Abstract: Newton’s Principia introduces four rules of reasoning for natural philosophy. Although useful, there is a concern about whether Newton’s rules guarantee truth. After redirecting the discussion from truth to…
Causality and Determination
Summary: A classic text in which Anscombe argues for a realist view of causation. Specifically, Anscombe holds that causation is both directly perceivable and not subject to philosophical analysis. Anscombe…
From Intelligent machines to the human brain
Summary: How does one make a clever adaptive machine that can recognise speech, control an aircraft, and detect credit card fraud? Recent years have seen a revolution in the kinds…
Heidegger’s hermeneutic account of cognition
…of transcendental phenomenology, and the hermeneutic account of cognition resulting from it. I explicate the main thesis of the hermeneutic account, namely that cognition is interaction with the world, followed…
Analects (Selections)
Summary: Selections from the Analects of Kongzi (Confucius), a foundational text in Chinese philosophy. It is split into twenty books recounting things that the Master (Kongzi) and his disciples said…
Donald Davidson: A short Introduction
…arguments, and discusses them in some detail. The book thus makes Davidson’s thought accessible in its genuine depth, and acquaints the reader with the main lines of discussion surrounding it….
Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt on Labor
Comparing the typologies of human activities developed by Beauvoir and Arendt, I argue that these philosophers share the same concept of labor as well as a similar insight that labor…
(eds.) Women and Liberty, 1600-1800: Philosophical Essays
…process of recovering these voices, our understanding of philosophy in the early modern period is not only expanded, but also significantly altered toward a more accurate history of our discipline….
Mary Astell’s ‘A Serious Proposal to the Ladies’ (1694)
Introduction: Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) is established in the popular imagination as the “first feminist,” but another philosopher provided a systematic analysis of women’s subjugated condition and a call for female…
22 Atmospherics: Abortion Law and Philosophy
Abstract: In 1934, Karl N. Llewellyn published a lively essay trumpeting the dawn of legal realism, “On Philosophy in American Law.” The charm of his defective little piece is its…