10 Moral Paradoxes

Saul Smilansky, "10 Moral Paradoxes"
Blackwell Publishing; 1 edition (4 Jun 2007) | ISBN: 140516087X | 160 pages | PDF | 1,1 Mb

If a severe misfortune makes your life better, was it unfortunate? Could it be that 50 per cent of competent medical doctors ought promptly to retire? Might a justice system threaten with unjust punishment, to avert the need for punishment? Could things become too good, morally? Can terrorists morally complain if innocent people they care about are harmed? The importance of paradox in the study of philosophy, from metaphysics to logic, is evident from the abundant literature on the subject. But until now, very little critical study of paradox within ethics has been available. The first of its kind, this cutting edge work of philosophical ethics makes a powerful case for the centrality of moral paradox. Presenting ten diverse and original moral paradoxes, the book challenges some of our deepest moral views. This innovative volume also asks whether the existence of moral paradox is damaging or beneficial, and explores more generally what paradoxicality can teach us about morality and life. Concise and provocative, "10 Moral Paradoxes" presents analytic moral philosophy in an engaging way; posing new questions, proposing possible solutions, and challenging the reader to wrestle with the paradoxes.

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Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments

Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments
University of California Press | ISBN 0520232496 | 2004 Edition | PDF | 171 Pages | 3.2 MB

Western philosophers have traditionally concentrated on theory as the means for expressing knowledge about a variety of phenomena. This absorbing book challenges this fundamental notion by showing how objects themselves, specifically scientific instruments, can express knowledge. As he considers numerous intriguing examples, Davis Baird gives us the tools to "read" the material products of science and technology and to understand their place in culture. Making a provocative and original challenge to our conception of knowledge itself, Thing Knowledge demands that we take a new look at theories of science and technology, knowledge, progress, and change. Baird considers a wide range of instruments, including Faraday's first electric motor, eighteenth-century mechanical models of the solar system, the cyclotron, various instruments developed by analytical chemists between 1930 and 1960, spectrometers, and more.

"From the air pump to the dynamo to the cyclotron, machines have played key roles in the development of scientific knowledge. Here, for the first time, Davis Baird looks at those machines as actual forms of scientific knowledge. Baird moves adeptly from historical case study to philosophical explanation in this convincing study of the material culture of science."--Ann Johnson, Department of History, Fordham University

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Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists

Jerome H. Barkow, Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists
Oxford University Press | ISBN 0195130022 | 2005 | PDF | 1 MB | 300 pages

In The Adapted Mind, Jerome Barkow, along with Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, set out to redefine evolutionary psychology for the social sciences and to create a new agenda for the next generation of social scientists. While biologically oriented psychologists quickly accepted the work, social scientists in psychology and researchers in anthropology and sociology, who deal with the same questions of human behavior, were more resistant. Missing the Revolution is an invitation to researchers from these disciplines who, in Barkow's view, have been missing the great evolution-revolution of our time to engage with Darwinian thought, which is now so large a part of the non-sociological study of human nature and society.

Barkow asks the reader to put aside the preconceptions and stereotypes social scientists often have of the "biological" and to take into account a powerful paradigm that is far away from those past generations who would invoke a vocabulary of "genes" and "Darwin" as justification for genocide. The evolutionary perspective, Barkow maintains, provides no particular support for the status quo, no rationalizations for racism or any other form of social inequality. "Cultural" cannot possibly be opposed to "biological" because culture and society are the only means we have of expressing our evolved psychology; social-cultural constructionism is not only compatible with an evolutionary approach but demanded by it. To marshal evidence for his argument, Barkow has gathered together eminent scholars from a variety of disciplines to present applications of evolutionary psychology in a manner intended to illustrate their relevance to current concerns for social scientists.

The contributors include, among others, evolutionary psychologist Anne Campbell, a Darwinian feminist who reaches out to feminist social cosntructionists; sociologist Ulica Segarstrale, who analyzes the opposition of the "cultural left" to Darwinism; sociologist Bernd Baldus, who criticizes evolutionists for ignoring agency; criminologist Anthony Walsh, who presents a biosocial criminology; and primatologists Lars Rodseth and Shannon A. Novak, who reveal an unexpected uniqueness to human social organization. Missing the Revolution is a challenge to scholars to think critically about a powerful social and intellectual movement which insists that the theoretical perspective that has been so successful when applied to the behavior of other animal species can be applied to our own.

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Religion in Public Life: Must Faith Be Privatized?

Roger Trigg, Religion in Public Life: Must Faith Be Privatized?
Oxford University Press | ISBN 0199279802 | 2007 | PDF | 0.7 MB | 275 pages

How far can religion play a part in the public sphere, or should it be only a private matter? Roger Trigg examines this question in the context of today's pluralist societies, where many different beliefs clamour for attention. Should we celebrate diversity, or are matters of truth at stake? In particular, can we maintain our love of freedom, while cutting it off from religious roots? In societies in which there are many conflicting beliefs, the place of religion is a growing political issue. Should all religions be equally welcomed in the public square?

Favouring one religion over others may appear to be a failure to treat all citizens equally, yet for citizens in many countries their Christian heritage is woven into their way of life. Whether it is the issue of same-sex marriages, the right of French schoolgirls to wear Islamic headscarves, or just the public display of Christmas trees, all societies have to work out a consistent approach to the public influence of religion.

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Tracking the Meaning of Life: A Philosophical Journey

Yuval Lurie, Tracking the Meaning of Life: A Philosophical Journey
University of Missouri Press | ISBN 0826216528 | 2006 | PDF | 2 MB | 338 pages

This book relates a philosophical journey undertaken by the author in the hope of resolving certain concerns about his life that manifested themselves as quandaries about the meaning of life. Being concerned with my life and finding myself also perplexed by the question about the meaning of life, I turned first to see what other philosophers had to say about the question. This move turned in time into a lengthy philosophical journey that has extended over various regions of thought, a journey, in which, as may be seen, I track an extensive philosophical effort to deal with the question about the meaning of life.

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Thinking about God in an Age of Technology

George Pattison, Thinking about God in an Age of Technology
Oxford University Press | ISBN 0199279772 | 2005 | PDF | 1 MB | 288 pages

Taking up the critique of theology found in the work of Heidegger, George Pattison argues for a model of thinking about God that would not be liable to the charge of `enframing' that Heidegger sees as characteristic of technological thinking. He constructs his case in relation to particular issues in bioethics, the place of theology in the university, the arts, and the contemporary experience of living in the city.

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What God Knows: Time and the Question of Divine Knowledge

Harry Lee Poe, J. Stanley Mattson, What God Knows: Time and the Question of Divine Knowledge
Baylor University Press | ISBN 1932792120 | 2006 | PDF | 1 MB | 226 pages

When Einstein destroyed the old view of the universe, he destroyed the old notion of time with it. His new theory explained that time is a dimension of the physical cosmos like space, and like space it is relative. This collection of essays by theologians, physicists, and philosophers explores the theoretical aspects of the problem of time and its implications for faith and the understanding of God.

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Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy

Tom Sorell, G. A. J. Rogers, Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy
Oxford University Press | ISBN 0199278997 | 2005 | PDF | 0.7 MB | 240 pages

Philosophy written in English is overwhelmingly analytic philosophy, and the techniques and predilections of analytic philosophy are not only unhistorical but anti-historical, and hostile to textual commentary. Analytic usually aspires to a very high degree of clarity and precision of formulation and argument, and it often seeks to be informed by, and consistent with, current natural science. In an earlier era, analytic philosophy aimed at agreement with ordinary linguistic intuitions or common sense beliefs, or both. All of these aspects of the subject sit uneasily with the use of historical texts for philosophical illumination. How, then, can substantial history of philosophy find a place in analytic philosophy?

If history of philosophy includes the respectful, intelligent use of writings from the past to address problems that are being debated in the current philosophical journals, then history of philosophy may well belong to analytic philosophy. But if history of philosophy is more than this; if it is concerned with interpreting and reinterpreting a certain canon, or perhaps making a case for extending this canon, its connection with analytic philosophy is less clear. More obscure still is the connection between analytic philosophy and a kind of history of philosophy that is unapologetically antiquarian.

This is the kind of history of philosophy that emphasises the status of a philosophical text as one document among others from a faraway intellectual world, and that tries to acquaint us with that world in order to produce understanding of the document. In this book, ten distinguished historians of philosophy, mostly trained in the analytic tradition, explore the tensions between, and the possibilities of reconciling, analytic philosophy and history of philosophy.

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The Myth of Morality (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

The Myth of Morality (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)
Cambridge University Press | ISBN 0521036259 | 2007-04-23 | PDF | 263 pages | 777 KB

Richard Joyce argues in this study that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed. At the heart of ordinary moral judgments is a notion of moral inescapability, or practical authority, which, upon investigation, cannot be reasonably defended. He asserts, moreover, that natural selection is to blame, in that it has provided us with a tendency to invest the world with values that it does not contain, and demands that it does not make. This original and innovative book will appeal to readers interested in the problems of moral philosophy.

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Language and Death

Language and Death | Giorgio Agamben
University of Minnesota Press | English | ISBN: 0816649235 | 136 pages | RAR | 3.73 Mb

Explores the symbiosis of philosophy and literature in understanding negativity.

A formidable and influential work, Language and Death sheds a highly original light on issues central to Continental philosophy, literary theory, deconstruction, hermeneutics, and speech-act theory. Focusing especially on the incompatible philosophical systems of Hegel and Heidegger within the space of negativity, Giorgio Agamben offers a rigorous reading of numerous philosophical and poetic works to examine how these issues have been traditionally explored. Agamben argues that the human being is not just “speaking” and “mortal” but irreducibly “social” and “ethical.”

“Makes a remarkable contribution. Language and Death combines erudition with analytical rigor and is most provocative. Giorgio Agamben deploys an impressive knowledge of the history of Western thought in his analysis of the place of negativity in philosophical discourse.” —Robert Harrison, Stanford University

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Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul

Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul
Oxford University Press, USA | ISBN 0198752040 | 1999 Edition | DJVU File | 490 pages | 6MB

The aim of the series is to bring together important recent writing in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly. The editor of each volume contributes an introductory essay on the items chosen and on the questions with which they deal. A selective bibliography is appended as a guide to further reading.

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A History of Greek Philosophy - Later Plato & the Academy

A History of Greek Philosophy - Later Plato & the Academy
Cambridge University Press | ISBN 0521200032 | 1978 Edition | DJVU File | 556 pages | 5.4 MB
All volumes of Professor Guthrie’s great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie’s work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.

All volumes of Professor Guthrie’s great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie’s work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.

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A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000

A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000
Oxford University Press, USA | ISBN 0199260168 | 2003 Edition | PDF | 342 pages | 1MB

`This history of American philosophy from 1720 through 2000 displays the erudition, philosophical sensitivity, and boldness that we have come to associate with the work of Bruce Kuklick, the premier historian of American philosophy ... an invaluable reference source' Richard M. Gale, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews........
Offering a thoughtful, inclusive overview of American philosophical activity from colonial divines to present-day academics, Kuklick, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania, defines philosophy expansively as "more or less systematic writing about the point of our existence, and our ability to understand the world of which we are a part." This broad definition allows him to include the philosophical aspects of writers often neglected in philosophy surveys, including Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Dense but clear, the book grounds its panoply of thinkers in their social context, particularly that of an evolving academic establishment for which Kuklick has some choice words ("constipated arrogance," in one case). The history is broken into three overlapping periods: a religiously inspired era (1720-1868), in which ministers, theologians and other amateurs shared equal status with professional philosophers; the "Age of Pragmatism" (1859-1934), dominated by Peirce, James and Dewey; and the contemporary "professional" period (1912-2000), in which American philosophy became more refined and internationally prestigious, but also more fragmented and remote from the public. Running themes include the "long circuitous march from a religious to a secular vision of the universe," the long-running match between idealism and materialism; and the frequent inattention of American philosophy to political and social concerns. Admittedly selective, the book becomes too much so at the end: the last 40 years are largely reduced to Kuhn and Rorty, skimming over almost everything else. Yet the book generally succeeds in identifying broad trends while spotlighting curious and significant points. Readers looking for a grounded narrative of American thought's development and contexts will find this book an accurate and compelling guide.

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Donald Davidson (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)

Kirk Ludwig , Donald Davidson (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)
Cambridge University Press | ISBN 0521793823 | 2003 | PDF | 1.2 MB | 256 pages
Written by a distinguished roster of philosophers, this volume includes chapters on truth and meaning; the philosophy of action; radical interpretation; philosophical psychology; knowledge of the external world; other minds and our own minds; and the implications of Davidson's work for literary theory. Donald Davidson has been one of the most influential figures in modern analytic philosophy and has made significant contributions to a wide range of subjects. Embodied in a series of landmark essays stretching over nearly 40 years, his principal work exhibits a unity rare among philosophers contributing on so many diverse fronts. Kirk Ludwig, the recipient of two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has taught at the University of Florida's Department of Philosophy since 1995. His areas of research specialization include philosophy of language, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. He has contributed chapters to a number of volumes on these topics as well as published articles in Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Mind and Language, and elsewhere.

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