Physics without Pictures? The Ostwald-Boltzmann Controversy, and Mach’s (Unnoticed) Middle-Way

Skill-based engagement with a rich landscape of affordances as an alternative to thinking through other minds

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x1900284x ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

Author(s):

Julian Kiverstein ◽

Erik Rietveld

Keyword(s):

Social Behaviour ◽

Cultural Learning ◽

Other Minds ◽

Middle Way ◽

Internalist Account

Abstract Veissière and colleagues make a valiant attempt at reconciling an internalist account of implicit cultural learning with an externalist account that understands social behaviour in terms of its environment-involving dynamics. However, unfortunately the author's attempt to forge a middle way between internalism and externalism fails. We argue their failure stems from the overly individualistic understanding of the perception of cultural affordances they propose.

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Burning Man Festival As Life Enhancing, Post Christendom 'Middle Way'

10.2986/tren.112-0001 ◽

2007 ◽

Author(s):

John W. MOREHEAD

Keyword(s):

Burning Man ◽

Middle Way

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Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life

10.1093/oso/9780198835004.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Sylvia Berryman

Keyword(s):

Virtue Ethics ◽

Human Nature ◽

Common Belief ◽

Ethical Life ◽

Metaphysical Grounding ◽

Middle Way ◽

The Common

This work challenges the common belief that Aristotle’s virtue ethics is founded on an appeal to human nature, an appeal that is thought to be intended to provide both substantive ethical advice and justification for the demands of ethics. It is argued that it is not Aristotle’s intent, but the view is resisted that Aristotle was blind to questions of the source or justification of his ethical views. Aristotle’s views are interpreted as a ‘middle way’ between the metaphysical grounding offered by Platonists and the scepticism or subjectivist alternatives articulated by others. The commitments implicit in the nature of action figure prominently in this account: Aristotle reinterprets Socrates’ famous paradox that no one does evil willingly, taking it to mean that a commitment to pursuing the good is implicit in the very nature of action. This approach is compared to constructivism in contemporary ethics.

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Schopenhauer, Buddhism, and Compassion

The Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190660055.013.17 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 327-346

Author(s):

Richard Reilly

Keyword(s):

Metaphysical Explanation ◽

Moral Value ◽

Middle Way ◽

Perfect Duties ◽

Kantian View ◽

The Will ◽

The Way

The focus of this chapter is Schopenhauer’s On The Basis of Morality (1841). His distinctive views are that compassion marks one’s being as spontaneously motivated to relieve another’s suffering as one’s own and that this requires a metaphysical explanation for how one identifies with another. The author defends these views and shows in some detail how they mirror the Mahayana account of compassion in Shantideva’s The Way of the Bodhisattva. Next, the author outlines Schopenhauer’s case for compassion being the sole basis of moral value and defends this claim against the Kantian view that acting beneficently cannot (rationally) override so-called perfect duties to others. Finally, the author explores how Buddha Shakyamuni’s teachings cohere with Schopenhauer’s account of suffering and how mystical consciousness, as represented in Mahayana Buddhism’s “Middle Way,” coheres with Schopenhauer’s asceticism—the “denial of the will”—as the path to overcoming suffering.

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