One might legitimately ask what reasons other than vanity could prompt an author to issue a collection of his previously published essays. The best reason, I think, is the belief that the essays hang together in such a way that, as a book, they produce a whole which is in a sense greater than the sum of its parts. When this happens, as I hope it does in the present case, it is because the essays pursue related themes in such a way that, together, they at least form a start toward the development of a systematic theory on the common foundations supporting the particular claims in the...
One might legitimately ask what reasons other than vanity could prompt an author to issue a collection of his previously published essays. The best re...
One might legitimately ask what reasons other than vanity could prompt an author to issue a collection of his previously published essays. The best reason, I think, is the belief that the essays hang together in such a way that, as a book, they produce a whole which is in a sense greater than the sum of its parts. When this happens, as I hope it does in the present case, it is because the essays pursue related themes in such a way that, together, they at least form a start toward the development of a systematic theory on the common foundations supporting the particular claims in the...
One might legitimately ask what reasons other than vanity could prompt an author to issue a collection of his previously published essays. The best re...
This book grew out of the lectures that I prepared for my students in epis temology at SUNY College at Brockport beginning in 1974. The conception of the problem of perception and the interpretation of the sense-datum theory and its supporting arguments that are developed in Chapters One through Four originated in these lectures. The rest of the manuscript was first written during the 1975-1976 academic year, while I held an NEH Fellowship in Residence for College Teachers at Brown University, and during the ensuing summer, under a SUNY Faculty Research Fellowship. I wish to express my...
This book grew out of the lectures that I prepared for my students in epis temology at SUNY College at Brockport beginning in 1974. The conception of ...
TItis book is the joint project of a philosopher, Lehrer, and a mathematician, Wagner. The book is, therefore, divided into a first part written by Lehrer, which is primarily philosophical, and a second part written by Wagner that is primarily formal. The authors were, however, influenced by each other throughout. Our book articulates a theory of rational consensus in science and society. The theory is applied to politics, ethics, science, and language. We begin our exposition with an elementary mathematical model of consensus developed by Lehrer in a series of articles 1976a, 1976b, 1977,...
TItis book is the joint project of a philosopher, Lehrer, and a mathematician, Wagner. The book is, therefore, divided into a first part written by Le...
My interest in the issues considered here arose out of my great frustration in trying to attack the all-pervasive relativism of my students in introductory ethics courses at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. I am grateful to my students for forcing me to take moral relativism and skepticism seriously and for compelling me to argue for my own dogmatically maintained version of moral objectivism. The result is before the reader. The conclusions reached here (which can be described either as a minimal objectivism or as a moderate verson of relativism) are considerably weaker...
My interest in the issues considered here arose out of my great frustration in trying to attack the all-pervasive relativism of my students in introdu...
The powers of seeing, hearing, re membering, distinguishing, judging, reason ing, are speculative powers; the power of ex ecuting any work of art or labour is active power. Thomas Reid I Some causal efficacy is due to persons. And, some of the causal efficacy due to persons is imparted by, not merely to, them. Further, some of the causal efficacy due to persons and imparted by them is imparted by and not merely to their physical, active bodies. Otherwise there is no agency. I will assume, with everyone at the outset, that the world contains agency of the kind found in some of a person's...
The powers of seeing, hearing, re membering, distinguishing, judging, reason ing, are speculative powers; the power of ex ecuting any work of art or l...
In this book, I discuss the question whether God exists, not as a Tillichian religious symbol, but as an actual person, albeit a person who is very different from you and me. My procedure is to examine arguments bdth for and against God's existence qua person and to assess their relative merits. I shall try to show that there is more evidence that God exists than that he does not. This position is, of course, rejected nowadays, even by most religious thinkers, who hold, for one reason or another, that evidence has nothing to do with religious belief, properly understood. My reply to these...
In this book, I discuss the question whether God exists, not as a Tillichian religious symbol, but as an actual person, albeit a person who is very di...
According to Ariel Meirav, the root of some of our most noteworthy difficulties in the metaphysics of concrete entities has been the traditional tendency to focus on the horizontal dimension of wholes (i.e. relations between the parts of a whole), and to neglect the vertical dimension (i.e. relations between the whole itself and its parts). In Wholes, Sums and Unities, Meirav formulates a critique of widely accepted mereological assumptions, presents a new conception of wholes as Unities', and demonstrates the advantages of this new conception in treating a variety of...
According to Ariel Meirav, the root of some of our most noteworthy difficulties in the metaphysics of concrete entities has been the traditional tende...
Jeffrie G. Murphy's second collection of essays further pursues the topics of punishment and retribution that were explored in his 1979 collection Retribution, Justice and Therapy. Murphy now explores these topics in the context of political philosophy as well as moral philosophy, and he now begins to develop some doubts about the version of the retributive theory with which his name has long been associated.
Jeffrie G. Murphy's second collection of essays further pursues the topics of punishment and retribution that were explored in his 1979 collection
This book explains our common-sense understanding of perception and then defends a representative theory of perception as an alternative form of understanding more in accord with the results of science. It also argues against color realism and defends the view that nothing has color. This view is color skepticism. A chapter is devoted to defending color skepticism against a number of objections. The book ends with a discussion of our concept of knowledge and attempts to show that the representative theory of perception is not as vulnerable to skeptical arguments as has been assumed. The book...
This book explains our common-sense understanding of perception and then defends a representative theory of perception as an alternative form of under...