"First published 1957 " Campion Collection.

In a time when more and more people are discovering they can have a rational morality without an orthodox God, these twenty-four essays reappraise the whole character of Christian ethics and criticize the traditional underpinning of morality by religion. Edited by Ian T. Ramsey, professor of philosophy at Oxford University, the volume is a valuable sequel to the well-known New Essays in Philosophical Theology. The contributors include atheists, agnostics, and Christians. Among them are Ninian Smart, R. B. Braithwaite, Ronald Hepburn, (...) and Iris Murdoch. The essays do not attempt to examine specific Christian questions in any sort of theological detail; rather, their primary concern is with problems that arise principally in a philosophical context. But they are concerned with issues that lie behind the present bewilderment in Christian morality. Stressing the diversity of moral situations, the papers show that these are far from being homogeneous and rule-determined. Moral decision demands personal involvement, activating the possibility of good and bad reasons for making such a decision. The essays point out the character of moral disagreements and also remind us that morality is not only of individual but also of social significance. The last section of the book examines the present concept of natural law; its possible erosion by developments in anthropology, psychology, and philosophy; and whether the possibility exists for a theory of morality that unites both natural-law theory and Christian ethics. Ian T. Ramsey (1915 - 1972) was former Bishop of Durham, County Durham, England, and also served as Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford University, He was also the author of Religious Language, Models for Divine Activity, and Words About God. (shrink)

In this essay collection, leading physicists, philosophers, and historians attempt to fill the empty theoretical ground in the foundations of information and address the related question of the limits to our knowledge of the world. Over recent decades, our practical approach to information and its exploitation has radically outpaced our theoretical understanding - to such a degree that reflection on the foundations may seem futile. But it is exactly fields such as quantum information, which are shifting the boundaries of the (...) physically possible, that make a foundational understanding of information increasingly important. One of the recurring themes of the book is the claim by Eddington and Wheeler that information involves interaction and putting agents or observers centre stage. Thus, physical reality, in their view, is shaped by the questions we choose to put to it and is built up from the information residing at its core. This is the root of Wheeler's famous phrase "it from bit." After reading the stimulating essays collected in this volume, readers will be in a good position to decide whether they agree with this view. (shrink)

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias. “The most utopian thing in Utopia is that there are no schools,” writes John Dewey. With these words, Dewey opened his talk to kindergarten teachers on April 21, 1933 at Teachers (...) College, Columbia University. Published a couple days later in the New York Times under the title, “Dewey Outlines Utopian Schools,” we find Dewey in this little-discussed talk fancifully imagining himself among the Utopians—somehow.. (shrink)

The English writers of Dr Coulson’s ‘Common Tradition’ all subscribe to a ‘fiduciary’ as opposed to ‘analytic’ use of language. For Coleridge, unlike Bentham, ‘a language is for action as well as reflection: it must be responded to in all its richness and diversity before we can know what some of its words mean’. A fiduciary language ‘reveals not only the traditions and living principles of a people, but the world of ideas by which all men live’. Coulson argues that (...) the key Coleridgean word ‘idea’ is ‘most clearly understood when it is seen as originating in an understanding of the Church as sacramentally…the presence of Christ in the world’. ‘Such a sacramental conception of the Church is at the heart not only of the Oxford Movement and of Newman’s idea of the Church, but also of that other movement which derives even more directly from Coleridge and is associated with F D Maurice’. But unlike Coleridge and Maurice, for Newman the idea of the Church Catholic must correspond to ‘a tangible, visible, and identifiable empirical entity’, which is not its particular manifestation in the National Church. On the other hand, Coleridge’s ideal of a ‘clerisy’ corresponds to Newman’s insistence on the importance of an educated laity to represent the Church in society; and if Newman could not accept that the idea of the Church is ‘regulated’ by the Nation, nevertheless it is the laity which is the ‘measure’ of his ‘regulating principles’—theology. Where Newman differed so sharply from both Coleridge and Maurice was in his insistence on first asking the Benthamite question, ‘how do we know that Christianity is true?’ before exploring the meaning or relevance of Christian doctrines and institutions. Coulson concludes by claiming that Newman’s final vision of a Church which ‘cannot be conceived sacramentally, and in its idea, in isolation from society’ both supplements Vatican I and anticipates Vatican II, as well as summing up the essential insight of Coleridge and Maurice. (shrink)

The English writers of Dr Coulson’s ‘Common Tradition’ all subscribe to a ‘fiduciary’ as opposed to ‘analytic’ use of language. For Coleridge, unlike Bentham, ‘a language is for action as well as reflection: it must be responded to in all its richness and diversity before we can know what some of its words mean’. A fiduciary language ‘reveals not only the traditions and living principles of a people, but the world of ideas by which all men live’. Coulson argues that (...) the key Coleridgean word ‘idea’ is ‘most clearly understood when it is seen as originating in an understanding of the Church as sacramentally…the presence of Christ in the world’. ‘Such a sacramental conception of the Church is at the heart not only of the Oxford Movement and of Newman’s idea of the Church, but also of that other movement which derives even more directly from Coleridge and is associated with F D Maurice’. But unlike Coleridge and Maurice, for Newman the idea of the Church Catholic must correspond to ‘a tangible, visible, and identifiable empirical entity’, which is not its particular manifestation in the National Church. On the other hand, Coleridge’s ideal of a ‘clerisy’ corresponds to Newman’s insistence on the importance of an educated laity to represent the Church in society; and if Newman could not accept that the idea of the Church is ‘regulated’ by the Nation, nevertheless it is the laity which is the ‘measure’ of his ‘regulating principles’—theology. Where Newman differed so sharply from both Coleridge and Maurice was in his insistence on first asking the Benthamite question, ‘how do we know that Christianity is true?’ before exploring the meaning or relevance of Christian doctrines and institutions. Coulson concludes by claiming that Newman’s final vision of a Church which ‘cannot be conceived sacramentally, and in its idea, in isolation from society’ both supplements Vatican I and anticipates Vatican II, as well as summing up the essential insight of Coleridge and Maurice. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that John Milton, in his tragedy Smason Agonistes, raises and offers a solution to a version of the problem of evil raised by Marilyn McCord Adams. Sections I and II are devoted to the presentation of Adams’s version of the problem and its place in the current discussion of the problem of evil. In section III, I present Milton’s version of the problem as it is raised in Samson Agonistes. The solution Milton offers to this (...) problem is taken up in section IV and examined in section V. Last, in section VI, I explore briefly the existential aspect of Milton’s solution. (shrink)

Cross-cultural sex differences in mobility and harm avoidance have been widely reported, often emphasizing fitness benefits of long-distance travel for males and high costs for females. Data emerging from adults in small-scale societies, however, are challenging the assumption that female mobility is restricted during reproduction. Such findings warrant further exploration of the ontogeny of mobility. Here, using a combination of machine-learning, mixed-effects linear regression, and GIS mapping, we analyze range size, daily distance traveled, and harm avoidance among Hadza foragers during (...) middle childhood and adolescence. Distance traveled increased with age and, while male adolescents had the longest daily ranges, average daily distance traveled by each sex was similar. We found few age- or sex-related patterns in harm-avoidant responses and a high degree of individual variation. When queried on the same issues, children and their parents were often in alignment as to expectations pertaining to harm avoidance, and siblings tended to behave in similar ways. To the extent that sex differences in mobility did emerge, they were associated with ecological differences in physical threats associated with sex-specific foraging behaviors. Further, we found no strong association between harm avoidance and mobility. Young Hadza foragers of both sexes are highly mobile, regardless of how harm avoidant they are. Taken together, our findings indicate that the causal arrows between harm avoidance and mobility must be evaluated in ecologically specific frameworks where cultural expectations of juvenile mobility can be contextualized. (shrink)

With Discourse of Miracles and part of A Third Letter Concerning Toleration.

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09403-x.

Major shifts in the field of model theory in the twentieth century have seen the development of new tools, methods, and motivations for mathematicians and philosophers. In this book, John T. Baldwin places the revolution in its historical context from the ancient Greeks to the last century, argues for local rather than global foundations for mathematics, and provides philosophical viewpoints on the importance of modern model theory for both understanding and undertaking mathematical practice. The volume also addresses the impact (...) of model theory on contemporary algebraic geometry, number theory, combinatorics, and differential equations. This comprehensive and detailed book will interest logicians and mathematicians as well as those working on the history and philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

We introduce the notion T does not omit obstructions. If a stable theory does not admit obstructions then it does not have the finite cover property . For any theory T, form a new theory $T_{\rm Aut}$ by adding a new unary function symbol and axioms asserting it is an automorphism. The main result of the paper asserts the following: If T is a stable theory, T does not admit obstructions if and only if $T_{\rm Aut}$ has a model companion. (...) The proof involves some interesting new consequences of the nfcp. (shrink)

Hrushovski originated the study of “flat” stable structures in constructing a new strongly minimal set and a stable 0-categorical pseudoplane. We exhibit a set of axioms which for collections of finite structure with dimension function δ give rise to stable generic models. In addition to the Hrushovski examples, this formalization includes Baldwin's almost strongly minimal non-Desarguesian projective plane and several others. We develop the new case where finite sets may have infinite closures with respect to the dimension function δ. (...) In particular, the generic structure need not be ω-saturated and so the argument for stability is significantly more complicated. We further show that these structures are “flat” and do not interpret a group. (shrink)

Questions about knowledge, and about the relation between logic and language, are at the heart of philosophy. Eleven distinguished philosophers from Britain and America contribute papers on such questions. All the contributions are examples of recent philosophy at its best. The first half of the book constitutes a running debate about knowledge, evidence and doubt. The second half tackles questions about logic and its relation to language.

We give a general account of the goals of axiomatization, introducing a variant on Detlefsen’s notion of ‘complete descriptive axiomatization’. We describe how distinctions between the Greek and modern view of number, magnitude, and proportion impact the interpretation of Hilbert’s axiomatization of geometry. We argue, as did Hilbert, that Euclid’s propositions concerning polygons, area, and similar triangles are derivable from Hilbert’s first-order axioms. We argue that Hilbert’s axioms including continuity show much more than the geometrical propositions of Euclid’s theorems and (...) thus are an immodest complete descriptive axiomatization of that subject. (shrink)

We explore Shelah's model‐theoretic dividing line methodology. In particular, we discuss how problems in model theory motivated new techniques in model theory, for example classifying theories by their potential (consistently with Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice (ZFC)) spectrum of cardinals in which there is a universal model. Two other examples are the study (with Malliaris) of the Keisler order leading to a new ZFC result on cardinal invariants and attempts to clarify the “main gap” by reducing the (...) dependence of certain versions on (highly independent) cardinal arithmetic. (shrink)

In this paper we study abstract elementary classes of modules. We give several characterizations of when the class of modules A with is abstract elementary class with respect to the notion that M1 is a strong submodel M2 if the quotient remains in the given class.

In “Sex selection and regulated hatred”1 John Harris launches a vehement critique of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s recent report Sex Selection: options for regulation, raising several issues that merit discussion.He begins by complaining about the recommendation that because of the theoretical risk associated with the use of flow cytometry as a method of sperm sorting, its use should be restricted for the moment to cases in which a clear medical benefit is to be gained from its use. Harris (...) objects that in this recommendation “an absurdly high standard of caution is employed”, since a theoretical risk is associated with almost all medical procedures. This objection is misplaced: as paragraph 142 of the report indicates, the phrase “theoretical risk” is to be understood here in the light of the earlier discussion of the risks arising from the fact that flow cytometry exposes sperm to laser energy, a procedure which is known to be liable to damage DNA. Since the application of flow cytometry to humans is a new procedure, the risk of human genetic defects caused this way is still only “theoretical”; nonetheless it is serious enough to warrant caution—hence the recommendation that at present flow cytometry should be available only when its use brings clear medical benefits. The HFEA has recently been criticised by some for not being cautious enough when permitting the use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection even though in that case there are clear medical benefits from its use. It is extraordinary that Harris should now criticise the HFEA for not throwing caution to the winds concerning flow cytometry.Harris’ next point concerns the justification for this suggestion that preimplantation sex selection should be available only where it is undertaken for medical reasons. The obvious way to justify this would appear …. (shrink)

We study when classes can have the disjoint amalgamation property for a proper initial segment of cardinals. Theorem A For every natural number k, there is a class $K_k $ defined by a sentence in $L_{\omega 1.\omega } $ that has no models of cardinality greater than $ \supset _{k - 1} $ , but $K_k $ has the disjoint amalgamation property on models of cardinality less than or equal to $\mathfrak{N}_{k - 3} $ and has models of cardinality $\mathfrak{N}_{k (...) - 1} $ . More strongly, we can have disjoint amalgamation up to $\mathfrak{N}_\alpha $ for α > ω, but have a bound on size of models. Theorem B For every countable ordinal a, there is a class $K_\alpha $ defined by a sentence in $L_{\omega 1.\omega } $ that has no models of cardinality greater than $ \supset _{\omega 1} $ , but K does have the disjoint amalgamation property on models of cardinality less than or equal to $\mathfrak{N}_\alpha $ . Finally we show that we can extend the $\mathfrak{N}_\alpha $ to $ \supset _\alpha $ in the second theorem consistently with ZFC and while having $\mathfrak{N}_i \ll \supset _i $ for 0 > i < α. Similar results hold for arbitrary ordinals α with |α|= K and $L_{k + ,\omega } $. (shrink)

CHAPTER 1 Combinatorial Geometries and Infinitary Logics In this chapter we introduce two of the key concepts that are used throughout the text. ...

We introduce the notion T does not omit obstructions. If a stable theory does not admit obstructions then it does not have the finite cover property (nfcp). For any theory T, form a new theory by adding a new unary function symbol and axioms asserting it is an automorphism. The main result of the paper asserts the following: If T is a stable theory, T does not admit obstructions if and only if has a model companion. The proof involves some (...) interesting new consequences of the nfcp. (shrink)