Philosophical Books Research Articles

The Practical Irrelevance of Relativism

I learned a lot from reading Jesse Prinz’s ambitious and entertaining book, The Emotional Construction of Morals. I think he’d be pleased to know that I learned many interesting things that I would not ordinarily find in a book of academic philosophy. Also, even when I disagreed with him, almost all of my questions were anticipated and addressed as the book proceeded, which is a very satisfying experience as a reader and (in my opinion anyway) high praise in philosophy. I say ‘almost all’ of my questions because there are a few that remain. These centre around a puzzle about Prinz’s relativism, which is the focus of my comments. The puzzle is about why the kind of relativism we get from Prinz’s metaethics matters to normative ethics or moral practice. I think it does not (or at least not directly and not in the ways he thinks it does). Moreover, I think many things Prinz says – about the advantages of relativism, about practical moral questions, and about moral progress – should have led him also to conclude that relativism doesn’t matter. But he doesn’t draw this conclusion; hence I am puzzled rather than simply disagreeing. Before I get into the puzzle, it will be helpful to explain the kind of relativism Prinz defends. According to Prinz, the truth of judgements about wrongness depends on the values (and hence the sentiments) of the person who makes the judgement (180). So, when a person says ‘it is wrong to kick puppies’, this is true only if the speaker has moral values that proscribe kicking puppies. This is so, in part, because moral judgements are constituted by emotions (such as shame and disgust) that are caused by our sentiments, and sentiments represent the secondary quality of causing disapprobation in the person whose sentiments they are. When we make moral judgements we ‘convey our feelings and also aim to assert a fact’ (100), for example, the fact that the action we are judging to be wrong has the property of causing disapprobation in us. As long as people have different sentiments, whether or not an action has that dispositional property will vary depending on the speaker. Prinz spends a good bit of time convincing us that people do indeed have different moral sentiments (this is the claim that descriptive relativism is true defended in Chapter 5). If people have different moral sentiments, and if moral judgements assert facts about moral sentiments, then we can see how the truth of moral judgements will be relative to individual agents (175). An interesting feature of Prinz’s relativism, one that begins to reveal my puzzle, is that ought judgements are treated differently from judgements of wrongness. According to Prinz, ought judgements (as opposed to judgements

Speaking Before the Environment: Modern Fiction and the Ecological

Speaking Before the Environment:Modern Fiction and the Ecological Robert P. Marzec (bio) Artaud said: to write for the illiterate. . . . But what does 'for' mean? It is not 'for their benefit,' or yet 'in their place.' It is 'before.' It is a question of becoming. We think and write for animals themselves. We become animal so that the animal also becomes something else. The agony of a rat or the slaughter of a calf remains present in thought not through pity but as a zone of exchange between man and animal in which something of one passes into the other. This is the constitutive relationship of philosophy with nonphilosophy. . . . The artist or philosopher is quite incapable of creating a people, each can only summon it with all his strength. A people can only be created in abominable sufferings, and it cannot be concerned any more with art or philosophy. But books of philosophy and works of art also contain their sum of unimaginable sufferings that forewarn of the advent of a people. They have resistance in common—their resistance to death, to servitude, to the intolerable, to shame, and to the present. —Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri, "Geophilosophy" By way of introduction to this special issue of Modern Fiction Studies I want to take the opportunity to foreground some problems [End Page 419] now facing ecocriticism in the fields of literary, cultural, and geographical studies as they are presently structured, and by extension the environmental movement as manifested in its current conditions of possibility.1 Though ecocriticism as a discipline within the humanities has yet to take on the significance of gender studies, race relations, or postcolonialism, it nevertheless has mushroomed in the last ten years or so and continues to grow in popularity, no doubt in part as a response to the growing public awareness of the planet's increasingly threatened environments. The potential of this flourishing critical activity signals a promising turn in ecological attitudes and importance. However, one must also consider the academic period in which this expansion now takes place—namely the waning of postcolonial studies in favor of a more generalized global studies,2 and the widespread erosion of philosophical inquiry (namely poststructuralist theory) alongside the subsequent ascension of various criticisms that could be loosely placed under the umbrella of cultural studies. These attritions will have an effect on the future of ecocriticism, and potentially foreclose the resources offered by contemporary critical inquiry from environmental studies and the environmental movement. Two resources that I want to consider here are structural-ontological analysis and the problem of representation. Representation has never been taken for granted by poststructuralist inquiry. This critical awareness becomes especially important when one considers that the worst form of aggressive politics functions by conveniently overlooking the important fact that language is not transparent. Even environmental representation cannot claim a privileged lucidity, otherwise its struggle for politicization may end up supporting the unchecked movement of capital as we saw with the turning of underrepresented struggles into marketable identity politics with the institutionalization of multiculturalism. The question of representation is also one of the central concerns of modern fictions. Joseph Conrad, for instance, foregrounds the limitations of representation—especially in relation to colonial spaces and environments—in each of his narratives. The inability of Marlowe to find an adequate means of representation lies at the center of the narrative of Heart of Darkness and other Conrad novels such as Lord Jim, Nostromo, and Victory. Interestingly enough the environment itself serves as the key vehicle for foregrounding this impossibility of representation in each of these works. In Heart of Darkness Marlowe describes the land as "featureless," "empty," and a "wilderness" that contributes to Kurtz's madness (29, 34, 83). Victory's Axel Heyst's failure to establish an adequate system of representation has such an effect on his being that he cannot step beyond the cultivated enclosure of his isolated outpost of empire into the indigenous environment of the [End Page 420] island forest in the Malay Archipelago: "In front of Heyst the forest, already full of the deepest shades, stood like a wall" (341). Conrad's novels are particularly interesting in terms of an ecological...

Clinical Chemistry’s NIH Book Club Corner, NIH Biomedical Computing Interest Group Book Club Review of The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher by Julian Baggini.1

This clever and entertaining book provides a hundred philosophical puzzles that stimulate thought and dialogue on a variety of moral, social, and personal issues. Organized into brief chapters that each consist of a fictional scenario followed by discussion of the dilemma presented by the scenario, this book includes a wide range of thought-provoking topics. The instant reaction of many scientists to deem a philosophical book as beyond their field of interest would deprive them of considering some scenarios that are very much related to scientific interests. For example, the “Black and white and red all over” chapter discusses a color-blind scientist who is an expert in objective measures of the color red. The question of whether gaining color vision will alter the scientist’s impression of red is raised in the dialogue section, and the potential role of subjective impressions on the largely objective discipline of science is considered. Additional topics included in the book arise from science fiction scenarios, such as consideration of what traits will be most useful when populating a colony on Mars. The space colonization situation presented in “The veil of ignorance” chapter raises questions regarding societal organization, while “Bigger Brother” introduces a mind-reading computer that predicts a person’s actions, leading to a discussion of whether humans are nothing more than a machine-like mix of chemical reactions and electrical signals. Given the broad range of topics presented in the 100 “thought experiments” within this book, most readers will find at least one chapter captivates their interest, although it is more likely that a reader will have several favorite chapters. As revealed in the Commentaries section …

The book of dead philosophers

The book of dead philosophers

The history of philosophy: a reader's guide: including a list of 100 great philosophical works from the pre-Socratics to the mid-twentieth century

Preface Part 1: Philosophical Propaedeutics One: Introduction: On the Historical Study of Philosophy Two: 100 Great Philosophical Works Three: The History of Philosophy in Outline Part 2: Philosophical Perspectives Four: On Reading Philosophical Books Five: The Origin of Philosophy and the Theatre of the World Six: Two Views of History and the History of Philosophy Part 3: Philosophical Practics Seven: Philosophical Writing Eight: Philosophical Literacy.

Should Philosophy Books Be Treated As Fiction?

KO KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION , Seite 121 - 129

The Consolation of Philosophy: Boethius

Journal of Palliative MedicineVol. 11, No. 10 BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWSThe Consolation of Philosophy: BoethiusLeon N. Shapiro and Laurie RosenblattLeon N. ShapiroSearch for more papers by this author and Laurie RosenblattSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:30 Dec 2008https://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2008.9812AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail "The Consolation of Philosophy: Boethius." , 11(10), pp. 1353–1354FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 11Issue 10Dec 2008 Information© 2008 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.To cite this article:Leon N. Shapiro and Laurie Rosenblatt.The Consolation of Philosophy: Boethius.Journal of Palliative Medicine.Dec 2008.1353-1354.http://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2008.9812Published in Volume: 11 Issue 10: December 30, 2008PDF download

…… AND A YEATSIAN PHANTASMAGORIA

The woman in … quotes from Yeats's "The Tower," a poem in which Yeats, who was familiar with séances, recalls the dead. "The Tower" is closely related to Yeats's book of occult philosophy, , in which he refers to 'phantasmagoria,' projections of images of ghosts, in discussing "dreaming back" by the Spirit. By repeatedly reproducing scenes, M's voice, called V, seems to be dreaming back a solitary séance by M, conducted by his past self to see the woman without. For Beckett, television thus produced a version of Yeats's phantasmagoria, a projection of the inner ghost outward.

Asymmetry: The Foundation of Information. By Scott Muller. Springer: Berlin. 2007. VIII, 165 p. 33 illus., Hardcover. CHF 139.50. ISBN: 978-3-540-69883-8

Normally a religious book should be read at least 100 times; a philosophy book 10 times and a science monograph should be read carefully at least once before you can claim that you have read the book and understand something.[...]

The Conservation Professional's Guide to Working with People. S. A. Bonar. 2007. Island Press, Washington, DC. 224 pp. $50 cloth, $25 paperback.

This book is unusual. It is not a how-to book, nor is it a history book, nor is it a philosophy book, nor is it a behavioral science book, although more that than the others. This book is really an...

AUTONOMY, TAKING ONE'S CHOICES TO BE GOOD, AND PRACTICAL LAW: REPLIES TO CRITICS

Philosophical Books Vol. 49 No. 2 April 2008 pp. 125 –137 AUTONOMY, TAKING ONE’S CHOICES TO BE GOOD, AND PRACTICAL LAW: REPLIES TO CRITICS andrews reath The University of California, Riverside I Several essays in my book try to understand what Kant means by autonomy and how that concept figures in his foundational project. Since political and juridical terminology runs through much of Kant’s moral theory, I suggest that he models autonomy on a notion of sovereignty. I interpret autonomy not as a motivational capacity, but as the sovereignty of the will over itself: the rational will is not bound to any outside authority and it has the capacity to give universal law. I shall begin with an overview of some of these themes. Since Samuel Kerstein asks whether I am interpreting or defending Kant, let me first say something about my approach. My guiding aim is to reconstruct the underlying ideas and arguments so as to make them philosophically success- ful, where ‘reconstruction’ permits pushing an idea farther in a certain direc- tion than Kant did. My approach is interpretive, since I accept the constraint that the ideas that I develop should have a firm basis in the texts and the underlying arguments. Without claiming that there is a uniquely right reading, I want to get at the deep structure of concepts and arguments that animate the movements of thought in Kant’s texts. But I am also engaged in defending Kant, in that I am trying, as far as I can, to make the arguments work out. Thus a second constraint is that the ideas and arguments attributed to Kant turn out to be philosophically successful. These two constraints are not always compatible, and that is one reason why Kant is hard work (and sometimes frustrating). II To provide background for my responses, I begin with some remarks about the role of autonomy in the overall trajectory of the Groundwork that may clarify the senses in which Kant thinks that moral requirements are laws that the will gives to itself. (Here I am more concerned to lay out an overall picture of what goes on in the Groundwork than to defend it.) Kant thinks that it is part of common moral thought that moral requirements apply with absolute necessity and that we take them to be categorical imperatives. Once this feature of common moral thought is brought to our attention, the question that sets the problematic of the Groundwork naturally arises: how could there be normative requirements with this kind of necessity? Groundwork III attempts to ground the authority of moral requirements in a dual necessity. Greatly simplified, it argues that the Categorical Imperative [CI] is the constitutive or internal principle of a necessary self-conception. First, the CI is the constitutive principle of free Philosophical 2008 The Books Author. Vol. Journal 49 No. 2 compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. © 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ , UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

Sir Robert Southwell's Dialogue on Thomas Burnet's Theory of the Earth: ‘C & S discourse of Mr Burnetts Theory of the Earth’ (1684): Contexts and an Edition

I. Thomas Burnet and the Telluris Theoria SacraThe publication in Latin and English of the four books of Thomas Burnet's Telluris Theoria Sacra (hereafter Theory) throughout the 1680s sparked over two decades of extensive debate within academic, scientific, and theological communities concerning the proper relation between physical hypothesis and biblical exegesis.1 Burnet's style, in English as in Latin, was universally conceded - 'there was never any book of Philosophy written with a more lofty and plausible stile than it is'2 - but his philosophical content prompted controversy. The Theory was the first book-length attempt by an English writer devoted to unifying a broadly Cartesian model of creation with conventional biblical history. Descartes's Principia Philosophiae (1644) itself had been written without any attempt to map its physical hypotheses onto the opening chapters of Genesis. Instead, Descartes maintained that if we can explain how things 'could have grown little by little from certain seeds . . . although [from Genesis] we rightly know them never to have arisen thus', then we will understand them much better.3 Burnet's Theory, in his own eyes, effected precisely the pious reconnection that Descartes had shunned, and although Burnet prudently understated his Cartesian genealogy, his work was quickly described as Descartes 'new vamp'd'.4 Burnet also remained largely silent about his intellectual debt to his old Cambridge masters Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, the latter of whom had made some very grand claims in the 1650s about the compatibility of Descartes and Moses. Burnet likewise failed to mention the last tenth of Joseph Glanvill's Lux Orientalis (1662), which had preceded him into the field of Mosaic Cartesianism, and described not only of the formation of the earth but also of its apocalyptic fate, compacting in less than 30 pages what Burnet would later spend four lengthy books and almost a decade traversing.5 Glanvill was likewise heavily influenced by Henry More, whom he cited repeatedly. But Glanvill's cosmology concluded a text primarily concerned with the pre-existence of the soul, a hypothesis of such obvious heterodoxy that Burnet - though in later life he would admit to this opinion in print6 - would have been ill-advised publicly to acknowledge any influence.7Burnet's reconnection was partial at best. He placed a great deal of emphasis on the role of the Flood in his system, barely mentioning the Hexameron or the fall of man in Eden. For Burnet, creation followed Cartesian not biblical lines; as he confessed at the beginning of his third book, on the Conflagration, 'Scripture it self will be a more visible Guide to us in these following parts of the Theory, than it was in the former'. In the first two books it was the calamity of the deluge that was the principal marker both of man's degeneracy and of catastrophic terrestrial change. Burnet advanced the suggestion at the end of the second book of the Theory itself that the opening chapters of Genesis were to be understood allegorically, or as written accommodated to a primitive Israelite audience, and he promised to defend this in a separate, later work. This was the Archaeologiae Philosophicae of 1692, a work that Burnet prudently did not translate into English. Unfortunately for Burnet, pertinent sections of the Archaeologiae were swiftly translated, and published at the front of Charles Blount's notorious Deist collection The Oracles of Reason (1693).8 The Amsterdam editions of the Theoria sacra (1694, 1699) simply appended the Archaeologiae in its entirety, with continuous pagination between the two works.Burnet had now departed from what could be tolerated by most orthodox commentators of the time, and his publications over the dozen years following 1681 contributed towards his political eclipse. They may also have cost him consideration for the See of Canterbury upon the death of his old tutor John Tillotson in 1694. Theologians attacked Burnet on theological grounds; natural philosophers criticised his physical or mathematical arguments. …

On the Romantic Thing

Previous articleNext article No AccessOn the Romantic ThingWilliam S. DavisWilliam S. Davis Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Wordsworth Circle Volume 39, Number 1-2Winter-Spring 2008 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/TWC24045176 Views: 1Total views on this site © 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Considérations socioanthropologiques sur les allotransplantations de tissus composites (ATC). Extraits de lecture et analyse d'un chirurgien

The author is neither anthropologist nor invested in social activities. He has learned some reviews of anthropology and some social and philosophical books since seven years. He describe not a general review but an analysis of these lectures according to the composite tissues allotransplantations (CTA). The discussion concerns anthropology and symbols, philosophical and social aspects. There is a natural umbilicus between the anthropological science and the surgical art according to CTA.

„Philosophie als eigene Antwort auf die Frage Welt“

The important and influential mathematician Felix Hausdorff was also the author of several remarkable philosophical books and essays. About his unusual biography between philosophy and topology we have only little knowledge. We know only few personal documents and letters. Among Hausdorff’s letters that have been preserved (about 130), the letters and postcards to the librarian, translator and artist Franz Meyer in Jena (10) give an important insight into Hausdorff’s biography and his philosophical development. They also inform about his way from a philosopher, who liked to play with Nietzsche’s thoughts, to a pure mathematician.

RATIONAL CAPACITY AS A CONDITION ON BLAME

Suppose that a particular woman intentionally takes a drink. To provide an evaluative context, suppose she ought not to have another because she will then be unfit to fulfill some of her obligations. Preanalytically, most of us would insist on the possibility and significance of the following three descriptions of the case: (1) the reckless or self-indulgent case; (2) the weak case; and (3) the compulsive case. In (1), the woman knows what she is doing but accepts the consequences. Her choice is to get drunk or risk getting drunk. She acts in accordance with her judgment. In (2) the woman knowingly takes the drink contrary to her (conscious) better judgment; the explanation for this lack of self-control is that she is weak-willed. In (3), she knowingly takes the drink contrary to her better judgment, but she is the victim of a compulsive (irresistible) desire to drink. (41–42) Distinguishing these three categories is important, because they are thought to license different responses to the drinker. While we blame both the reckless drinker and the weak-willed drinker, we do so in different ways, or for different things; the compulsive drinker, on the other hand, is excused in virtue of her compulsion. Although matters of moral importance thus hang on distinguishing these cases, providing a way to distinguish them proves difficult. Watson believes that both the weak-willed and the compulsive drinker act contrary to their better judgment. This distinguishes them from the reckless drinker. Distinguishing them from one another proves more difficult. In a natural first attempt, one might claim that the weak-willed drinker could have resisted the temptation while the compelled drinker could not have—she was compelled. This is a preprint. The final version can be found in Philosophical Books 48, no. 2 (April 2007): 109–123.

The Great Professor Ibnosina (Avicenna)

The Great Professor Ibnosina (Avicenna)

A hero for their times: early biographies of NewtonIliffeRobKeynesMiloHiggittRebekaheds. Early biographies of Isaac Newton, 1660–1885(2 vols). Pickering & Chatto, London2006. pp. lxix +387; xlvii +420. £195.00 (hardback).1-85196-778-8.

Rob Iliffe, Milo Keynes, Rebekah Higgitt. eds. Early biographies of Isaac Newton, 1660–1885 (2 vols). Pickering & Chatto, London 2006. pp. lxix +387; xlvii +420. £195.00 (hardback). 1-85196-778-8. Though biography be no longer an act of worship, it is not yet a solemn and impartial judgment: we

Does Consequentialism Make Too Many Demands, or None at All?

Previous articleNext article No AccessDoes Consequentialism Make Too Many Demands, or None at All?*Paul E. HurleyPaul E. Hurley Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 116, Number 4July 2006 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/504620 Views: 195Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref © 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Marcel van Ackeren, Martin Sticker Moral Rationalism and Demandingness in Kant, Kantian Review 23, no.0303 (Aug 2018): 407–428.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415418000225Noell Birondo Rationalism in Ethics, (Jun 2017): 1–10.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee702.pub2John R. Welch Working with Moral Means, (Sep 2014): 95–131.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08013-0_4Bharat Ranganathan ON HELPING ONE'S NEIGHBOR, Journal of Religious Ethics 40, no.44 (Oct 2012): 653–677.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9795.2012.00542.xramon das ETHICS AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Philosophical Books 48, no.44 (Oct 2007): 329–344.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0149.2007.00451.x

Epistemic Partiality in Friendship

Analytic moral philosophers have been taking a renewed interest in friendship in recent years. They have been especially liable to consider friendship in connection with debates over partiality and impartiality in ethics. Many important styles of ethical theory hold up impartiality and equal treatment—under one or another interpretation—as central moral concepts and ideals. Yet friendship and other close relations between persons seem to involve partiality and differential treatment. We care more about what befalls our friends than about what happens to strangers, and we are more motivated to advance our friends’ interests than those of strangers. We seem even to have special responsibilities toward our friends which we don’t have toward strangers. If friendship necessarily involves such partiality, then there is a tension, at least, between the constitutive elements and dispositions of friendship and those of morality: they seem to pull in opposite directions. Contemporary moral theorists have responded to this tension in a variety of ways. Some have sought to bring the apparent partiality of friendship under the wing of a more fundamental impartiality, thus reconciling friendship and the moral. Others have insisted on the primacy of friendship, and partiality, over impartial moral conceptions—