In an important recent article T. C. W. Stinton reaffirmed the case that in Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 13, has a wide range of application. I do not wish to dispute the general conclusion of what seems to me a masterly analysis of the question but simply to discuss two areas where Stinton's argument may be thought defective–the interpretation of the examples given by Aristotle in Poetics 13, 5 3all and 53a2O–1 and the problem of the contradiction between 13, 53a13–15 and (...) 14, 54a4–9. (shrink)

Task unrelated thought (TUT) refers to thought directed away from the current situation, for example a daydream. Three experiments were conducted on healthy participants, with two broad aims. First, to contrast distributed and encapsulated views of cognition by comparing the encoding of categorical and random lists of words (Experiments One and Two). Second, to examine the consequences of experiencing TUT during study on the subsequent retrieval of information (Experiments One, Two, and Three). Experiments One and Two demonstrated lower levels of (...) TUT and higher levels of word-fragment completion whilst encoding categorical relative to random stimuli, supporting the role of a distributed resource in the maintenance of TUT. In addition the results of all three experiments suggested that experiencing TUT during study had a measurable effect on subsequent retrieval. TUT was associated with increased frequency of false alarms at retrieval (Experiment One). In the subsequent experiments TUT was associated with no advantage to retrieval based on recollection, by manipulating instructions at encoding (Experiment Two), and/or at retrieval (Experiment Three). The implications of the results of all three experiments are discussed in terms of recent accounts of memory retrieval and conscious awareness. (shrink)

In an important recent article T. C. W. Stinton reaffirmed the case that in Aristotle's Poetics, ch. 13, has a wide range of application. I do not wish to dispute the general conclusion of what seems to me a masterly analysis of the question but simply to discuss two areas where Stinton's argument may be thought defective–the interpretation of the examples given by Aristotle in Poetics 13, 5 3all and 53a2O–1 and the problem of the contradiction between 13, 53a13–15 and (...) 14, 54a4–9. (shrink)

The economic aspects of biobanking are intertwined with the social and scientific aspects. We describe two problems that structure the discussion about the economics of biobanking and which illustrate this intertwining. First, there is a ‘sustainability problem’ about how to maintain biobanks in the long term. Second, and representing a partial response to the first problem, there is a ‘commercialisation problem’ about how to deal with the voluntary altruistic relationship between participants and biobanks, and the potential commercial relationships that a (...) biobank may form. Social scientists have argued that the commercialisation problem is inadequate as a way to construct the multiple tensions that biobanks must negotiate. We agree that the commercialisation problem is an inadequate framework; turning to alternative accounts of bioeconomy, we suggest that contemporary consideration of the economics of biobanking primarily in terms of participants and their bodily tissue may reproduce the very commodification of science that these scholars critique. We suggest that an alternative conception of the economics of biobanking beyond the logics of commodification, which may thereby allow broader questions about the social and economic conditions and consequences of biobanks to be posed. (shrink)

Unquestionably, Kant wrote one of the most important works in aesthetics. Yet, in comparison with the amount of work philosophers have done in other areas of his philosophy, surprisingly little has been done with the aesthetics. Crawford’s book is a welcome and useful attempt to remedy this situation by presenting a sustained and critical exposition of the major argument in The Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment.

A revised edition of this translation which was first published in 1934. Silber has added a vigorous and provocative essay focusing attention on the importance of the Religion for understanding Kant's ethics.--J. M. W.

The translators have sought an expression generally intelligible to philosophers, rather than one steeped in the phenomenological and existential tradition. This avoids jargon, but sacrifices coin which is becoming current. Locutions which seem peculiar to one oriented within the more restricted viewpoint can generally be justified. The English is often colloquial and imaginative, but sometimes agonized. The great loss is the blind alleys in the English where, in the original, the possibilities of further penetration are limitless. Some terms are misleading. (...) The book includes a valuable glossary of German expressions, copious notes, and an extensive index of English expressions.--J. M. (shrink)

A short dictionary of quotations from Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Marcel, Heidegger, Sartre and de Beauvoir provides the reader with some idea of peculiarly existentialist understandings of standard philosophical terms as well as of terms which are more especially associated with existential thought. At times the selection seems rather arbitrary in some cases.--J. M. W.

An authorized, eminently readable translation of a work first published in German in 1957. Martin leads his reader into the problems of metaphysics by tracing the development of Plato's thought and Aristotle's criticism of Plato, focusing throughout on the question, "What is unity?" Although the book is introductory in intent and tone, it offers its own interpretation of Plato and Aristotle.--J. M. W.

Drawing upon recent contributions to an already developed literature of diverse speculation on Bayle and his milieu, the author attempts to assess the historical significance of Bayle's writings by means of a chronological treatment of the French Calvinist's changing understanding of the relation of faith and reason. One may find here the main lines of Bayle criticism judiciously set forth, together with a careful investigation of some biographical material and the exposition of Bayle's principal ideas on the role and limits (...) of reason as a speculative and moral guide, the function of grace, the grounds of faith and morality, the problem of error, and, the centrality of Providence. The author argues convincingly for the thesis that Bayle remained consistently loyal to the traditions of the Reform. On the other hand, the closely related attempt to illuminate the logic of Bayle's ambiguous statements of the dualism of reason, as an instrument for yielding clarity and evidence, and as the agent of man's struggle with the unknowable, lacks critical vigor. Nonetheless, this work is a very readable summary of the intellectual contribution of a crucial figure in the evolution of French philosophical and religious thought. A valuable bibliography is included.--J. M. S. (shrink)

F. H. George is Professor of Cybernetics at Brunel University in England. His book comprises eight chapters originally developed as lectures for a non-specialist audience. He points out the position of computer science among the sciences, explains its aims, procedures, and achievements to date, and speculates on its long-term implications for science in particular and society in general. Among the topics discussed are biological simulation and organ replacement, automated education, and the new philosophy of science. Each chapter concludes with a (...) brief summary. George's treatment of the technical details of his speciality is both illuminating and readable, thus serving as an excellent primer on one of the new technology's most important components. His wider forays into philosophy, economics, sociology, and religion are less happy, however; and unfortunately they take up a large part of the text. In general, they reveal that George identifies the methods of human advancement with the methods of the natural sciences in an equation whose rigidity would make even B. F. Skinner blush. Yet, the reader cannot claim that he was not forewarned; for in the introduction, D. J. Stewart, Chairman of the Rationalist Press Association, suggests that the current "swing of interest among young people away from the physical and biological sciences and towards the behavioural and social sciences... represents a symptom of disillusionment with science and technology and an attempted escape into irrationality."--J. M. V. (shrink)

This publication reflects the revival of interest in Theophrastus’ minor works during the last decade,. Coutant’s edition of Theophrastus’ treatise on fire is not to be compared with any of these books. The book contains an introduction on random subjects such as the nature of the work, sources of information, Aristotle’s view of fire, vocabulary, important concepts, and the establishment of the Greek text. There is also a Greek text with critical apparatus, an English translation, a fourteen page commentary, as (...) well as a subject index and an index of Greek nouns occurring in the text. (shrink)

Dicke discusses the metamorphosis of Hegelianism in Feuerbach and Marx through an examination of the concept of identity in the three philosophers. He demonstrates the persistence of this concept as a decisive theme in both Feuerbach and Marx, and shows how Hegel's doctrine of identity is transformed and adulterated in the process of adaptation. A primary consequence of Marx's modification of this doctrine is the philosophical sacrifice of the individual to the collective, which has its practical consequences in contemporary communist (...) states.--J. M. W. (shrink)

The author wants to explicate a core "philosophy of human finitude" in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and many others, philosophical and literary. A great many themes are taken up, and interesting connections among those writers are suggested. Some important distinctions are lost, however, and the wide-ranging topics are not fully developed.--J. M.

Morality, as commonly conceived, is a delusion; it is, however, indispensable for the flourishing both of society and of individuals. These are the main theses, one concerning the status, the other the content of morality,, of J. L. Mackie’s Ethics, Inventing Right and Wrong. In part 1, with much fresh, useful, if subsidiary discussion of more standard meta-ethical fare—meanings of normative terms and analysis of moral argument—Mackie argues that the morality of the plain man is not, what it is commonly (...) taken to be, revelatory of a realm of objective values. Such values, he contends, making no secret of his empiricism, are ontologically too queer to exist, epistemologically too alien to be known. Nor are they needed to account for the specious objectivity of common sense morality, for there are "patterns of objectification" which, with less philosophical extravagance, can explain how an agent’s subjective attitudes become objectified. Although Mackie does think that one’s moral principles are prescriptive, universal, and, in some sense, chosen, his skepticism is not the fruit of linguistic analysis. On the contrary. "[O]rdinary moral judgments include a claim to objectivity.... Any analysis of the meanings of moral terms which omits this claim to objective, intrinsic, prescriptivity is to that extent incomplete; and this is true of any non-cognitive analysis, any naturalist one, and any combination of the two". (shrink)

Essays on Gilbert, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Harvey, van Helmont, and Descartes attempt, at a medium level of complexity, to relate the positions of these men to twentieth century views of the same questions. The stated purpose of the book is the assessment of the role of each man in the "methodological revolution"; although the methods are discussed, little attempt is made to put them into the context necessary for the reader to view them as revolutionary.—J. M. B.

Although some of Helmholtz’s scientific suggestions are dated with the progress of science, his ontological statements as well as his epistemological studies are still an object of philosophical controversy. The selection of Helmholtz’s epistemological writings, edited as volume 79 in the Synthese Library, contains four papers originally published in German between 1868 and 1887. In these papers are considered among others the epistemological aspects of measuring and numbering, the issues of perceptual cognition, the theory of geometrical knowledge, and the relationship (...) between science and metaphysics. The present collection of the Helmholtz’s articles was previously edited in German, on the centenary of his birth, under the title Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie. The editors, M. Schlick and P. Hertz, sharing the opinion that Helmholtz’s name is a symbol of a union between epistemologically oriented philosophy and science, had selected from his many epistemological writings only four—the most representative and the most complete. In order to make the papers intelligible not only to philosophers but also to general readers, Schlick and Hertz supplemented the primary texts with explanatory remarks and comments. Some of them have a general introductory character, explaining, for instance, the difference between induction and deduction or elucidating Locke’s conception of two kinds of properties; the others present useful syntheses of methodological solutions, comparing, e.g., Carnap’s or Reichenbach’s ideas with Helmholtz’s. (shrink)

A richly detailed history of French secular thought in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. A wealth of material is introduced from unpublished manuscripts. Spink's stress on the clandestine spread of the enlightenment, in spite of official suppression, is interesting and sobering.--J. M. W.

This sizable, significant work focuses with novel insight on broad logical features in Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems. Part 1 perceptively examines its rhetorical, logical, scientific, and methodological contents. Anchored in these findings, a second part emends faulty interpretations and scholarly opinions, while sympathetically criticizing recent directions toward a more humanistic logic. From Galileo properly assessed a third part distils a concrete-practical logic that is primarily critical reasoning about reasoning.

Hartmann gives a careful, succinct, clear exposition, and, integral to it, a criticism of the main systematic outlines of Sartre's L'être et le néant. He interprets Sartre as attempting to use a phenomenological base for an "objective" ontology. He suggests that Sartre's highly formal dialectic, unlike its Hegelian model, is external to its "content" of concrete existential insights. The comparisons of the en-soi and pour-soi with Hegel's Sein, Dasein, Fürsichsein, and the more developed Begriff and Geist go far to challenge (...) the adequacy and richness of Sartre's determinations. The author discusses Husserl's subject-oriented epistemology, and refers to the Heideggerian contributions to Sartre's phenomenological base. A first rate job of opening up serious questioning in the area.--J. M. (shrink)

This volume consists of seven contributions to a symposium held in 1970 to commemorate the centennial of Saint John's University. Carlo Giacon and Bernard Cohen explicate the relationship of philosophy and modern science. Joseph Owens and John E. Smith treat the question of God as it is posed in philosophy today. Richard McKeon interrelates humanism, civility, and culture; while Vernon Bourke evaluates humanism as a possible basis for moral philosophy. Finally, Paul Ramsey offers some pithy comments on the present trend (...) which abhors man's irreverence for the non-human environment but waxes enthusiastic over the prospect of man's limitless self-modification. Though these papers are brief, for the most part they are extensively footnoted; and thus they provide a handy survey of current thinking on the indicated issues.--J. M. V. (shrink)

A new and simplified edition of Myers' major work, originally published in 1903. Previous editions had relegated all illustrative case material to cumbersome appendices. The editor of this edition has abridged this material and integrated it into the body of the text. The result is a more manageable and readable volume.--J. M. W.