This book is a collection of interesting papers edited by Walter Ott and Lydia Patton. It fills an oft-noted gap in the laws literature: namely, connecting familiar contemporary accounts to their early modern predecessors. Chapters one through six describe and evaluate several different notions of laws that appear in early modern history and explore how …
Published in Blackwell’s Contemporary Social Issues series, Taking Moral Action has as its goal, “to provide a first overview of the emerging but highly fragmented field of moral psychology. . .for both those beginning in the field and those deep in the weeds and thickets of theoretical controversy” (xiii). Chuck Huff, an American social psychologist, and Almut …
According to a traditional view, whether a subject is in an epistemic state like knowledge (justified belief, etc.) depends only on epistemic, truth-related factors like reliability or evidence. According to a relatively recent view, the pragmatic encroachment view, this also depends on non-epistemic, pragmatic factors like what is practically at stake for the subject. If …
This is a research monograph suitable for professional philosophers and graduate students working on any of the first order issues in metaphysics, but also (importantly) those interested in metaphilosophical issues, especially as these arise in metaphysics — addressing the latter issues is the core aim, though not to the exclusion of the former. The first …
Eliminativism, Objects, and Persons: The Virtues of Non-Existence Read More »
This is a collection of essays most of which have been published before, between 2001 and 2018. They all deal with John Rawls’ political philosophy, defending it against various criticisms and what Freeman takes to be misinterpretations. The essays are of admirable clarity, arguing for their positions in meticulous detail. For those interested in a …
What are actions? In this densely-argued and thought-provoking work, David-Hillel Ruben sets out to answer this question, by way of an examination of some of the ideas that have gained currency over the last 50 years or so of philosophy of action — including what is usually called ‘the standard story’; the view that actions …
The Metaphysics of Action: Trying, Doing, Causing Read More »
How do we know what we believe, want, intend, or feel? In other words, how do we come to possess knowledge of our own minds? One historically influential answer to this question is that we know the contents of our minds via introspection. We “look inward” to determine what mental states we token. And when …
This book brings together a thoughtfully curated collection of essays that offers Kierkegaard as an important resource for anyone thinking through the intersection of religion, ethics, and social life in twenty-first century contexts. And, of course, one is not surprised that navigating this particular intersection also involves rich engagements with philosophy and literature. The collection …
Baruch (or Benedict) de Spinoza is best known for two books: the Ethica (E), completed in 1675 but only published in his Opera Posthuma of 1677; and the Tractatus theologico-politicus (TTP), published anonymously in 1670. Although these books are widely held to be masterpieces today, much ink has been spilled over the question of how the two books are related given …
There are few more reliable ways to get attacked in public these days than by expressing sympathy for eugenics.[1] Often this reaction is a case of moral grandstanding.[2] Of course, much evil has been done in the name of eugenics.[3] But the word is ambiguous, and the past misapplication of a word or a theory doesn’t mean the underlying …