17th/18th Century British Philosophy

I identify three conceptually distinct operative notions of moral necessity in Clarke’s account of divine freedom. One notion of moral necessity is thin because it does not imply that God lacks the ability to choose to do otherwise; another notion of moral necessity is thick because it implies that God lacks the ability to choose to do otherwise, but God retains the power to do otherwise; and a third notion of moral necessity is robust because it implies that God lacks (...) both the power and the ability to choose to do otherwise. After raising this exegetical puzzle, I provide a solution. I argue that Clarke’s conception of the will and account of divine omnipotence rule out the thick notion. The emerging picture is one in which God is (thinly and robustly) morally necessitated to do the best—and thus lacks the power and the ability to choose other than the best—but retains a meaningful ability to act otherwise, for God’s choice of creation is necessarily a choice between equally good options that God’s mere will can choose without any further reason. (shrink)

The analytic-synthetic distinction is a topic relevant to both the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. In dealing with subject-predicate distinctions, the analytic-synthetic distinction attempts to demonstrate what we can say. At the same time, through a priori- a posteriori distinctions, the analytic-synthetic distinction attempts to demonstrate what we can know. For these reasons, the analytic-synthetic distinction became one of the biggest controversies from early modern philosophy well into the twentieth century. While Kant is generally credited with the (...) precise formulation, I argue that David Hume presented one of the earliest coherent forms of the analytic-synthetic distinction. The one major difference in Kant’s analytic-synthetic distinction is the allowance of synthetic a priori judgments. While the analytic-synthetic distinction was accepted by philosophers for hundreds of years, it would undergo significant criticism from the twentieth-century philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. Quine saw himself as a follower of Humean epistemology; however, he believed Hume was incorrect in asserting analytic a priori judgments. Quine attempted to dismantle the analytic-synthetic distinction, which some philosophers accept today. I conclude by demonstrating connections between Kant’s and Quine’s epistemology. (shrink)

Contemporary religious epistemology is often divided into classical evidentialists, who work primarily in and through arguments, and their detractors, who often take perceptual or functional states to be immediately justifying. As a result, contemporary religious epistemology often overlooks the relationship between theory and practice and the rich historical traditions that integrate lived experience and intellectual assent. Recovering the genealogical link between 18th century Protestant pietism and the 19th century classical pragmatism of William James, Pietism and Pragmatism articulates a philosophical approach (...) that brings questions of religion and spirituality back to practice while contributing to traditional and perennial philosophical discussions. Applying this approach to the philosophical space between the traditional Christianity and perfect being theism of the Protestant pietists and the pluralism and alternative theism of Jamesian pragmatism, Pietism and Pragmatism offers a defense of the continued relevance of spirituality and religion and a fresh exposition of the boundaries of philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Is it possible to explain the existence of evil under the supposition of a supremely good creator? Are we ourselves the cause of most of the suffering that befalls us? Is life generally more painful than it is pleasant, and if so is non-existence preferable to existence? Is happiness ever even attainable? These questions occupied some of the best-known philosophers of the 17th to 19th centuries—figures such as G. W. Leibniz, Pierre Bayle, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Arthur (...) Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche. These questions were also richly discussed by writers often since excluded from the philosophical canon, such as Ottobah Cugoano, Mary Astell, and Olga Plumacher. For these thinkers, philosophy was not only a fair-weather friend; it was also a companion in storms and in darkness—it was a way of thinking about, thinking through, and contending with the profoundly unsettling. In this unique and provocative anthology, one will find philosophers bending their intellectual efforts to the darker side of life. (shrink)

Background: Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) had long been interested in mental disease, which he also (ab)used for satirical purposes. He characterized various forms of madness in 1704, was elected governor of Bedlam in 1714, and in 1731 decided to dedicate his fortune to the founding of a first lunatic asylum in Ireland. Objective: To identify and consider the nature of neuropsychiatric features described in Gulliver’s Travels. Material & methods: Literary works by and biographies of Jonathan Swift were examined together with the (...) pertinent medical and historical specialist literature. Results: Gulliver’s Travels, primarily a political satire, was published 300 years ago. The adventures of the restless naval surgeon Lemuel Gulliver on various remote islands can be understood as a journey into psychosis with characteristic motor, sensory and cognitive features. After his return home an autistic Gulliver refuses contact with his own species, the Yahoo-like humans, including his family and prefers the company of horses. Seamen and lunatic inpatients apparently shared a number of environmental risk factors and features of scorbutic nostalgia. Conclusion: Caution is advised when making a retrospective diagnosis, even with a fictional character like Lemuel Gulliver. If there were no hints at relevant organic causes — primarily hypovitaminoses —,one might suggest that Swift/Gulliver reported a number of characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia long before they were described in the medical literature. (shrink)

Anne Conway (1631–1679) is argued to be a relationist about time and possibly a weak absolutist about space. We deny the latter, arguing that Conway invokes ‘creatures’ (one of three metaphysical primitives in her system) to construct her account of space, showing that space is not metaphysically prior to the creatures inhabiting it. This places her in a broader tradition of philosophers who reduce space and time to real properties of existing things. However, Conway reduces these properties in an unexpected (...) way. Following her view that the essence of creatures consists in their ‘mutability’, spatial and temporal properties turn out to depend on creatures’ motions. We show this by investigating Conway’s notions of divisibility and multiplicity and their roles in the lives of individual creatures, revealing how space (and time) are grounded in their fundamental moral vocation. (shrink)

It has become increasingly clear in recent years that, for all their differences, the many varieties of thinking commonly grouped together under the rubric of “postmodernism” share at least one salient characteristic: they all depend upon a stereotyped account of the Enlightenment. Postmodernity requires a “modernity” to be repudiated and superseded, and the tenets of this modernity have invariably been identified with the so-called Enlightenment Project. This volume aims to explore critically the now conventional opposition between Enlightenment and Postmodernity and (...) question some of the conclusions drawn from it. In so doing, the authors focus on three general areas. Part I, “Enlightenment or Postmodernity?”, reflects on the way in which contemporary discussion characterizes the two movements as radical alternatives. Part II, “Critical Confrontations,” provides a kind of archaeology of this opposition by charting a series of critical engagements by those who have affirmed or demeaned Enlightenment values in the twentieth century. Part III, “A Postmodern Enlightenment?”, complicates the perceived dichotomy between Enlightenment and Postmodernity by pointing to the existence within the Enlightenment of elements frequently seen as characteristic of Postmodernity. The contributors are Lorraine Daston, Dena Goodman, David Hollinger, Lawrence E. Klein, Jonathan Knudsen, Michael Meranze, Richard Rorty, Hans Sluga, and Johnson Kent Wright. (shrink)

The Fable of the Bees (1714) by Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch émigré physician and an acerbic satirist, was one of the most controversial works of the eighteenth century. Numerous contemporaries condemned Mandeville for ostensibly arguing that vice is the driving force of modern commercial societies, virtue is an arbitrary invention, and happiness consists in worldly pleasures. This article challenges the historiographical consensus that Mandeville’s account of commercial society depended on his encounters with Epicurean moral and political thought. Instead, it contends (...) that Mandeville deployed a distinctive blend of Augustinian and Hobbist ideas to argue against what he regarded as Epicurus’s unrealistic valorisation of virtue as the way to secure the delights of mental tranquillity. This critique of Epicurus supported a wider polemic against the “easie Divines” of the Church of England, who had appealed to Epicurean maxims to declaim on the pleasures of virtue. To defend this vision of egoistic human nature, Mandeville proposed conjectural histories of the origin of moral virtue, which inverted Lucretius’s depiction of contented primitive humanity in his Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura. The upshot of this reinterpretation is to highlight the creative tensions within the diverse intellectual traditions that constituted the wider neo-Epicurean Enlightenment. (shrink)

Joseph Priestley was an impressive scientist, who also wrote a book largely neglected today entitled An Essay on the First Principles of Government (second edition, 1771). In the second section, he makes an argument that appeals to the public good over generations. Then he says, "I own it is rather matter of surprise to me, that this great object of all government should have been so little insisted on by our great writers who have treated of this subject, and that (...) more use hath not been made of it." I interpret him as asking, why don't they pay attention to this? I find Priestley amusing here: he is as puzzled by the white man's civilization, with its emphasis on the individual, as any foreigner! (Part of my title comes from lyrics by the rapper Eminem - his best lines?: "Never seen a white person before, jaws all on the floor." The vast majority of white people have never met the white man proper, I sometimes wonder.) What should we say to Priestley's question? What do you think? ("You're asking me? I didn't get in by being able to answer such questions. I'm best thought of as a Daily Mail reader with high culture references"???) Not sure what the answer is, but various possible responses. Here are four. (A) The great writers on government: their souls are just made of different stuff. It is not that they have much the same desires as so-and-so but more talent. (They don't marry in the age of marriage, as we all notice, etc. A lot of the philosophers I have taught for are married, in contrast. The Coco-Nutters of Bacup only admit married men, because they can be trusted to learn the complicated steps - see Jeanette Edwards' Born and Bred.) (B) At the core of liberalism is a different choice. If you give one of these writers a choice between saving this man and that, they choose that man. And that man is not concerned about the public good. And their arguments address him. (C) Sometimes the intellectual elite in a society, if you can bear up the term "Intellectual elite," decide to pursue some other path to normal, as the best way to achieve. For example, "everyone" loves these well-crafted well-proportioned tragedies featuring legendary characters, but the Englishman decides to pursue irregularity and make it the core of his literary art. If he chose the normal path, his literature is sure to come second or below. George Eliot at best. (D) The philosophers who make commonsensical points and pose commonsensical questions don't ask this sensible question that Priestley does, so they have perhaps learnt not to look too closely at the core system of Western culture (or British culture), as one might metaphorically describe it! (shrink)

Pourquoi et comment les médecins recourent-ils aux plantes pour dire et comprendre le corps humain ? De la plante au cosmos en passant par le corps de l’homme, médecins et philosophes conçoivent de façon analogique les semences, la génération, la nutrition, la circulation, la croissance et rassemblent ainsi des choses et des êtres qui peuvent aujourd’hui paraître davantage étrangers les uns aux autres. L’enquête menée à travers des textes médicaux, botaniques, agricoles ou philosophiques européens de l’Antiquité, du Moyen-Âge et de (...) la première Modernité repère les usages des analogies végétales pour dire, penser, voir et soigner le corps humain. Le prisme végétal rend ainsi visible l’intuition d’une communauté des processus élémentaires entre différents types de vivants. (shrink)

Although William Herschel (1738-1822) is most well-known as an astronomer and instrument-maker, he also had interests in speculative philosophy (e.g., metaphysics), as several papers he read at the Bath Philosophical Society reveal. These papers, arguably, are the context in which Herschel engaged most directly in philosophical argumentation and are thus worthy of greater scholarly attention. In this article, I focus on Herschel’s paper entitled “On the Utility of Speculative Inquiries,” in which he debates the legitimacy of speculation with an unnamed (...) interlocutor, referred to as the “Gentleman.” In section 1, I briefly discuss Herschel’s intellectual background. In section 2, I review some of the main points of contention between Herschel and the Gentleman. In section 3, I situate their dispute within a broader intellectual context by reference to the distinction between “experimental philosophy” and “speculative philosophy” (ESD). In section 4, I discuss the possible identity of the Gentleman, favoring the itinerant teacher of experimental philosophy John Arden over the more well-known Joseph Priestley. In section 5, I argue for the historical significance of this exchange, specifically that Herschel’s debate provides support for the superiority of the ESD as a historiographical framework over the more familiar rationalism vs empiricism distinction (RED). In section 6, I examine three further arguments Herschel provides to defend speculative inquiry. I conclude in section 7 by connecting Herschel’s arguments to contemporary debates in general philosophy of science on the role that speculation plays in advancing scientific progress. (shrink)

Few contemporary Christian philosophers can be identified as philosophical pragmatists, and yet, in this article, I argue that there is an often overlooked, but venerable tradition of pragmatism in Christian history. To make this case, I introduce and explain pragmatism as developed by William James. I argue that many of James’s central commitments can be found in the practical theology of John Wesley, and I contend that a comparison of James and Wesley supports the construction of a taxonomy of Christian (...) pragmatism that not only proves the viability of the view but helps pose some important questions about the very nature of Christian philosophy. (shrink)

The enigmatic sixteenth-century Swiss physician and natural philosopher Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, is known for the almost superhuman energy with which he produced his innumerable writings, for his remarkable achievements in the development of science, and for his reputation as a visionary (not to mention sorcerer) and alchemist. Little is known of his biography beyond his legendary achievements, and the details of his life have been filled in over the centuries by his admirers. This richly illustrated (...) anthology presents in modernized language a selection of the moral thought of a man who was not only a self-willed genius charged with the dynamism of an impetuous and turbulent age but also in many ways a humble seeker after truth, who deeply influenced C. G. Jung and his followers. (shrink)

The study of perception and the role of the senses have recently risen to prominence in philosophy and are now a major area of study and research. However, the philosophical history of the senses remains a relatively neglected subject. Moving beyond the current philosophical canon, this outstanding collection offers a wide-ranging and diverse philosophical exploration of the senses, from the classical period to the present day. Written by a team of international contributors, it is divided into six parts: Perception from (...) Non-Western Perspectives Perception in the Ancient Period Perception in the Medieval Latin/Arabic Period Perception in the Early Modern Period Perception in the Post-Kantian Period Perception in the Contemporary Period. The volume challenges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophyis essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. ges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophyis essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

There’s long-standing debate over whether Locke can be considered a feminist of sorts; and there’s good reason for this: Much of what Locke says is ambiguous on the gender front. But one topic about which Locke is rather regularly described as a feminist is education. Nevertheless, Giuliana DiBiase (2020) has recently argued that Locke thinks women are naturally less rational than men—offering a decidedly anti-feminist reading of Locke on education. In this chapter, we contribute to the debate over Locke on (...) gender and education in the following ways: We start by showing how even purportedly objective pictures of Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education lean toward a feminist reading by excluding important bits of the broader context within which Locke was writing, and we work to re-set the stage some. Thereafter, we offer a taxonomy of the ways in which commentators utilize the main bit of evidence they present for their interpretations of Locke on gender and education: Letter 809. We then problematize Letter 809 and offer our own reading of it. As we do, we explore how the context provided by Locke’s often-overlooked ‘Midwifery Notes’ appears to tip the interpretive scales toward an anti-feminist reading; but, we also challenge the argument DiBiase offers for the conclusion that Locke thinks women are naturally less rational than men—turning to Locke’s Of the Conduct of the Understanding and ‘Anatomia’ along the way. As a result of our inquiry, we don’t come to any hard and fast conclusions about Locke’s stance on gender and education. Rather, our point is to underscore that it is rather difficult—indeed, far more difficult than most commentators have noted—to do so, given the evidence that we have. But, importantly, this is different from concluding that Locke himself failed to come to any concrete conclusions about the degree to which girls and women are included in his picture of education, or whether, more generally, women naturally have the same rational capacities as men. We conclude by raising some metaphilosophical questions about what it means to call an early modern philosopher or their text “feminist” in the first place. -/- . (shrink)

This research notes identifies the Platonist philosopher Henry More's unnamed correspondents on the subject of self-love in Richard Ward's Life of the Learned and Pious Dr. Henry More (1710) as William Sherlock and John Scott. It then discusses how these identifications shed new light on the later development of More's philosophical and theological thought.

"Berkeley na história do ceticismo" é uma tradução para o português do artigo “Berkeley in the History of Scepticism”, publicado originalmente em inglês em: R. H. Popkin, E. de Olaso, e G. Tonelli (Orgs.) Scepticism in the Enlightenment, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, pp. 173-186.

This research note provides an analysis of several overlooked extracts from Wollstonecraft's writings, which were published in Britain between 1792-1795. It uses these publications to argue that although politics played a significant role in Wollstonecraft's reception, her writings were often extracted because of their stylistic beauty, their diverting vividity, and their usefulness as educational works.

Shepherd’s philosophy centers on her rejection of Hume’s arguments against the demonstrability of causal principles. According to Shepherd, the causal maxim—everything that begins to exist must have a cause—is demonstratively true. She begins her first major philosophical work with a proof of this maxim. While scholars have complained that the proof seems blatantly circular, a closer look at Shepherd’s texts and their Lockean background dispels this worry. Shepherd’s premises are motivated not by the causal maxim or her theory of causation, (...) but by a metaphysics that distinguishes between substances and affections and by an empirical understanding of a ‘beginning of existence.’. (shrink)

"Richard Burthogge's Conceptualism and Its Origins in the Medieval Perspectivist Optics" The paper aims to analyse the historical determinants of the conceptualist argument for epistemological idealism made by the seventeenth-century English philosopher Richard Burthogge. The crux of this argument, unprecedented in earlier philosophy, is an attempt to prove the inherent inadequacy of human cognition from the divergence between the general concepts and the extra-mental singulars. At the same time, Burthogge considers the relationship between the universal and the particular to be (...) analogous to the relation between the visual image and the thing. I argue that, as suggested by certain significant aspects of Burthogge’s theory, it was medieval perspectivist optics that had decisively influenced the conception of visual cognition, which provided the basis for this analogy and, consequently, for the conceptualist argument itself. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the epistemology developed by Richard Burthogge, the lesser-known seventeenth-century English philosopher, and author, among other works, of Organum Vetus & Novum (1678) and An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (1694). Although his ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time, and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study, Burthogge’s writings contain a highly original concept of idealistic constructivism, anticipating (relatively speaking) Kant’s idealism. At the same time, some (...) interesting implications for the issue of self-interpretation and self-identity can be derived from his account of the mind. At the core of Burthogge’s epistemological position is a remarkable idea of structural and functional similarity between the three human cognitive faculties, that is between reasoning, sensation and imagination. Accordingly, every cognition, intellectual as well as sensuous, contains in its structure an object-directed operation of apprehending and thus can be viewed as an intentional act in a broad sense of the term. An immediate consequence of this claim for both mind and object is that they cannot be reduced to a pure stream of sense data, but on the contrary are to be considered ontologically independent from the content of a cognitive act. Furthermore, an object of cognition is never presented to the mind directly, as it is in itself, but always under the modus concipiendi, a particular form or manner of conceiving, specific to human cognitive powers due to their internal structure. As a result, Burthogge clearly anticipates Kant in claiming that it is impossible to know reality in itself, and in situating human consciousness as if in between two unknowable spheres: the external and internal one. Since these restrictions are imposed not only on external, but also on internal cognition, that is on self-knowledge, they lead to considerable difficulties regarding the mind’s identity. Basically, two principal strategies to address this issue are available in the post-Cartesian framework of seeing the mind as an ontologically independent entity, and both of them appear to be ineffective when employed in Burthogge’s epistemology. First, the mind identity can be grounded in some extra-mental factors, preferably in matter. However, with no access to the external world in itself, and with the scope of knowledge restricted to mental phenomena, the mind’s identity cannot be defined in terms of relationship with the reality of which it knows nothing except that it exits. The second option is to explain personal identity by referring it to the intrinsic properties of the mind. Nevertheless, this strategy also faces insuperable obstacles, and for the same reasons as the former does. Since self-knowledge is no exception to the structural-functional principles imposed on cognition, the mind can also be known only under the subjective conditions of conceiving. It is, therefore, just as unknowable in itself as the external things are. The main purpose of the paper is to explore this aspect of Burthogge’s philosophy. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the theory of cognition developed by Richard Burthogge, the lesser known seventeenth-century English philosopher, and author, among other works, of Organum Vetus & Novum (1678) and An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (1694). Although his ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time, and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study, Burthogge’s writings contain a highly original concept of idealistic constructivism, anticipating Kant’s idealism. Therefore, a closer examination (...) of his philosophy can not only deepen our understanding of early modern British thought, but may also shed new light on the internal dynamics of the development of the whole post-Cartesian epistemology. (shrink)

"Theory of modus concipiendi in Richard Burthogge’s Epistemology" The paper focuses on the epistemology of Richard Burthogge, the lesser known seventeenth-century English philosopher and author, among other works, of the Organum Vetus & Novum (1678) and An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (1694). Although his ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time, and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study, Burthogge’s writings contain a highly original concept of idealistic constructivism. The (...) most important claim of this approach is that the external objects are never presented to the mind directly, as they are in themselves, but always under the modus concipiendi, a particular form of conceiving or conceptualising, performed by the human cognitive powers (both intellectual and sensuous) in the manner and with the means determined by their structural and functional properties. Thus, Burthogge clearly anticipates Kant in claiming that the external world is unknowable in itself, being accessible to the human mind only through the phenomena that the mind itself co-produces. The paper provides an outline of the theory of modus concipiendi, including its historical context and idealistic consequences, preceded by the brief presentation of Burthogge’s epistemology. (shrink)

The book "Unnoticed Revolution. Richard Burthogge's Constructivist Idealism" focuses on the theory of cognition developed by Richard Burthogge, the seventeenth-century English philosopher and author, among other works, of the "Organum Vetus & Novum" (1678) and "An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits" (1694). Burthogge’s ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study. Nevertheless, his writings contain a highly original concept of constructivist idealism, which, when (...) seen from a historical perspective, turns out to have anticipated the crucial points of that proposed a century later by Kant. It is because at the core of Burthogge’s epistemological position lies the claim that the external object of cognition is never presented to the mind directly, but always under the 'modus concipiendi', a particular form of conceptualisation of the external reality, performed in the manner and with the means determined by the structural and functional properties of the human cognitive powers. As a result, Burthogge clearly anticipates Kant in claiming that the external world is unknowable in itself, being accessible to the human mind only through the ‘phenomena’ that the mind itself co-produces. The need for deeper analysis of the works by the ‘forgotten’ philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been recognised for at least ninety years. The discussed book tries to meet these expectations. Its direct aim is to increase our knowledge of early modern British philosophy. At the same time, the restoration of the memory of the idealist doctrine, anticipating by almost a century that of Kant, should enable us to draw some new conclusions about the internal logic and immanent dynamic of the development of the whole post-Cartesian thought. (shrink)

An unpublished manuscript on eucharistic metaphysics by Thomas White (1593–1676) supplies new information about his contributions to philosophy and theology—especially his irenic efforts to find middle ground between traditional Aristotelian views and challenges from the new mechanical philosophy. The work by White studied here, “A Discourse Concerning the Eucharist,” sheds light on his other writings and is illuminated by them. Substance, quantity, place, and accident were the main philosophical issues at stake in White's attempt to give a reasoned account of (...) controversial religious and theological issues, especially transubstantiation and the real presence. (shrink)

The term “altruism” is used in many ways. In this thesis, I discuss altruism as a motivation, which is an influential notion in philosophy and the social sciences. Questions about the nature and the possibility of altruistic motivation have inspired much debate, both in academia and in everyday conversations. How can we know when we are truly altruistic and when we are merely helping others as a means to some egoistic goal? Are humans even capable of genuine altruistic motivation or (...) are we always egoistic deep down? Before answering questions like these, however, we need to ask a more fundamental question: how should we define altruistic motivation? The standard account of altruistic motivation in the literature defines it as an ultimate desire to increase the welfare of others. The central claim I will argue for in this thesis is that this standard account is intrinsically flawed and should be abandoned. -/- The problem with the standard account of altruistic motivation, in short, is its reliance on the notion of “ultimate desire”, which is a limited and unfruitful way of conceptualizing altruistic motivation. The criticism I propose is based on an interdisciplinary analysis of many aspects of the standard account, discussing its philosophical basis, its use in scientific research, its historical development, and its relation to common sense and morality. -/- This thesis is divided into four parts, each composed of two chapters. Part I presents the many technical accounts of altruism present in the scientific literature, distinguishing the standard account of altruistic motivation from alternative accounts of altruism. I discuss the hypotheses of psychological altruism, which states that some of our ultimate desires aim to increase the welfare of others, and psychological egoism, which states that all of our ultimate desires are egoistic. In this first part, I discuss some of the central philosophical concepts underlying the standard account of altruistic motivation, showing their implications for the debate about psychological altruism. -/- Part II discusses the main arguments for the existence of altruistic motivation. I argue that the main arguments in the scientific literature fail in making a defense of psychological altruism and that the definition of altruistic motivation makes the solution to the debate on psychological altruism virtually impossible. I conclude that the standard account makes altruistic motivation an unverifiable and unfruitful notion for scientific research. -/- Part III discusses the history of altruism and egoism, focusing particularly on early modern philosophy. I argue that the modern accounts of altruism and egoism diverge from the contemporary standard account of altruistic motivation. Reading the debates in modern philosophy through the lens of psychological altruism and psychological egoism oversimplifies and impoverishes the modern debate. I argue that the standard account also fails in representing the original use of “altruism”, proposed by Auguste Comte. In this third part, I show how the use of the standard account of altruistic motivation cannot be based on its historical foundations. -/- Finally, Part IV addresses the normative character of altruism and discusses some alternative ways of conceptualizing altruism. I argue that the standard account of altruistic motivation does not reflect the ordinary use of the term “altruism” and fails in accounting for its normative character. As an alternative, I propose an alternative account of altruism, virtue altruism. I claim that this account better reflects the ordinary intuitions about altruism, accommodates the descriptive and normative dimensions of altruism, is at home with most of the historical accounts of altruism, and may promote the active promotion of altruistic actions. (shrink)

This piece explores the origins of science fiction in philosophical speculation about the size of the universe, the existence of other solar systems and other galaxies, and the possibility of alien life. Science fiction helps us to grapple with the dizzying possibilities that a vast universe affords, by allowing our imagination to fill in the details.

The paper covers the discussion of three aspects of Thomas Reid’s political thought. Initially, it presents and discusses Reid’s understanding of Politics. Secondly, it is argued that, unlike the first principles of other branches of knowledge, such as Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind and Morals, the first principles of Politics are not the first principles of common sense. Politics is founded on a form of empirical knowledge that cannot be identified with common sense, with the judgments and beliefs due to the (...) original constitution of mind that are shared by most humans. Finally, it is argued, from a parallel with the philosophy of nature, that common sense has only a methodological role in Politics. (shrink)

This paper examines how Descartes’ philosophy was presented and discussed in articles and reviews published in Mind from 1900 to 1947, a period in which this most prestigious British philosophical journal was edited by George F. Stout (until 1920) and then by George E. Moore (from 1921 to 1947). The survey deals with various aspects of the reception of Cartesian philosophy in the journal: articles devoted to several topics of Cartesian thought, critical notices and reviews of the secondary literature, discussions (...) of twentieth-century English translations of Cartesian works. In line with the theoretical character of Mind, most of the interpreters discussed Cartesian philosophy with the aim either of checking its internal consistency or of proving how the Cartesian system might be rendered consistent with its own premises. In this respect, all the themes revolving around the problem of the Cartesian circle attracted the attention of commentators, and the intuitionist foundation of Cartesian theory was analyzed. Descartes’ metaphysics and natural philosophy were often evaluated from the perspective of contemporary philosophical debates, while their original historical context was neglected. Of particular relevance were issues like the mind-body problem, discussed at the beginning of the century in relation to developments in psychology, and the question of the existence of the external world, which was examined from various standpoints, metaphysically, epistemologically and from the point of view of linguistic analysis. Interest in Descartes was shown by many authors from major philosophers (such as Ward, Schiller, Taylor, Broad, Ryle) to lesser known scholars whose profiles and contributions are outlined. Through the angle of the Cartesian presence a sketch emerges of the rich and variegated philosophical scene of British culture in the first half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Relying on the double meaning of Alkaest on the texts of the first paracelsians, in a first sense the universal dissolvent of the alchemic Work, in a second a wonderful epatic medicine, the paper outlines history and spread of this alchemical substance, from the late XVI century to the early XVIII. With the growing dissemination of Franciscus Van Helmont and his followers writings, the Alkaest as universal solvent earns credibility, touching his peak probably in England, where arouses the strong interest (...) of George Starkey, physician and alchemist, and Robert Boyle, chemist and inventor. (shrink)

A tradução aqui apresentada consiste no Prefácio à tradução francesa de Siris, obra de George Berkeley publicada em inglês em 1744 e traduzida para o francês em 1745 por David-Renaud Boullier. Neste prefácio a Siris, publicada em francês com o título Recherches sur les vertus de l’eau de goudron, où l’on a joint des réflexions philosophiques sur divers autres sujets, além de oferecer um bom resumo da obra, Boullier explica a filosofia imaterialista de Berkeley e a apresenta favoravelmente como um (...) antídoto interessante para as concepções materialistas. (shrink)

How should we conceive of policymakers for the purposes of political analysis? In particular, if we wish to explain and predict political decisions and their consequences, if we wish to ensure that political action is as effective as it can be, how should we think of policymakers? Should we think of them as they are commonly conceived in traditional political analysis, i.e., as uniquely knowledgeable and as either altruistic (i.e., as motivated to realize goals associated with their constituents’ interests) or (...) knavish (i.e., as motivated to realize goals associated with their own personal interests), or should we treat them as possibly ignorant with respect to their political tasks? -/- It is always an open question whether policymakers possess the knowledge required to realize some policy objective. It should never be assumed a priori that policymaker knowledge is adequate to the policy tasks with which policymakers are charged. Politicians need knowledge concerning the causes of social phenomena adequate to control events sufficiently well to ensure the success of their policies. No argument has ever been offered for the standard, if only implicit, assumption that policymakers, somehow automatically, possess this knowledge. In many contexts, there is no reason to believe that policymakers possess or can acquire this knowledge. Indeed, a bit of reflection reveals how unlikely it is that and how rare the circumstances must be in which policymakers meet this condition, which political philosophers, theorists, economists, and other political thinkers have traditionally assumed as a matter of course. -/- The main purpose of the book is to encourage a conversation among scholars and students of political inquiry (in philosophy and political theory, political science, economics and political economy) concerning the best way to conceive of policymakers for the purposes of such inquiry. -/- The book defends an alternative, more realistic, method of political analysis. The book argues against the false assumption that policymakers are epistemically privileged. The book presents and defends the alternative assumption that, with respect to the knowledge required to discharge their political tasks effectively, policymakers are at least as ignorant as constituents. -/- The book further argues that whether policymakers are altruistic or knavish is, in the first instance, a function of the nature and extent of their ignorance with regard to constituent-minded policy goals. Policymakers who possess the knowledge required to be effectively altruistic are more likely to be altruistic, other things the same, than policymakers who are ignorant of the knowledge that successful altruism requires. -/- This being said, my goal is more to leave readers thinking about and inclined to debate these profound issues than to prescribe a particular methodological conclusion (even less to advocate a particular political conclusion). The book is a heuristic for spurring further conversation. It makes of readers fellow interlocutors partnered with the characters (and the author!) of the dialogue. -/- The vehicle for this analysis is a conversation between four friends, philosophy graduate students, with different interests, different levels and kinds of experience, and different political preferences. The four friends consider how politicians should be conceived for the purposes of analyzing political decision-making and its consequences. -/- In his famous Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, David Hume concluded that the assumption of an all-knowing and all-powerful God was neither necessary nor sufficient to explain natural phenomena. Dialogues concerning Natural Politics does for social science what Hume did for natural science. Both books undermine the assumption that some epistemically privileged being – God in the case of natural phenomena and God-like politicians in the case of social phenomena – must be invoked to explain relevant phenomena. (shrink)

The paper presents and discusses how Thomas Reid's philosophy of common sense replies to the skepticism about the epistemic reliability of the faculties of mind. The hypothesis presented establishes that Reid’s reply has three arguments. First, Reid shows why it is impossible to prove the reliability of the faculties of mind and why philosophers may begin their investigations by accepting the truth of the beliefs due to these faculties. Secondly, Reid shows that it is inconsistent to choose one of these (...) faculties as the only source of true beliefs. This is arbitrary. Those authors, who choose, for example, consciousness as the only source of reliable knowledge, only reinforce the claim that all faculties of mind are equally reliable. Thirdly, if the faculties of the mind operate properly, that is, when our mind is not affected by any disorder or disease, there is no good reason to call them into question and to doubt the truth of their beliefs. (shrink)

The paper covers the discussion of three aspects of Thomas Reid’s political thought. Initially, it presents and discusses Reid’s understanding of Politics. Secondly, it is argued that, unlike the first principles of other branches of knowledge, such as Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind and Morals, the first principles of Politics are not the first principles of common sense. Politics is founded on a form of empirical knowledge that cannot be identified with common sense, with the judgments and beliefs due to the (...) original constitution of mind that are shared by most humans. Finally, it is argued, from a parallel with the philosophy of nature, that common sense has only a methodological role in Politics. (shrink)

This contribution explores Gilles Personne de Roberval’s 1644 Aristarchi Samii de mundi systemate, partibus, & motibus eiusdem, libellus. I focus on the complex circumstances of publication, the intellectual context of the polemics of Copernicanism within the scientific community, as well as the natural philosophy of the treatise. Roberval’s strategy of publication provides a very sophisticated example of authorship in early modern natural philosophy. The strategy lies at the conflux of certain specific motivations. I contextualize these motivations by accounting for the (...) delicate debates around the motion of the Earth in mid-seventeenth century Europe, the institutional communities of the Collège Royal and Mersenne’s circle, and the disciplinary bounds of Roberval’s professional authority. Weighing in all the elements, I argue that Roberval’s publication is an interesting intellectual game, playing with the notion of ancient authority and humanistic recovery. By this somewhat libertine attitude, Roberval takes a stance in a complicated debate around heliocentrism and the status of hypothetical cosmology. Roberval’s position is supported by his natural philosophical speculations, which I situate in the contemporary debates of the community. Roberval borrows from many philosophers, but he aims at achieving a highly systematic speculative cosmology. One of the functions of this system is to confirm Copernicanism, while maintaining a very pessimistic attitude on the prospects of precise astronomical knowledge and, among others, prognostication issues. (shrink)

Self-authorship is fundamental to respecting the dignity of persons, and epistemic credibility depends upon impartial review. While these claims may seem obviously true, they arguments for them are rarely given. In a supposedly "post-truth" world in which respect for individual rights is under attack, the obvious must be argued for and reiterated. To that end, I mine sources from the European Enlightenment (Bacon, Hume, Kant, and Mill) to make the case for self-authorship and impartial review.

I make some proposals regarding which paradoxes Dr. Johnson was referring to in a preface.

This article offers an extensive study of the idea of an animal afterlife in seventeenth-century England. While some have argued that the idea of an animal afterlife became prevalent at the time due to increased awareness of animals’ mental abilities, others have suggested it was due to greater sensitivity to animal suffering and the perceived need to square this suffering with divine justice. I show that both views are incorrect, and that seventeenth-century thinking about an animal afterlife was first and (...) foremost grounded in, and shaped by, speculations about end times and the restored creation based on a literal reading of a key passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:19–22), which thus served as the sedes doctrinae throughout the seventeenth century. Lastly, I show that those who entertained a future life for beasts also supposed that animals would have a functional role therein, considering animals as being present in the restored creation to serve some spiritual end rather than as being true beneficiaries in their own right. (shrink)

The Aristotelian account of change—according to which no individual can survive a change of species because an individual's essence is, at least in part, determined by its species membership—remains popular in the seventeenth century. One important, but often overlooked dissenting voice comes from Anne Conway. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Conway firmly rejects the Aristotelian account of change. She instead endorses the doctrine of Radical Mutability, the view that a creature can belong to different species at different times. A horse, (...) for example, can gradually become a human being and yet remain the same individual. Why, though, is Conway so opposed to the prima facie appealing Aristotelian account of change? This paper claims that she levels two arguments against this account which have been largely neglected so far. First, she argues that there could be no causal interaction between creatures belonging to different species with distinct essences, because cause and effect would be too dissimilar in that case. Second, Conway argues that the Aristotelian model is inconsistent with divine goodness because it allows for the annihilation of creatures and because it imposes arbitrary restrictions on the capacity of creatures to improve. (shrink)

On the standard interpretation, Samuel Clarke and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz endorse fundamentally different theories of free will. Clarke is typically interpreted as a libertarian who holds that freedom requires indeterminism. Leibniz, in contrast, is typically interpreted as a compatibilist who holds that free actions can be determined. This chapter challenges the standard interpretation and argues that Clarke and Leibniz agree almost completely about free will. Both require free actions to be instances of agent causation, and both view freedom as compatible (...) with moral necessity or the determination by motives, reasons, or final causes. Hence, both Leibniz and Clarke should be interpreted as proponents of compatibilism. (shrink)

The early modern period (roughly, 1600–1800 ce) in Europe brought tremendous changes in intellectual, political, and cultural life. It was a period in which philosophical debates were inevitably bound up with questions about the nature and sources of religious truth. A chronological examination of some of the period’s major thinkers highlights two issues that were central to the development of philosophy of religion in the period. The first concerns the relations between God, the soul, and the body; the other concerns (...) the relationship between human reason and divine revelation. (shrink)

The eighteenth century was the century of self-organization, but also that of materialism, inasmuch as it was then that certain thinkers proclaimed themselves to be materialists (rather than just being labelled as such by enemies of various sorts). If one seeks to read these two features – one hesitates to call them ‘facts’ or ‘events’ – together, one arrives rather quickly at an influential metaphor, the beeswarm. But a metaphor of or for what? Irreducible organic unity, most broadly – spelled (...) out in the vocabulary of the period in terms of synergy, sympathy and sensibility, but also of cohesion, consensus and conspiration: individual bees have their characteristics, their intentions, and their own purposes, but they also ‘conspire’, ‘cohere’ and ‘consent’ in the name of a larger living unity, the swarm, although this leaves open further questions such as the exact nature of the order or organization yielded or enacted by the swarm (bottom-up? top-down? emergent? etc.). The fascination with the beeswarm is a fascination with organic unity and in some cases (notably Diderot), with the organic or organismic features of living matter itself. This is the story we wish to tell. (shrink)

This article recovers mid-century proposals for sciences of concord and contextualizes them as part of a broader politics of commercial knowledge in eighteenth-century Britain. It begins by showing how merchants gained authority as formulators of commercial policy during the Commerce Treaty debates of 1713–1714. This authority held fast during the Walpolean oligarchy, but collapsed by the 1740s, when lobbying and patronage were increasingly maligned as corrupt by a ferment of popular republicanism. The article then explores how the Anglican cleric Josiah (...) Tucker and country pamphleteer Joseph Massie made use of this vacuum in authority to formulate a novel basis for the production of commercial knowledge. In pamphlets written between 1749 and 1760, they argued that the competing interests comprising the nation’s increasingly complex commercial system could only be reconciled and geared to the national interest through the establishment of a science which harnessed an impartial and systematizing epistemology, developing highly idealized accounts of the abstract market as a realm of concord which operated according to regular, rationally deducible principles. The conclusion suggests that their arguments introduced the foundational conceptual bases for later sciences of political economy and legitimated a new form of expertise in statecraft. (shrink)