Current workflows in academic ecology rarely allow an engagement of ecologists with philosophers, or with contemporary philosophical work. We argue that this is a missed opportunity for enriching ecological reasoning and practice, because many questions in ecology overlap with philosophical questions and with current topics in contemporary philosophy of science. One obstacle to a closer connection and collaboration between the fields is the limited awareness of scientists, including ecologists, of current philosophical questions, developments and ideas. In this article, we aim (...) to overcome this obstacle and trigger more collaborations between ecologists and philosophers. First, we provide an overview of philosophical research relevant to ecologists. Second, we use examples to demonstrate that many ecological questions have a philosophical dimension and point to related philosophical work. We elaborate on one example – the debate around the appropriate level of complexity of ecological models – to show in more detail how philosophy can enrich ecology. Finally, we provide suggestions for how to initiate collaborative projects involving both ecologists and philosophers. (shrink)

Introduction: Variation across research ethics boards in conditions placed on access to medical records for research purposes raises concerns around negative impacts on research quality and on human subject protection, including privacy.Aim: To study variation in REB consent requirements for retrospective chart review and who may have access to the medical record for data abstraction.Methods: Thirty 90-min face-to-face interviews were conducted with REB chairs and administrators affiliated with faculties of medicine in Canadian universities, using structured questions around a case study (...) with open-ended responses. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded manually.Results: Fourteen sites required individual patient consent for the study to proceed as proposed. Three indicated that their response would depend on how potentially identifying variables would be managed. Eleven sites did not require consent. Two suggested a notification and opt-out process. Most stated that consent would be required if identifiable information was being abstracted from the record. Among those not requiring consent, there was substantial variation in recognising that the abstracted information could potentially indirectly re-identify individuals. Concern over access to medical records by an outside individual was also associated with requirement for consent. Eighteen sites required full committee review. Sixteen allowed an external research assistant to abstract information from the health record.Conclusions: Large variation was found across sites in the requirement for consent for research involving access to medical records. REBs need training in best practices for protecting privacy and confidentiality in health research. A forum for REB chairs to confidentially share concerns and decisions about specific studies could also reduce variation in decisions. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

This article presents Schelling’s claim that nature has an evolutionary process and Hegel’s response that nature is the development of the concept. It then examines whether evolution is progressive. While many evolutionary biologists explicitly repudiate the suggestion that there is progress in evolution, they often implicitly presuppose this. Moreover, such a notion seems required insofar as the shape of life’s history consists in a directional trend. This article argues that, insofar as a notion of progress is indeed conceptually ineliminatable from (...) evolutionary biology or needed to articulate the shape of life’s history, progress should be viewed as constitutive. The section on “Why Schelling and .. (shrink)

This is an exciting book by one of the most respected philosophers of our time. It includes almost all of Goodman’s published articles as well as a number of papers not previously published. There are a total of forty-four papers divided into ten chapters according to topic. The chapters are: Philosophy, Origins, Art, Individuals, Meaning, Relevance, Simplicity, Induction, Likeness, and Puzzle. Each chapter is preceded by a forward which provides historical notes concerning the papers in the chapter and which frequently (...) suggests new ideas of the problem under investigation. The book demonstrates Goodman’s wide philosophical interests from discussions of art from his Languages of Art to technical analyses in philosophical logic. It affords a unique opportunity to witness the development of a philosopher’s thought over a span of over thirty years.—J. J. F. (shrink)

In a discussion-note in Mind, Father P. M. Farrell, O.P., gave an account, in what he admitted to be an embarrassingly brief compass, of the Thomist doctrine concerning evil. There is one sentence in this discussion which at first glance appears paradoxical. Father Farrell has been arguing that a universe containing ‘corruptible good’ as well as incorruptible is better than one containing ‘incorruptible good’ only. He continues: ‘If, however, they are to manifest this corruptible good, they must be corruptible and (...) they must sometimes corrupt.’ The final words, despite Father Farrell's italics, strike one as expressing, not a self-evident truth, but a non sequitur. The fact that I am capable of committing murder does not entail that I will at some time commit it. It is not immediately obvious that a similar entailment holds in the case of corruption and corruptibility. (shrink)

Is it possible to interfere with individual decision-making while preserving freedom of choice? The purpose of this article is to assess whether ‘libertarian paternalism’, a set of political and ethical principles derived from the observations of behavioural sciences, can form the basis of a viable framework for the ethical analysis of public health interventions. First, the article situates libertarian libertarianism within the broader context of the law and economics movement. The main tenets of the approach are then presented and particular (...) attention is given to its operationalization through the notion of a ‘nudge’. Essentially, a ‘nudge’ consists in an intervention, which aims to suggest one choice over another by gently steering individual choices in welfare-enhancing directions yet without imposing any significant limit on available choices. Finally, the article concludes that, while it fails as an overreaching framework of ethical analysis, libertarian paternalism nonetheless constitutes a valuable addition to the conceptual toolbox of public health ethics. (shrink)

Parti INTRODUCTION Wittgenstein sometimes suggested looking on words as instruments, for example in the following passages from ...

In both continental and analytical philosophy, social ontology has emerged as a particularly lively and increasingly sophisticated area of debate. This essay explores the potential contribution that social-ontological thinking can make to the continued development of critical theory via a critical reading of Georg Lukács and the Possibility of Critical Social Ontology – a collection of essays edited by Michael J. Thompson and published by Brill as part of the Studies in Critical Social Sciences series. The essay argues that whilst (...) social ontology as such no doubt offers a fruitful avenue for contemporary critical theory, the later philosophy of Georg Lukács represents an untenable and antiquated theoretical resource for such endeavours. The conceptual and systematic barriers to the revitalisation of the late Lukács are explored with specific reference to Lukács’ specific interpretation of the paradigm of labour and, closely related to this, his philosophy of history. (shrink)

A number of Democritean fragments may loosely be called ‘political’, concerned as they are with questions to do with the πλις – with government, with the duties and dangers of public office, with justice, law and order. The majority of them have been preserved in chapters of Stobaeus’ anthology entitled ‘On the State’ , ‘On Laws and Customs’ , ‘On Government’.

We study reducts of Peano arithmetic for which conditions of saturation imply the corresponding conditions for the whole model. It is shown that very weak reducts (like pure order) have such a property for κ-saturation in every κ ≥ ω 1 . In contrast, other reducts do the job for ω and not for $\kappa > \omega_1$ . This solves negatively a conjecture of Chang.

For countable structure, "Scott rank" provides a measure of internal, model-theoretic complexity. For a computable structure, the Scott rank is at most [Formula: see text]. There are familiar examples of computable structures of various computable ranks, and there is an old example of rank [Formula: see text]. In the present paper, we show that there is a computable structure of Scott rank [Formula: see text]. We give two different constructions. The first starts with an arithmetical example due to Makkai, and (...) codes it into a computable structure. The second re-works Makkai's construction, incorporating an idea of Sacks. (shrink)

Roman Catholic moral theology follows a centuries-old tradition of moral reflection. Contemporary Roman Catholic moral theory applies these traditional arguments to the realm of medical ethics, including the issues of active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Unavoidable moral limits on licit medical intervention sometimes require that the moral duty to treat, cede to the duty to cease treatment when measures become more harmful than beneficial to the patient. This does not reduce the need for the compassionate use of palliative care in (...) response to suffering. However, it does mean that rather than being excessively committed to maintaining mere biological human life, or actively seeking death, that we learn a sober realism about the limits of human life. Catholic moral analysis examines an act objectively, both in its relation to the agent and as a material event in the world. This allows both the virtuous or vicious intentions of the agent and the effects of the action to be included in its moral evaluation. Thus, Catholic moral analysis is both quasi-deontological and quasi-consequentialist. Objectively, active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, as acts of deliberate killing, are seen as repugnant, in that they fail to incarnate a benign inner intention or to form an agent in virtue. Catholic moral theology is extremely skeptical that an act of intending death directly can be consonant with a sincere compassion for the dying, suffering person and views it as a direct negation of the precious gift of human life. (shrink)

In this paper the authors argue that ethical considerations are relevant for evaluating animal production systems and that in consequence agrologists should seriously consider the arguments of animal welfare supporters. Furthermore, the authors point out the ethical basis for some (though not all) of the conclusions proposed by supporters of animal welfare. In consequence it is necessary to determine the nature of animal welfare and methods of evaluating the welfare of animals and to recognize when production systems fail to satisfy (...) the needs of animals. (shrink)

With volume 5 the publication of the actual text of Henry's fifteen Quodlibetal Questions begins. Macken's edition is preceded by a valuable introduction, which itself commences with discussions of Henry's life and writings. Macken then surveys the manuscripts containing Quodlibet I and explains in detail the procedure he has adopted in reconstituting the text and the editing techniques he has employed. As he points out, Quodlibet I was given its definitive written form by Henry himself, and is not a mere (...) report drawn up by someone else who would have been present at its oral presentation. It should here be recalled that the Quodlibetal Question developed in Parisian University circles in the course of the thirteenth century as a distinctive literary genre of philosophical and theological writing. The Quodlibets themselves as we have them in written form reflect their origins in those special public oral sessions which were held twice a year in the Theology Faculty, and at which certain Masters would open themselves to questions from one and all about any appropriate topic. After this evidently taxing exercise, a Master would have the right to readdress himself to the questions that had been raised on some following day when meeting with his own students. By then he would have introduced some kind of order into the various topics originally proposed for discussion. And at some subsequent time, probably during the course of the next year, he would release them for publication, but only after having carefully revised them. As one might expect, the very nature of such an exercise opened the way for consideration of a bewildering variety of topics ranging widely over areas such as speculative and moral theology, metaphysics, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and canon law. This variety is clearly reflected in the 42 questions examined in Henry's first Quodlibet. Thus one finds him here considering questions treating of Trinitarian theology, the hypostatic union, unicity vs. plurality of substantial form in man, Eucharistic theology, the possiblity of an eternally created universe, the relationship between essence and existence in creatures, and the possibility that prime matter could be sustained in existence by God apart from any substantial form. Questions are also raised relating to the nature of the soul both in its separated state and in its state of union with the body, and the relative priorities of intellect and will and their interrelationship in the act of choice. Finally, a host of other topics of less immediate interest to philosophers are also examined, such as the fate of infants who die without baptism, confessional jurisdiction, the guilt of a teacher who is primarily concerned with his own glory, etc. At the risk of oversimplification, certain positions defended by Henry in this Quodlibet will be mentioned because of their interest to students of metaphysics. In q. 4 he leaves open the possibility of defending unicity of substantial form in man. In qq. 7-8 he eliminates the possibility that any creature could have existed from eternity and, therefore, the possibility of an eternally created universe. In q. 9 he rejects real distinction between essence and existence in creatures and defends his well known "intentional" distinction between them. Here too he has already developed his unusual view of the essential being enjoyed by creatures insofar as they are objects of God's knowledge and have exemplar ideas in God. In q. 10 he denies that prime matter is pure potentiality and maintains that God could, if he should so choose, keep matter in existence without any substantial form. In q. 14 he defends the preeminence of the will over the intellect, and in a number of succeeding questions enters into intricate discussion of the interrelationship between reason and will in the act of choice. Perhaps these indications will be enough to give the reader some idea of the general direction of Henry's thought with respect to the topics in question. Anyone who has already examined earlier printed editions of Henry's Quodlibets will be delighted with Macken's superb edition of Quodlibet I. Apart from its great critical value, this volume is beautifully printed, handsomely bound, and appropriately indexed. This reviewer, for one, is eagerly awaiting the appearance of subsequent volumes in the series. All will be required reading for students of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century philosophy and theology.--J.F.W. (shrink)

With the publication of these two volumes the ground has now been prepared for a long awaited event, the critical edition of the works of Henry of Ghent. Henry was one of the outstanding philosophizing-theologians at the University of Paris in the second half of the thirteenth century and, during the period between the death of Thomas Aquinas in 1274 and the ascendancy of John Duns Scotus near the beginning of the fourteenth century, no other Master surpassed him in terms (...) of influence or importance. During his tenure there as Master in the theology faculty, Henry conducted fifteen Quodlibetal disputes. His written versions of these, along with his Summa of ordinary Disputed Questions, constitute his most important surviving works. And of these, his Quodlibets rank first. Henry's philosophical and theological views were highly original and drew considerable reaction from other leading Masters of the time, especially from Giles of Rome, Godfrey of Fontaines, and somewhat later, from Duns Scotus. While his personal thought cannot be reduced to that of any earlier thinker or tradition, his views were heavily influenced by Augustine, by Avicenna, and by various other Neoplatonic currents. At the same time, while he was quite familiar with the texts and thought of Aristotle, he reacted strongly against the more radical form of Aristotelianism developed by Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, and other Masters in the Arts Faculty at Paris in the 1260s and 1270s. Aquinas's incorporation of many Aristotelian positions into his own thought was also suspect in Henry's eyes. Given this background, Henry himself may be regarded as an outstanding representative of the Neo-Augustinian philosophical current which surfaced at Paris around 1270, which triumphed with the condemnation of 219 propositions by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, in 1277, and which would continue to be a dominant philosophical force until the end of the century. The need for a critical edition of his Quodlibets and his Summa has long been recognized, since the only printed versions date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In these first two volumes of Henry's Opera omnia Macken has prepared the way for the critical edition of Henry's works and especially of his Quodlibets. Here one finds a valuable catalog, based on first-hand inspection, of the widely scattered manuscripts of Henry's works. The catalog also contains expert codicological descriptions of the contents of these manuscripts, including works whose authenticity remains doubtful. Manuscripts are also considered which contain works that treat ex professo of Henry's doctrine. This is followed by an appendix which surveys ancient references to other manuscripts allegedly containing Henry's works, which manuscripts have not yet been found. Then there is a Répertoire, not of manuscripts but of Henry's works themselves, including certainly authentic works, works of doubtful authenticity, and finally, in another short appendix, works which have been falsely ascribed to him. A third part of this survey of Henry's works is devoted to manuscripts of other writers who discuss Henry's doctrine ex professo. The two volumes conclude with all the necessary indices. One must congratulate Macken for the care, the industry, and the meticulous scholarship with which he has prepared these two volumes. Not only are they of great value to anyone interested in the manuscript tradition of Henry's works and doctrine; they also include helpful descriptions of the writings of many other medieval authors which are contained in many of these same manuscripts. They will undoubtedly be carefully combed for decades to come by other scholars interested in these same authors and manuscripts. These volumes will be indispensable for libraries of institutions making any serious claim to expertise in the history of medieval philosophical and theological thought. One can only wish Macken and his international team of collaborators every success in their next immediate task, the actual edition of Henry's most important works, his fifteen Quodlibetal Questions.--J.F.W. (shrink)

This Festschrift in Professor Kristeller’s honor consists of contributions by scholars who have had some connection with Columbia University, his "intellectual home in the United States for three decades." It also includes a Tabula Gratulatoria listing many other friends from the United States and Europe. The editor’s opening essay provides an interesting and informative account of this scholar’s academic career, and should be read together with the complete annotated bibliography of his publications through 1974. The latter lists 149 "major publications" (...) and 220 "minor publications." Kristeller’s contributions to the history of Renaissance philosophy are well known to historians of philosophy, and deservedly so. Here reference should be made to his groundbreaking studies on Marsilio Ficino and Pomponazzi, and on others such as Pico della Mirandola and Petrarch, as well as on Renaissance Platonism, Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, Thomism in the Renaissance, Paduan Averroism, and Alexandrism. But he has also contributed greatly to the fields of medieval and Renaissance history, and especially to our understanding of Renaissance humanism, Renaissance music, and Renaissance art. He is universally recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on manuscript research, as is witnessed, for example, by the cooperative project, Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, which he founded, and by his Iter ltalicum. In all of these enterprises he has set an enviable example for other scholars by the exacting standards and the breadth of his expertise. It is only fitting, then, that the many essays in this Festschrift should reflect the breadth and depth of the scholarship so evident in the man to whom they are dedicated. Limitations of space will only permit us to list them here, with a few remarks reserved for those of more special interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy: Eugene F. Rice, Jr., "The De magia naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples" ; Donald R. Kelley, "Louis Le Caron Philosophe", on Le Caron’s effort to bring together jurisprudence and classical, especially Platonic, philosophy; Richard H. Popkin, "The Pre-Adamite Theory in the Renaissance", with fascinating material about theories concerning men before Adam in La Peyrère and widely scattered earlier sources; Richard Lemay, "The Fly against the Elephant: Flandinus against Pomponazzi on Fate", on an unedited attack by an Augustinian Bishop against Pomponazzi’s espousal of the Stoic doctrine of fate; Martin Pine, "Pietro Pomponazzi and the Medieval Tradition of God’s Foreknowledge", on Pomponazzi’s solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom inlight of his familiarity with earlier discussions by Boethius, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham; F. Edward Cranz, "Editions of the Latin Aristotle Accompanied by the Commentaries of Averroes", helpful to all who wish to consult late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century versions of the Latin Aristotle and especially the Latin Averroes; Josef Soudek, "A Fifteenth-Century Humanistic Bestseller: The Manuscript Diffusion of Leonardo Bruni’s Annotated Latin Version of the Aristotelian Economics" ; Edward P. Mahoney, "Nicoletto Vernia on the Soul and Immortality", which details a radical shift on Vernia’s part from an earlier Averroistic reading of Aristotle; Joan Kelly-Gadol, "Tommaso Campanella: The Agony of Political Theory in the Counter-Reformation", which attempts to account for some of the shifts and inconsistencies in Campanella’s political writings by placing them within the troubled personal and political circumstances of his life; Charles Trinkaus, "Protagoras in the Renaissance: An Exploration" ; Maristella de Panizza Lorch, "Voluptas, molle quoddam et non invidiosum nomen: Lorenzo Valla’s Defense of voluptas in the Preface to his De voluptate" ; Neal W. Gilbert, "Richard de Bury and the ‘Quires of Yesterday’s Sophisms"’, with much interesting material on the medieval tradition of sophismata, especially at Oxford; Malcolm Brown, "A Pre-Aristotelian Mathematician on Deductive Order" ; John H. Randall, Jr., "Paduan Aristotelianism Reconsidered", on evidence for influence of the Italian Aristotelian tradition on Galileo; William F. Edwards, "Niccoló Leoniceno and the Origins of Humanist Discussion of Method" ; C. Doris Hellman, "A Poem on the Occasion of the Nova of 1572" ; Edward Rosen, "Kepler’s Mastery of Greek" ; W. T. H. Jackson, "The Politics of a Poet: The Archipoeta as Revealed by his Imagery" ; John Charles Nelson, "Love and Sex in the Decameron" ; George B. Parks, "Pico della Mirandola in Tudor Translation" ; Richard Harrier, "Invention in Tudor Literature: Historical Perspectives" ; Helene Wieruszowski, "Jacob Burckhardt and Vespasiano da Bisticci " ; Morimichi Watanabe, "Gregor Heimburg and Early Humanism in Germany" ; Raymond de Roover, "Cardinal Cajetan on ‘Cambium’ or Exchange Dealings" ; and a series of text editions with introductions including Julius Kirshner, "Conscience and Public Finance: A Questio disputata of John of Legnano on the Public Debt of Genoa" ; John Mundy, "The Origins of the College of Saint-Raymond at the University of Toulouse" ; Charles B. Schmitt, "Girolamo Borro’s Multae sunt nostrarum ignorantionum causae " ; Guido Kisch, "An Unpublished Consiliumof Johannes Sichardus" ; Patricia H. Labalme, "The Last Will of a Venetian Patrician " ; Felix Gilbert, "The Last Will of a Venetian Grand Chancellor" ; Herbert S. Matsen, "Giovanni Garzoni to Alessandro Achillini : An Unpublished Letter and Defense" ; Theodore E. James, "A Fragment of An Exposition of the First Letter of Seneca to Lucilius Attributed to Peter of Mantua". The editor, his collaborators, and the contributors are all to be commended for the high quality of this volume.—J.F.W. (shrink)

The thirteen essays of this collection converge on the theme of authority in an effort to analyze its general theoretical characteristics, to evaluate its historical development, and to propose solutions to contemporary social, political, and legal problems. Hannah Arendt's contribution, "What was Authority?" best expresses the awareness, reflected in several of the other essays, of a crisis in the understanding and acceptance of authority as a significant concept in political theory; and Carl J. Friedrich and Bertrand de Jouvenel provide perceptive (...) constructive attempts to grasp the nature of authority.--J. F. D. (shrink)

Since philosophy follows science in the modern age. Macmurray holds, the emergence of psychology demands a reformulation of the theory of the Self. In the past physics has led to a substance view of the self and biology to a theory of the self as organism; psychology, as a science of human behavior forms the groundwork for a metaphysics of agency which includes the theoretical and the organic, but as derivative, not as primary modes. These Gifford Lectures are provocative and (...) persuasive, and their historical arguments are subtle and illuminating.--J. F. D. (shrink)

A comprehensive empirical study of value, explicitly indebted to the work of R. B. Perry, but brought up-to-date by considerable refinement of method and by the inclusion of much recent material from anthropology, psychology, and the social sciences. Pepper considers the question of "how to make well-grounded decisions in human affairs". His analysis yields the concept of "selective systems" as the organizing principle of types of value and of value selection. Among these are personal, social, and cultural valuation patterns; the (...) system of natural selection is superimposed upon all the others.--J. F. D. (shrink)

Anyone who has ever tried to teach the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to undergraduate students will welcome this volume as a classroom aid. Using the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations as their basic sources, the authors have collected textual references under eighteen general topics. A partial list of the topics includes: "The Picture-Theory," "Naming," "Private Languages," "Meaning and Use," and "Philosophical Method." In each case there are cross references to the basic texts and, where applicable, references to the Notebooks, the (...) Blue and Brown Books, Zettel and Philosophische Bemerkungen. The great service that this text performs is that it illustrates the unity of Wittgenstein’s thought—a fact that is not immediately apparent in one’s first contact with either the Tractatus or the Investigations. An important feature of the workbook is that, in addition to the references to Wittgenstein’s own work, each topic includes references to classical and contemporary treatments of the issue so that Wittgenstein’s work will not be regarded as a "curiosity in the history of philosophy." On the facing page of each topic the authors have supplied a series of questions for discussion, some of which call for straightforward textual interpretation while others require sophisticated philosophical reasoning. Thus, depending on the competence of the students, the questions can be dealt with on a variety of levels. The program of topics is designed to emphasize the continuity of Wittgenstein’s thought, and to combat the widely held view that the Investigations is a repudiation of most of the doctrines of the Tractatus. Perhaps this is why several important topics, e.g., "Grammar," "Family Resemblances," and "Seeing As," are not treated at all. But there are other sources in which the textual references for these topics can be found, and the neglect of these topics does not take away from the usefulness of the text as a class aid.—J. J. F. (shrink)

Contemporary problems associated with the notion of determinism are focused by this symposium in three major areas of inquiry--philosophy, physical science, and law and moral responsibility. Determinism in modern physics is capably analyzed by a number of eminent contributors; but with respect to its significance for a philosophy of nature, little that is new or suggestive emerges from this analysis. The distinction between "hard" and "soft" determinism and its implications in legal and moral contexts provoke the most valuable part of (...) the discussion.--J. F. D. (shrink)

A desultory caricature, ostensibly socialist in tenor, of a well-known theory of justice.--J. F. D.

A collection of essays by a British master of Marxism, this book ranges over a wide variety of related topics--ethics, human rights, social theory, ideology, religion, and philosophy. The essays are reprints or adaptations of previous articles and addresses, and are unified by the author's sympathetic interpretation of Marxist thought. Especially instructive and timely is a chapter on Sartre and Marxism.--J. F. D.

A paperbound edition of an excellent interpretative study, originally published in 1950. Though the bibliography and index are considerably abridged in the present edition, the text is complete and has been improved by numerous minor revisions prepared by the author.--J. F. D.

There is no pretension here of discussing "art in general," or of forcing aesthetic categories on a uniquely "unphilosophic" art. The author, following an inquiry into the existential modes of concrete works of art, skillfully develops solutions to the vexing problems of individuality, identity, and authenticity of paintings. His realistic analysis of the creation of paintings, of their complex causal elements, suggests the conclusion that paintings are not imitations or reflections of nature, but are themselves natural objects. This conclusion necessitates (...) a fundamental distinction between paintings and pictures, and by virtue of this distinction the author seeks to overcome many of the "metapictorial" problems posed by religious and social art and especially by the "abstract" revolution in modern art. His case for modern painting and for its relevance for philosophic inquiry is both penetrating and enlightening.--J. F. D. (shrink)