and Parliament and private conversation hardly rises above the intellectual level of disputes between boys at a preparatory school.
Exposition and Explanation
Authors: Toms Eric
Published: February 2009

Arguments, at least the best of them, should be based upon principles of logic, and therefore be beyond dispute. But unfortunately many philosophical arguments are based upon principles which, though claimed by some to be principles of logic, or at least to be true, are disputed or rejected by others. This difficult position arises, no doubt, because it is the philosopher more than anyone else who is entitled to delve into questions of the validity of first principles. In a philosophical undertaking of any magnitude it is therefore imperative for the author to state as clearly as possible the principles which seem to him certain, and which constitute the guiding lines of his method. Any criticism could then take only one of two forms: (1) it could allege that the argument under criticism does not conform to the principles laid down, though these principles are themselves accepted. (2) it could allege that the argument is mistaken because something is wrong with the principles, in which case the object of criticism is properly the principles and not the argument. But a valid criticism could not take the form of condemning a certain argument in the light of a principle which, while appearing to the critic to be true and undisputed, is in fact inconsistent with the principles which the author has laid down.
A Plea for Excuses?
Authors: Holdcroft David
Published: February 2009

In ‘A Plea For Excuses’ Austin observes that there are many situations in which a person accused of doing an action A wishes to protest that it is not altogether accurate or fair to say that he did A. The person may wish to excuse himself from an accusation of doing A on the grounds that what happened was inadvertent, or the result of an accident, or done by mistake etc. etc. Moreover if he really has an excuse, then it will no longer be possible simply to say that he did A, because it will be seen that either it is not true that he did anything at all, or that whatever he did it was not A but something else, or that he did A in such a manner that simply to say that he did it would be misleading in the extreme.
Not Exactly Pretending
Authors: Barrett Cyril
Published: February 2009

In his paper ‘Pretending’ J. L. Austin says that (a) philosophers have exaggerated the scope and distorted the meaning of pretending, and (b) the clarification of this notion has a place in the ‘long-term project of classifying and clarifying all possible ways and varieties of not exactly doing things, which has to be carried through if we are ever to understand properly what doing things is.’
Reason and Certainty
Authors: Jones O. R.
Published: February 2009

In his book, Theory of Knowledge, Roderick Chisholm distinguishes very precisely between, amongst others, what he calls acceptable, reasonable and evident propositions. A proposition is acceptable if with-holding it is not more reasonable than believing it; a proposition is reasonable if believing it is more reasonable than with-holding it; and a proposition is evident for a person provided it is reasonable for him, and there is no other proposition such that the latter is more reasonable than the former. The notion of being more reasonable is obviously pivotal, and Chisholm explains what it is for an attitude to be more reasonable than another in the following words: “If the person in question were a rational being, if his concerns were purely intellectual, and if he were to choose between the two attitudes, then he would choose the more reasonable in preference to the less reasonable”. The wording of this conditional suggests that Chisholm does not think a person is necessarily rational, so it is imperative that we ask: When is a person rational?
On Being a Philosopher
Authors: Hallett H. F.
Published: February 2009

In a very famous analysis and panegyric of the philosopher, Plato claimed that he is a man magnificent in mind and the spectator of all time and all existence. These are great words, and words made venerable by ancient repute and centuries of citation. Unfortunately, however, like many such utterances they can only be regarded as hyperbolic and rhetorical; and in an age that, failing in inspiration and fecundity of intuition, seeks at least to be precise, thay must suffer limitation. For the lumen siccum of reason shows that the phrase “all time” involves a contradiction, and that the human mind, by nature limited both in amplitude and in profundity,
Errors of Logical Positivism
Authors: Ritchie A. D.
Published: February 2009

Positivists have excelled at destructive criticism. This criticism has been useful for pruning away absurd and superfluous theories but it is liable to be used to prune away everything else. The latest exponents, the Logical Positivists, are no less adept at criticism than their predecessors. The doctrines of this school have been surrounded with an air of mystery and inquirers have been frightened off by alarming technical apparatus. We all know that the Logical Positivists had proved that everybody else talked nonsense, but we did not know what they themselves talked. Mr. A. J. Ayer's exposition of the doctrine, Language, Truth and Logic, is therefore welcome as it is simple,
Some Simple Thoughts on Freedom and Responsibility
Authors: Gomperz H.
Published: February 2009

The following considerations have been styled “simple thoughts” for two reasons.
The Great Tao
Authors: Elwell-sutton A. S.
Published: February 2009

An understanding of the Chinese mind, and Chinese Art and Literature that are the expression of it, cannot be achieved without an examination of the fundamental elements that have gone to the building of Chinese mysticism.
An Approach to Philosophy
Authors: Moore Jared S.
Published: February 2009

The first important question which confronts the teacher of an introductory course in philosophy is likely to be the question as to how he may best approach the subject of what philosophy is, how to approach it in such a way as to pique the curiosity and excite the interest of the student from the beginning. After considering this question many times, it has recently occurred to the present writer that it might be helpful to make this approach by way of a parable, an allegorical account of what seem to be the three basic human desires—the desire to live, the desire to enjoy life, and the desire to understand life. He accordingly offers this suggestion for whatever it may be worth, and presents the following little tale as at least one possible working-out of that suggestion.
Philosophy in France
Authors: Keeling S. V.
Published: February 2009

To the bulk of the British reading public ‘contemporary French philosophy’ would seem to be interchangeable with ‘the works of M. Bergson.’ And it can scarcely be otherwise when, as an erudite correspondent of Le Temps relates, Paris now prints in a week one million books—as many as were printed annually in the reign of the Roi Soleil. For the proportion of these devoted to philosophy is not small. One voracious reader and professor of philosophy in Switzerland, Monsieur J. Benrubi, has withstood for thirty years the annual avalanche of philosophical books, read steadily on, abstracted and collated his gleanings. In him we have a most competent guide. Familiar with every rivulet and path, and with the historic formation of the country, he now reveals to us the whole panorama. His encyclopaedic enterprise, 1 treating some hundred and sixty authors, is neither a chronicle nor a classification, except in a secondary way. It aims principally at tracing cross-currents in recent philosophies so as to discover their internal connexions, and thence in what direction present French thought is heading. M. Benrubi's scrupulousness in seeing nobody is left out tends perhapsto overcrowding, and his emphasis on that which coheres may somewhat overshadow that which divides. And it may be inevitable, too, with a field of figures so vast, that the accounts of some should be insufficiently detailed. But the total effect is substantial, and his volumes are invaluable to whomever would appreciate whence and whither French thought is proceeding. There are three threads to guide us through the labyrinth. The distinct though still interacting tendencies are described as ‘empirical and scientific positivism,’ ‘epistemological and critical idealism,’ and ‘metaphysical and spiritual positivism.’ Each rests on certain characteristics manifested with varying explicitness in the thought of its many representatives. I indicate summarily and quite inadequately some points of M. Benrubi's conclusions.
The Story of American Realism
Authors: Montague Wm. Pepperell
Published: February 2009

In American philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century there was small interest in Empiricism and almost no interest in Realism.
Contemporary British Realism
Authors: Laird John
Published: February 2009

Anyone who thinks, for example, of “realism,” “sur-realism,” and the like in matters of art, or of the vulgar and journalistic vagueness in the use of the adjective “realistic,” may be prepared for the discovery that in philosophy also the term “realist” is either uncomfortably fluid or else acquires technical senses that are rather easily blurred. Our lexicographers tell us that, in its most general sense, “realism” indicates fidelity to what is real, particularly in the representation of (usually sordid) matters of fact, and that in philosophy it is an antithetic term, asserting the contrary either of
Nature, Education and Freedom According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Authors: Allan D. J.
Published: February 2009

Do the most celebrated works of Rousseau—more particularly his Discourse on Inequality, émile, and Control Social—present on the whole a coherent answer to the problems of Education and Society? My impression is that Rousseau has here been very much calumniated, owing to the incredible haste and superficiality with which his writings have generally been studied. Even sympathetic inquirers, like M. Schinz in his thorough and attractive work La Pensée de J. J. Rousseau, seem to be too easily discouraged in the quest for unity.
The Appeal to Common Sense
Authors: Price H. H.
Published: February 2009

We must begin by asking; What exactly is common sense? No doubt the word was originally used as a translation of Aristotle's; κοί⋯νη αἴσθησις but that is not its modern meaning. When Reid or more recent philosophers speak of common sense, they clearly have something else in view. At the present day, it is perhaps most often used to mean a quality of a mind, as when we say that jurymen or Members of Parliament should be men of common sense, meaning that they should show intelligence in the ordinary affairs of life; or again, we say that a little common sense would enable us to solve this or that political problem. But we are not concerned with that meaning either, though it would be interesting to discuss it. Common sense, as we are concerned with it here, means rather a body of very general principles commonly accepted by ordinary non-philosophical men in the ordinary affairs of life. These principles are really philosophical—that is to say, they belong to the proper subject-matter of philosophy—but, of course, the plain man who accepts or applies them at every moment of his life is far from being aware of this. Some of them are metaphysical, or (if we prefer to say so) epistemological, others are ethical; and whether or not there can be a common-sense theology, as a recent writer has asserted, it seems quite possible that there may be one or two among them which properly belong to the theologian's province. All these principles, taken together, make up what is usually called the common-sense view of the world. But in this discussion we shall confine ourselves to the metaphysical or epistemological ones, which are more frequently appealed to than the others, and which, besides, seem to be more interesting. But our conclusions, if valid, will apply to the others also.
The Metaphysics of Plato
Authors: Jessop T. E.
Published: February 2009

If we need a figure to indicate the way in which the influence of Plato has passed through Europe, we must liken it, not to a river continually at the flood, but to an expanding atmosphere enveloping and pervading whatever it meets, an atmosphere with a perfume that has made some sick and others open their nostrils to take in the seed and substance of a new life. A river makes a linear path which, except perhaps for a few sinuosities and an occasional overflow, can be traced with relative ease; but an atmosphere, enlarging itself in all dimensions, with attenuation here and condensation there and precise limits nowhere, offers neither clue nor pattern for the inquisitive historian who would, seek to plot its course. We may be prepared to find it anywhere. So it is with the metaphysics of Plato. No sphere of learning or of art has kept beyond its reach. Anyone who, by comprehending its particular incidence and its total range, would write the most remarkable single chapter in the history, of thought, would have to search the minds not merely of philosophers but also of saints, scientists, poets, painters, sculptors, statesmen, and educationists of all ages. He would even have to search for the breath of it among the innumerable works of fiction that tumble mechanically from our modern undiscriminating presses. The following, for example, is pure Platonism: “We come from a world where we have known incredible standards of excellence, and we dimly remember beauties which we have not seized again; and we go back to that world. Uncle Pio and Camila Perichole were tormenting themselves in an effort to establish in Peru the standards of the theatre in some heaven whither Calderon had preceded them.” To understand, alike in its emotional beauty and in its scientific severity, the metaphysic that underlies such charming phrases is perhaps an obligation, almost a necessity, and certainly a privilege.
Social Machinery and the Social Spirit
Authors: Wodehouse Helen
Published: February 2009

There is a certain experience which awaits reformers of all parties sooner or later. They make plans for amending some small part of the world, and consider means for getting the idea into practice, and then someone interposes a comment: “This plan,” he says, “is all very well, but it is mere machinery. The world can be saved only by what is inward and living, by change in heart and thought, by renewal of spirit.”
Justice and Equality
Authors: Emmet Dorothy M.
Published: February 2009

My purpose in this paper is to maintain that “justice” represents an objective and impersonal recognition of the nature of moral personality, and as such should retain its identity at all levels of human relationship. It is not, as certain idealist philosophers, and notably Bosanquet, have maintained, inappropriate at the deeper levels, at which it is said to be superseded by love.
Images in Art
Authors: Ushenko A. P.
Published: February 2009

Objective communication—the principal aim of languages of any kind—meets with its greatest measure of success in science and art, which can both be precise, and therefore immune to misunderstanding born of vagueness or ambiguity, by givingspecific expressionto ideas. But, paradoxically, in order to reach specificity science and art must be developed along two opposite directions: in the first technical terminology replaces imagery-bearing words, in the second images are cultivated to the utmost. The scientist's procedure is entirely justified. For it is undeniable that words are often misleading. because they are clouded with different images in the minds of different people.
The Present Relations of Science and Religion
Authors: Broad C. D.
Published: February 2009

Fifty or sixty years ago anyone fluttering the pages of one of the many magazines which then catered for the cultivated and intelligent English reader would have been fairly certain to come upon an article bearing somewhat the same title as that of the present paper. The author would probably be an eminent scientist, such as Huxley or Clifford; a distinguished scholar, such as Frederic Harrison or Edmund Gurney; or a politician of cabinet rank, such as Gladstone or Morley. Whichever side he might take, he would write with the moral fervour of which Englishmen at that time had an inexhaustible supply. Nowadays the so-called “conflict between Religion and Science,” which was then appetizingly hot from the oven, has acquired something of the repulsiveness of half-cold mutton in halfcongealed gravy. There seems to be a widespread opinion that Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans, with some highly technical and not readily intelligible assistance from Professor Whitehead, have enabled the lion to lie down with the lamb. Well, I have no wish to pipe a discordant note in this scene of Messianic harmony. But I cannot help reflecting that psychology, anthropology, and psychical research have made considerable advances as well as mathematical physics; and that they seem prima facie much more likely to be relevant to religion. Even the ordinary common sense of the lawyer and the historian may still have something useful to say on such topics.
The Aesthetic Doctrines of Samuel Alexander
Authors: Listowel Lord
Published: February 2009

Those, like the present writer, for whom the late Samuel Alexander unlocked doors to new realms of wisdom and delight, or who basked in the sunshine of encouragement and kindly advice he gave so readily to younger men, will understand with what alacrity this opportunity was seized of paying a small tribute to the memory of so unusual and attractive a personality. To resurrect the mind that has built of its own fabric a mansion so vast that its chambers have room for every fact of experience and every theory of science will always provide a happy and appropriate memorial to one whose main business in life was the disinterested speculation idolized by the Greeks as the worthiest employment to which the human spirit can devote its powers. My own share in this labour of love is small and limited in scope; I want to fill in one corner of the picture of Alexander's philosophical system, drawn by Professor Muirhead in the last number of Philosophy, by describing in some detail what he thought about Art and Beauty in their most important aspects and relations.
Great Thinkers
Authors: Jessop T. E.
Published: February 2009

Berkeley belonged to the days when it was possible to write philosophy without being learned, when it was sufficient to have fundamental convictions and to be able to write about them clearly. His contribution to the stock of philosophical possibilities was substantially complete when he was twenty-five, at which age no man can or should be learned. Not until he became a bishop did he pile up the burden of scholarship, and the work in which he expressed it, the Siris, has remained a stumbling-block to his expositors. In his day philosophy was not learning but culture and wisdom. He
The Philosophy of Melchior Palágyi
Authors: Gibson W. R. Boyce
Published: February 2009

Readers of the Journal may know little of Melchior Palágyi (pronounced Pallargee) (1860–1924). Even on the Continent his work has been very inadequately recognized. It is not that he has written little: he published some books and many articles during his lifetime, in German as well as in Magyar, and since his death, Barth of Leipzig has issued an edition of his selected works, including his most important contribution, Naturphilosophische Vorlesungen, also the Wahrnehmungslehre and Zur Weltmechanik. He has many enthusiastic admirers, and those who care to look up the Preussische Jahrbücher, March 1926, will find there a most informative and highly appreciative article on his general philosophy by Werner Deubel, who in the same journal, some two years previously (October 1924), discussed the work of a kindred spirit, Ludwig Klages. It was Deubel's article that first roused my interest in Palágyi and led me to study his more important writings.
Behaviourism: A Logical Study
Authors: Chapman H. Wallis
Published: February 2009

The object of this article is not to criticize Professor Watson's psychology, still less his physiology; neither do I wish to attempt a fundamental metaphysical criticism, such as that contained in Professor Lloyd Morgan's article in the April number of the Journal, but it appears to me that a purely logical criticism, admitting Professor Watson's facts and observations, and assuming his mechanistic point of view, may be a useful preliminary to such wider and more fundamental inquiry.
Types of Imagination
Authors: Bartlett F. C.
Published: February 2009

At first sight it may seem as if Imagination can easily be characterized as a continuous process of having images; but this is very soon found to be inadequate and misleading. On the one hand we have a great number of good witnesses who insist that in their best imaginative work they have made use of no images, or of very few; and on the other, everybody makes distinction between flights of fancy, for example, which certainly involve successions of images, and true imagination. Perhaps a better method of approach is found when we examine how the material dealt with in the imaginative process is built together. In the flight of fancy image follows image, and the transition from one to the next seems to be determined by something in the nature of each individual step of the whole chain, or by each individual act of imaging. Thus the train as a whole is very apt, to the outsider, to appear jerky, ill-connected,
Reflections on Plato's Republic
Authors: Garvie Alfred E.
Published: February 2009

Inhis greatest work (The Republic) the greatest thinker of his era, if not of all time, Plato, writing in one of the greatest, if not even the greatest epoch in the intellectual, artistic, and literary history of mankind, held up a mirror not only to his own age but to every age, not least our own, in the glowing radiance of his unsurpassed genius. This essay is an attempt to look on the world around us with his searchlight. Addressing on this subject a select company of educated and intelligent men and women, I discovered that several of them had attempted but had failed to read throughThe Republic. They could not see the wood for the trees, lost their way, and gave up the guest.
Colour
Authors: Chapman H. Wallis
Published: February 2009

Wheneverwe read any philosophical work dealing with the nature of qualities, the status of universals, or similar problems, we find continual references to colour; redness and blueness meet us on every page. Even Whitehead, whose obscurity is, at least in part, due to his avoidance of particular instances, condescends to cite colours as examples of “eternal objects” and other cases will occur at once to every reader.
Some Problems in the Psychology of Temporal Perception
Authors: Bartlett F. C.
Published: February 2009

Perhapsit is unfortunate that, no matter what problems a psychological investigator elects to attempt to discuss, he is almost always confronted by a number of different and often conflicting points of view. The twisting paths revealed by these may one day be found to unite into a broad road, but most of them have as yet been insufficiently explored. Certainly problems in the psychology of temporal perception seem to lie in many different directions, according to the ways in which they are approached. It would be possible, for instance, to take the mass of experimental work, always patient, sometimes brilliant, which has had a fairly continuous history since Czermak, in 1857, building upon Weber's researches into space perception, planned and began to carry out a programme for an investigation of the estimation of short time intervals.
Science and Value
Authors: Russell L. J.
Published: February 2009

In previous articles I have been concerned with various aspects of science; and I have now to endeavour to look at scientific activity as a whole, and to view it in its relation to other activities of man. I have been trying to avoid those pleasant sweeping generalizations which strike the imagination and which are so easy to write and to read about: such as that science is our only avenue to truth; or that science is abstract and tells us nothing about the concrete nature of things; or that knowledge of particular facts is the object of science, generalizations being merely a means thereto; or that generalizations are the object of science, investigation of particular facts being merely a means thereto; all of which can be defended by a rich array of arguments, none of which can finally stand confrontation with the actual nature of scientific activity as a whole. The situation seems to be much more complicated than any such generalizations would suggest.
Philosophy in Italy
Authors: de Ruggiero Guido
Published: February 2009

Shaftesbury is one of those philosophers who are usually placed more or less in the margin of the history of thought because an insufficient idea of system and a certain looseness of conception make it difficult to grasp their ideas and to classify them. Yet when you are able to break down or to dismiss the mental figures in which you have been accustomed to consider the historical succession of doctrines and are prepared to revive their words with an open mind, not only do they give you in their originality more than you had hoped, but also they help to render your representation of intellectual life as a whole more complex and more harmonious in its development. Bandini,1an Italian scholar, in making a zealous study of Shaftesbury, has succeeded in drawing out his rich personality, and at the same time in explaining the importance of his contribution to theperennis philosophia. We could hardly succeed in understanding the modern English mind in its genesis if we concentrated our attention exclusively on those empiristic currents which, although they preponderate in Anglo-Saxon speculation, do not contain all its originality. There is a deep fount of romance in the spirit of this people which wells up from time to time, and the drier and harder the surface earth the more strongly it gushes forth. Shaftesbury is just such a fount, isolated and inexplicable to all outward appearances, but far otherwise for anyone who knows how to penetrate below the surface. In his essay Bandini, while emphasizing the contrast between the philosophy of moral enthusiasm and feeling and the contemporaneous doctrines of Hobbes and Locke, examines with equal penetration the way in which the former becomes reattached to English speculative tradition and by what means it contributes in its turn to furnishing new trends in philosophy.
American Philosophy
Authors: Schlipp Paul Arthur
Published: February 2009

In America most of us are so proud of our own achievements and—as a corollary of this—so provincial and narrow-minded in our general worldoutlook, that it has probably never occurred to us that until very recently we have cut absolutely no figure in the world's philosophy. In fact, it may still be said that even in 1930 the influence of American philosophy upon the philosophical world is almost a negligible factor. But even such nearly negligible influence is vastly more than American philosophers could boast of thirty or forty years ago. The fact is that even as late as at the outbreak of the world-war most of Europe hardly knew that there was any such thing as American philosophy. And up to a very few years prior to the beginning of this devastating conflict such judgment concerning the non-existence of American philosophy was probably quite in agreement with the facts of the case. For an understanding of America's present cultural position it is essential, therefore, that one should know something of the recent advances in American philosophy. In fact, such philosophical progress in contemporary America constitutes one of the most remarkable and distinct proofs of America's ability to make significant and appreciated contributions to the highest intellectual and cultural life of the world. It would be foolish were one—even yet—to claim that America has arrived, philosophically. But the signs which indicate that American philosophy is definitely on its way are numerous, and are constantly multiplying. If American philosophers cannot yet say: “Plato, Hume, and Kant, we are here!”
Some Merits and Defects of Contemporary German Ethics
Authors: Baumgardt David
Published: February 2009

Topreach morals is easy, to ground them difficult. I think this saying of Schopenhauer is quite true. In the writings of the moral theorists we meet with ample enthusiasm for the beauty and the loftiness of moral principles. But even the best moral sermons are certainly no substitute for philosophical reasoning. To-day more than ever before we need the soundest foundation for a truly fixed ethics. For, to-day there is not a single affirmation in morals, which is not contradicted by its opposite. Eduard von Hartmann, for instance, could in the beginning of the twentieth century still maintain that the differences of opinion in ethics are concerned
Will and Action in Ethics (I)
Authors: Stocks J. L.
Published: February 2009

Ethics or Moral Philosophy investigates the application of the terms good and bad. We constantly use these predicates, and Ethics is an inquiry into our use of them. But this pair of terms is used over a very wide field and no one inquiry could cover it all. A ship or a tea or a house may be called good; and the investigation of such judgments would require a knowledge of ships, teas, or houses. Moral philosophy does not pretend to cover the whole field or to investigate every use of the terms: it is concerned only with the. moral use, or more explicitly with the use of the terms in reference to human conduct. And even this limitation may not be sufficient.
The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes
Authors: Taylor A. E.
Published: February 2009

Themoral doctrine of Hobbes, in many ways the most interesting of our major British philosophers, is, I think, commonly seen in a false perspective which has seriously obscured its real affinities. This is, no doubt, largely due to the fact that most modern readers begin and end their study of Hobbes's ethics with theLeviathan, a rhetorical and, in many ways, a popularStreitschriftpublished in the very culmination of what looked at the time to be a permanent revolution, and do not pay such attention to the more calmly argued statements of the same doctrine contained in theElements of Law, circulated before the outbreak of the Civil War, or the De Cive,
Will and Action in Ethics (II)
Authors: Stocks J. L.
Published: February 2009

Wemay look at the relation of will and motive from another side as follows: Will, we have said, is an individual response to an individual situation. Like the situation itself, it is not a fixed thing persisting through change, but involved in a continuous flow of change, re-adapting itself constantly in one respect or another to recognized changes of circumstance. It can have no more immutability than circumstance, and if it is not to be left behind in the march of events and become old-fashioned, it should have the capacity for the same rapidity of change. Now motives also change, but in a different way. First one motive operates, then another, as circum-
Civilization
Authors: Samuel Viscount
Published: February 2009

In what, after all, does civilization consist? If Japanese aggression in China were successful, would it bring to the Chinese a higher civilization or subject them to a lower? Sidney and Beatrice Webb entitled their spacious survey of present-day Russia Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? with a query at the end. In a postscript to that book they give reasons why they think that query might be omitted. But Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco assert that Communism is not a civilization at all, but an embodiment of the forces of destruction, to be resisted at all costs and to the death. History has accorded the title of “the Great” only as a rule to the
Is Political Activity under a Different Law from that of Personal Ethics?
Authors: Oakeley Hilda D.
Published: February 2009

In the course of his discussion of the work of the Disarmament Commission, in his book on the League of Nations, Sir Alfred Zimmern asks why the British people were so active in sponsoring disarmament. The question arises because, as he points out, the project must evoke proposals in regard to security which they were in no mood to consider. “The explanation,” he proceeds, “no doubt is that the eventuality, however obvious it may seem in retrospect, was overlooked in the enthusiasm for what had become for a certain type of British opinion a moral crusade, rather than a realistic
Colour: An Alternative Statement
Authors: Wodehouse Helen
Published: February 2009

In an interesting article in a recent number of Philosophy (October 1937) Mr. H. Wallis Chapman examines Colour as one of the commonest illustrations of the universal; and comes to conclusions of a nominalist kind. I desire to propose alternative solutions for the problems he deals with. If my statements seem too dogmatic, or my quotations too brief, the motive is economy of space. I trust that any reader of the present paper will read the whole of Mr. Chapman's.
Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Authors: Mossner Ernest C.
Published: February 2009

Hume'sDialogues Concerning Natural Religion are still much with us. What appears to be the definitive edition was published by Professor Norman Kemp Smith in 1935 with a learned introduction which, among other things, assembled a mass of evidence pointing to the conclusion that Philo is to be identified with Hume himself, and that Hume in the Dialogues is deliberately trying to undermine the religious hypothesis. Though these conclusions have been widely accepted, Dr. B. M. Laing, in the April issue of Philosophy, strenuously attacked them in an ingenious argument based in part on his already published thesis that Hume's fundamental philosophy is not really the scepticism so long assigned him. Dr. Laing takes the opportunity in passing to indicate his sympathy with the recent position of a distinguished British poet that Voltaire, also, has been traditionally abused in the assumption that on the question of religion he wrote with his tongue in his cheek. The present examination is not designed to inquire into this new mode of making the wicked pious; nor to push the question back from the Dialogues to Hume's basic philosophy; nor to press the writer's conviction [“The Enigma of Hume,” Mind, XLV (July, 1936) pp. 334–349] that not only is Philo to be identified as Hume, but in addition, Cleanthes as Joseph Butler, and Demea as Samuel Clarke. The present purpose is solely to indicate certain unhistorical bases of Dr. Laing's attack on the more traditional view so ably championed by Professor Norman Kemp Smith.