Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!  Happy Monday to you!

Via Garrett Eastman’s Library News & Notes, a fascinating interview by Gordy Slack of Salon.com with philosopher Alva Noë, on why Noë thinks that certain reductionist accounts of the brain are problematic.

Good morning, readers!

Here are the latest podcasts from Philosophy Bites.  These podcasts were recorded from mid-August 2008 to mid-October 2008:

• Aaron Ridley on Nietzsche on Art and Truth
• M. M. McCabe on Socratic Method
• Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography
• Barry C. Smith on Neuroscience
• Adrian Moore on Kant’s Metaphysics
• Peter Cave on Paradoxes
• Christopher Janaway on Nietzsche on Morality
• Anthony Appiah on Experiments in Ethics
• Roger Crisp on Virtue

Just a reminder that I will be out tomorrow.  See you on Monday!

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!

Yesterday, I learned of a journal that may be of interest to those who study philosophy of mind, epistemology, cognitive science, and related fields: Mind and Matter. Here is a description of the journal:

Mind and Matter is aimed at an educated interdisciplinary readership interested in all aspects of mind-matter research from the perspectives of the sciences and humanities. It is devoted to the publication of empirical, theoretical, and conceptual research and the discussion of its results. The main subject areas of the journal are:

– neuroscience, cognitive science, behavioral science
– physical approaches, mathematical modeling, data analysis
– philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, applied metaphysics
– cultural and social studies, history of ideas

Some, but not all, of the articles are available for free on the site.  One of these is “The Phenomenological Role of Consciousness in Measurement,” by Patrick A. Heelan, Mind and Matter 2(1) 2004, which a friend and colleague sent to me yesterday.  The abstract reads:

A structural analogy is pointed out between a hermeneutically developed phenomenological description, based on Husserl, of the process of perceptual cognition on the one hand and quantum mechanical measurement on the other hand. In Husserl’s analytic phase of the cognition process, the “intentionality-structure” of the subject/object union prior to predication of a local object is an entangled symmetry-making state, and this entanglement is broken in the synthetic phase when the particular local object is constituted under the influence of an eidos (”inner horizon”) and the “facticity” of the local world (”outer horizon”). Replacing “perceptual cognition” by “measurement” and “subject” by “expert subject using a measuring device” the analogy of a formal quantum structure is extended to the conscious structure of all empirical cognition. This is laid out in three theses: about perception, about classical measurement, and about quantum measurement. The results point to the need for research into the quantum structure of the physical embodiment of human cognition.

Harvard does not currently have electronic access to the full contents of the journal, though a hard copy may be found in Widener, Widener WID-LC RC321 .M49, with current issues in the Reading Room Stacks.

What do you think, readers?

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!

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

Hello, readers, and happy Friday!

Yesterday, we received the latest issue of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research — Vol. 76 (3) May 2008.

For those interested in epistemology, psychology, philosophy of mind, and perception, this issue may catch your fancy. Articles include:

• Erik J. Olsson, “Klein on the Unity of Cartesian and Contemporary Skepticism”
• Henry E. Allison, “‘Whatever Begins to Exist Must Have a Cause of Existence’: Hume’s Analysis and Kant’s Response”
• David Enoch and Joshua Schechter, “How are Basic Belief-Forming Methods Justified?”
• Peter Baumann, “Contextualism and the Factivity Problem”
• Todd Buras, “Three Grades of Immediate Perception: Thomas Reid’s Distinctions
• Adina L. Roskies, “A New Argument for Nonconceptual Content”

Additionally, there are two book symposia.

• The first covers Alva Noë’s Action in Perception, with responses by John Campbell, M.G.F. Martin, and Sean Kelly, and a reply by Noë.
• The second covers Jesse Prinz’s Gut Reactions, with responses by Justin D’Arms and David Hills, and a reply by Prinz.

The issue is not currently available in electronic format, but will likely be so at some point. You will be able to find it via the database, Synergy. (For information on how to use Synergy, please see my earlier post.) You’ll need your PIN and ID to access the journal.

April has been a busy month at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. I’ve listed some of the more relevant and interesting books below, sorted out into my own categories. (Obviously, a few books can be placed in more than category.)

Do any strike you as needing to be in the Robbins collection?

Historical Figures & Periods

Gregory Landini
Wittgenstein’s Apprenticeship with Russell
Reviewed by Nicholas Griffin, McMaster University

Judith Chelius Stark (ed.)
Feminist Interpretations of Augustine
Reviewed by Colleen McCluskey, Saint Louis University

Mark Dooley, Liam Kavanagh
The Philosophy of Derrida
Reviewed by Matthew C. Halteman, Calvin College

Robert B. Louden
The World We Want: How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us
Reviewed by Beatrix Himmelmann, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Bret W. Davis
Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit
Reviewed by Frank Schalow, University of New Orleans

Aaron Preston
Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion
Reviewed by William Larkin, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Paul Redding
Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought
Reviewed by Willem A. deVries, University of New Hampshire

Brad Inwood
Seneca: Selected Philosophical Letters
Reviewed by Katja Maria Vogt, Columbia University

Songsuk Susan Hahn
Contradiction in Motion: Hegel’s Organic Conception of Life and Value
Reviewed by Richard Velkley, Tulane University

Epistemology & Perception

Mary Margaret McCabe, Mark Textor (eds.)
Perspectives on Perception
Reviewed by José Luis Bermúdez, Washington University in St. Louis

Jaakko Hintikka
Socratic Epistemology: Explorations of Knowledge-Seeking by Questioning
Reviewed by Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde University, Denmark

David Reisman
Sartre’s Phenomenology
Reviewed by Katherine Morris, Mansfield College, University of Oxford

Russell T. Hurlburt, Eric Schwitzgebel
Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic
Reviewed by Gualtiero Piccinini, University of Missouri, St. Louis

Metaphysics

Christian Kanzian, Muhammad Legenhausen (eds.)
Substance and Attribute: Western and Islamic Traditions in Dialogue
Reviewed by Sajjad Rizvi, University of Exeter

Christian Kanzian (ed.)
Persistence
Reviewed by Thomas Sattig, Washington University

Moral & Political Philosophy, Ethics

Jens Timmermann
Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary
Reviewed by Sean P. Walsh, University of Minnesota, Duluth

David Copp
Morality in a Natural World: Selected Essays in Metaethics
Reviewed by Eric Gampel, California State University, Chico

Christopher J. Finlay
Hume’s Social Philosophy: Human Nature and Commercial Sociability in A Treatise of Human Nature
Reviewed by Lorraine Besser-Jones, University of Waterloo

Michael W. Austin
Conceptions of Parenthood: Ethics and the Family
Reviewed by Joseph Millum, National Institutes of Health

Pedro Alexis Tabensky
Judging and Understanding: Essays on Free Will, Narrative, Meaning and the Ethical Limits of Condemnation
Reviewed by Meghan Griffith, Davidson College

Simon Keller
The Limits of Loyalty
Reviewed by John Kleinig, John Jay College, CUNY; and Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, CSU

Philosophy of Science

Steven Horst
Beyond Reduction: Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science
Reviewed by D. Gene Witmer, University of Florida

Aesthetics

Paul Crowther
Defining Art, Creating the Canon: Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt
Reviewed by Ingvild Torsen, Florida International University

Philosophy of Religion

Sandra Menssen, Thomas D. Sullivan
The Agnostic Inquirer: Revelation from a Philosophical Standpoint
Reviewed by Keith M. Parsons, University of Houston, Clear Lake

Miscellaneous

Barry C. Smith (ed.), Fritz Allhoff (ed.)
Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine; and, Wine and Philosophy: A Symposium on Thinking and Drinking
Reviewed by Peter Machamer, University of Pittsburgh

Good morning, and happy Friday! Three articles in Bookforum.com caught my attention recently:

• Following on my recent post about neuroscience and neuroaesthetics, I found this article, “The Limits of Neuro-Talk,” by Matthew B. Crawford to be an intriguing and critical examination of the models and language that we use to discuss and frame neuroscience.

• Bill Moyers interviews Martha Nussbaum, discussing the separation of church and state in the context of her new book, Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality.

• Finally, Thomas Merrill offers an interesting reading of Descartes’ Discourse on Method, with a look at the strengths and flaws of the Cartesian project.

Via Bookforum.com: Raymond Tallis writes “The neuroscience delusion:
Neuroaesthetics is wrong about our experience of literature – and it is wrong about humanity” for the Times Literary Supplement. It’s an interesting article on how aspects of neuroscience have been transformed into “neuroaesthetics,” the literary theory du jour.

While some may balk at the whiff of Continental literary theory, Tallis offers some fascinating commentary on the present state and use of neuroscience as an explanatory model — his main criticism is that some who use neuroscience as an explanatory model assume that the field is far more advanced than it actually is. He also argues that neuroscience is not sufficient to explain the whole of human creativity. Finally, he also critiques the attempts by contemporary neuroscience to explain (or dismiss) consciousness. Tallis concludes:

At any rate, attempting to find an explanation of a sophisticated twentieth-century reader’s response to a sophisticated seventeenth-century poet in brain activity that is shared between humans and animals, and has been around for many millions of years, rather than in communities of minds that are unique to humans, seems perverse. Neuroaesthetics is wrong about the present state of neuroscience: we are not yet able to explain human consciousness, even less articulate self-consciousness as expressed in the reading and writing of poetry. It is wrong about our experience of literature. And it is wrong about humanity.

Do you think he is right, readers?