Gordon Graham

_The Internet: A Philosophical Inquiry_ develops many of the themes Gordon Graham presented in his highly successful radio series, _The Silicon Society_. Exploring the tensions between the warnings of the Neo-Luddites and the bright optimism of the Technophiles, Graham offers the first concise and accessible exploration of the issues which arise as we enter further into the world of Cyberspace. This original and fascinating study takes us to the heart of questions that none of us can afford to ignore: how does the Internet affect our concepts of identity, moral anarchy, censorship, community, democracy, virtual reality and imagination? Free of jargon and full of stimulating ideas, this is essential reading for anyone wishing to think clearly and informatively about the complexities of our technological future

Sir William Hamilton was revered in his lifetime by his philosophical contemporaries. The publication of Mill’s Examination of his work in 1865 speedily brought about a very negative assessment, from which Hamilton’s reputation has never recovered. This chapter sets out Hamilton’s philosophical contentions in relation to Reid and Kant, examines Mill’s criticisms and Mansel’s reply to them with a view to establishing a more judicious assessment, somewhere between the extremes of veneration and condemnation. It argues that Hamilton’s conception of philosophy was consonant with the tradition of Scottish common sense philosophy, and that his neglect in part derives from the general decline of that tradition.

Adam Ferguson has received little of the renewed attention that contemporary philosophers have given to the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, most notably David Hume, Thomas Reid and Adam Smith. There are good reasons for this difference. Yet, the conception of moral philosophy at work in Ferguson's writings can nevertheless be called upon to throw important critical light on the current enthusiasm for philosophical ethics and applied philosophy. Eighteenth century ‘moral science’ took its significance from a context that modern philosophers who seek to be practically ‘relevant’ need, but lack.

This paper argues that a recurrent mistake is made about Scottish moral philosophy in the 18th century with respect to its account of the relation between morality and feeling. This mistake arises because Hume is taken to be the main, as opposed to the best known, exponent of a version of moral sense theory. In fact, far from occupying common ground, the other main philosophers of the period—Hutcheson, Reid, Beattie—understood themselves to be engaged in refuting Hume. Despite striking surface similarities, closer examination reveals a deep difference between Hume's and Reid's conception of ‘the science mind’ which marked the philosophy of the period. Properly understood, this difference shows that mainstream Scottish moral philosophy, far from subscribing to Hume's dictum about morality being ‘more properly felt than judged of’, held that morality is ‘more properly judged than felt of’

Genocide in Rwanda, multiple murder at Denver or Dunblane, the gruesome activities of serial killers - what makes these great evils, and why do they occur? In addressing such questions this book, unusually, interconnects contemporary moral philosophy with recent work in New Testament scholarship. The conclusions to emerge are surprising. Gordon Graham argues that the inability of modernist thought to account satisfactorily for evil and its occurrence should not lead us to embrace an eclectic postmodernism, but to take seriously some unfashionable pre-modern conceptions - Satan, demonic possession, spiritual powers, cosmic battles. Precisely because it strives to observe the high standards of clarity and rigour that are the hallmarks of philosophy in the analytical tradition, the book makes a powerful case for the rejection of humanism and naturalism, and for explaining the moral obligation to struggle against evil by reference to the New Testament's cosmic narrative.