Thomas Brian Mooney

Generous selections from these four seminal texts on the theory and practice of education have never before appeared together in a single volume. The Introductions that precede the texts provide brief biographical sketches of each author, situating him within his broader historical, cultural and intellectual context. The editors also provide a brief outline of key themes that emerge within the selection as a helpful guide to the reader. The final chapter engages the reflections of the classic authors with contemporary issues and challenges in the philosophy and practice of education.

In his seminal work Moral Notions , Julius Kovesi presents a novel account of concept formation. At the heart of this account is a distinction between what he terms the material element and the formal element of concepts. This paper elucidates his distinction in detail and contrasts it with other distinctions such as form-matter, universal-particular, genus-difference, necessary-sufficient, and open texture-closed texture. We situate Kovesi’s distinction within his general philosophical method, outlining his views on concept formation in general and explain how his theory of concept formation is applied in moral philosophy

The book aims at equipping you with 21st Century Skills key life skills that will drive your future employability, promotion and career success. These are required for effective reasoning, writing and decision-making in changing, evolving environments. You give reasons for what you do and think every day. You argue. You often argue about things that matter to you. For example you might argue that you are the best candidate for promotion, about whether your company should invest in China, about the best way to help a friend or about what the right thing to do is in an ethical dilemma. The list is up to you. If you work your way carefully through this book you will become better at reasoning both in terms of understanding and clarifying other peoples’ arguments and also at producing increasingly sophisticated and compelling arguments of your own. You will learn how to recognize common but often seductive mistakes in reasoning and so be empowered to avoid making these mistakes yourself. Your writing and oral presentations will improve and you will hone your ability to define crucial terms in argument, debate and discussion. As this book is specifically written with everyday language considerations in mind, it is a valuable tool for anyone to understand, evaluate and construct arguments in ordinary language.

A perennial problem in the philosophy of love has centred around what it is to love persons qua persons. Plato has usually been interpreted as believing that when we love we are attaching ourselves to qualities that inhere in the objects of our love and that these qualities transcend the objects. Vlastos has argued, along with Nussbaum, Price and many others that such an account tells against a true love of persons as unique and irreplaceable individuals. I argue that Plato’s account of love as presented in the Lysis and Symposium is not so easily rejected. My concern is both to show that Plato can meet the objections and that his theory can still offer helpful insights into the understanding of love in our own lives. In particular I will identify two manners of loving persons; one which is context and individual specific, and another which might be termed metaphysical, thereby preserving aspects of the Platonic ascent of love. I will further argue that the two aspects are often non–controversially linked, and that such linking helps explain something of the mysterious nature of love

Locke considers miracles to be crucial in establishing the credibility and reasonableness of Christian faith and revelation. The performance of miracles, he argues, is vital in establishing the "credit of the proposer" who makes any claim to providing a divine revelation. He accords reason a pivotal role in distinguishing spurious from genuine claims to divine revelation, including miracles. According to Locke, genuine miracles contain the hallmark of the divine such that pretend revelations become intuitively obvious. This paper argues that serious tensions exist in Locke's position regarding miracles, which impact on the reasonableness of the assent to Christianity which he presumes they provide.

Aristotle distinguishes friendships of pleasure or utility from more valuable ‘character friendships’ in which the friend cares for the other qua person for the other’s own sake. Aristotle and some neo-Aristotelians require such friends to be fairly strictly symmetrical in their separateness of identity from each other, in the degree to which they identify with each other, and in the degree to which they are virtuous. We argue that there is a neglected form of valuable friendship–neither of friendship nor utility–that allows significant asymmetries. We know of no sustained discussion of such ‘asymmetrical’ friendships in the literature.

In a famous debate on jurisprudence held in 1958 between H. L. A. Hart and Lon Fuller, the protagonists argued about the nature of the law. On one side was H. L. A. Hart, who was a staunch defender of two ideas, first, that law was to be separated from morals, and secondly, that law as it is should be separated from law as it ought to be. These two ideas are subtly different. On the other side, is Fuller, who argues that law cannot be understood apart from its reason for being formulated in the first place. In relation to Hart's two ideas, the paper shows how both rest upon an unstated hidden motivating assumptions, clues to which can be found in both "Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals" and 'The Concept of Law'. This assumption is that Hart is committed to a distinctively liberal account of morality which finds expression in the rule of law. The paper argues that the project of finding a purely descriptive account of law is impossible in the Hartian sense since the descriptive/evaluative dichotomy is a false dichotomy. This is achieved by means of the Kovesian analysis of concept formation.

Life-science art is a generic term which describes a new kind of collaboration between artists and scientists which adds a new dimension to the polemics of the ‘philosophy of art.’ Utilising the techniques and materials made available by developments in biotechnology, artists, and scientists produce objects not for scientific benefit but aesthetic objects designed to enchant, shock, or familiarize the audience with the fanciful applications to which this technology can be put: the creation of pig wings, fish that can draw, rabbits that glow in the dark and dead men that appear to play chess.This paper investigates the moral implications of the incorporation of living and non-living plant, animal, and human tissue as part of the artistic palette. It is argued that the rupture between the beautiful and the good that characterises much of contemporary thinking directly leads to the morally dubious practices of life-science art and that there are very good reasons drawn from utilitarian and natural law traditions against such “artistic” endeavours

Julius Kovesi's Moral Notions (1967) was a startlingly original contribution to moral philosophy and theory of meaning. After initial positive reviews Kovesi's book was largely forgotten. Nevertheless, it continued to have an enduring influence on a number of philosophers and theologians some of whom have contributed to this volume. The original essays collected here critique, analyze, deepen and extend the work of Kovesi. The book will be of particular interest to moral philosophers and those working on concept formation, while also having a broader appeal to social scientists grappling with the description/evaluation problem.

The tragic unfolding of world events since September 11, 2001, has added great urgency to practical and theoretical issues arising from the phenomenon of international terrorism. This paper applies a traditional concept of just war theory drawing largely on Aquinas and Augustine to legitimate violent action against groups who are not themselves representatives of states. Traditional just war theory is couched largely in terms of the legitimacy of defensive war directed at polities. New applications of the theory are required to deal with contemporary international terrorism. In presenting a new application of the theory I argue that the purely defensive conception of just war advocated in recent Catholic Church documents and taken up by some contemporary theologians and philosophers is problematic. In dialogue particularly with Joseph Boyle, I maintain that traditional just war theory provides the salient criteria for a polity’s violent actions against groups that are not themselves, or at least, need not be polities – including actions that may be characterised as punitive rather than purely defensive in nature. The traditional concept of just war is in this respect more coherent.

A perennial problem in the philosophy of love has centered around what it is to love persons qua persons. Plato has usually been interpreted as believing that when we love we are attaching ourselves to qualities that inhere in the objects of our love and that these qualities transcend the objects. Vlastos has argued, along with Nussbaum, Price and many others that such an account tells against a true love of persons as unique and irreplaceable individuals. I argue that Plato’s account of love as present in the Lysis and Symposium is not so easily rejected. My concern is to show both that Plato can meet the objections and that his theory can still offer helpful insights into the understanding of love in our lives. In particular, I will identify two manners of loving persons; one which is context and individual specific, and another which might be termed metaphysical, thereby preserving aspects of the Platonic ascent of love. I will further argue that the two aspects are often non-controversially linked, and that such linking helps explain something of the mysterious nature of love.

It is a testimony to the enduring importance of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that, 30 years on, its doctrines of normal science and paradigm, incommensurability and revolution continue to challenge metascien tists and stimulate vigorous debate. Critique has mainly come from philosophers and historians; by and large, interested sociologists have embraced Kuhn. Un justifiably so, this article argues, bringing to light a serious difficulty or anom aly in his account of the social side of science. Contrary to what he claims, scientific knowledge is not the achievement of organic communities. It is con structed in trans-epistemic arenas by diverse participants, laypeople, and specialists. Accepting community is a flawed concept in the sociology of science, and in appreciating the major role Kuhn assigned it, the Kuhnian system looks less robust than it did before.

This article explores the relation between Aquinas’ metaphysical, epistemological and theological ideas and his theory of education as presented in the De Magistro and other writings. Aquinas’ theory of education is based on a theological metaphysics of human nature and an account of human rationality that is grounded in human nature. In the first section after the introduction we provide a synopsis of Aquinas’ metaphysical narrative, but in a contemporary key that draws upon the resources of Analytical Thomism. However, this theologically inspired metaphysics leads to a somewhat neglected epistemology that is crucial to his understanding of teaching and learning in the De Magistro – the notion of connatural knowledge that we explore in the second section. Our exposition of the Thomistic ontology of the human person together with the notion of connatural knowledge, provide the context for understanding the De Magistro in the third section.