Daniel Robinson

Reviews the book, Philosophy and ordinary language: The bent and genius of our tongue by Oswald Hanfling . This book is in the Routledge Series in 20th Century Philosophy and it is a distinguished contribution to that series. It is in its own way an exemplary exercise in philosophical acumen and clarity. In thirteen chapters the reader is paced carefully through what are often the tares and snares of contemporary analytical philosophy, but for the express purpose of defending "ordinary language" philosophy against charges of inadequacy. As the expression goes, if you have time to read only one book this year on the vexed question of meaning, this is the one. 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

From the Upanishads to Homer -- Philosophy, did the Greeks invent it -- Pythagoras and the divinity of number -- What is there? -- The Greek tragedians on man's fate -- Herodotus and the lamp of history -- Socrates on the examined life -- Plato's search for truth -- Can virtue be taught? -- Plato's Republic, man writ large -- Hippocrates and the science of life -- Aristotle on the knowable -- Aristotle on friendship -- Aristotle on the perfect life -- Rome, the Stoics, and the rule of law -- The Stoic bridge to Christianity -- Roman law, making a city of the once-wide world -- The light within, Augustine on human nature -- Islam -- Secular knowledge, the idea of university -- The reappearance of experimental science -- Scholasticism and the theory of natural law -- The Renaissance, was there one? -- Let us burn the witches to save them -- Francis Bacon and the authority of experience -- Descartes and the authority of reason -- Newton, the saint of science -- Hobbes and the social machine -- Locke's Newtonian science of the mind -- No matter? The challenge of materialism -- Hume and the pursuit of happiness -- Thomas Reid and the Scottish school -- France and the philosophes -- The federalist papers and the great experiment -- What is enlightenment? Kant on freedom -- Moral science and the natural world -- Phrenology, a science of the mind -- The idea of freedom -- The Hegelians and history -- The aesthetic movement, genius -- Nietzsche at the twilight -- The liberal tradition, J.S. Mill -- Darwin and nature's "purposes" -- Marxism, dead but not forgotten -- The Freudian world -- The radical William James -- William James' pragmatism -- Wittgenstein and the discursive turn -- Alan Turing in the forest of wisdom -- Four theories of the good life -- Ontology, what there "really" is -- Philosophy of science, the last word? -- Philosophy of psychology and related confusions -- Philosophy of mind, if there is one -- What makes a problem "moral" -- Medicine and the value of life -- On the nature of law -- Justice and just wars -- Aesthetics, beauty without observers -- God, really?

Studies of Witherspoon's influence as an educator and as a pivotal figure in the American founding tend to neglect his earlier part in controversies among the Scottish Moderates and Evangelicals. By the time he answered the summons from the College of New Jersey, his position on church-state relations was thoroughly developed as was his understanding of the nature and the sources of rights, both alienable and unalienable. Nor were there ‘two Witherspoons’, the earlier one in Scotland opposed to the academic world of intellectuals and a later American version suddenly committed to the progressive ethos of the Enlightenment. There was but one Witherspoon, clear on the several missions required by the times

In the third of his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Reid devotes the fourth chapter to the concept of‘identity’, and the sixth chapter to Locke’s theory of ‘personal identity’. This latter chapter is widely regarded as a definitive refutation of the thesis that personal identity is no more than memories of a certain sort. It is interesting that the terms ‘identity’ and ‘personal identity’ do not appear as chapter or section titles elsewhere in any of Reid’s works; and Hume is neither mentioned nor his theory of personal identity discussed in the two chapters specifically addressed to the matter. Moreover, while Locke, Reid, and Hume are often anthologized in works on personal identity, Reid is always presented as replying only to Locke.

The sources for this volume are the unpublished papers of Reid contained in the Birkwood Colletion. As the title of the volume indicates, Reid’s teaching as a Regent included Logic, Rhetoric, and the Fine Arts. The regenting system assigned cadres of students to a specific teacher who would pace them through the entire curriculum of study. Broadie cites Reid’s own defenses of this system and the important educational and civic aims achieved by it, at the relatively slight cost of unavoidable superficiality. Today’s academic world might benefit from a consideration of current practices as informed by Reid’s ideas on just this point.

Contrary to the estimation of Reid’s close friend and admiring biographer, Dugald Stewart, the correspondence of Thomas Reid is of great interest. Not only do the letters offer more than a hint of the extraordinary breadth of Reid’s interests, but they reinforce conclusions reached by his readers as to the intellectual integrity, the fairness, and the modesty of this central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Credit is due to Paul Wood for including all of the known letters to and from Reid, and to the General Editor, Knud Haakonssen, for the entire ten-volume Edinburgh Edition of Reid’s works. It will not be until 2007 that the entire set is available, but the volumes published to date leave no doubt as to the high standards of scholarship and the comparably high production value reserved for this undertaking.

Reviews the books, Emotion and peace of mind: From stoic agitation to Christian temptation by Richard Sorabji and Other minds by Anita Avramides . The two works considered here are deeply serious and composed by scholars who have executed their projects with undeviating integrity. In Emotion and Peace of Mind, based on his Gifford Lectures, Richard Sorabji moves the reader through a veritable course of study on a subject as notoriously protean as it is central to the lived life. The twenty-six chapters range over whole realms of thought on the subject of emotion, beginning with ancient philosophy and reaching the research and theory advanced right now in that congeries of specialties dubbed the brain sciences. Between the covers of this truly estimable work one meets not just the subtle and instructive thought of Seneca and Augustine, Iamblichlus and Epictetus, but insightful commentaries on the work of Damasio, Le Doux, Maclean and others. In all, Emotion and Peace of Mind is a benchmark- volume, an outstanding contribution to the philosophy and psychology of emotion; surely a required work for anyone prepared to approach the subject with the seriousness it demands. The second book of this review, Other Minds, is a work of philosophical rigor and originality, composed by an Oxford tutor who has skillfully shaped other minds with the sharp and sharpening instrument of conceptual analysis. Do computers have minds? Do animals have minds? Are there minds other than my own? And if I know of my own mind in that most basic first-person sense, then clearly there is no other mind that I can thus know. If there is something epistemologically amiss about first-person achievements, then there is surely something suspect about claims to the effect that I know of my mind. If there is nothing less than a required first-person account of minds, then there is something epistemologically suspect about any statement of any other mind. 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Available for the first time in English, this is the definitive account of the practice of sexual slavery the Japanese military perpetrated during World War II by the researcher principally responsible for exposing the Japanese government's responsibility for these atrocities. The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousands of women, who were euphemistically called "comfort women" by the Japanese military, first seized public attention in 1991 when three Korean women filed suit in a Toyko District Court stating that they had been forced into sexual servitude and demanding compensation. Since then the comfort stations and their significance have been the subject of ongoing debate and intense activism in Japan, much if it inspired by Yoshimi's investigations. How large a role did the military, and by extension the government, play in setting up and administering these camps? What type of compensation, if any, are the victimized women due? These issues figure prominently in the current Japanese focus on public memory and arguments about the teaching and writing of history and are central to efforts to transform Japanese ways of remembering the war. Yoshimi Yoshiaki provides a wealth of documentation and testimony to prove the existence of some 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and some Japanese women were restrained for months and forced to engage in sexual activity with Japanese military personnel. Many of the women were teenagers, some as young as fourteen. To date, the Japanese government has neither admitted responsibility for creating the comfort station system nor given compensation directly to former comfort women. This English edition updates the Japanese edition originally published in 1995 and includes introductions by both the author and the translator placing the story in context for American readers.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it might seem that questions about the nature of the mind are best left to scientists rather than philosophers. How could the views of Aristotle or Descartes or Kant possibly contribute anything to debates about these issues, when the relevant neurophysiological facts and principles were completely unknown to them? This Oxford Reader shows that the arguments of philosophers throughout history still provide essential insights into contemporary questions about the mind and help to clarify the underlying scientific assumptions. Contributions from thinkers ranging from Plato and Locke to Roger Penrose and Oliver Sacks show that appreciating the full complexity of debates about consciousness, intelligence, and perception demands attention to fundamental questions that have occupied philosophers for over two thousand years.

Reviews the book, The cultural psychology of the self by Ciaran Benson . This is a book rich in insight, deep in significance and, inevitably, marked by assumptions and interpretations subject to gentle disagreement. It is precisely because of its manifest assets that points of disagreement need to be highlighted. In this review I will address criticism only to the first half of the book, the criticism being more by way of an introduction to the issue than the suggestion of a settled position on it. I confine criticism to the first half not because of limited space. Rather, the foundational chapters on which the balance of the book's arguments depend are given in Part I. Part II then stands as an elevated and elevating "applied psychology of the self" resting on these very substantive and theoretical foundations. 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The constant threats to scientific progress are complacency and the diminished capacity for self-criticism. There have been great advances in our understanding of the functional anatomy of the nervous system, advances that stand in vivid contrast to our understanding of the moral, aesthetic and political dimensions of human life. The contrast is so great as to encourage the belief that these dimensions are found beyond the ambit of scientific explanation. How pathetic, then, to witness strident and smug attacks on those who have reached this plausible and profound conclusion.