This article suggests that the popular western image of the Buddha of the Pali suttas has been influenced by the opening pages of Walpola Rahula’s book What the Buddha Taught. It examines two closely linked qualities postulated by Rahula as attributes of the Buddha: that he is respectful of other religions and that he encourages freedom of thought in his followers. It finds Rahula’s evidence faulty at every turn and goes on to give examples of the Buddha’s and suttas’ disrespectful (...) attitude to other faiths, suggesting that in respect of its ‘exclusivism’, the Buddhism of the Pali suttas is no different from other religions. (shrink)

In this previously unpublished essay, Edward Caird attacks Spencer's Transfigured Realism, before defending an absolute idealist theory of the formation of self-consciousness. Along the way, Caird also considered the writings of Bishop George Berkeley, David Hume, Sir William Hamilton, J.S. Mill and Henry Sidgwick. Yet the primary foci of the essay were Herbert Spencer's writings, particularly First Principles, the second edition of Principles of Psychology and the third volume of Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative . It appears to follow from (...) Caird's 1874 review of the third volume of Spencer's Essays, a piece which concluded with the observation that: 'There are some other points of interest in Mr. Spencer's 'Replies,' particularly his strange representation of Kant's meaning , but it would take too much space to discuss the subject here.'. (shrink)

In this entry, the authors outline the goals of a "dynamic reference work", and explain how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has been designed to achieve those goals.

Buddhism Without Beliefs. Stephen Batchelor. Bloomsbury, London 1998. 127 pp. £9.99. ISBN 0 7475 3769 0.

The patient wished to receive an experimental drug that she was instrumental in developing. After her diagnosis, she had investigated treatments that might help her condition and discovered that a specific compound could be beneficial. To further the development of this potential drug, she obtained preclinical data, founded a company, and sought investment from venture capitalists. The company was about to begin phase I testing, but the clinical trial had not yet opened. In addition, she would not have been a (...) candidate for the study, as it excluded patients with advanced disease. To be able to administer this drug to her, the patient's team of oncologists was in the process of drafting an individual patient investigational new drug application, including the protocol for the drug's delivery, to the Food and Drug Administration. The company developing the drug had preliminarily agreed to provide it. This protocol was also under review by the institutional review board of the university, and the ethics committee was consulted to determine whether she should receive the drug. (shrink)

Mrs. Gaskell: (i) A circle is the set of points at a distance R from a central point and (ii) R must be greater than zero. Me: why do you include requirement (ii) in your definition? Mrs. Gaskell: Because a mere point is not a circle. Me: it is a degenerate circle. Mrs. Gaskell: It is just not a circle and I don't accept degenerate characters in my home. Me: no mathematician today accepts your definition. Mrs. Gaskell: That is not (...) an argument against my definition. That is just an appeal to follow the crowd. Me: your definition is inelegant. Mrs. Gaskell: I find my definition is elegant. I am being bullied into proceeding in a style that eludes all rule-specification. Me: at least one person thinks that elegance can be defined. Mrs. Gaskell: That is in metaphysics, not in geometry. Me: do you just move from field to field as if they were distinct games? "These are the rules of the novel game, and I am now an accomplished player of it. These are the rules of the epistolary game..." Mrs. Gaskell: this is not an objection. (shrink)

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan describes the right-wing intellectual as “no more than your Mr. Everyman, but your Mr. Everyman with greater strength of character.” It is tempting to apply the description to sensible English essayists, though they take up positions across the political spectrum. I shall raise two worries about this application, one of which is a puzzle for Lacan.

Hobbes' philosophy is one of the high points of a century of great philosophical achievement and Leviathan is recognized as one of the great classics of political theory. But the response from Hobbes's contemporaries to his secular analysis of society demonstrated the challenging nature of his ideas. This collection of many of the major contemporary responses to his thought by leading figures, mostly never republished, provides an outstanding source for assessing his immediate impact and the long-term importance of his work.

Edward Pols has made it his purpose in this perceptive study to deal with the aspects of Whitehead's philosophy that belong to traditional metaphysics. Mr. Pols closely examines Process and Reality, Whitehead's chief metaphysical work, and uses Science and the Modern World, Adventures of Ideas, and Modes of Thought to clarify difficulties with some of the doctrines in that work. Mr. Pols's primary concern is with freedom, and he uses this single theme to examine Whitehead's metaphysical system in depth.

Claims about the economic motivations of population groups in the American past are a staple of contemporary political argument, as polemicists of one side seek to impeach the moral standing of the other side by impeaching the moral standing of the forebears of the people on the other side. Sometimes such polemics are presented to the public in the guise of nonpartisan works of popular history. This paper, applying the training of a litigator in preparing an "opposition" or "reply" brief, (...) examines and exposes the "spin" in the economic history offered by popular author Nathaniel Philbrick in his 207 book Mayflower, in the sections of the book addressing the bloody conflict in New England in 1675-76 known as "King Philip's War." The paper uses the facts Mr. Philbrick himself reports in his book to refute his conclusions, showing that the English colonists fought in legitimate self-defense and not out of greed or racism, against certain (not all) Indian tribes whose warriors, in the words of one of their own chiefs, were like "sticks laid on a heap, till by the multitude of them a great fire came to be kindled.". (shrink)

I argue that Kathleen Stock omits crucial information in her 2021 book Material Girls, when she debates with Thomas Laqueur, information which enables readers to appreciate the excitement in relation to his historical discovery. I argue further that this is more than just a communicational problem. I then present a reason for rejecting the theory Laqueur uncovers: the initially strange theory that there is just one sex. But I argue that the one sex theory is unlikely to be killed off (...) by this reason. I also raise a concern about Stock’s interpretation of Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford. The writing style here is influenced by an essay by a medic. (shrink)

Murder as depicted in films/movies/the cinema typically involves this: a person struggles against a killer and is then killed. I am thinking of a murder scene involving two individuals, a killer and a victim. The victim runs away but is caught, or the victim struggles against the grip of the murderer but is killed. No doubt you have seen dozens of American films with scenes like this. But how realistic are they? I have a rival conception of what goes on, (...) which also challenges various films which do not have murder scenes which fit this description, e.g. Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock. (I should probably work on a precise definition of the film scenes challenged, but I will not do so now, because I am so eager to share my rival conception. Have you ever experienced such eagerness? “I am not disposed to form such conceptions, but I know people who are”???) The killer and the victim are walking together and they enter his apartment. They are conversing pleasantly but he disagrees with a point that she makes. She asks, "Would you like me to kill myself?" He says, "Would you prefer to live?" She says, "I do but if you want me to kill myself I can." He says, "Don't worry I will do it." He begins to strangle her. She asks, "Can you press a little harder?" Eventually he kills her. (The part of my title before the colon - is there a name for this? - quotes a line from Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan's song Mr. Tambourine Man. The "dozens" sentence is an echo of Milan Kundera, from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. A Russian speaker once asked me whether adding Mister is generally funny in English, because she does not find it funny. Adding Mister to Tambourine Man does not appear to produce a humorous effect. MRS. GASKELL: Don’t be late for work today, okay. ME: What I am trying to say is the cinema is technically good, but it doesn't have ideas. I have ideas. MRS. GASKELL: Whatever!). (shrink)

Mr. A. F. Bentley in his Linguistic Analysis of Mathematics has attacked the problem of the “embedding language” of mathematics; “This essay” we read in the Foreword, “deals with the language of mathematics, including not only the mathematical symbols, but also those immediately surrounding forms of expressions and assertions through which the symbols are developed, communicated and interpreted. The writer seeks to establish a firm construction for this embedding language.” Inevitably, in the first instance this embedding language must be, as (...) he puts it, “every-day language”; but this is sadly inadequate: “The every-day language reeks with philosophies—the absolutisms of pointing. It shatters at every touch of advancing knowledge. At its heart is paradox… Mathematicians know this. Yet they feel ever the compulsion to interpret their mathematics in terms of every-day language. So proceeding, their harvest is super-paradox.” Yet the writer recognizes after all that “every-day language is the basal medium of communication between men,” even when we seek to “extend standards of symbolic consistency into the regions of the embedding language.”. (shrink)

Barker and Achinstein misread Goodman's definitions of 'grue' and 'bleen'. If we stick to Goodman's definition of 'grue' as applying "to all things examined before t just in case they are green but to other things just in case they are blue" (my italics), and his parallel definition of 'bleen', then Barker and Achinstein's arguments are seen to be irrelevant. The result is to by-pass the question whether Mr. Grue sees things as grue rather than as green while showing that (...) it is possible for human conceptual schemes to employ different sensory terms. These two issues are separate. (shrink)

In his book "The Jews. Are they human?" Wyndham Lewis writes: "Is it with us a compensatory fact that, being more stupid in the mass, we shoot up higher, when we do shoot up, in dazzling concentrations of intellectual power, and so produce what we describe as 'genius'? For 'genius' with us is an individual thing. Whereas all Jews are a sort of little geniuses." (1939: 68) Here are some reactions of mine, not in order of importance I assume. (A) (...) The observation that the English are for the most part stupid with a few exceptions, of the most amazing level, is not new. (George Eliot - a woman, by the way - quotes Heinrich Heine making the observation when visiting; I presume it started with him.) (B) The observation along with Wyndham Lewis's remark that all Jews are little geniuses, in contrast with the English divide between many and few, is puzzling to me, because would you not expect a democratic culture (as English culture famously is) to be all little geniuses and a dictatorship to feature a leader genius and a set of stupid followers? (C) I wonder whether the appearance of a mysterious gap in English culture - you are either one of the stupid many or the next Newton, etc. - is the outcome of taboo rather than nature. (D) Elsewhere Wyndham Lewis more or less encourages this "social constructivist" explanation, which seems inconsistent to me. A year earlier, in his The Mysterious Mr. Bull, he writes of Churchill: "And he has committed the further sin - a mortal one in England - of making a disgusting exhibition of 'brains.' " (1938: 92) Given the taboo (or mortal sin), we have another explanation for why various people are struck by an absence in the continuum (to simplify) from very stupid to very clever when it comes to the English. Of course, there are people in-between, but they are not allowed to show it. ("But would not the taboo lead to everyone in England appearing stupid?" Maybe an exception is made for the opposite extreme.) How can Lewis later justifiably assert that the English don't produce in this in-between region given the taboo? (E) The taboo is puzzling to me, because sometimes (often even) it takes even more cleverness to hide one's cleverness. And once you see how, you think: what a clever fellow this is! (F) All little geniuses: the common man of England today (if we can speak of him) had this experience when watching Spanish football (Barcelona, the national team) in the 2010s. That is how far behind he is Wyndham Lewis in this matter. (shrink)

In his 1938 book The Mysterious Mr Bull, the disgraceful Wyndham Lewis writes, "Nothing can be got in England by direct action. Some day things may change, but at present there is no exception to that rule. In politics, art, business, law, or whatever it may be, if you do not recognize that you are engaging in a game - and a game with very elaborate rules, to break one of which is tantamount to moral misdemeanour, involving social disgrace - (...) you can make no headway. Such an eminent politician as Mr. Churchill has discovered that to his cost. And he has committed the further sin - a mortal one in England - of making a disgusting exhibition of "brains." " (1938: 92) Wyndham Lewis sounds like just a straight-talking guy giving a frank description of English culture or a part of it (at least as it struck him). But if what he says is true and he managed to publish this book from which the quotation comes (or get published), should we not regard him as a player in an elaborate game, at least metaphorically? The moment you take him as speaking truly you should lose confidence in him as a speaker of truth! (I have put this in "Liar Paradox" as the closest category.). (shrink)

Early on in the first volume of On What Matters, Derek Parfit praises the little-known utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick: a distant third behind Bentham and Mill. He quotes Sidgwick's criticism of F.H. Bradley: "really penetrating criticism, especially in ethics, requires a patient effort of sympathy which Mr Bradley has never learned to make, and a tranquillity of temper which he seems incapable of maintaining." Given the high praise he gives Sidgwick, it is difficult not to take Parfit as approving. But (...) I saw Parfit speak, in what was perhaps the last lecture before he died. And he did not seem tranquil at all. To my intuitive assessment, he is the most excitable person I have ever met. (I was at the back of the lecturer and I was shuffling a bit. I had decided not to go to the toilet before the lecture. After the lecture, during the question and answer session, he looked at me very aggressively. If he does that, I leave. I could not shake the intuition that he already knew me - or knew of me or whatever. I suspect Parfit kept large league tables of ethics, scoured all the journals himself, and even I figured on his table. To psychiatrists: if I don't write, I will fall back in the league table. I am surely struggling already.). (shrink)

It is, or was, the received wisdom amongst British anthropologists that one cannot do group worldview description in liberal Britain (but there is a decorated exception who is keen on this, namely Dame Marilyn Strathern - they don’t listen to her on this crucial matter, despite the appearance of a cult). I have my view and you have your view and he has his view and she has her view, and that is all you can say, rather than "They all (...) have this view." A view here is a proposition one can justifiably ascribe to a group (any set of individuals). Let us include should/ought statements as expressing such propositions, e.g. "I should not have laughed at the cross-looking woman who bobbed out of that little house." Now we find that individuals diagnosed with autism are functioning members of some communities, for example the stand-up comedy community here in the city of Manchester, UK (or they were until a couple of months ago?). Simon Baron-Cohen says that autistics display an extreme instance of the male brain, even if they happen to be female. The male brain is oriented towards systematizing over empathizing: creating or analysing systems, systems being composed of rules or laws (laws of nature or society). The majority of human males have it, hence its name, but if one has the dispositions, then one also has it. The best explanation for the success of these autistic comedians, it seems, is that they have a reliable grasp of the rules of comedy in this community. An example of such a rule might be: "If this joke is the favourite of this kind of audience (e.g. your Mum), then you should not make it at the large gong show called Beat the Frog, at the Frog & Bucket." ("Every time you make a joke, Terence, you violate a local taboo!"? I don't think it is a good idea to find the audience for that and do it at home, Mr. Oedipus.) It seems available to the anthropologist to specify these rules. Is this a worldview, or is it not? Well, the main clash between traditional group worldview description and focusing on diverse individuals is that the individuals don't share anything, or enough, to pursue the former project, but in the case under consideration one can describe these shared rules, whatever one calls the final report: a description of a shared worldview, shared rule system, a model for doing comedy, etc. (The details might matter in other contexts, by the way.) The title of this contribution quotes a song by the band Jane's Addiction. (My friend introduced me to them in school. The artist's touch!). (shrink)

The individual in history is always replaceable versus a football-management Youtube video I saw this video online on Youtube, but I cannot find it now, when I did a Youtube search "Jose Mourinho and young players" and even when I put the accent in. It is extremely well-crafted to my casual eye, and it has probably got a cartoon pen in it, and it argues with evidence for this: "José Mourinho does not like young players." The video seems to be (...) getting very involved with the character of José Mourinho. Now Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf, somewhere in his writings, introduces us to the view that in history the individual is always replaceable. (From Carlyle’s discussions?) Consider this problem, which occurs in many many games as an Englishman or economist would say. You are taking in young players to form a team: 17 of them, let's say. You will reduce them to 12, let's suppose. There are 2 very good players. One of them presents themselves as solid and mature. The other presents themselves as doing fancy tricks. They form a little team of their own. They pass to each other in the game more often. You are the manager but are you any more? The best solution in all societies hopefully is this: we have two teams and two managers and one manager takes Mr. Solid-and-Mature and the other manager takes Mr. Fancy-Tricks. No team has both kinds of player, because then the official manager cannot function. It is not about like or dislike: "He only likes young players if they are always mature." ("We know this problem so we come all disguised as one of these types/kinds. We are the Lords and Ladies from Terry Pratchett." LOL! Or: hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee.). (shrink)

The relation between natural necessity and entailment is an involved one indeed, and I am grateful to Mr. Oakes for giving me the opportunity to sharpen the nature of this relation. I shall not reply directly to him but shall develop briefly my own views in a way that contains an answer.

The issue is not whether we should or should not reduce the facts of literature to those of some other order or to make it causally dependent on such things as history, religion, or philosophy. These are the phantoms of forty years. Nor is the issue whether a contextualist can be flexible enough to do other kinds of criticism. Empson was a poor contextualist and an atrocious Freudian; and if the man was the same, the activites were not. One can (...) do both in turns and doing both tells us nothing about the flexibility of contextualism. Empson was indefatiable in multiplying ambiguities and notoriously indifferent to contexts, a fact that is drawing some attention and admiration today from some structuralists. Nor is the issue whether or not contextualism has been vindicated by other schools of criticism because it held that poetic language was ambivalent. The evidence that is brought forth from psychoanalysis to support this point undermines it. If Freudianism holds that poetic language is ambivalent - and it does - then it does not vindicate the contribution of contextualism, since it antedates contextualism by many years. And as a matter of fact, poetic ambivalence has been held by many critics and aestheticians - Croce is an example - long before New Criticism and contextualism. Nor is the issue, finally, wheher or not literature defamiliarizes usual or habituated language. I suppose it does, but this does not tell us very much. The term was used by the Russian Formalists to describe the process by which new literary forms come into being as they separate themselves from "conventionalized" or "canonized" forms. The Russian ostranenie could be translated as "deconventionalizing," just as well as the more usual "making strange," and the less usual "defamiliarization" that Mr. Hyman has taken from Lemon and Reis. The Formalists quickly abandoned the term because it was too vague and general to account for the increasingly complex process that was involved in the interchange of literary forms. The term was not used to describe the relationship of literary language to nonliterary language, as Mr. Hyman uses it. This is a New Critical reflex, which tends always to see the literary context as something opposed to something outside itself. But Mr. Hyman's misuse is also the right use because his misunderstanding and misapplication of the term takes us to the real issue, one that he has been unwilling or unable to face despite all the grace and complaisance of his argument. (shrink)

This article and checklist present the contents of the Spencer Album of Marcantonio Raimondi prints, long considered to be lost. By examining its composition and tracing its provenance from the Spencer collection at Althorp House to the John Rylands Library, Manchester, we offer new insight into how attitudes toward Marcantonio Raimondi‘s work evolved during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Great Britain. Our article also explores Victorian collecting practices and the importance of the graphic arts for Mrs Rylands‘s vision (...) for the Library to be dedicated to her late husband‘s memory. (shrink)

This skit of Bertrand Russell’s philosophy was originally published in 1918 by Russell’s correspondent friend Jourdain. The introduction explains that the contents purport to be lost papers written by Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll, a contemporary of Bertrand Russell. This politically humorous volume from the early 20 th Century parodies the writing style of Russell as well as his theories.