Showing papers in "Philosophy in 1956"

Thomas Hobbes's Doctrine of Meaning and Truth

Abstract: It is generally acknowledged that Hobbes's radical scepticism is intimately connected with his nominalism, and that his nominalism in turn rests upon the doctrine of meaning and truth set out in its best-known version in Chapters 4 and 5 of Leviathan.

Motives and Motivation 1

Abstract: To probe people's motives is almost an occupational malaise amongst psychologists. And it is not one that can be nursed in private. It intrudes constantly into discussion of acquaintances, into moral assessments of people's actions and their responsibility for them, and into pronouncements on the proper operation of law. On this account psychologists are treated with suspicion, often with derision and resentment, by their academic colleagues. Of course, like Jehovah's witnesses, they come to expect, even to relish, the reception they receive. For has it not been written that we all have a strong resistance to such revelations, our real motives being often those which we are ashamed to admit? But there may be good grounds for this resistance as well as psychological explanations of it. My hope in this paper is to set out the sorts of grounds that there may be for our resistance to this scrutiny of our motives and to the theories of motivation which lend some kind of scientific respectability to it.

John Locke and Natural Law

Abstract: It has been said, and few would deny, that John Locke is as important as the founder of philosophical liberalism as he is as the founder of the empiricist theory of knowledge. Though he was a most versatile thinker, writing on philosophy, politics, medicine, education, religion, and economics, and on all these with the knowledge of an expert and the influence of an authority, his fame no doubt derives on the one hand from his treatises on Toleration and Civil Government, and from his Essay on Human Understanding on the other. Whenever these are expounded by scholars, the political writings are discussed independently of the Essay and the Essay independently of the political writings. The reason for this is obviously that scholars have seen very little connexion between Locke's principal works. This has been changed with the appearance of a manuscript in which are preserved eight essays on the law of nature written by Locke in Latin shortly after the Restoration of 1660 and thirty years before the appearance in print of his major works. This manuscript has been published by me, and it is now possible to recognize that Locke's two main bodies of doctrine, namely his political theory and his theory of knowledge, have a common ground and that this lies in his early doctrine of natural law. Admittedly, the notion of a natural law can be seen to be of central importance in his treatise on Civil Government and it also plays its part in the Essay.

The Croce-Collingwood Theory of Art

Abstract: It is not my intention in this brief essay to give an exhaustive critical analysis of the theory of art championed by Croce and his follower Collingwood; I intend only to point out certain confusions in and misunderstandings of their theory, and to make a few critical comments in the light of them. Nor do I wish to imply that the theories of Croce and Collingwood are identical; but although they diverge on some points, and although each develops views that the other discusses only briefly, they are so substantially alike on all important points (at any rate, on any that will be discussed in this essay) that, as reviewers were quick to point out on the appearance of Collingwood's The Principles of Art, the two can for all practical purposes be considered as one theory.

Aristotle and Confucius

Abstract: “The composition of the lectures of which Aristotle's extant works are the notes probably belongs in the main to the twelve or thirteen years of tail headship of the Lyceum, and the thought and research implied, even if we suppose that some of the spadework was done for him by pupils, implies an energy of mind which is perhaps unparalleled. During this time Aristotle fixed the main outlines of the classification of the sciences in the form which they still retain, and carried most of the sciences to a further point than they had hitherto reached; in some of them, such as logic, he may fairly claim to have had no predecessor, and for centuries no worthy successor…one of the greatest of analytic thinkers. “SIR W. DAVID ROSS, Aristotle.

Motives and Motivation1

Abstract: To probe people's motives is almost an occupational malaise amongst psychologists. And it is not one that can be nursed in private. It intrudes constantly into discussion of acquaintances, into moral assessments of people's actions and their responsibility for them, and into pronouncements on the proper operation of law. On this account psychologists are treated with suspicion, often with derision and resentment, by their academic colleagues. Of course, like Jehovah's witnesses, they come to expect, even to relish, the reception they receive. For has it not been written that we all have a strong resistance to such revelations, our real motives being often those which we are ashamed to admit? But there may be good grounds for this resistance as well as psychological explanations of it. My hope in this paper is to set out the sorts of grounds that there may be for our resistance to this scrutiny of our motives and to the theories of motivation which lend some kind of scientific respectability to it.

Could Machines Be Made to Think

Abstract: This question as to whether machines can, or could, be made to think, has become familiar in recent years since the renewed outburst of interest that has taken place in the development of Cybernetics. The notion of servo–mechanisms and the like has a history in remote antiquity but the form of its fundamental question has recently taken on a new and especially acute significance.

Objectivity and Reason 1

Abstract: The need for objective standards of judgement is acutely felt in the bewilderment created by the world situation of our time, a bewilderment that is partly the result of the rapid advance of the natural sciences, with its profound effects upon metaphysical doctrines, religious beliefs and moral attitudes, and partly due to the intractable problems which have arisen in social and political fields. The progress of the sciences, while it seems to have given us secure knowledge of the world about us, has, at the same time, undermined confidence in the criteria of belief and judgement in the conduct of affairs which hitherto had served to guide mankind. Bereft of these the majority of men are unable to see a clear way through the complexities of modern political and economic life and are overwhelmed by the major problems that confront them. As examples of the major perplexities with which mankind is faced today, I shall mention only three:—

Hegel's “Science” and Whitehead's “Modern World”

Abstract: “I have never been able to read Hegel: I initiated my attempt by studying some remarks of his on mathematics which struck me as complete nonsense. It was foolish of me, but I am not writing to explain my good sense.”—A. N. Whitehead.

Knowledge and Faith

Abstract: “We have but faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see” So Tennyson wrote in the nineteenth century, using the same distinction that in the first of our era Paul the Apostle used, writing to his converts of the walking by faith that looks not to the things seen and temporal, but to the things eternal and unseen (2 Cor iv 18, v 7)