The Review of Metaphysics back issues from December 2006:
Saving ta legomena: Aristotle and the history of philosophy.(Critical essay)
Dec 01, 2006; ... And it is just to feel gratitude not only to those whose opinions one shares, but even to those whose pronouncements were more superficial, for they too contributed something, since before us they exercised the active condition [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] of thinking.--Metaphysics ...
On whether Aquinas's ipsum esse is "platonism" (1).(Aquinas on Being by Anthony Kenny )(Critical essay)
Dec 01, 2006; ... IN SEPTEMBER OF 2002, Oxford University Press published a book by Anthony Kenny entitled Aquinas on Being. In the preface, Kenny declares St. Thomas to be one of the greatest of all philosophers. The book's aim, however, is not to explain this judgment. In fact it is to show that on the ...
Siger and the skeptic.(Critical essay)
Dec 01, 2006; ... MOST ASSESSMENTS OF SIGER OF BRABANT'S CONTRIBUTION to philosophy have tended to focus on his adoption of Averroistic noetics, a position he would later renounce, and on his supposed role as the factious leader of a group of "Latin Averroists" within the Faculty of Arts, an enduring myth ...
Heidegger, Paul Klee, and the origin of the work of art.(Martin Heidegger )(Critical essay)
Dec 01, 2006; ... WHILE HE WAS SAID TO HAVE FOUND PAUL KLEE'S WRITINGS too neo-Kantian, overly concerned with form, and too cosmological, Martin Heidegger spent hours looking at Klee's late paintings and expressed a keen interest that was never fulfilled to write about them. Nonetheless, the writing on art ...
Human reason and a common world: why Wittgenstein and Rawls are both wrong.
Dec 01, 2006; ... SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY preceded the great period of Greek philosophy. However, in a unique development in intellectual history, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle sought a reasoned understanding of the world--that is, a mutually understandable account of the world, of things in it, and of ...
Battin, Margaret Pabst. Ending Life: Ethics and the Way We Die.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... BATTIN, Margaret Pabst. Ending Life: Ethics and the Way We Die. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 344 pp. Cloth, $24.95--Animated, inventive, and pleasurable reading is not what ordinarily comes to mind when one thinks of a collection of writings on the subjects of death, dying, and ...
Bernardete, Seth. Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... BERNARDETE, Seth. Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero. Ronna Burger, editor. Preface by Michael Davis. South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 2005. xxi + 140 pp. Cloth, $17.00. Paper, $10.00---At the age of twenty-five Seth Benardete presented his Ph.D. dissertation on Homer's Iliad to his ...
Berkowitz, Roger. The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... BERKOWITZ, Roger. The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. xviii + 214 pp. Cloth, $49.95--Animating Berkowitz's book is his profound concern that law has abandoned justice as its fundamental aspiration. Once the embodiment ...
Collingwood, R. G. An Essay on Philosophical Method.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... COLLINGWOOD, R. G. An Essay on Philosophical Method. James Connelly and Giuseppina D'Oro, eds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. cxxii + 360 pp. Cloth, $99.00--R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943) continues to have iconic status not only at Oxford but in many parts of the Anglo-European intellectual ...
Felt, James W., Human Knowing: A Prelude to Metaphysics.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... FELT, James W., S.J. Human Knowing: A Prelude to Metaphysics. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. x + 130 pp. Cloth, $30.00; paper, $15.00--This short volume offers a primer on the basic problems of epistemology. By way of introducing the novice to the "mysterious" character ...
Flynn, Thomas R. Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason, Volume Two: A Poststructuralist Mapping of History.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... FLYNN, Thomas R. Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason, Volume Two: A Poststructuralist Mapping of History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. 360 pp. Paper, $25.00--Flynn's two-volume study asks whether it is possible to think, despite their antagonism, a "postmodern" Sartre ...
Frank, Jill. A Democracy of Distinction: Aristotle and the Work of Politics.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... FRANK, Jill. A Democracy of Distinction: Aristotle and the Work of Politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. xiii + 199 pp. Cloth, $49.00; paper, $19.00--In its attention to virtue and excellence, Aristotle's political thought depends upon distinction and inequality ....
Fronterotta, Francesco and Leszl, Walter, editors. Eidos-Idea: Platone, Aristotele e la Tradizione Platonica.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... FRONTEROTTA, Francesco and LESZL, Walter, editors. Eidos-Idea: Platone, Aristotele e la Tradizione Platonica. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2005. xxx + 278 pp. Hardbound, $58.50--Efforts to comprehend Plato unmediated by later readers' concerns may remind one of the Prolegomena to the ...
Groth, Miles. Translating Heidegger: Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... GROTH, Miles. Translating Heidegger. Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences. New York: Humanity Books, 2004. 314 pp. Hard Cover, $60.09--Miles Groth's study, Translating Heidegger, is guided by the following insight: "[F]or Heidegger, philosophizing is translating ....
Guyer, Paul. Kant's System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... GUYER, Paul. Kant's System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. vi + 384pp. Hardcover $99.00; Paper $35.00--The essays in this collection exemplify what an impeccable command of texts together with unfailing philosophical insight can achieve in doing ...
Hill, R. Kevin. Nietzsche's Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of his Thought.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... HILL, R. Kevin. Nietzsche's Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of his Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. xvi + 242 pp. Cloth, $35.00--The conventional wisdom in Nietzsche scholarship is that Nietzsche derived most of his understanding of Kant from reading Schopenhauer, that he ...
Hodgson, Peter. Hegel and Christian Theology: A Reading of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... HODGSON, Peter. Hegel and Christian Theology: A Reading of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 308 pp. Hardcover, $110.00--Hodgson divides his book into three parts. He begins with an introduction that situates Hegel's philosophy of religion ...
Huffman, Carl A. AArchytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher, and Mathematician King.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... HUFFMAN, Carl A. Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xv + 665 pp. Cloth, $175.00--This beautifully ordered book will become indispensable. After three introductory essays, we have what Huffman argues are the ...
Inwood, Brad. Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... INWOOD, Brad. Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xvi + 376 pp. Cloth, $85--This book is a collection of twelve essays, including two new pieces, "Getting to Goodness," and "Seneca and Self-assertion," representing fifteen years of "reading" ...
Kenny, Anthony. Medieval Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 2.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... KENNY, Anthony. Medieval Philosophy. A New History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xvii + 334 pp. Cloth, $ 30.00--This book is the second volume of Anthony Kenny's intended four volume series on the history of Western philosophy. Such works are ...
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Confessio Philosophi, Papers Concerning the Problem of Evil, 1671-1678.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm. Confessio Philosophi, Papers Concerning the Problem of Evil, 1671-1678. Translated, edited and with an introduction by Robert C. Sleigh, Jr.; additional contributions from Brandon Look and James Stam. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005. xli + 178 ...
Liebert, Georges. Nietzsche and Music.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... LIEBERT, Georges. Nietzsche and Music. Translated by David Pellauer and Graham Parkes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. x + 291. Cloth, $38.00--The title of this translation of Nietzsche et la musique (Paris, 1995) is slightly misleading; more apt would be something like ...
Norton, Anne. Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... NORTON, Anne. Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 235 pp. Paper, $16--In a very "Straussian" manner, the last word in this, what can best be called "impassioned intellectual autobiography," is not Athens, not Jerusalem, not Rome, not ...
Partenie, Catalin and Rockmore, Tom, editors. Heidegger and Plato: Toward Dialogue.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... PARTENIE, Catalin and ROCKMORE, Tom, editors. Heidegger and Plato: Toward Dialogue. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2005. xxviii + 234 pp. Cloth, $59.95; paper, $23.95--This volume is a welcome addition to contemporary scholarship on Heidegger. It contains several ...
Rauscher, Anton, editor. Nationale und kulturelle Identitat im Zeitalter der Globalisierung.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... RAUSCHER, Anton, editor. Nationale und kulturelle Identitat im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Soziale Orientierung. Veroffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Kommission bei der Katholischen Sozialwissen-schaftlichen Zentralstelle. Monchengladbach, Band 18, Duncker und Humblot, Berlin. 374 ...
Rockwell, W. Teed. Neither Brain Nor Ghost: A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... ROCKWELL, W. Teed. Neither Brain nor Ghost: A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. xxii + 231 pp. Cloth, $36.00--The thesis of this book is that current problems in the philosophy of mind are unsolvable because philosophers are committed ...
Seeskin, Kenneth. Maimonides on the Origin of the World.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... SEESKIN, Kenneth. Maimonides on the Origin of the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. vii + 215 pp. Cloth, $55.00--This work, rich in arguments and scholarship, is so clearly written that one is tempted to quote from it at length. As Seeskin notes, questions about the ...
Skrbina, David. Panpsychism in the West.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... SKRBINA, David. Panpsychism in the West. A Bradford Book, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass/London, England, 2005. viii + 314 pp. Cloth, $35.00--This book is both a survey of the history of panpsychist ideas in the Western philosophical tradition, and an argument for taking panpsychism seriously ...
Small, Robin. Nietzsche and Ree: A Star Friendship.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... SMALL, Robin. Nietzsche and Ree: A Star Friendship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xxiv + 247 pp. Cloth, $45.00--The historical contextualization of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical thought has in recent years emerged as one of the most exciting areas of Nietzsche scholarship ....
Sorell, Tom. Descartes Reinvented.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... SORELL, Tom. Descartes Reinvented. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xxii + 180 pp. Cloth, $75.00--The reader of Tom Sorell's excellent book gets a strong hint of what's to come from the very first words of the text: "In much of Anglo-American philosophy, 'Cartesian' is a dirty ...
Stone, Allison. Petrified Intelligence: Nature in Hegel's Philosophy.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... STONE, Allison. Petrified Intelligence: Nature in Hegel's Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press, 2005. xxiii + 224 pages. Cloth, $86.50; paper, $24.95--Given the shortage of recent positive appropriations of Hegel's philosophy of nature, Petrified Intelligence investigates the Naturphilosophie ...
Thomson, Iain D. Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... THOMSON, Iain D. Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xx + 202 pp. Cloth, $70.00; paper, $24.99--Iain Thomson sets himself a difficult task in this study of Heidegger's thinking on education, given that Heidegger's ...
Ver Eecke, Wilfried. Denial, Negation, and the Forces of the Negative: Freud, Hegel, Lacan, Spitz, and Sophocles.(Book review)
Dec 01, 2006; ... VER EECKE, Wilfried. Denial, Negation, and the Forces of the Negative--Freud, Hegel, Lacan, Spitz, and Sophocles. SUNY Series in Hegelian Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. ix + 190 pp. Cloth, $55.00--This book presents a multifaceted, inspiring weave of themes ...
Anselm's definition of free will: a hierarchical interpretation.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Anselm defines free will as "the ability to keep uprightness of will for the sake of uprightness itself" rather than as the ability to sin or not sin. I fulfill two objectives pertaining to his definition. First, I show that his definition should be interpreted as a hierarchical account of ...
Aquinas and onto-theology.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Saint Thomas Aquinas)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... For Heidegger, onto-theology is the use of abstract, impersonal categories under the principle of sufficient reason that has one goal and two results. The goal is to make God fully intelligible to human understanding. The results are the disappearance of mystery from our understanding of ...
The Thomistic telescope: truth and identity.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Thomas Aquinas)(Critical essay)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... The following essay explores the way in which notions of truth are linked to those of secure identity and hence to certain mathematical issues, from Plato and Aristotle onward. It argues that this recognition underlies traditional resorts to notions of form or eidos as securing both ...
The theory of friendship in Erasmus and Thomas More.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Critical essay)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... The foundation of humanist friendship and its purpose lay in the sharing of the Christian faith accompanied by the love of classical letters. The ideas of Erasmus concerning friendship are best developed in his Adagia, and thus in relationship to the ancient proverbs on the subject. The ...
Tradition, dialectic, and ideology: contemporary conflicts in historical perspective.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... The task of philosophy is examined in reference to the actual circumstances of academic philosophy, principally in the United States. The author challenges the still prevalent tendency to conceive academic philosophy as an affair split into two camps--most often identified as analytic and ...
Science of being, science of faith: philosophy and theology according to Heidegger.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Viewpoint essay)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... This essay is a critical investigation of Heidegger's insistence on the absolute difference between philosophy, defined as fundamental ontology, and theology, understood as the "ontic" "science of faith." Focusing primarily on two important works from 1927, "Phenomenology and Theology" and ...
Adventures of the reduction: Jacques Taminiaux's metamorphoses of phenomenological reduction.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... In his illuminating Aquinas Lecture Jacques Taminiaux offers a bold interpretation of certain contemporary European philosophers in terms of the way in which they react to and transform Husserrs phenomenological reduction. He highlights issues relating to embodiment, personhood, and value ....
Sufficiency or priority?(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Roger Crisp )(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... The doctrine of sufficiency has become a popular theme for philosophical analysis. In particular, Roger Crisp has recently developed a very attractive version of it. The paper criticizes Crisp's version arguing against a general requirement to give priority to the less advantaged. It ...
Quinean skepticism about de re Modality after David Lewis.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Critical essay)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... The classic articulation of Quine's skepticism about de re modalizing is his Reference and Modality argument against the semantic and metaphysical coherence of de re modal predication. Lewis's theory of de re modality allows us to construct a response to Quine that shows up a crucial flaw ...
Empirical concepts and the content of experience.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... The view that the content of experience is conceptual is often felt to conflict with the empiricist intuition that experience precedes thought, rather than vice versa. This concern is explicitly articulated by Ayers as an objection both to McDowell and Davidson, and to the conceptualist ...
Nietzsche's metaphysics in the birth of tragedy.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... This paper analyzes the metaphysical assumptions underlying the Birth of Tragedy. First, it argues against previous interpretations (in particular J. Young's) that reading the text from a strict Schopenhauerian perspective makes it impossible (a) to construe the Apollonian and the ...
Non-mereological universalism.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... This paper develops a version of universalism that is non-mereological. Broadly speaking, nonmereological universalism is the thesis that for any arbitrary set of objects and times, there is a persisting object, which, at each of those times, is constituted by those of the objects that ...
Modest evidentialism.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Evidentialism is the view that subjects should believe neither more than nor contrary to what their current evidence supports. I will critically present two arguments for the view. A common source of resistance to evidentialism is that there are intuitive cases where subjects should ...
Kant on conscience, 'indirect' duty, and moral error.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Kant's concept of conscience has been largely neglected by scholars and contemporary moral philosophers alike, as has his concept of 'indirect' duty. Admittedly, neither of them is foundational within his ethical theory, but a correct account of both in their own right and in combination ...
Leibniz on concept and substance.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz)(Critical essay)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... A historically persistent way of reading Leibniz regards him as some kind of conceptualist. According to this interpretation, Leibniz was either an ontological conceptualist or an epistemological conceptualist. As an ontological conceptualist, Leibniz is taken to hold the view that there ...
Stoic realpolitik.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Thanks to its doctrines of natural right and moral egalitarianism And to its prominent historical role in defying totalitarian government, Stoicism is often cited as a touchstone for liberal democracy. Less well known, however, is an alternate lineage, culminating in a Stoic Realpolitik ...
The Aristotelian prescription: skepticism, retortion, and transcendental arguments.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Critical essay)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... From a number of quarters have come attempts to answer some form of skepticism--about knowledge of the external world, freedom of the will, or moral reasons--by showing it to be performatively self-defeating. Examples of this strategy are subject to the criticism that they fail to shift ...
Potential being and the source of cosmic order.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... This paper argues (a) that the concept of 'potential being' is central to the theory and practice of contemporary cosmology and evolutionary science, and (b) that the reality of potential being points to the existence of an intelligent and purposive cause of the intelligible order among ...
MacIntyre and the moralization of enquiry.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Masdair MacIntyre)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Are there moral norms or virtues, the application or exercise of which are necessary for successful progress in enquiry? This paper considers the work of one thinker who is convinced of an affirmative answer to this question, Masdair MacIntyre. For MacIntyre, the possibility of progress in ...
Hegel on the life of the understanding.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)(Critical essay)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... This article clarifies Hegel's argument within "Force and the Understanding" in his Phenomenology of Spirit by developing Hegel's underlying point through discussion of recent and ongoing issues concerning explanation in natural and psychological science. The latter proceeds by way of a ...
Aquinas on non-voluntary acts.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Saint Thomas Aquinas)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Aquinas argues that an agent's act may be voluntary, involuntary, or even non-voluntary. An agent performs a non-voluntary act on these conditions: (a) the agent does not know the act falls under a certain description D, (b) the act under D is not contrary to the agent's will, and (c) if ...
Wu-wei and the decentering of the subject in Lao-Zhuang: an alternative approach in the philosophy of religion.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... This essay attempts to provide an alternative approach to the philosophy of religion through a new interpretation of Daoist philosophy in light of Husserl's phenomenology. I argue that Lao-Zhuang's wu-wei should be understood as a reduction of our existential and conceptual beliefs about ...
The humanity of the word: personal agency in hermeneutics and humanism.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Hans-Georg Gadamer)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Gadamer's hermeneutic project is an effort to rejoin what he called the "unbroken tradition of rhetorical and humanist culture" to its own thought. My focus here is on the distinctive hermeneutic schematism of persons and culture in conjunction with the Renaissance doctrine of prudence ....
Second-best realism and functional pragmatism.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Nicholas Rescher)
Dec 01, 2006; ... The functional pragmatism advocated by Nicholas Rescher derives from the conviction that we have no strict evidence for the existence of extramental reality and therefore must postulate it in order to make any sense of truth, communication, and scientific ...
Beeckman, Descartes and the force of motion.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Issac Beeckman, Rene Descartes)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... In this reassessment of Descartes' debt to his mentor Isaac Beeckman, I argue that they share the same basic conception of motion: the force of a body's motion--understood as the force of persisting in that motion, shorn of any connotations of internal cause--is conserved through God's ...
The Eleatic Descartes.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Rene Descartes)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Given Descartes's conception of extension, space and body, there are deep problems about how there can be any real motion. The argument here is that in fact Descartes takes motion to be only phenomenal. The paper ...
Concurrence or divergence? Reconciling Descartes's physics with his metaphysics.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Rene Descartes)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... This paper interprets Descartes's use of the Scholastic doctrine of divine concurrence in light of contemporaneous sources, and argues against two prevailing occasionalist interpretations. On the first occasionalist reading God's concurrence or cooperation with natural causes is always ...
The evolution of Henry More's theory of divine absolute space.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... This paper charts the gradual development of a theory of real space, underlying the created world and constituted by the extension of God Himself, in the writings of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More. It identifies two impediments to More's embracing such a ...
A dialogue with Descartes: Newton's ontology of true and immutable natures.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... This article is concerned with Newton's appropriation of Descartes' ontology of true and immutable natures in developing his theory of infinitely extended space. It contends that unless the part played by the Platonic distinction between "being a nature" and "having a nature" in Newton's ...
Newton and the reality of force.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Isaac Newton)(Critical essay)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Newton's critics argued that his treatment of gravity in the Principia saddles him with a substantial dilemma. If he insists that gravity is a real force, he must invoke action at a distance because of his explicit failure to characterize the mechanism underlying gravity. To avoid distant ...
A new argument for evidentialism.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... When we deliberate whether to believe some proposition, we feel immediately compelled to look for evidence of its truth. Philosophers have labelled this feature of doxastic deliberation 'transparency.' I argue that resolving the disagreement in the ethics of belief between evidentialists ...
No norm needed: on the aim of belief.(PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTS)(transparency defined)(Brief article)
Dec 01, 2006; ... Does transparency in doxastic deliberation entail a constitutive norm of correctness governing belief, as Shah and Velleman argue? No, because this presupposes an implausibly strong relation between normative judgements and motivation from such judgements, ignores our interest in truth, ...