Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers, on this rainy Friday!

Just arrived in Robbins: the latest issues of American Philosophical Quarterly and Erkenntnis.  A list of the Tables of Contents follows below.

American Philosophical Quarterly 45(2) October 2008 (This is not currently available electronically.)

• Orthogonality of Phenomenality and Content, Gottfried Vosgerau, Tobias Schlicht, and Albert Newen, 309-328
• Agent-Based Virtue Ethics and the Fundamentality of Virtue, Daniel C. Russell, 329-348
• “Designer Babies” and Harm to Supernumerary Embryos, Mark Walker, 348-364
• A Unified Pyrrhonian Resolution of the Toxin Problem, the Surprise Examination, and Newcomb’s Puzzle, Laurence Goldstein and Peter Cave, 365-376
• Response-Dependence of Concepts Is Not for Properties, Eyja M. Brynjarsdóttir, 377-386
• Personal Identity Un-Locke-ed, Andrew Naylor, 387-396

Erkenntnis 69(2) September 2008 (You will need your Harvard ID and PIN to access this issue.)

• Sortals for Dummies, John E. Sarnecki, 145-164
• Must Differences in Cognitive Value be Transparent?, Sanford Goldberg, 165-187
• Contrastivism Rather than Something Else? On the Limits of Epistemic Contrastivism, Peter Baumann, 189-200
• The Causal Chain Problem, Michael Baumgartner, 201-226
• The Logical Structure of International Trade Theory, Frieder Lempp, 227-242
• Is There a Simple Argument for Higher-Order Representation Theories of Awareness Consciousness?, Mikkel Gerken, 243-259
• Too Naturalist and Not Naturalist Enough: Reply to Horsten, Luca Incurvati, 261-274
• Review of Heather Dyke, Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy, Kevin Dewan, 275-277

Good morning, readers!

To get us started this week, here are the latest podcasts from Philosophy Bites:

• Adrian Moore on Kant’s Metaphysics
• Barry C. Smith on Neuroscience
• Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography
• M.M. McCabe on Socratic Method
• Aaron Ridley on Nietzsche on Art and Truth

Enjoy!

Good morning, readers, and welcome back after the Labor Day holiday weekend!

A short administrative update: I will be in tomorrow, as my plans have changed.

Now, for our main attraction: here are the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews from August 2008.  Should any of these be added to the Robbins collection?

Epistemology

• Jeffrey Blustein, The Moral Demands of Memory, Reviewed by Sue Campbell, Dalhousie University
• Yujin Nagasawa, God and Phenomenal Consciousness: A Novel Approach to Knowledge Arguments, Reviewed by Uwe Meixner, University of Regensburg
• Sanford C. Goldberg (ed.), Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology, Reviewed by Hanseung Kim, University of Seoul
• Simone Gozzano, Francesco Orilia (eds.), Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind: Essays at the Boundary of Ontology and Philosophical Psychology, Reviewed by Keith Campbell, University of Sydney

History of Philosophy

• Christian Lotz, From Affectivity to Subjectivity: Husserl’s Phenomenology Revisited, Reviewed by A. D. Smith, University of Warwick
• Samantha Frost, Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics, Reviewed by Stewart Duncan, University of Florida
• Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language, Reviewed by Ted Kinnaman, George Mason University
• Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton (eds.), Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy, Reviewed by Eric Schliesser, Leiden University
• William F. Bristow, Hegel and the Transformation of Philosophical Critique, Reviewed by Paul Franks, University of Toronto
• Allen Speight, The Philosophy of Hegel, Reviewed by Mark Alznauer, Sweet Briar College
• James Hankins (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, Reviewed by E. Jennifer Ashworth, University of Waterloo
• Keith Green, Bertrand Russell, Language and Linguistic Theory, Reviewed by Bernard Linsky, University of Alberta
• Santiago Zabala, The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat, Reviewed by Robert Sokolowski, The Catholic University of America
• Francis J. Ambrosio, Dante and Derrida: Face to Face, Reviewed by Donald G. Marshall, Pepperdine University

Philosophy of Law

• Douglas Husak, Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law, Reviewed by John Gardner, University College, Oxford
• Douglas E. Edlin (ed.), Common Law Theory, Reviewed by W.J. Waluchow, McMaster University

Philosophy of Science

• Steve Fuller, Science v. Religion? Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution, Reviewed by Sahotra Sarkar, University of Texas at Austin
• Michael Ruse, Charles Darwin, Reviewed by Bruce Weber, California State University, Fullerton/Bennington College

Philosophy of Religion

• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Reviewed by Michael L. Morgan, Indiana University

Metaphysics

• Peter van Inwagen, Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Persons: Human and Divine, Reviewed by William R. Carter, North Carolina State University
• Laird Addis, Ontology and Explanation: Collected Papers, Reviewed by Katalin Farkas, Central European University, Budapest

Historiography

• Jonathan Gorman, Historical Judgement: The Limits of Historiographical Choice, Reviewed by Paul A. Roth, University of California, Santa Cruz

Moral & Political Philosophy

• Robert B. Talisse, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy, Reviewed by David Hildebrand, University of Colorado Denver
• Larry May, Aggression and Crimes Against Peace, Reviewed by Douglas Lackey, Baruch College/Graduate Center, CUNY

Good morning, readers, and happy Friday!

A brief note: Monday is a holiday (Labor Day) and I won’t be posting.  Also, I will be out next Wednesday, 3 September, and won’t be posting then, either.

While browsing through Bookforum.com yesterday, I came across the Web site for Philosopher’s Annual. The aim of this site is as follows: “The papers on this website represent our effort to showcase ten of the best philosophy articles published in the past year.” There is a wide range of topics covered by the papers chosen for the annual, as can be seen from the offerings for 2007, though the majority of this year’s selections focus on epistemology and philosophy of mind:

• “Reflection and Disagreement,” Adam Elga, from Nous 41 (2007), 478-502
• “Why Nothing Mental is Just in the Head,” Justin Fisher, from Nous 41 (2007), 318-334
• “Socrates’ Profession of Ignorance,” Michael N. Forster, from Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3 (2007), 1-36
• “When is a Brain Like a Planet?,” Clark Glymour, from Philosophy of Science 74 (2007), 330-347
• “But Mom, Crop Tops are Cute! Social Knowledge, Social Structure and Ideology Critique,” Sally Haslanger, from Philosophical Issues 17, The Metaphysics of Epistemology, pp. 70-91
• “Innocent Statements and their Metaphysically Loaded Counterparts,” Thomas Hofweber, from Philosophers’ Imprint 7 (2007), 1-33
• “Honest Illusion: Valuing for Nietzsche’s Free Spirits,” Nadeem Hussain from B. Leiter & N. Sinhababu, eds., Nietzsche and Morality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 157-191
• “Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions,” Shaun Nichols & Joshua Knobe, from Nous 41 (2007), 663-668
• “Covenants and Reputations,” Peter Vanderschraaf, from Synthese 157 (2007), 167-195
• “Epistemic Modals,” Seth Yalcin, from Mind 16 (2007), 983-1026

You will be able to link directly to the full text of all of the articles, with the exception of Haslanger’s and Vanderschraaf’s articles, for which you will need to go through HOLLIS to access, and Hussain’s article, for which permission to include an online version has not been granted yet by the publisher.

The Tables of Contents for all previous volumes are available via the link in the upper right hand corner of the home page — “Past Volumes,” which has the same URL as the home page — and full-text of many articles for more recent years is as well, though I’m finding that not all of the links work at the present time.

I will add a link to the Philosopher’s Annual in the blogroll, and also on the Links page of the Philosophy Department’s Web site.

Have a great long holiday weekend, folks!

Good morning, readers!

Here are the July reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Are any of these books candidates for inclusion in the Robbins collection?

Philosophy of Language

Frederik Stjernfelt
Diagrammatology: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology and Semiotics
Reviewed by Valeria Giardino, Institut Jean Nicod (CNRS-EHESS-ENS), Paris

François Recanati
Perspectival Thought: A Plea for (Moderate) Relativism
Reviewed by Kepa Korta, University of the Basque Country

 Epistemology

Mark Okrent
Rational Animals: The Teleological Roots of Intentionality
Reviewed by Matthew Ratcliffe, Durham University

Michael N. Forster
Kant and Skepticism
Reviewed by Anthony Brueckner, University of California, Santa Barbara

Zenon W. Pylyshyn
Things and Places: How the Mind Connects with the World
Reviewed by Christopher S. Hill, Brown University

Jennifer Lackey
Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge
Reviewed by Aaron Z. Zimmerman, University of California, Santa Barbara

Philosophy of Religion

Alvin Plantinga, Michael Tooley
Knowledge of God
Reviewed by William L. Rowe, Purdue University

J. L. Schellenberg
The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism
Reviewed by Stephen Wykstra, Calvin College and Timothy Perrine, Calvin College

Erik J. Wielenberg
God and the Reach of Reason: C.S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell
Reviewed by Bruce Russell, Wayne State University

Metaphysics

Robin Le Poidevin
The Images of Time: An Essay on Temporal Representation
Reviewed by Craig Callender, University of California, San Diego

John Leslie
Immortality Defended
Reviewed by Charles Taliaferro, St. Olaf College

Max Kistler, Bruno Gnassounou (eds.)
Dispositions and Causal Powers
Reviewed by Jennifer McKitrick, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Lynne Rudder Baker
The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism
Reviewed by Charlotte Witt, University of New Hampshire

History of Philosophy

Terence Irwin
The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study; Volume I: From Socrates to the Reformation
Reviewed by Dimitrios Dentsoras, University of Manitoba

Iain Macdonald, Krzysztof Ziarek (eds.)
Adorno and Heidegger: Philosophical Questions
Reviewed by David Pettigrew, Southern Connecticut State University

Larry A. Hickman
Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey
Reviewed by Dennis M. Senchuk, Indiana University

P. J. E. Kail
Projection and Realism in Hume’s Philosophy
Reviewed by Angela Coventry, Portland State University

Christopher Shields
Aristotle
Reviewed by Barbara Sattler, Yale University

Andrew Haas
The Irony of Heidegger
Reviewed by Richard Polt, Xavier University

Quentin Skinner
Hobbes and Republican Liberty
Reviewed by Bernard Gert, Dartmouth College

Paul Russell
The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion
Reviewed by Rico Vitz, University of North Florida

Charlie Huenemann (ed.)
Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays
Reviewed by Steven Barbone, San Diego State University

Philosophical Practice

Rupert Read, Laura Cook (ed.)
Applying Wittgenstein
Reviewed by Colin Johnston, Institute of Philosophy, University of London

Steve Fuller
The Knowledge Book: Key Concepts in Philosophy
Reviewed by Val Dusek, University of New Hampshire

Ethics/Moral Philosophy/Political Philosophy

Jerome Neu
Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults
Reviewed by Macalester Bell, Columbia University

J. McKenzie Alexander
The Structural Evolution of Morality
Reviewed by Herbert Gintis, University of Massachusetts

Francisco J. Benzoni
Ecological Ethics and the Human Soul: Aquinas, Whitehead, and the Metaphysics of Value
Reviewed by Christopher M. Brown, University of Tennessee at Martin

Aesthetics

Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
The Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature
Reviewed by K. Gover, Bennington College

Elisabeth Schellekens
Aesthetics and Morality
Reviewed by James Harold, Mount Holyoke College

Jane Kneller
Kant and the Power of Imagination
Reviewed by James Schmidt, Boston University

James O. Young
Cultural Appropriation and the Arts
Reviewed by John Rapko, San Francisco Art Institute

Stephen Davies
Philosophical Perspectives on Art
Reviewed by Christian Helmut Wenzel, National Chi Nan University, Taiwan

Philosophy of Mathematics

Marcus Giaquinto
Visual Thinking in Mathematics: An Epistemological Study
Reviewed by Sun-Joo Shin, Yale University

Happy Monday, readers!

Just arrived in Robbins last Friday: the latest issues of Inquiry and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.  Here are the Tables of Contents for the respective journals:

Inquiry 51(3) June 2008

• “Wittgenstein, Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty,” Nigel Pleasants
• “Fichte’s Fictions Revisited,” Benjamin D. Crowe
• “Personal Identity as a Task,” Sophia Vasalou
• “The Myth of the Metaphysical Circle: An Analysis of the Contemporary Crisis of the Critique of Metaphysics,” Herbert De Vriese

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77(1) July 2008

Articles

• “The Virtue of Practical Rationality,” Sigrún Svavarsdóttir
• “Internalist Foundationalism and the Problem of the Epistemic Regress,” José L. Zalabardo
• “A Functionalist Theory of Properties,” Ann Whittle
• “Is Locke’s Theory of Knowledge Inconsistent?,” Samuel C. Rickless
• “Why Be an Anti-Individualist?,” Laura Schroeter

Discussions

• “A Hard-line Reply to Pereboom’s Four-Case Manipulation Argument,” Michael McKenna
• “A Hard-line Reply to the Multiple-Case Manipulation Argument,” Derk Pereboom

• “Comments on Woodward, Making Things Happen,” Michael Strevens
• “Response to Strevens,” Jim Woodward

Book Symposium
The Evolution of Morality

• “Preçis of The Evolution of Morality,” Richard Joyce
• “Acquired Moral Truths,” Jesse Prinz
• “Some Questions About The Evolution of Morality,” Stephen Stich
• “Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Realism,” Peter Carruthers, Scott M. James
• “Replies,” Richard Joyce

Review Essay

• “Review Essay on Sami Pihlström’s Solipsism: History, Critique, and Relevance,” Richard Schantz

Critical Notices

• Epistemic Luck, reviewed by Jonathan Kvanvig
• The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche On Overcoming Nihilism, reviewed by Robert Pippin
• Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification, reviewed by Tomoji Shogenji

Good morning, all!

Today’s post highlights the latest issue of The Review of Metaphysics – Review of Metaphysics 61(4) June 2008.  The table of contents for this issues includes:

• David Roochnik, “Aristotle’s Defense of the Theoretical Life: Comments on Politics 7″
• John K. O’Connor, “Precedents in Aristotle and Brentano for Husserl’s Concern with Metabasis“
• Matthew J. Kisner, “Spinoza’s Virtuous Passions”
• Ronald E. Santoni, “Camus on Sartre’s Freedom — Another ‘Misunderstanding’”
• Alexander S. Jensen, “The Influence of Schleiermacher’s Second Speech on Religion on Heidegger’s Concept of Ereignis“

The journal is available electronically, but only up to volume 59 (2006).  If you are interested in looking at any of these articles, please let me know, as I will be sending this issue off to be bound in the next week or so.

Good morning, readers!  Welcome back from the long holiday weekend!

Last week, while browsing through Bookforum.com, I found two articles that may interest you.  The first is an article from Eurozine on Nietzsche and the “death of God.”  The second is from First Principles, on how philosophers play with fire — or is it the fire that plays with philosophers?

What do you think?

Good morning, readers!

Here is the list of the June 2008 reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Do you think any of these should be in the Robbins collection?

Stephen H. Daniel (ed.)
New Interpretations of Berkeley’s Thought
Reviewed by Marc A. Hight, Hampden-Sydney College

Rachel Cooper
Psychiatry and Philosophy of Science
Reviewed by Grant Gillett, University of Otago

Christopher Janaway
Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy
Reviewed by Brian Leiter, University of Texas, Austin

Brian J. Braman
Meaning and Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor on the Drama of Authentic Human Existence
Reviewed by David Burrell, C.S.C., University of Notre Dame/Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi

Peter Hylton
Quine
Reviewed by Guido Bonino, Università di Torino

James W. Felt
Aims: A Brief Metaphysics for Today
Reviewed by Oliva Blanchette, Boston College

Cécile Laborde, John Maynor (eds.)
Republicanism and Political Theory
Reviewed by Hans Oberdiek, Swarthmore College

Lambert Zuidervaart
Social Philosophy after Adorno
Reviewed by Hauke Brunkhorst, Universität Flensburg

Theodore Scaltsas, Andrew S. Mason (eds.)
The Philosophy of Epictetus
Reviewed by Brad Inwood, University of Toronto

Julie K. Ward
Aristotle on Homonymy: Dialectic and Science
Reviewed by David Evans, Queen’s University Belfast

Jay F. Rosenberg
Wilfrid Sellars: Fusing the Images
Reviewed by Willem A. deVries, University of New Hampshire

A. C. Grayling
Truth, Meaning and Realism: Essays in the Philosophy of Thought
Reviewed by Alexander Miller, University of Birmingham

Eric Christian Barnes
The Paradox of Predictivism
Reviewed by Clark Glymour, Carnegie Mellon

Thomas Baldwin (ed.)
Reading Merleau-Ponty: On Phenomenology of Perception
Reviewed by Taylor Carman, Barnard College

James R. Hamilton
The Art of Theater
Reviewed by Brian Soucek, University of Chicago

Andrew Bowie
Music, Philosophy, and Modernity
Reviewed by James Currie, University at Buffalo

Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne, Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.)
Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics
Reviewed by Alan Sidelle, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Alexander Bird
Nature’s Metaphysics: Laws and Properties
Reviewed by John W. Carroll, North Carolina State University

Charles L. Griswold
Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration
Reviewed by Ernesto V. Garcia, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Robert Young
Medically Assisted Death
Reviewed by John Keown, Georgetown University

Raimo Tuomela
The Philosophy of Sociality: The Shared Point of View
Reviewed by Kenneth Shockley, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Bernd Prien, David P. Schweikard (eds.)
Robert Brandom: Analytic Pragmatist
Reviewed by Bernhard Weiss, University of Cape Town

Terence Cuneo,
The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism
Reviewed by James Lenman, University of Sheffield

Sarah Broadie
Aristotle and Beyond: Essays on Metaphysics and Ethics
Reviewed by Jacob Rosen, New York University

Vincent F. Hendricks, Duncan Pritchard (eds.)
New Waves in Epistemology
Reviewed by Dennis Whitcomb, Western Washington University

Christian Beyer, and Alex Burri (eds.)
Philosophical Knowledge: Its Possibility and Scope
Reviewed by Duncan Pritchard, University of Edinburgh

David L. Hull, Michael Ruse (eds.)
The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology
Reviewed by David Depew, University of Iowa

David Lay Williams
Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment
Reviewed by Neven Leddy, Magdalen College, Oxford

Jesse Prinz
The Emotional Construction of Morals
Reviewed by Ronald de Sousa, University of Toronto

Immanuel Kant, Günter Zöller (ed.), Robert Louden (ed.)
Anthropology, History and Education
Reviewed by Amelie Rorty, Boston University

Katherine J. Morris
Sartre
Reviewed by William L. McBride, Purdue University

Timothy O’Connor
Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency
Reviewed by Graham Oppy, Monash University

David Luban
Legal Ethics and Human Dignity
Reviewed by Charles Silver, University of Texas at Austin

Igor Primoratz (ed.)
Civilian Immunity in War
Reviewed by Steven P. Lee, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Giorgio Agamben
Profanations
Reviewed by Jeffery Geller, University of North Carolina, Pembroke

Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.)
John Searle’s Philosophy of Language: Force, Meaning and Mind
Reviewed by Jesse R. Steinberg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Martin Carrier, Don Howard, Janet Kourany (eds.)
The Challenge of the Social and the Pressure of Practice: Science and Values Revisited
Reviewed by Miriam Solomon, Temple University

Ginia Schönbaumsfeld
A Confusion of the Spheres: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Religion
Reviewed by Wayne Proudfoot, Columbia University

C. A. J. Coady
Morality and Political Violence
Reviewed by Christine Chwaszcza, European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole, Florence

Megan Laverty
Iris Murdoch’s Ethics: A Consideration of her Romantic Vision
Reviewed by Christopher Cordner, University of Melbourne

P.M.S. Hacker
Human Nature: The Categorial Framework
Reviewed by Michael Quante, Universität zu Köln

Allen W. Wood
Kantian Ethics
Reviewed by Noell Birondo, Pomona College

Via New Advent’s news feed: John Allen, of the National Catholic Reporter, reports on a recent conference in Lugano, Switzerland on the topic of truth. Here’s how Allen begins:

Ever since his famous warning about a “dictatorship of relativism” shortly before his election three years ago, Pope Benedict XVI has been trying to kick-start a global conversation about truth. In particular, Benedict yearns for a new look at truth within the Western secular academy, that exotic region where Jacques Derrida’s relativist maxim “there is nothing outside the text” has, ironically, achieved the status of a near-absolute.

This weekend, in the enchanting Alpine setting of Lugano, Switzerland, a cross-section of prominent Western intellectuals is taking up the papal challenge. Organized by the Balzan Foundation, which each year awards the Swiss-Italian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, this unique gathering of scientists, philosophers, and eggheads of all stripes, most of them without any specific religious conviction, is titled, simply, “The Truth.”

I’m in Lugano covering the event. In effect, the two-day summit represents the most intriguing test to date of how Benedict’s effort to restore confidence in truth is playing among secular makers of opinion.

What makes this conference of interest for those who study analytic philosophy is the presence of Simon Blackburn at the conference. Blackburn, an atheist, seems a strange bedfellow among the many “religious” presenters at this conference. Yet, Blackburn’s book, Truth: A Guide, challenges relativism, and there are points where he agrees with some — though not all — of the Pope’s positions on truth, some of which comes out in the interview between him and Allen at the end of the article.

It’s quite an interesting read, especially for those interested in topics like truth.

Follow-up: After writing the original post, I found this follow-up article by Allen, “A three-point platform for détente with secularism.” I’m curious to know what my readers think of these articles.