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Examining the ontological nature of social groups and the way in which groups are and should be regarded within moral deliberation, this book makes an original contribution to the field of social philosophy. Tackling a fundamental metaphysical question that has either been ignored or unsatisfactorily addressed: 'what kind of thing is a social group?', Sheehy argues for an ontological realism of groups and then goes on to discuss the practical and moral question of whether groups can be regarded as the bearers of moral status, rights and moral judgements. ... Read more

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Historical claims to modernity in the 5th, 12th and 17th centuries were articulated through the ethos of an idealized past. This work discusses current concepts of modernity that have been shaped by the historical decline of social practices such as feudal servitude and religious piety. ... Read more

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This work examines the liberal-communitarian debate from a new perspective. Communitarians argue that liberal theory neglects the significance of communities for the lives of their members. An examination of that argument reveals that there are deficiencies in the communitarian account of community. Identifying and remedying those deficiencies is the key concern of this book. The book addresses the deficiencies using Sartre's anarchist theory derived largely but not exclusively from an interpretation of the "Critique of Dialectical Reason". Sartre champions the individual yet criticizes liberalism. The tension arising from these two apparently disparate positions makes for a fruitful argument, enhanced by the connections made with Aristotelian and feminist theory, Hobbes and Rousseau. Finally, a method is developed for inquiring into the nature of associations which, it is argued, should interest communitarians concerned to avoid deficiencies in their account of community. ... Read more

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The twin notions of fairness and unfairness have received little study in the field of philosophy but figure prominently in classic moral and political discourse. The author redresses the balance in this exploration of fairness. ... Read more

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In a naive sense it seems that there could be nothing simpler than to 'know thyself' yet a philosophical elucidation of the process by which one comes to know oneself is quite elusive. In this book Gregg Ten Elshof deals with the epistemology of introspection; whether and to what extent self-knowledge can appropriately be thought of as a species of perception. Assessing the suggestion that we, at least sometimes, come to acquire significant knowledge about ourselves, by observation, in very much the same way that we sometimes come to know things about the external world; this book explains the perceptual/observational model of introspection and contrasts it with its more prominent competitors. Ten Elshof examines in detail rival conceptions of the epistemology of self-knowledge such as those proposed by Searle, Dennett and Lyons yet concludes by insisting that the arguments levelled against the perceptual/observational view have not been decisive and that it deserves to be taken seriously as a viable competing model. ... Read more

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Beginning with a sustained argument against the tenseless theory of time and against McTaggart's A series/B series distinction, the author of this essay goes on to provide a non-paradoxical, tensed, phenomenologically-based account of the "going on" or "taking place" of events in time that escapes the paradoxes endemic to "passage" as understood via the A series/B series distinction. The author then turns his attention to the other main aim of the essay, which is to seek an understanding of time adequate to those more "embodied" conceptions of the self that place character, and with it the "constitutive attachments" or "ground projects" of individual life circumstance, at the centre of the self. This involves a "redrawing" or the self informed by a wider conception of the will than the one we have inherited via Descartes and Kant, by an account of ground projects, and by the theory of the tripartite psyche in Plato's "Republic". It also involves extending the account of time developed in the second chapter in a way that draws on the notion of "ecstatic temporality" that originates with Heidegger. ... Read more

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Charting new territory in the interface between science and ethics, "Science and Virtue" is a study of how the scientific mentality can affect the building of character, or the attainment of virtue by the individual. Drawing on inspiration from virtue-ethics and virtue-epistemology, Caruana argues that science is not just a system of knowledge but also an important factor determining a way of life. This book goes beyond the normal strategy evident in the science-ethics realm of examining specific ethical dilemmas posed by scientific innovations. Here Caruana deals with more fundamental issues, uncovering morally significant tendencies within the very core of the scientific mentality and explaining how science, its method, history and explanatory power can shape a conception of the good life. ... Read more

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This work is a response to many issues, three in particular. The first is the status of "feeling" in political and ethical philosophy. This "feeling" is not emotional but more a question of an orientation in and towards the world. The book looks at how humans recognize the suffering of others, and why it has been felt necessary to enfranchize all manner and groups of people. The second issue stems from this feeling for the "Other", that somehow we must get beyond autonomy. The third issues is one of economics and the status of both politics and ethics. The book covers globalization and the rise of corpratism as the new form of social governance, which means that ethical and political problems are reduced to problems of accountancy. This book does not aim to resolve these issues but merely to state them. ... Read more

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Intermediate quantifiers express logical quantities which fall between Aristotle's two quantities of categorical propositions - universal and particular. "Few", "many" and "most" express the most commonly referred to intermediate quantifiers, but this book argues that an infinite number can be understood through a deeper examination of the logical nature of all intermediate quantifiers. Presenting and analyzing the logical and linguistic features of intermediate quantifiers, in a fashion typical of traditional logic, Philip L. Peterson presents an account integrating the logic and semantics of intermediate quantifiers with the two traditional quantities by traditional methods. Having introduced the basic idea of how to approach the task in the first chapter, with heavy emphasis on the linguistic meanings and ordinary uses of English intermediate quantifier expressions, Peterson then undertakes the task of completely integrating the three basic intermediate quantities into traditional logic in the following chapter.Drawing on the work of Robert carnes and taking a critical look at James McCawley's grammatical analysis, the author then provides ruther revisions, extensions and explorations into logical inference, linguistic meaning, algebraic methods and rules of infinite-quality syllogism to reach the conclusion that a new approach to foundations of mathematics, based on the syllogistic logic of quantifiers, is possible to produce a new explanation of classical distribution and an extension of "infinite-quantity" syllogistic to relations. Considerable attention has been paid over the years to "generalized quantifiers" and this completion of an explanation for extending traditional syllogistic logic to handle intermediate quantifiers offers insights for those studying across areas of logic, linguistics and the philosophy or semantics of natural language. ... Read more

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This is a clear and well-written guide to the philosophy of laws of nature and offers a critical survey of the main positions debated in the current literature on the nature of 'laws of nature'. ... Read more

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An examination of human cognition, arguing that cognitive skills are dispositional in nature. Opposing influential views in modern Anglo-American philosophy, Gundersen starts from the received premiss that knowledge is related to belief, justification and truth, and goes on to clarify and improve on these ingredients' exact nature and internal association. Exploring a wide range of arguments offered by influential contributors in the field of modal epistemology, Gundersen argues that external conditions are secondary in developing and cultivating cognitive competence and that the fulcrum of the cognitive investigation is the fascinating interplay between and cultivation of internal cognitive powers. ... Read more

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Engaging critically with the work of Habermas, Gadamer and Foucault, Healy makes the case for a dialogical approach to rationality as a fitting response to post-foundationalist needs. ... Read more

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Is it important for quality of life that the preferences we satisfy are rational and well-informed? Standard preferentialist theories allege that a person's preferences and their satisfaction are the correct measure of well-being. In preference-sensitive theories preferences are important but do not count for everything. This raises the question of whether we ought to make demands on these preferences. In this book, Egonsson presents a critical analysis of the 'full-information account of the good', which claims that only the satisfaction of rational and fully informed preferences has value for a person. The problems he deals with include: How is an information requirement to be formulated and shaped? Is it possible to design a requirement that is neutral to the agent's epistemic situation? Is the requirement reasonable? Does it make sense to claim that a person is better off if we satisfy the preferences she would have had in some merely hypothetical circumstances? This is an important new book on preference rationality which will be of great interest to academics and students of ethics, quality of life and rationality. ... Read more

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Debates about individualism and holism, reductionism and phenomenology and naturalism and humanism all turn on how we answer the basic questions about the nature of human agency.This book argues that the traditional emphasis on the accuracy of a given theory of human agency has systematically obscured the normative dimension in these theories and that recognizing this normative dimension allows us to see that a pragmatic approach to theories of agency, either in social science or moral philosophy, is more appropriate.As well as offering a vigorous presentation of the pragmatic-therapeutic account of agency Wisnewski also engages critically with three rival accounts from Nietzsche, Foucault and Rorty. ... Read more

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Frege's invention of the predicate calculus has been the most influential event in the history of modern logic. This book challenges the position in contemporary logic and philosophy of language of the predicate calculus claiming that it is based on mistaken assumptions. ... Read more

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Can the intellect or the intellectual faculty be its own object of thought, or can it not think or apprehend itself? This work explores the ancient treatments of the question of self-intellection - an important theme in ancient epistemology and of considerable interest to later philosophical thought. The manner in which the ancients dealt with the intellect apprehending itself, took them into both the metaphysical and epistemological domains with reflections on questions of thinking, identity and causality. Ian Crystal traces the origins from which the concept of self-intellection springs, by examining Plato's account of the epistemic subject and the emergence of self-intellection through the Aristotelian account. The final part of the text explores the problem of how the intellect apprehends itself, and its resolution including Plotinus' reformulation and the dilemma raised by Sextus Empiricus. Crystal concludes that Plotinus recasts the metaphysical structures of Plato and Aristotle in such a way that he casts the concept of self-intellection in an entirely new light and offers a solution to the problem. ... Read more

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John Rawls' pioneering work of political philosophy "A Theory of Justice" has had far reaching influence on modern liberal political philosophy. Rawls' principles of justice as fairness: the principle of liberty, the principle of fair equality of opportunity and the famous 'difference principle' have been both heavily criticized and incorporated into other political theories. In the book Paivansalo both presents a deep analysis of the whole Rawlsian canon and builds upon and goes beyond Rawls' conception by introducing a fresh theoretical framework to clarify and modify different balances of the elements of Rawlsian justice. Justice as fairness is analyzed into its parts and elements, critically examined to find the strongest most favourable interpretations of each principle and in this light the principles are reconstructed and rebalanced in such a way as to resist the most significant criticisms of the Rawlsian project. ... Read more

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Presenting an original and thought provoking interpretation of Heidegger's philosophical anthropology, this book offers a comprehensive interpretation of the conception of human sensibility in early and later Heidegger. Beginning by isolating Heidegger's understanding of the Kantian idea of pure intuition, Moyle suggests that the early and later work present radically different answers to the underlying problem that this idea generates. This book offers an original perspective on the relation between early and later Heidegger and a distinctively different approach to later Heidegger's ontology of language. Moyle acknowledges Heidegger's significant debt to the Romantic tradition and takes seriously his later philosophical claim that thinking is the highest affirmation of life. On the other hand, Moyle challenges the assumption that Heidegger's later work falls back from philosophy into a poetic form of mysticism and argues that the work on language can be used constructively in contemporary philosophy, especially in relation to the recent work of John McDowell. ... Read more

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The aim of this volume is to examine a number of different theories of the self explicitly set out in, or implied by, the work of Descartes, Hume, Kant, Max Stirner, Heidegger, Sartre, and R.D. Laing. The seven theorists are divided into two camps representing two distinctly different schools of thought. The first group, which includes Descartes, Hume, Kant, Sartre and Stirner, represents a tradition that has dominated western philosophy since Descartes, and the author argues that, although these five differ in many ways, they share certain approaches and a dualism that critically influences their theories of the self. The second group, which comprises Heidegger and Laing, represents a radical departure from the tradition and a rejection of the approach shared by its members, and consequently a very different understanding of selfhood. ... Read more

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Young posits the idea of 'freedom in community' and traces its origin back to Aristotle. Taking as his premise that humans are deeply social beings who live their lives intricately interwoven with each other, he examines what type of political community is relevant for us in this post-Classical, post-Enlightenment and, indeed, post-Existential world. Identifying the failure of traditional 'statist' models of politics, Young instead argues for a civil society: a globally interlinked and free set of liberal communities as the best context for nourishing human flourishing. In this way we can achieve a proper setting for Eudaimonia in a modern sense. ... Read more