Good morning, readers!

Here are the February 2009 reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:

Philosophy of Law

  • Peter Goodrich, Florian Hoffmann, Michel Rosenfeld, Cornelia Vismann (eds.), Derrida and Legal Philosophy, Reviewed by Douglas Litowitz, Magnetar Capital LLC

Moral & Political Philosophy

Philosophers and History of Philosophy

Critical Theory

Philosophy of Language

Aesthetics

Perception

Personal Identity

Philosophy of Religion

Logic

  • Douglas Walton, Chris Reed, Fabrizio Macagno, Argumentation Schemes, Reviewed by Leo Groarke, Wilfrid Laurier University

Good morning, readers!

Here are the January 2009 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Though collection development is on hold for the time being at Robbins, are any of these worth considering for purchase at a later date?

Aesthetics

Philosophers

Metaphysics

Epistemology

History of Philosophy

Moral & Political Philosophy

Philosophy of Law

Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of Science

Food, Wine, Beer and Philosophy

January 21st, 2009

Image at left taken from here.

Good morning, readers!

Last year, I wrote a post about pop culture and philosophy, talking about an editorial that used Batman v. the Joker to show how popular culture can be used to explore and discuss (charged) philosophical topics.

In the same spirit, I will review, today, three books which I’ve recently read.  The books, from the same Philosophy and Pop Culture series as Batman and Philosophy, are:

Now, before you hold your nose and pass on today’s reading, declaring them unfit for general philosophical consumption, let me rise to their defense and say that the books in this trilogy are well worth your time to read and ponder.

For one thing, there are some fascinating discussions of philosophy of language, aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology in this book.  For instance:

  • Why do we limit artistic and aesthetic pleasure to sight and sound alone, but not to taste, touch, or smell?
  • Just what is it that we are describing when we describe a bottle of wine?  Or in a glass of beer?  Are we using metaphor alone?  Or are we describing objective, measurable features of the wine or beer?
  • How do we account for things like taste?  Is taste purely subjective?  Or is there an objective component to it?
  • What sort of legal and Constitutional issues are involved in the prohibition of shipping alcohol across state lines? In limitations on homebrewing?  How do laws in regards to these differ in Canada as opposed to in the United States?
  • In regards to food: what do our cultural dietary consumption patterns reveal about us as a people? As individuals?
  • What are the arguments for and against hunting?
  • What does it mean to say that certain food experiences are both delicious and disgusting at the same time?

These are but some of the many questions discussed in the trilogy, covering a wide range of topics of interest to philosophers.

Another reason that I liked this trilogy is that many of the essays are simply hilarious even as they explicate some serious philosophical points.

For example, Steven Hales’ essay, “Mill v. Miller, or Higher and Lower Pleasures,” in Beer and Philosophy is a witty examination of what exactly goes into performing a hedonistic calculus according to John Stuart Mill, through the example of determining which beer (a greater amount of lower-quality, less pleasurable beer v. a lesser amount of higher-quality, more pleasurable beer) should be purchased with a limited sum of money.

Likewise, Glenn Kuehn’s “Food Fetishes and Sin-Aesthetics: Professor Dewey, Please Save Me From Myself,” in Food and Philosophy, examines why we have such guilt over food in American culture, with references to Kant, Dewey, and Indiana Jones.

Finally, as pedagogical tools, the essays in these books may help to illuminate questions of perception, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics for students who may need a concrete example or two, to see how a theory might be applied in practice.

In short, I definitely recommend these books.  You will, I think, find them not only insightful, but amusing and helpful as well.

“The first business of science education should not be to help us answer questions, but to help us ask questions.”

– The Last Psychiatrist

Good morning, readers, and happy Friday!

I will leave you this week with an interesting blog post from The Last Psychiatrist: “Where Does a Tree Get its Mass?

There is a lot going on in this post of potential interest to philosophers — there are questions about epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and general philosophical practice that can be drawn out of this post.

I like this post a great deal, for four reasons:

  • The Last Psychiatrist exposes the shallowness of so much of our ordinary, political, and scientific discourse.
  • I particularly like his final sentence, quoted above.  I would go even farther and argue that not only science education, but general education as well, should be about learning how to ask meaningful, correct, and precise questions, rather than merely being force-fed “answers.”
  • His argument, though it focuses on science education, also, for me, gets to the heart of philosophy. Learning to ask questions in a meaningful and precise way is a major component of philosophical practice and discourse.
  • Finally, as a librarian, the post touches on the very first step of successful searching: Define the question precisely. Get this right, and your search strategy and results will flow easily from your question.

What do you think, readers?

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

History of Philosophy

Philosophy of Law

Philosophy of Science

Philosophy of Religion

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

Metaphysics

Historiography

Moral & Political Philosophy

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

For those interested in philosophy of language: Steven Pinker discusses how language works in this 2005 TED Talk.

For those who don’t know about the TED Talks, here’s a brief description from the TED Web site:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)…

The TED Conference, held annually in Long Beach, is still the heart of TED. More than a thousand people now attend — indeed, the event sells out a year in advance — and the content has expanded to include science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole.

I’ve enjoyed watching a variety of these posted lectures over the last two years or so, and they are always provocative.  If you like Professor Pinker’s talk, you might want to browse the site and view more of the talks.

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