John Joseph Haldane

In opposition to compatibilism, it is argued that the thesis of universal causal determinism is at odds with the idea of free action. Free agency involves liberty of indifference -that is to say the non-determination of action by antecedent events-. Action issues from habitual behavioural tendencies; but this relation is neither deterministic nor random: it is one of propensity, in this case conditioned by practical rationality. In general, specifying reasons for action is not identifying antecedent causes but describing the intentional content of action -saying what kind of behaviour it is-. Practical reasons directs the agent's behaviour towards ends conceived of as good; it is further question whether, as Plato suggest, the end of action, standardly, is a, or the, good

Abstract:Writing a little over a decade ago of developments in educational philosophy, R. F. Dearden remarked on the dearth of alternative approaches to that of conceptual analysis which predominated, at least in Anglophone cultures, at that time. One possible avenue of enquiry which he identified as conspicuously absent in this respect was the development of a distinctively Catholic approach to problems of educational philosophy, observing that a work of the mid‐war years, Maritain's Education at the Crossroads (1943), appeared to be well nigh the only modem effort in this direction. More than a decade on from this, in a climate no longer exclusively dominated by conceptual analysis – indeed, in which there is unprecedented interest in a wealth of different schools, traditions and approaches to philosophy of education – Dearden's remarks about the absence of a distinctively Catholic perspective still apply. In the following essay, therefore, the authors have undertaken, via a critical analysis of Maritain's educational speculations of half a century ago, to try to discern some of the principal issues and considerations which would need to be addressed in the interests of identifying a distinctively Catholic educational philosophy.

Notwithstanding that there is now widespread interest in the rights of victims, little has been written about the theoretical justification of state compensation. Here we offer an initial exploration of the field in the hope that others might venture further and examine the points at which issues of compensation connect with other general and specific themes in social and political philosophy. For example, there has been much discussion about communitarian conceptions of civil society but the practical implications of such views, other than those relating to multiculturalism, have been largely ignored. The application of theory to social policy needs to take account of existing laws and institutions and these vary from one society and jurisdiction to another. In what follows we are principally concerned with the situation obtaining in the United Kingdom but the underlying issues are general ones [1].

Anyone who comes to read some of Aquinas' works and at the same time looks around for modern discussions of them will be struck by two things: first, the greater part of the latter is the product of American and European Catholic neo-scholasticism; and second, that, with a few distinguished exceptions,1 what is contributed by writers of the analytical tradition is often a blend of uninformed generalizations and some suspicion that what Aquinas presents is not so much independent philosophy as propaganda for the cause of Christian theology

In his paper A Philosophical Approach to Professional Ethics, Professor de Stexhe offers a very rich and interesting set of reflections on the possible foundations of professional ethics. First he constructs a compelling problematic arising from the diverse but intersecting dimensions in which ethical action is located. Then he describes a task, or more accurately a series of tasks, involving a skilfully choreographed set of dialectal movements between the various moments or conditioning features of action.These moments include particular demands and general principles; personal experience and impersonal reasoning; and existing practices and regulative forms. What de Stexhe wants to see, and with this we must all be in agreement, is a reinterpretation in broadly ethical terms of institutionalized practices such, I presume, as medicine, nursing, law, banking, and education, practices which are at risk of becoming, or indeed have already become, ordered to purely instrumental purposes; or, worse, are unwelcoming to the wishes of individuals and of groups to live humanly good lives. If sloganeering were called for we might speak of a concern to ‘recover virtue in professional life’ or even of a demand for ‘reform and renewal’.Again, I sympathize with the ambition, though I am slightly wary of what I suspect may be a tendency to see this task in political terms. The influence of Heidegger and Ricoeur on the argument seems evident and thus far benign; but I think the shadows of Hegel and Marx may also fall upon, or at least fall close to, de Stexhe’s thinking. I may be wrong about this, but if not let me enter a plea to avoid, or at any rate to delay for as long as possible, an appeal to the state as a source of, and as an object for, virtue

In recent years there has been a dramatic expansion of the range of studies, policy directives and initiatives concerned with the environment. For the most part these are unphilosophical, pragmatic responses to perceived threats of pollution and other forms of environmental degradation. However, they invariably presuppose certain conceptual and normative commitments, and the examination and evaluation of these has been a major concern of environmental philosophy. To date the primary focus of interest has been on ethical and political values, but there is a developing sense of the need to consider issues relating to the aesthetics of environment. After outlining a general philosophical structure for understanding the nature of aesthetic experience, its objects and values, a little known theory - that of Aquinas - is explained and defended.

The following essay, whose title has been provided by me for this occasion, is taken from James Ferrier's work The Institutes of Metaphysic where it appears in Section I., the general theme of which is ‘The Epistemology, or Theory of Knowing’. The essay is a statement and elaboration of the ‘ninth proposition’ of the Institutes, and an examination of its implications as these bear upon knowledge of mind and self. The precise source of the text is the 3rd edition of the Institutes of Metaphysic (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons 1875). Ferrier indicates earlier that ‘generally throughout this work the word “cognition” signifi es the known, the cognitum. This remark is necessary lest the reader should suppose that it signifi es the act rather than the object of knowledge’ (p. 156). In the last section of this introduction I list the preceding eight propositions

This essay is concerned with the drift of recent analytical philosophy of mind away from the view of persons as unified subjects of thought and action--human beings as rational animals--towards various forms of dualism (including materialist dualism) and eliminativism. It raises the question what view of persons would be able to accommodate (even if only as a hypothesis) the idea that human beings are images of God and that God took on a human nature in the person of Jesus Christ? The reply is in terms of a non-dualist, non-physicalist view: incarnational anthropology’

In 1990 Harvard produced Realism with a Human Face, a collection of twenty-two of Putnam's essays and lectures introduced by James Conant. Now, in similar format, Harvard presents a further twenty-nine pieces for which Conant has written a seventy-six-page introduction preceded by an epigraph drawn from Putnam himself: "Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs in one." Conant's contribution to both collections is significant, for he offers perspectives on Putnam's work that serve to place its parts within a whole, and the whole within the context of a style of philosophical reflection that is, to use Strawson's distinction, "descriptive" rather than "revisionary."