Bücher der Reihe Philosophical Studies Series

The conception of a right that Berger defends derives from J ohn Stuart Mill and is captured by what he calls "the rights formula": to have a right is to have important interests that society ought to protect as a matter of general rule (pp.

This volume addresses the complex interplay between the conditions of an agent's personal autonomy and the constitution of itself. It includes an instructive confrontation between subjective and intersubjective approaches to personal autonomy.

KEITH LEHRER MARSHALL SWAIN IX INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION TO EPISTEMOLOGICAL SKEPTICISM Many philosophers try to refute skepticism, but few try to give a precise characterization of the thesis they attack.

'" Another, an oratio obliqua or indirect speech report, consists in the response 'He said that he wants us to write a paper reconciling . Since 'says' is construable in these various ways, it is at best unhelpful to write something like 'Alice said "Your paper is two days late", thereby saying that Tom's paper was two days late.

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 particular articles.

Never theless, to the author's eye they have unities of theme and development which, if they fail to give them the true identity of the book, may (to adapt a metaphor from Hume) generate those smooth and easy transi tions of the imagination which arouse dispositions appropriate to sur veying such identical objects.

Emotion in Aesthetics is the first book on aesthetics to provide an extensive theory of emotion; a well-developed naturalistic theory of ethics as applied to aesthetics and emotion. As a result there is still much confusion in aesthetics about aesthetic emotion and related concepts, such as the expression theory of emotion.

This book grew out of the lectures that I prepared for my students in epis temology at SUNY College at Brockport beginning in 1974. Brown for a useful correspondence concerning key arguments in Chapters Five and Seven, to Keith Lehrer for a criticism of one of my arguments that led me to make some important revisions, and to Roderick M.

What kind of properties are moral qualities, such as rightness, badness, etc? These "moral error theorists" argue that the world simply does not contain the kind of properties or objects necessary to render our moral judgments true.

Singular reference is a crucial philosophical topic. This book explains in detail why in the past some philosophers favored a descriptivist approach to this matter and why in more recent times others support a referentialist standpoint.

The final chapters explore in detail the implications of Moore's theory for individual moral conduct -- in particular, his denial of self-evident moral rules; and his account of what moral agents should do in situations where such rules apply and in situations where they do not.

If act utilitarianism were true, we appar ently could infer that the utility of A & B is higher than that of A, and higher than that of B (because A & B is obligatory, and the other acts are alternatives to A & B).

It goes on to offer a new way to group the dialogues, based on important facts in the lives and philosophical practices of Socrates - the main speaker in most of Plato's dialogues - and of Plato himself.

With one exception, all of the papers in this volume were originally presented at a conference held in April, 1978, at The Ohio State University. The excep tion is the paper by Wilfrid Sellars, which is a revised version of a paper he originally published in the Journal of Philosophy, 1973.

When we ask whether something exists, we expect a yes or no answer, not a further query about what kind of existence, how much of it, whether we mean existence for you or existence for me, or whether we are asking about some property which it might have.

Our world is full of composite objects that persist through time: dogs, persons, chairs and rocks. But in virtue of what do a bunch of little objects get to compose some bigger object, and how does that bigger object persist through time?

We restricted the contributors to former students of Chisholm as a special tribute to his acknowledged as a teacher of philosophy. It is, we think, appropriate that his students should reserve for themselves the privilege of honoring Chisholm in this way as his 60th birthday draws near.

A collection of essays pursuing further the topics of punishment and retribution that were explored in the author's previous book "Retribution, Justice and Therapy". The current volume discusses these themes in the context of political philosophy as well as moral philosophy.

His encouragement and friendship were of great value to me and I wish to express my thanks to him here. I wish to express my thanks to Hans Schuurmans of the Computer Center at Tilburg University for his patient and cheerful assistance in preparing the manuscript.

Papers deriving from and related to a Workshop on the Philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1976

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.

Every two years since 1989, an international colloquium on cognitive science is held in Donostia - San Sebastian, attracting the most important researchers in that field.

This book brings together philosophical approaches to cooperation and collective agency with research into human-machine interaction and cooperation from engineering, robotics, computer science and AI.

This book presents a novel theory of fictional entities which integrates the work of previous authors. It puts forward a new metaphysical conception of the nature of these entities, according to which a fictional entity is a compound entity built up from both a make-believe theoretical element and a set-theoretical element.

This book provides a formal ontology of senses and the belief-relation that grounds the distinction between de dicto, de re, and de se beliefs as well as the opacity of belief reports.

One of the central areas of concern in late twentieth-century philosophy is the debate between Realism and anti-Realism. It is argued that this approach enables us to clarify the exact nature of the empirical evidence that would be required to establish Realism in any area.

One of the most basic themes in the philosophy of language is referential uptake, viz., the question of what counts as properly `understanding' a referring act in communication.

This sharply focused monograph thus has a dual aim: coping with a crucial problem that turns out to be a lot tougher than is generally supposed, and presenting a precise and rigorous demonstration of an unfamiliar and exciting philosophical approach.

This is a unique book on terrorism that openly, rationally and passionately delves into what underlies terrorism, what in some cases justifies it on ethical grounds, and how terrorism might be dealt with successfully.

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.