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1. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Andrew Jampol-Petzinger Totality and Infinity at 50—Ed. Scott Davidson and Diane Perpich
2. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Victor M. Salas The Science of Being as Being: Metaphysical Investigations—Ed. Gregory T. Doolan
3. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Curtis L Hancock Poetry, Beauty, & Contemplation: The Complete Aesthetics of Jacques Maritain—John G. Trapani
4. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Chris Bessemans Universalizability in Moral Judgments: Winch’s Ambiguity
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Peter Winch once objected to Sidgwick’s universalizability thesis in that an agent’s nature would be of no interest to his judgment or the judgment about the agent’s action. While agreeing upon the relevance of the agent-as-person in moral judgments, I disagree with Winch’s conclusions. The ambiguity in Winch’s text reveals that Winch’s moral judgment is inconsistent, and this indicates that there is something wrong in Winch’s account. My claim, for which I am indebted to Aurel Kolnai, is that inserting the relevance of the circumstantially relevant features of the agent-as-person does not imply that one has to deny the universalizability of moral judgments. Differences in agents, if relevant to the situation, can cause differentiations in judgments and can allow bystanders to say that the agent did right or wrong although they themselves would have acted differently. But this possibility does not mean that the universalizability of moral judgments should be denied.
5. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Annual Index
6. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Mark A. Tietjen Antitheory and Edification: Williams and Kierkegaard on Some Possibilities for Philosophy
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This paper shows the remarkable compatibility of the thought of Bernard Williams and Søren Kierkegaard regarding what Williams would call the “limits” of philosophical ethics and practice. In different ways both Williams and Kierkegaard critique a reductionist conception of the ethical life, its obligations, and the prescriptions that ethical theories make based upon such conceptions. Additionally, the high level of reflectiveness in their respective societies worries both. For Williams the concern is an epistemological one, whereas for Kierkegaard the issue is moral. Upon juxtaposing their thought in these areas, I show how Kierkegaard extends the concerns that he shares with Williams by demonstrating a wider vision of what philosophical ethics can and should do.
7. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Stephen R. Palmquist Could Kant’s Jesus Be God?
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Although Kant had a high regard for Jesus as a moral teacher, interpreters typically assume that his philosophy disallows belief in Jesus as God. Those who regard Kant as a moral reductionist are especially likely to offer a negative construal of the densely-argued subsection of his 1793 Religion that relates directly to this issue. The recent “affirmative” trend in Kant-scholarship provides the basis for an alternative reading. First, theologians must regard Jesus as human so that belief in Jesus can empower believers to become good. Second, theologians may refer to Jesus as divine by identifying his disposition as exemplifying the “archetype of perfect humanity.” Third, Judeo-Christian history poses an empirical problem that theologians can solve by interpreting Jesus’s divinity according to the schematism of analogy. While this does not constitute a robust (identifiably Christian) doctrine of Jesus’s divinity, it does provide clear guidelines for formulating such a tenet of historical faith.
8. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Joseph Palencik Kant and the Limitations of Legitimized Historical Knowledge
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Kant’s emphasis on the individual knower often overshadows the social dimension in his thought. In particular, it is infrequently recognized that he has a coherent and well-developed theory of testimony. In this paper I develop Kant’s view of testimony and argue for the important distinction that he holds between historical belief derived from testimony and what I shall call mere belief. While beliefs of the former type can be justified and often amount to instances of knowledge, beliefs of the second type are not justified, cannot lead to knowledge, and yet may still be legitimately held.
9. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Yu Zhenhua Polanyi and Wittgenstein on Doubt
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There is an interesting convergence between Michael Polanyi and Wittgenstein with respect to the problem of doubt. Polanyi carries out his “critique of doubt” on the basis of the distinction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge and examines explicit doubt and tacit doubt. On the level of explicit doubt, Polanyi debunks the paradoxical nature of the principle of universal doubt and illuminates the fiduciary character of doubt. The introduction of the tacit dimension into the discussion of the problem of human knowledge leads Polanyi to discover tacit doubt. Polanyi’s critique of doubt finds strong echoes in Wittgenstein, especially in his On Certainty. Nevertheless, there are important differences between two thinkers. Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the practical aspect of a world-picture and Polanyi’s sensitivity to tacit doubt are among the most prominent items that set them apart.
10. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
Books Received
11. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
About Our Contributors
12. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Books Received
13. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Jean-Louis Hudry Aristotle on Modality and Predicative Necessity
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Many logicians have tried to formalize a modal logic from the Prior Analytics, but the general view is that Aristotle has failed to offer a consistent modal logic there. This paper explains that Aristotle is not interested in modal logic as such. Modalities for him pertain to the relations of predication, without challenging the assertoric system of deductions simpliciter. Thus, demonstrations or dialectical deductions have modal predicates and yet are still deductions simpliciter. It is a matter of distinguishing inferential necessity that applies to every deduction from the modal predicates in the two premises and conclusion. The modality of demonstrations can be either necessary or possible. The necessity is predicative, i.e., independent of inferential necessity. While the possible demonstration challenges the predicative necessity of the necessary demonstration, it preserves the inferential necessity of the deduction simpliciter.
14. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
About our Contributors
15. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Anders Kraal Is the Existence of the Best Possible World Logically Impossible?
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Since the 1960s an increasing number of philosophers have endorsed the thesis that there can be no such thing as “the best possible world.” In this paper I examine the main arguments for this thesis as put forth by George Schlesinger, Alvin Plantinga, Bruce Reichenbach, Peter Forrest, and Richard Swinburne. I argue that none of these arguments succeed in establishing the thesis and that the logical possibility of the best possible world is as yet an open question.
16. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Plato’s Moral Realism: The Discovery of the Presuppositions of Ethics. By John M. Rist
17. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Mathew Lu Aristotle on Abortion and Infanticide
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Some recent commentators have thought that, if updated with the findings of modern embryology, Aristotle’s views on abortion would yield a pro-life conclusion. On the basis of a careful reading of the relevant passage from Politics VII, I argue that the matter is more complicated than simply replacing his defective empirical embryological claims with our more accurate ones. Since Aristotle’s view on abortion was shaped not only by a defective embryology but also by an acceptance of the classical Greek practice of exposure/ infanticide, substituting a more accurate embryology will not straightforwardly generate a strongly pro-life conclusion. In the end, this analysis reveals how different Aristotle’s ethical thought on this matter really is from the contemporary discussion of abortion.
18. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Dominika Dzwonkowska The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics. By David J. Gunkel
19. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Wojciech P. Grygiel Multiverse, M-theory, and God the Creator
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From a physical point of view, the no-boundary Hartle-Hawking model put forward in 1983 was an attempt to demonstrate that the incorporation of quantum effects into the general theory of relativity would solve the problem of singularities that make the theory of relativity incomplete. This was achieved by imposing the so called “no-boundary conditions” whereby the Universe could emerge with non-zero probability from a non-existing state. Stephen Hawking quickly turned this result into a metaphysical claim that physical laws explained away the necessity of the Divine intervention at the origin of the Universe. This paper offers an inquiry into the line of arguments presented by Hawking and Mlodinow in their book The Grand Design and supported with the claim that the yet unknown versionof the superstring theory, the M-theory, is an ultimate theory of the Universe. The upshot of the paper is that although the argument in the Grand Design relies on the newer achievements of physics embedded in the controversial multi-verse setting, it does not escape the question of the origin of the most general laws of physics that bring the Universe into existence.
20. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Thomas Krettek, S.J. Virtue, Rules, and Justice: Kantian Aspirations. By Thomas E. Hill, Jr.