Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors (...) We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection. (shrink)

Why me? -- Sticks and stones -- Hammer of God -- God is great -- The problem of atheists -- Guardian angels -- Nations under God -- God knows.

Provided we agree about the thing, it is needless to dispute about the terms. —David Hume, A treatise of human nature, Book 1, section VIIMap-like representations are frequently invoked as an alternative type of representational vehicle to a language of thought. This view presupposes that map-systems and languages form legitimate natural kinds of cognitive representational systems. I argue that they do not, because the collections of features that might be taken as characteristic of maps or languages do not themselves provide (...) scientifically useful information above and beyond what the individual features provide. To bring this out, I sketch several allegedly distinctive features of maps, and show how they can easily be grafted onto a simple logical language, resulting in a hybrid “manguage.” The ease with which these linguistic and map-like properties can be integrated into a single representational system raises the question of what work broader categories like language and map are doing. I maintain that, as an empirical matter of fact, they serve no particular purpose in cognitive science, and thus do not characterize distinct kinds of cognitive architectures. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

It is standard to attribute to Kant the view that actions from motives other than duty deserve no positive moral evaluation. I argue that the standard view is mistaken. Kant's account of merit in the Metaphysics of Morals shows that he believes actions not performed from duty can be meritorious. Moreover, the grounds for attributing merit to an action are different from those for attributing moral worth to it. This is significant because it shows both that his views are reasonably (...) consistent with our ordinary views, and that he recognized a variety of purposes in evaluating actions, many of which are not furthered by determining whether they were motivated by duty. (shrink)

This paper argues that if motivation by rightness de re is praiseworthy, then so is motivation by rightness de dicto. I argue that these two types of moral motivation have been unfairly compared, in light of a widespread failure to appreciate the structural similarities between them. These structural similarities become clear when we think more carefully about the nature of motivation and about moral metaphysics. I then argue that the two types of moral motivation are on a par by discussing (...) a series of minimal pairs. I argue that in good cases, in which the agent succeeds in doing what she is motivated to do, both motivations seem praiseworthy, and that bad cases, in which the agent fails, arise for motivation by rightness de re in precisely the same way as they do for motivation by rightness de dicto. I then offer a way to evaluate the unsuccessful agents, according to which someone's motivations can still be praiseworthy even if her actions and moral beliefs are both blameworthy, and someone can have certain praiseworthy motivations while lacking others. On my view, most of us are deeply flawed agents who nonetheless have some redeeming features—including our moral motivations. (shrink)

A new translation and edition of Aristotle's Protrepticus (with critical comments on the fragments) -/- Welcome -/- The Protrepticus was an early work of Aristotle, written while he was still a member of Plato's Academy, but it soon became one of the most famous works in the whole history of philosophy. Unfortunately it was not directly copied in the middle ages and so did not survive in its own manuscript tradition. But substantial fragments of it have been preserved in several (...) works by Iamblichus of Chalcis, a third century A.D. neo-Pythagorean philosopher and educator. On the basis of a close study of Iamblichus' extensive use and excerption of Aristotle's Protrepticus, it is possible to reconstruct the backbone of the lost work, and then to flesh it out with the other surviving reports about the work from antiquity (for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias and other ancient commentators on Aristotle). It is also possible to identify several papyrus fragments of the work, and many references and literary allusions in later authors, especially Cicero, whose own lost dialogue Hortensius was a defense of philosophy modeleld on Aristotle's. (shrink)

The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In (...) this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language. (shrink)

Common sense is not enough -- The "new archaeology" -- Archaeology as a science -- Middle-range theory, ethnoarchaeology, and material culture studies -- Culture and process -- Thoughts and ideologies -- Postprocessual and interpretative archaeologies -- Archaeology, gender, and identity -- Archaeology and cultural evolution -- Archaeology and Darwinian evolution -- Archaeology and history -- Archaeology, politics and culture -- Conclusion : the future of theory.

"Sure to be controversial and of interest to a wide audience in feminist history" (Judith Grant, University of Southern California), this book draws on a wide range of political and intellectual traditions to demonstrate that, only by ...

Three visual habituation studies using abstract animations tested the claim that infants’ attachment behavior in the Strange Situation procedure corresponds to their expectations about caregiver–infant interactions. Three unique patterns of expectations were revealed. Securely attached infants expected infants to seek comfort from caregivers and expected caregivers to provide comfort. Insecure-resistant infants not only expected infants to seek comfort from caregivers but also expected caregivers to withhold comfort. Insecure-avoidant infants expected infants to avoid seeking comfort from caregivers and expected caregivers to (...) withhold comfort. These data support Bowlby’s (1958) original claims—that infants form internal working models of attachment that are expressed in infants’ own behavior. (shrink)

When people use a resource without a co-ordinated plan the result is often a tragedy of the commons in which the resource is depleted. Many environmental resources display the characteristics of a developing tragedy of the commons. Many believe that each person is ethically obligated to reduce use of the commons to the sustainable level. I argue that this is mistaken. In a tragedy of the commons there is no reasonable expectation that individual, voluntary action will succeed. Our obligation is (...) not fruitlessly to reduce individual use, but to support a collective agreement to reduce everyone's use to the sustainable level. (shrink)

My thesis is that moral ignorance does not imply a failure to care adequately about what is in fact morally significant. I offer three cases: one in which someone is ignorant of the precise nature of what she cares about; one in which someone does not reflect on the significance of what she cares about in a particular set of circumstances, and one in which someone cares deeply about two morally significant considerations while being mistaken about their relative significance. I (...) argue that these agents all clearly care at least “adequately” about everything morally significant, including the very considerations that in fact make their acts wrong. This creates theoretical room for a way of thinking about culpable moral ignorance that respects the key concerns of those in the voluntarist tradition who have held that moral ignorance is typically blameless, within an approach to thinking about moral responsibility according to which we are blameworthy for that which manifests poor quality of will; caring adequately does not require moral omniscience, but motivated moral ignorance and moral ignorance that reflects indifference to things that matter morally are still blameworthy. My thesis also suggests a fruitful change of direction for quality-of-will theorists: we should articulate the nature and structure of the standards for adequate caring, i.e. those that specify what it is to care “adequately”. I close by offering an initial proposal as to what these standards might look like and identifying four promising avenues for further research on this topic. (shrink)

A semantics is presented for Storrs McCall's separate axiomatizations of Aristotle's accepted and rejected polysyllogisms. The polysyllogisms under discussion are made up of either assertoric or apodeictic propositions. The semantics is given by associating a property with a pair of sets: one set consists of things having the property essentially and the other of things having it accidentally. A completeness proof and a semantic decision procedure are given.

Offers a robust, full-orbed theology of beauty, showing how it has functioned as a theological concept from biblical times to the present day.

Archytas of Tarentum, a contemporary and associate of Plato, was a famous Pythagorean, mathematician, and statesman of Tarentum. Although his works are lost and most of the fragments attributed to him were composed in later eras, they nevertheless contain valuable information about his thought. In particular, the fragments of On Law and Justice are likely based on a work by the early Peripatetic biographer Aristoxenus of Tarentum. The fragments touch on key themes of early Greek ethics, including: written and unwritten (...) laws; freedom and self-sufficiency; moderation of the emotions and cultivation of virtues; equality and the competence of the majority to participate in government; criticism of “rule by an individual”; a theory of the ideal “mixed constitution”; distributive and corrective justice and punishment, and of the rule of law. The fragments also contain one of the only positive accounts of democracy in ancient Greek philosophy. (shrink)

El presente libro se enmarca dentro de ciertas traducciones del griego antiguo al castellano, publicadas por Ediciones Tácitas. Este libro es la segunda traducción de Tucídides que presenta la mencionada editorial. La primera fue el Discurso Fúnebre de Pericles, a cargo de Antonio Arbea (2012).

This book addresses several dimensions of the transformation of English Nonconformity over the course of an important century in its history. It begins with the question of education for ministry, considering the activities undertaken by four major evangelical traditions to establish theological colleges for this purpose, and then takes up the complex three-way relationship of ministry/churches/colleges that evolved from these activities. As author Dale Johnson illustrates, this evolution came to have significant implications for the Nonconformist engagement with its message (...) and with the culture at large. These implications are investigated in chapters on the changing perception or understanding of ministry itself, religious authority, theological questions, and religious identity.In Johnson's exploration of these issues, conversations about these topics are located primarily in addresses at denominational meetings, conferences that took up specific questions, and representative religious and theological publications of the day that participated in key debates or advocated contentious positions. While attending to some important denominational differences, The Changing Shape of English Nonconformity, 1825-1925 focuses on the representative discussion of these topics across the whole spectrum of evangelical Nonconformity rather than on specific denominational traditions.Johnson maintains that too many interpretations of nineteenth-century Nonconformity, especially those that deal with aspects of the theological discussion within these traditions, have tended to depict such developments as occasions of decline from earlier phases of evangelical vitality and appeal. This book instead argues that it is more appropriate to assess these Nonconformist developments as a collective, necessary, and deeply serious effort to come to terms with modernity and, further, to retain a responsible understanding of what it meant to be evangelical. It also shows these developments to be part of a larger schema through which Nonconformity assumed a more prominent place in the English culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (shrink)

In his essay “Logical Empiricism”, in the anthology Twentieth Century Philosophy, Professor Feigl writes: “All forms of empiricism agree in repudiating the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge.” Schlick makes the same point even more forcibly: “The empiricism which I represent believes itself to be clear on the point that, as a matter of principle, all propositions are either synthetic a posteriori or tautologous; synthetic a priori propositions seem to it to be a logical impossibility.” The denial of synthetic a (...) prioris is a major thesis of the logical empiricist position, being found in the writings of most of the leaders of the movement. The reason for its importance is fairly clear. It provides a formula on which the empiricists can base their critique of traditional philosophy. To use Ayer's phrase, denial of the synthetic a priori results in “the elimination of metaphysics”. The philosophical tradition to which the empiricists are opposed and whose “metaphysics” they wish to eliminate can be called, somewhat loosely, rationalism. (shrink)

Disagreement is, for better or worse, pervasive in our society. Not only do we form beliefs that differ from those around us, but increasingly we have platforms and opportunities to voice those disagreements and make them public. In light of the public nature of many of our most important disagreements, a key question emerges: How does public disagreement affect what we know? This volume collects original essays from a number of prominent scholars--including Catherine Elgin, Sanford Goldberg, Jennifer Lackey, Michael Patrick (...) Lynch, and Duncan Pritchard, among others--to address this question in its diverse forms. The book is organized by thematic sections, in which individual chapters address the epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions of dissent. The individual contributions address important issues such as the value of disagreement, the nature of conversational disagreement, when dissent is epistemically rational, when one is obligated to voice disagreement or to object, the relation of silence and resistance to dissent, and when political dissent is justified. Voicing Dissent offers a new approach to the study of disagreement that will appeal to social epistemologists and ethicists interested in this growing area of epistemology. (shrink)

The academic study of religion has long enjoyed a variety of philosophies and methodologies. A new entrant to this list has now arisen: metamodernism. This article examines the claims of metamodernism and makes an initial attempt to relate it to the academic study of religion, both in its guise as Religious Studies and, more tentatively, as the Theological sciences. Metamodernism, with its emphasis on oscillation and simultaneity, shows great promise as an explanatory framework to understand certain current religious developments, such (...) as the 'Spiritual but not Religious' phenomenon. It may also assist in creating a growing convergence between the various branches of the academic study of religion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Most American engineers believe that they have a responsibility for the safety and well‐being of society, but whence does this responsibility arise? What does it entail? After describing engineering practice in America as compared with the practice of other professions, this paper examines two standard types of accounts of the social responsibilities of professionals. While neither provides a satisfactory account of the social responsibilities of American engineers, several lessons are learned by uncovering their weaknesses. Identifying the framework in which (...) professional rights and responsibilities are justified, I argue that an end or primary good is the starting place for conceptualizing a profession, and justifying its existence and shape. Too little attention has been paid to the end(s) of engineering. The social responsibilities of American engineers as defined in the present system of engineering are ambiguous and weak. I indicate how the case for assigning American engineers stronger social responsibilities must be made by starting with the end(s) of engineering. I argue that, at present, American engineers do not have social responsibilities as engineers, though they do have social responsibilities as persons. (shrink)

The monumental works of Bertrand Russell and Louis Couturat have set a firm pattern of interpretation which many follow in their approach to the Philosophy of Leibniz. In the Preface to the second edition of The Philosophy of Leibniz , Russell reaffirms his contention that “Leibniz’s philosophy was almost entirely derived from his logic”. He welcomes the support provided in Couturat’s La Logique de Leibniz . Russell remarks “No candid reader—can doubt that Leibniz’s metaphysic was derived by him from the (...) subject-predicate logic. This appears, for example, from the paper ‘Primae Veritates’ where all the main doctrines of the Monadology are deduced, with terse logical rigor from the premises; ‘Always therefore the predicate or consequent adheres in the subject or antecedent, and in this fact consists the nature of truth in general—But this is true in every affirmative truth, universal or singular, necessary or contingent’.” Referring further to Couturat, he points out that in his book the “Principle of Sufficient Reason” and “The Identity of Indiscernibles” are “expressly deduced—from the analytic character of all true propositions”. In short, Russell is contending that in formulating his metaphysics Leibniz used the rigorous methods of deductive logic and employed “models” drawn from logic to construct his “picture of reality”, i.e. his metaphysics. (shrink)

Hal Draper was born in Brooklyn in 1914, to East European Jewish immigrant parents. In 1932 he became active in the Student League for Industrial Democracy and the Socialist Party youth section, the Young People's Socialist League. A leader of the Student Strikes Against War, he became an associate editor of Socialist Appeal in 1934. In 1937, the socialist youth, led by Draper and Ernest Erber, voted to support the Fourth International after Trotsky's followers entered the Socialist Party. Draper opposed (...) the subsequent split in the SP, which Trotsky and James P. Cannon deliberately provoked, but left with the Trotskyists and became the national secretary of the Socialist Workers’ Party's youth group, a member of its first National Executive, and the secretary of the party's National Education Department. Irving Howe, a YPSL comrade, later recalled his admiration. Draper was, ‘genuinely learned in Marxism, with a mind that marched from one theorem to another as if God were clearing his way’, a youth leader who ‘would speak for us with a razored lucidity’ in debate with the Stalinists. Draper was part of the minority when the SWP split in 1940 over two issues, the ‘Russian question’ and the ‘bureaucratic conservatism’ of James P. Cannon's internal party regime. Draper became a founder member of the Workers’ Party, led by Max Shachtman, which developed an analysis of the Soviet Union as neither a ‘workers’ state’ nor state capitalist but a new form of exploiting class society, bureaucratic collectivism. The WP refused to ‘defend the Soviet Union’ and developed a distinctive democratic revolutionary Marxism, summed up by the slogan, ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow but the Third Camp of Independent Socialism!’. And, in reaction to Cannon's monolithic conception of the party, the WP developed a highly democratic internal political culture marked by ‘an atmosphere of genuine tolerance’ unceasing internal debate carried in the public press, and untrammelled rights for minorities. (shrink)

Recently the relevance of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger has been critiqued in nursing literature. However, this critique is based primarily upon an appropriation of Heidegger that does not reflect an understanding of meaning as grounded in temporality. Therefore, this paper aims to (1) explicate Heidegger's grounding of meaning, (2) briefly contrast Heidegger's and Husserl's notions of the origin of meaning, (3) describe how Heidegger was first introduced to nursing, and (4) illustrate through examples from a research study how the (...) philosophy of Heidegger might inform the phenomenological researcher. (shrink)

Assisted suicide is a tragic issue, one of those for which the tools of mere logic are inadequate and in which the power of the individual case is compelling and seductive but not necessarily clarifying. Meaningful dialogue is difficult. Persuasion is limited because the resolution of the issue, on a moral level, must be founded upon fundamental notions of what it means to be human, especially in the midst of suffering or disability or at the point of death.

In his book, The Principles of Mathematics , the young Bertrand Russell abandoned the common-sense notion that the whole must be greater than its part, and argued that wholes and their parts can be similar, e.g. where both are infinite series, the one being a sub-series of the other. He also rejected the popular view that the idea of an infinite number is self-contradictory, and that an infinite set or collection is an impossibility. In this paper, I intend to re-examine (...) Russell's wisdom in doing both these things, and see if it might not have made more sense, and caused his enterprise fewer problems, if he had simply stuck to our commonplace ideas. To this end, I shall also be considering his treatment of certain paradoxes that he claims can only be resolved by the abandonment of the above notions, as well as certain others which his theories appear to have generated. (shrink)