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Andy Clark is a leading philosopher and cognitive scientist. The fruits of his work have been diverse and lasting. They have had an extraordinary impact throughout philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and robotics. The extended mind hypothesis, the power of parallel distributed processing, the role of language in opening up novel paths for thinking, the flexible interface between biological minds and artificial technologies, the significance of representation in explanations of intelligent behaviour, the promise of the predictive processing framework to unify the cognitive sciences: these are just some of the ideas explored in Clark’s work that have been picked up by many researchers and that have been contributing to intense debate across the sciences of mind and brain. This volume provides the first interdisciplinary, critical engagement with Clark’s work; it includes contributions of authors from several disciplines, offering a fresh perspective on key questions in the sciences of mind and brain.

This book examines Aristotle’s response to Eleatic monism, the theory of Parmenides of Elea and his followers that reality is ‘one’. The book argues that Aristotle interprets the Eleatics as thoroughgoing monists, for whom the pluralistic, changing world of the senses is a mere illusion. Understood in this way, the Eleatic theory constitutes a radical challenge to the possibility of natural philosophy. Aristotle discusses the Eleatics in several works, including De Caelo, De Generatione et Corruptione, and the Metaphysics. But his most extensive treatment of their monism comes at the beginning of the Physics, where he criticizes them for overlooking the fact that ‘being is said in many ways’—in other words, that there are many ways of being. Through a careful analysis of this and other criticisms, the book explains how Aristotle’s engagement with the Eleatics prepares the ground for his own theory of the principles of nature. Aristotle is commonly thought to be an unreliable interpreter of his Presocratic predecessors; in contrast, this book argues that his critique can shed valuable light on the motivation of the Eleatic theory and its influence on the later philosophical tradition.

This work challenges the common belief that Aristotle’s virtue ethics is founded on an appeal to human nature, an appeal that is thought to be intended to provide both substantive ethical advice and justification for the demands of ethics. It is argued that it is not Aristotle’s intent, but the view is resisted that Aristotle was blind to questions of the source or justification of his ethical views. Aristotle’s views are interpreted as a ‘middle way’ between the metaphysical grounding offered by Platonists and the scepticism or subjectivist alternatives articulated by others. The commitments implicit in the nature of action figure prominently in this account: Aristotle reinterprets Socrates’ famous paradox that no one does evil willingly, taking it to mean that a commitment to pursuing the good is implicit in the very nature of action. This approach is compared to constructivism in contemporary ethics.

This volume of the ‘Symposium Aristotelicum’ constitutes a running commentary of the first book of Aristotle’s Physics, a central treatise of the Aristotelian corpus that aims at knowledge of the principles of physical change; it establishes that there are such principles and determines what they are and how many. After a general introduction, the ten chapters of the volume, written by distinguished scholars of ancient philosophy, comment on the entirety of the Aristotelian text and deal in detail with the philosophical issues raised in it. Aristotle is here in dialogue with the divergent doctrines of earlier philosophers, namely with the Eleatics’ monism, with Anaxagoras’ theory of mixture, and finally with the Platonist dyadism that posits the two principles of Form and the Great and Small. He employs the critical examination of his predecessors’ views in order to present and formulate his own theory of the principles of natural things, which are fundamental for the entire Aristotelian study of the natural world: form, privation and the substratum that underlies them. Moreover, Aristotle provides us with his own solution to the problem about coming to be and passing away, by distinguishing between coming to be in actuality and in potentiality. The exhaustive analysis of the Aristotelian doctrines as well as the critical discussion of the prevailing current views on their interpretation make this volume an obligatory reference work for Aristotle studies.

Now back in print, and in paperback, these two classic volumes illustrate the scope and quality of Josiah Royce's thought, providing the most comprehensive selection of his writings currently available. They offer a detailed presentation of the viable relationship Royce forged between the local experience of community and the demands of a philosophical and scientific vision of the human situation. The selections reprinted here are basic to any understanding of Royce's thought and its pressing relevance to contemporary cultural, moral, and religious issues.

Now back in print, and in paperback, these two classic volumes illustrate the scope and quality of Josiah Royce's thought, providing the most comprehensive selection of his writings currently available. They offer a detailed presentation of the viable relationship Royce forged between the local experience of community and the demands of a philosophical and scientific vision of the human situation. The selections reprinted here are basic to any understanding of Royce's thought and its pressing relevance to contemporary cultural, moral, and religious issues.

In Being and Reason, Martin Lin offers a new interpretation of Spinoza’s core metaphysical doctrines with attention to how and why, in Spinoza, metaphysical notions are entangled with cognitive, logical, and epistemic ones. For example, according to Spinoza, a substance is that which can be conceived through itself, and a mode is that which is conceived through another. Thus, metaphysical notions, substance and mode, appear to be defined through a notion that is either cognitive or logical, being conceived through. What are we to make of the intimate connections that Spinoza sees between metaphysical, cognitive, logical, and epistemic notions? Or between being and reason? Lin argues against idealist readings according to which the metaphysical is reducible to or grounded in something epistemic, logical, or psychological. He maintains that Spinoza sees the order of being and the order of reason as two independent structures that mirror one another. In the course of making this argument, he develops new interpretations of Spinoza’s notions of attribute and mode, and of Spinoza’s claim that all things strive for self-preservation. Lin also argues against prominent idealist readings of Spinoza according to which the Principle of Sufficient Reason is absolutely unrestricted for Spinoza and is the key to his system. He contends, rather, that Spinoza’s metaphysical rationalism is a diverse phenomenon and that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is limited to claims about existence and nonexistence which are applied only once by Spinoza to the case of the necessary existence of God.

Bernard Bolzano (1781–1850) is increasingly recognized as one of the greatest nineteenth-century philosophers. A philosopher and mathematician of rare talent, he made groundbreaking contributions to logic, the foundations and philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. Many of the larger features of later analytic philosophy, but also many of the details, first appear in his work: for example, the separation of logic from psychology, his sophisticated understanding of mathematical proof, his definition, so similar to Tarski’s, of logical consequence, his work on the semantics of natural kind terms, or his anticipations of Cantor’s set theory. To his contemporaries, however, he was best known as an intelligent and determined advocate for reform of Church and state. Based in large part on a carefully argued utilitarian practical philosophy, he developed a program for the non-violent reform of the authoritarian institutions of the Habsburg Empire, a program which he himself helped to set in motion through his teaching and other activities. Rarely has a philosopher had such a great impact on the political culture of his homeland. Persecuted in his lifetime by secular and ecclesiastical authorities, long ignored or misunderstood by philosophers, Bolzano’s reputation has nevertheless steadily increased over the past century and a half. Much discussed and respected in Central Europe for over a century, he is finally beginning to receive the recognition he deserves in the English-speaking world. This book provides a comprehensive and detailed critical introduction to Bolzano, covering both life and works.

People convicted of crimes are subject to a criminal sentence, but they are also subject to a host of other legal measures: Some are denied access to jobs, housing, welfare, the vote, or other goods. Some may be deported. Others are subject to continued detention. Many have their criminal records made publicly accessible. These measures are often more burdensome than an offender’s formal sentence. This is the first book-length philosophical examination of these burdensome legal measures, called collateral legal consequences (CLCs). The book draws on resources in moral, legal, and political philosophy to shed light on whether these measures are ever morally justified. It analyzes the various kinds of CLCs imposed in different legal systems and the important moral challenges they raise, and it makes the case that these challenges have been largely overlooked by philosophers. The book examines whether CLCs can ever be justified as forms of criminal punishment—whether they are consistent with the values and principles that we believe should govern punishment. Then it considers whether CLCs are ever justifiable as civil measures, and specifically what could justify the state in imposing additional burdensome measures on offenders in addition to their punishment. Whether CLCs function as forms of punishment or as civil measures, the book contends that they are justifiable in a far narrower range of cases than we find in current legal practice.

The Jewish nation-state has often been thought of as Zionism's end goal. This bracing history of the idea of the Jewish state in modern Zionism, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century until the establishment of the state of Israel, challenges this deeply rooted assumption. In doing so, the book complicates the narrative of the Zionist quest for full sovereignty, provocatively showing how and why the leaders of the pre-state Zionist movement imagined, articulated, and promoted theories of self-determination in Palestine either as part of a multinational Ottoman state (1882–1917), or in the framework of multinational democracy. In particular, the book focuses on the writings and policies of five key Zionist leaders from the Habsburg and Russian empires in central and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Leon Pinsker, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion to offer a very pointed critique of Zionist historiography.

According to the standard conception of persons, an individual qualifies as a person if it satisfies four conditions, broadly construed. First, the individual is conscious, in the sense that there is something it is like to be it. Second, it is rational, in the sense that it can execute at least some rational inferences and possesses the required materials for such inferences, such as beliefs and desires. Third, the individual must be self-aware, aware of itself as an individual persisting through time. Finally, it must be other-aware, aware of the mindedness of others. This book argues that many animals can satisfy all of these conditions and so qualify as persons. Unlike recent debates that concern whether we should extend personhood as far as the great apes, it is argued that personhood extends quite widely through the animal kingdom.

We are women, we are men. We are refugees, single mothers, people with disabilities, and queers. We belong to social categories that frame their action, self-understanding, and life options. But what are social categories? How are they created and sustained? How does one come to belong to them? To answer these questions is to offer a metaphysics of social categories, and that is the project of Categories We Live By. The key component in the story offered is a theory of what it is for a feature of an individual to be socially meaningful in a context. People have a myriad of features, but only some of them make a difference socially in the contexts people travel. The author gives an account of what it is for a feature of an individual to matter socially in a given context. This the author does by introducing a conferralist framework to carve out a theory of social meaning, and then uses the framework to offer a theory of social construction, and of the construction of sex, gender, race, disability, and other social categories. Accompanying is also a theory of social identity that brings out the role of individual agency in the formation and maintenance of social categories.

This book is an attempt to understand a significant part of the complex thought of CharlesSanders Peirce, especially in those areas which interested him most: scientific method and related philosophical questions. It is organized primarily from Peirce's own writings, taking chronological settings into account where appropriate, and pointing out the close connections of several major themes in Peirce's work which show the rich diversity of his thought and its systematic unity. Following an introductory sketch of Peirce the thinking and writer is a study of the spirit and phases of scientific inquiry, and a consideration of its relevance to certain outstanding philosophical views which Peirce held. This double approach is necessary because his views on scientific method are interlaced with a profound and elaborate philosophy of the cosmos. Peirce's thought is unusually close-knit, and his difficulty as a writer lies in his inability to achieve a partial focus without bringing into view numerous connections and relations with the whole picture of reality. This book attempts to understand Peirce as Peirce intended himself to be understood, and has presented what the author believes Peirce's philosophy of scientific method to be. The book singles out for praise Peirce's Greek insistence on the primacy of theoretical knowledge and his almost Teilhardian synthesis of evolutionary themes. Primarily philosophical, this volume analyzes Peirce's thought using a theory of knowledge and metaphysics rather than formal logic.

In recent years, Charles Sanders Peirce has emerged as one of America's major philosophical thinkers. His work has invited philosophical reflection about those basic issues that inevitably confront us as human beings, especially in an age of science. Peirce's concern for experience, for what is actually encountered, means that his philosophy forms a reflective commentary on actual life and on the world in which it is lived. This book argues that Peirce's doctrine of the normative sciences is essential to his pragmatism. No part of Peirce's philosophy is bolder than his attempt to establish esthetics, ethics, and logic as the three normative sciences and to argue for the priority of esthetics among the trio. The book shows that Pierce took seriously the trinity of normative sciences and demonstrates that these categories apply both to the conduct of man and to the workings of the cosmos. It combines sympathetic and informed exposition with straightforward criticism and deals with the gaps and inconsistencies in Peirce's thought. It shows that Peirce was above all a cosmological and ontological thinker, one who combined science both as a method and as result with a conception of reasonable actions to form a comprehensive theory of reality. Peirce's pragmatism, is not a glorification of action but rather a theory of the dynamic nature of things in which the “ideal” dimension of reality has genuine power for directing the cosmic order, including man, toward reasonable goals.

This volume provides a reading of Hume’s Treatise as a whole, foregrounding Hume’s understanding of custom and its role in the Treatise. It shows that Hume grounds his understanding of custom in its usage in English legal theory, and that he takes custom to be the foundation for normativity in all of its guises, whether moral, epistemic, or social. The book argues that Hume’s project in the Treatise is to provide a socially inflected cognitive science—to understand how persons are constituted through an interaction of individual psychology and their social matrix—and that custom provides the ligature that ties together Hume’s naturalism and skepticism. In doing so, it shows that Hume is a consistent Pyrrhonian skeptic, but that he takes the positive part of the skeptical program seriously, showing not only that our practices have no foundation, but that they need none, and that custom alone serves to explain and to justify our practices.

This fresh, provocative account of the American philosophical tradition explores the work of key thinkers through an innovative and counterintuitive lens: religious conversion. From Jonathan Edwards to Cornel West, the book threads the history of American thought into an extended, multivalent encounter with the religious experience. Looking at John Dewey, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Richard Rorty, Robert S. Corrington, and other thinkers, the book demonstrates that religious themes have deeply influenced the development of American philosophy. This innovative reading of the American philosophical tradition will be welcomed not only by philosophers, but also by historians and other students of America’s religious, intellectual, and cultural legacy.

The dead are gone. They count for nothing. Yet if we count the dead, their number is staggering. And they account for most of what’s great about civilization. Compared to the greatness of the dead, the accomplishments of the living are paltry. Which is it then: are the dead still there to be counted or not? And if they’re still there, where, exactly, is “there”? We’re confronted with the ancient paradox of nonexistence bequeathed us by Parmenides. The mystery of death is the mystery of nonexistence. A successful attempt to provide a metaphysics of death, then, must at the same time resolve the paradox of nonexistence. That is the aim of this study. At the same time, the ontology of death, i.e. of ceasing to exist, must serve as an account of birth, i.e. coming to exist, and the primary thesis of this book is that this requires expanding one’s ontology beyond existence and nonexistence to include what underlies both, namely, “being.” The dead, along with the unborn, are nonexistent objects which retain their identity before, during, and after their transition to, and from, existence. The nonexistent are what are “there” that can be counted when we count the dead. The dead and the unborn are thus the same kind of beings as the living. What separates the living from the dead is only their existence.

This book presents an interpetation of John Dewey’s metahysics. Dewey spent seventy years of his life in philosophical activity. The book covers the three periods of Dewey’s career. The first is the idealistic phase, then the experimental phase, and finally the naturalistic phase. The book begins by discussing responses to two major problems in Deweyan scholarship and to a third issue of a more purely theoretical character. There are scholars who dismiss the Deweyan attempt at formulating a metaphysics as superficial, irrelevant, and contradictory. There are others who provide a caricature of Deweyan metaphysics as describing a natural world given over solely to flux, process, and change. There there is also a general need for contemporary philosophers to deal with the issues encapsulated in the term form. The book concludes that Dewey’s metahysics presented in this book has a direct bearing on a much-discussed topic in contemporary philosophical literature: the dispute between foundationalists and anti-foundationalists.

In Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky uses the commission of a double-murder to initiate and organize a diverse set of philosophical reflections. This volume contains seven essays that approach the novel through philosophical themes in order to offer both readings of the text and continuations of its reflections. The topics addressed include Dostoevsky’s presentation of mind and psychological investigation, as well as the nature of self-knowledge; emotions, in particular guilt and love, and their role in overcoming ambivalence toward existence; the nature of agency; the metaphysical conditions of freedom and the possibility of evil; the family and the failure of utopian thought; individuality and the authority of the law; and Bakhtin’s conceptions of dialogue and polyphony and his views of the self and generative time.

Millions of Americans lack health insurance, and thousands suffer and die every year. Philosophers have argued that an ideal society would avoid these problems by guaranteeing affordable access to health insurance, but what about people’s concerns that a universal health insurance system would be inefficient, create excessive fiscal risk, or impose high taxes and other personal costs? This book examines the ethical issues raised by these objections. It shows that the ethical principles underlying these concerns are legitimate and that they might even justify opposition to poorly designed universal health insurance plans. However, the objections do not undercut the moral case for adopting a well-designed universal health insurance system that improves on the gains made in the Affordable Care Act. Addressing these objections is important because they are philosophically rich and interesting, and since the objections help drive actual disagreements about health policy, responding to them also contributes to the real-world case for universal access to health insurance. Understanding these issues in the health care debate has larger upshots as well. It leads us to a deeper understanding of progressive and conservative views on distributive justice, and it provides a framework for analyzing debates about any part of the social safety net—in America and elsewhere.