British Philosophy Research Articles

Mary Calkins, Victoria Welby, and the spatialization of time

ABSTRACT This paper explores a trans-Atlantic clash about time: in 1899, American philosopher Mary Calkins argued we should not spatialize time; in 1899, British philosopher Victoria Welby argued we should. I take their disagreement as a starting point to contextualize, study, and compare the accounts of time presented in their respective articles. Both Calkins and Welby cared deeply about time, writing on the topic across their careers, but their views have not been studied by historians of philosophy. This is unfortunate, for I argue their novel theories reward attention. Calkins’ 1899 account draws on Kant to arrive at the earliest American-British causal theory of time, pioneers the metaphysical applications of temporal experimental psychology, and replies to F. H. Bradley’s proclamation that it is ‘impossible’ to explain the appearance of time. Meanwhile, I read Welby’s 1907 account as offering a radical metaphysic, on which time is literally a kind of space, resonating with 1880s literature around the ‘fourth dimension’ and H. G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine. I have uncovered an early draft of Welby’s paper dating to 1902 and, using this alongside other unstudied writings by Welby, trace the development of her views from the 1880s onwards.

Decarbonization Is Our Costliest Challenge: It has no clear beginning or end, and it affects every aspect of life

In his 1949 book The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle, an English philosopher, introduced the term “category mistake.” He gave the example of a visitor to the University of Oxford who sees colleges and a splendid library and then asks, “But where is the university?” The category mistake is obvious: A university is an institution, not a collection of buildings.

Young Women and Disgust in Contemporary Norwegian Comics: A Close Reading of Ane Barstad Solvang's Frykt & medlidenhet

Young Women and Disgust in Contemporary Norwegian Comics: A Close Reading of Ane Barstad Solvang's <i>Frykt</i> &amp; <i>medlidenhet</i>

A un Siglo de “El Análisis de la Mente” (1921) de Bertrand Russell

In 1921 The analysis of mind of the English philosopher Bertrand Russell was published, a volume that was conceived a few years after John B. Watson defined the new orientation known as behaviorism . In the book, Russell undertook a discussion of some of the central concepts proposed by Watson, putting them in relation to other topics of interest within his own philosophical and psychological approach, such as the problem of consciousness and the theory of desires. Russell's work provided important support for emerging behaviorism. A century after its publication, this article assesses its general importance both in the history of psychology and behaviorism. Likewise, the way in which Russell conceptualized the main aspects of behavioral theory is analyzed. The article has a theoretical and review character, based on a pertinent use of the primary sources related to the subject.

Karl Popper and the Problem of Essentialism in Philosophy

In modern philosophy, essentialism is in most cases regarded as an outdated and, in fact, incorrect philosophical trend. And one of the scientists who created such a reputation of essentialism was the famous English philosopher of Austrian origin Karl Popper. The success of his book “The Open Society and its Enemies” led to the fact that in the West essentialism began to be considered not only cognitively untenable, but also suspicious as the theoretical basis of fascism, communism and totalitarianism. In the article, K. Popper’s arguments against essentialism are reviewed all over again, and it is shown that K. Popper’s criticism of essentialism as an anti-scientific and outdated doctrine is not the point of view of the philosophy as a whole, but it is just the position of empirical positivism. Essentialism deals with the reality that lies on the other side of phenomena. And this, according to K. Popper, necessarily leads to “ultimate” definitions. However, in accordance with the doctrine of falsification by K. Popper himself, every scientific conclusion within its expiration date is “ultimate”. The article shows that in reality essentialism did not only play an extraordinary role in the classical metaphysical theory of knowledge, but also continues to do so within the framework of modern ontology. Moreover, in the latter case, he does it with the help of abduction which is a specific form of logical inference generating scientific hypotheses. The existence of abduction in science, which generates new knowledge, suggests that essentialism is not something, at best, tolerable and excusable. This is the main way to development of sciences in general. In all cases, the author of the article considers only logical entities, but not legal, theological or any other.

How to write a history of philosophy? The case of eighteenth-century Britain

ABSTRACT This paper raises the question of how a history of the philosophy of eighteenth-century Britain should be written. First, it describes the usual answer to this question, which divides the period into what happened before Hume, then Hume, then responses to Hume. It notes that this answer does not correspond well with how the period saw itself. It then considers how ‘philosophy’ is defined in Britain in the eighteenth century, taking into account dictionary definitions, book titles, and university syllabi. Obvious differences between eighteenth-century and twenty-first-century philosophy are explored, including the idea that ‘natural philosophy’ is as much part of philosophy as moral philosophy, metaphysics, and logic, and the difficulty of making a distinction between philosophy and what we now call psychology. In the final section of the paper some difficulties are raised regarding the hypothesis that ‘enlightenment’ might provide an organizing concept for a more historically sensitive account of eighteenth-century British philosophy.

Ramsey's Lost Counterfactual

In contemporary works on conditionals, the Ramsey test is a procedure for the evaluation of conditional sentences. There are several versions of the test, all inspired by a footnote by the British philosopher and mathematician Frank Ramsey, in his General Propositions and Causality. However, no study on Ramsey's own account of conditionals has been put forth so far. Furthermore, the footnote seems to cover indicative conditionals only, and this has led to the belief that no account of counterfactuals can be found in Ramsey's work. In this paper, I recover Ramsey's account of counterfactuals and show that it is sketched in the footnote too. The result is a well-developed account of counterfactuals that resembles many contemporary ones. But Ramsey uses the same approach also for other types of conditionals, and this casts doubts on the current criteria for the classification of this type of sentences.

The Gongfu Approach to Teaching and Doing Chinese Philosophy across Cultures

This paper introduces a method of doing and teaching East Asian philosophy transculturally. The method underlies a pedagogy that has proven successful with students from diverse international backgrounds studying primarily in English, which suggests its potential for the wider scholarly community. The method centres on the practice, or gongfu, of doing philosophy with classical Chinese texts. The gongfu approach emphasizes the skill of interpreting and analysing texts within the context of the traditional works themselves. We have found that this skills-based approach to analysis bears much philosophical fruit. It does so, moreover, without subordinating the texts, their ideas, and their arguments to other more academically predominant frameworks. Or in more positive terms, it allows and encourages students to critically philosophize with the early Confucian and Daoist texts on their own terms, and to then creatively bring those unique insights and perspectives to bear on contemporary life. This paper first introduces the gongfu approach to doing and teaching Chinese philosophy and its distinctive characteristics. It then contextualizes the value of this method through critically examining the nature of Chinese philosophy and how we can do Chinese philosophy in English. (How Chinese is it, and in what ways?) Throughout I offer short case studies from our program. I conclude by highlighting its promise as a mode (or valuable component) of transcultural philosophizing and briefly reflect on some reservations one might have.

A Ratiocinative Assessment of A.J. Ayer’s Rejection of Metaphysics.

Purpose: This paper aims at exposing and appraising the arguments of A.J. Ayer against metaphysics, as reflected in the first chapter of his book, Language, Truth and Logic. It shall explore the basic assumptions, content and concerns of the metaphysical enterprise, and place them in careful juxtaposition with A.J. Ayer’s positivist assumptions in order to discover whether the claims he makes regarding metaphysics are really valid or not. The conclusion will emphasize the relevance and irrefutability of metaphysics.&#x0D; Methodology: The work is expository, analytic, critical and evaluative, in its methodology.&#x0D; Findings: Sir Alfred Julius Ayer was an English philosopher who developed key features of logical positivism. His book Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) is one of the most influential philosophy books in the 20th century, addressing questions of reality, perception, knowledge and meaning. In it Ayer explains important positivist ideas, like the principle of verifiability as a criterion of meaning, the rejection of metaphysics, and the emotivist theory of ethics. In Ayer’s logical empiricism, philosophy is no longer seen as a metaphysical concern, nor as an attempt to provide speculative truths about the nature of ultimate reality. Instead, philosophy is seen as an activity of defining and clarifying the logical relationships of empirical propositions.&#x0D; Unique Contribution to theory, practice and policy (recommendation): The ratiocinative discussion of A. J. Ayer’s rejection of Metaphysics, offers an alternative perspective on how Metaphysics should be construed, given its centrality to, and in-eliminability in philosophical discourses.

Delimiting Religion

Delimiting Religion

Томас Чабб и три основы его деистической философии

The article presents a brief biography of the little-studied British deist Thomas Chubb (1679-1747) and a reconstruction of his ideas about capabilities of human mind. The goal of this article is to study the religious philosophy of T. Chubb that Russian studies does not distinguish from ideas of other deists. That is why the idea of the phenomenon of deism is still less clear in relation to foreign studies. The article analyzes and presents Chubbs concepts about the independence of religious truths from human perception, that are presented in «Discourse concerning Reason, with Regard to Religion and Divine Revelation» (1733) and «An Enquiry into the Ground and Foundation of Religion». The article documents that the English philosopher formulated three "author's" truths of natural religion: there is an initial difference between objects, independent of human perception; this distinction is the basis for human behavior; God made these foundations a moral rule for all people and for himself. The work identifies and analyzes the definition of the phenomenon of "deism" in Chubb's treatises, as well as an assessment of his philosophy in the context of this definition – the natural religion of reason or belief and just and sense of a Deity impressed upon the mind, and is the governing principle of a man’s-affections and actions. The correlation of the ideas of Thomas Chubb and Matthew Tindal is analyzed. At the end of the article, a brief conclusion is made about the place of T. Chubbs philosophy to deism in general. The author of this work believes that despite the absence of references to other deists by the English philosopher, the ideas of this thinker fit into their religious and philosophical system, specifically about the issue of understanding natural religion. The sources of this article are treaties «The Sufficiency of Reason in Matters of Religion, Farther Considered» (1732), «Discourse concerning Reason, with Regard to Religion and Divine Revelation» (1733), «Some reflections upon the comparative excellency and usefulness of moral and positive duties» (1733), «The true Gospel of Jesus Christ Asserted»(1741) and several other treatises.

The speech act in the poem" to the student" by the poet ahmed sahnoun

The speech act theory is the most important thing of pragmatic lesson ,and it was founded by the English philosopher Austin and his student searl which states that every saying is an action that is accomplished, for him ,the speech act is broader than being limited to the intention of speaker ,rather ,it is related to linguistic and social custom, and in this article we will apply the theory of speech act to the poem ( to the student) by the poet Ahmed sehnoun accredited on searle’s division of the speech act.

Karol Frenkel and the tradition of ethics

Abstract Karol Frenkel was one of Kazimierz Twardowski’s first disciples to undertake an attempt to develop their own concept of ethics. In his case, the process of developing his own ethical concept involved questioning the tradition in which he had been educated. Accordingly, he was able to formulate an original concept of independent ethics. In his doctoral dissertation, Frenkel analyzed two ethical systems, formulated by David Hume and Arthur Schopenhauer respectively which sought ethical determinants in the affective sphere. For Frenkel, these proposals turned out to be unsatisfactory, and thus he proposed his own solution derived from the accepted concept of morality. From today’s perspective, it was the first reflection in Poland referring to scientific ethics, which – chronologically speaking – in many respects preceded the analogous solutions proposed later by British analytical philosophers.

Times of the Timeless: May Sinclair, British Idealism, and the Stream of Consciousness

This article examines the relationship between British Idealist philosophy and modernist form, particularly the stream of consciousness technique. Idealism was ascendant from the 1870s to the 1920s, and the writer/philosopher May Sinclair participated in its conceptual discourse, finding the British Idealists’ contention that time is unreal an especially valuable insight for her literary agenda. For many of the idealists, time is unreal in the sense that multiple temporal series coexist within the universe or atemporal “Absolute.” This idea, which was debated in the journal Mind and elsewhere, played a significant role in the literary conception of “stream of consciousness,” a term first applied to literature by Sinclair in 1918. Considering the interplay of literature and philosophy during this period expands our understanding of the genealogy of modernist form and its effects. In particular, in evoking an experience of the timeless, for Sinclair stream of consciousness draws together authors, characters, and readers, generating among them complex investments, both ethical and ontological.

Inheriting Cosmopolitics: Pericles, Whitehead, Stengers

Isabelle Stengers’ cosmopolitical proposal is an influential attempt by a European philosopher to transform the burdensome legacy of Western thought. Reconsidering her comprehensive engagement with the cosmology of the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, this article reveals two concepts as foundational to Stengers’ cosmopolitics: civilization and commerce. While not usually associated with a critical political theory, in her development of what we call a commercial political ontology, Stengers explores the modes of inheriting these ostracized notions. By tracing the genealogy of this political ontology back to Pericles’ first explicit defense of persuasion as a requisite for civilization, we argue that Pericles’ famous funeral oration provides the structure for Whitehead’s cosmology, and, ultimately, Stengers’ cosmopolitics. As such, we understand her cosmopolitical proposal as a dress rehearsal of a funeral eulogy for bourgeois society.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CONCEPTUAL APPARATUS OF THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY’S CLASSICS IN THE RENAISSANCE

The given research is aimed to study and clarify the common characteristic features of the conceptual mechanism, elaborated by the creativity of English philosophers, that lived in the Renaissance period. The English philosophers of the period, criticizing the reality of their time, developed their concepts precisely in this connection, substantiating either the validity of their criticism, or their social ideal, or some other issues. Another feature of the philosophical works of the period is the great attention of thinkers to the problems of the simplest certainties, their desire to ensure that in solitude, in the silence of an office that allows only scholarly correspondence, to meticulously investigate the question of the fundamental foundations of knowledge

Was Aśoka really a secularist avant-la-lettre? Ancient Indian pluralism and toleration in historical perspective

AbstractFocusing on Rajeev Bhargava's claim that Aśoka was a secularist avant-la-lettre, I dispute the common understanding of secularism as the separation of religion and politics, and argue instead that such separation, to the extent that it existed, was characteristic of traditional religious societies. I then offer an alternative history of secularism as the demise of the traditional balance of power between church and state, and the rise of a unitary state which incorporated a civil religion that excluded competing forms of religiosity within its domain. This model of secularism, exemplified by the seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, fits Aśoka's Dhamma better than the separationist model does.

The Notion of Identity in the Philosophy of John Locke: Through the Influences of Religion Ideas

John Locke is one of the key figures in the history of early modern philosophy. He had a great influence on the development of philosophy, which is based on the empirical method, and on the political systems of countries. And even though his works have not been deprived of attention, some questions of his philosophy remain insufficiently disclosed. The author's deals with the religious turn in studies of John Loke. Attention is paid to the role of religion in the philosophy of the thinker. The issue of religious influences on the issue of identity is being discussed. The essence of the term “modern” is highlighted and the criteria according to which John Locke's ideas should be considered modern are indicated. The author notes that some researchers considered John Locke one of the founders of modern philosophy, while others believed that the role of the English philosopher in the development of modern philosophy was overestimated. A characteristic feature of modern philosophy is the emphasis on research and exploration. The author names the identity of John Locke a subjective identity. The main attributes of identity are: reflection, consciousness and memory. Self-reflection and meaningful self-perception allows each person to choose their own way of worshiping God. Consciousness allows a person to evaluate his actions, forms an idea of morality, the concept of sin and so on. The article deals with different meanings of the concept of identity in the religious and secular aspects. The difference - is in memory. Personal responsibility is an integral part of identity. The author of the article notes that we should make a difference between responsibility in religious and political field. Religious responsibility requires observance not only of legal law, but also of moral rules and biblical commandments.

Recovering the Story of Pragmatism in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar, John Dewey, and the Origins of Navayana Pragmatism

Recovering the Story of Pragmatism in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar, John Dewey, and the Origins of Navayana Pragmatism

A New Interpretation to Form and Meaning of Words in Kurdish Language - Preparation of Reading and Writing Methods for Kindergarden

Throughout the history of language philosophy, most philosophers have had different views on language and the way of creation, which has seen itself in different theories, according different eras, the philosopher’s views of the field of language has changed and their theories about form and meaning have changed. Primary by the Greeks particularly (Plato and Aristotle) and then in the medieval and later ages, until the twentieth century, especially the Austrian and British Philosopher (Ludwig Wittgenstein), who emphasis more on word form more than meaning, so he is considered the founder of image theory in language philosophy, as well in the contemporary century, different theories and views were presented, most of them stressing the importance of form for language learning, particularly children in the kindergarten stage. The research benefits from the visual theory of language philosophy with preparation and implementation on the education system in the Kurdistan Region. Under the light of these meaning theories in the research, the first side of the word, called (form), has been given a new explanation for this important side of the word and a new scientific understanding has been created, by practising the theoretical side of meaning within the practical linguistics. Which are related to child education. Using this new method at the age of four and enriching their in- mental lexicon with the embodiment of other forms of the word and using images of surrounding things until their level of expression and use in daily life, then familiarizing them at the age of five and introducing the (abstract) side of words in the form of writing language sounds that are made up of letters, which is considered the most important stage in the development of children’s mind, makes children better prepared to learn at school.