The PolemicalGravitasof Robert Persons

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-305
Author(s):  
Victor Houuston
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
The State ◽  
Mary Magdalen ◽  
The Common ◽  
As If

The reputation of Robert Persons as a prose stylist has suffered from the repellant myth his opponents constructed around him. What if his works created a phenomenal stir at the time? A. L. Rowse, the most eloquent spokesman for the ‘common-sense’ English view of the matter, puts this down to the deceptively natural, easy prose of Persons, the smiling face of the villain. Haunted—if Rowse is to be believed—by the sound of the bells of St. Mary Magdalen, pealing backwards as if for a fire when he was expelled from Balliol in 1573, he nursed a lifelong grudge against his own nation for so dismissing his great intellectual gifts. No wonder Swift, himself a bitter, ‘conjured’ spirit, thought Persons the pick of Elizabethan prose writers. Everything he wrote, so smoothly and plausibly, was devoted to the overthrow of the State in England and the establishment of a Catholic monarchy under which Jesuits would exercise a monopoly of power. Rowse acknowledges Persons’ spirituality, notably evident inThe Christian Directory,but treats it as being of his active career a thing apart.

Linguistic Philosophy and Perception

Philosophy ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 28 (107) ◽  
pp. 311-324
Author(s):  
Margaret MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Perceptual Variation ◽  
Linguistic Philosophy ◽  
As If

Philosophical theories of perception are generally admitted to be responses to certain problems or puzzles allied to the ancient dichotomy between Appearance and Reality. For they have been mainly provoked by the incompatibility of the common–sense assumption that an external, physical world exists and is revealed to the senses with the well–known facts of perceptual variation and error. If only what is real were perceived just as if only what is right were done it is possible that many of those questions would never have been asked which lead to moral philosophy and a metaphysics of the external world. But sense perceptions of the same object vary so that it appears to have contradictory qualities and are sometimes completely deceptive. Nor do illusory differ internally from veridical perceptions. Moreover, perceptual variation and error can be unmasked only by such procedures as looking more carefully, listening harder, trying to touch, asking others, in short by more sense experience. So the senses are, as it were, both accused and judge in these disputes and why should a venal judge be trusted more than the criminal he tries? Such “correction” of one experience by another of the same kind seems no more reliable than the original “error.” Philosophers have found all this very puzzling.

The Machiavellian Budgeter

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew T. Cowart
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
The State ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
The Common ◽  
As If

Some political theorists maintain that Niccolò Machiavelli was a rather immoral sort. His exhortations to guile, perfidy, deception and opportunism were numerous, his scruples few. Others, in a more revisionist vein, suggest that his preferred tactics were only meant for the common good. Yet, whether Machiavelli was a scientist, a descriptivist, a technician, a moralist or an immoralist is immaterial from one standpoint: he taught us something about the nature of human interaction in the State. Machiavellian interpretations of human events underlie many of our personal impressions of political life. We speak of strategy, tactics, morality, honesty as if the locations of political leaders along those dimensions determine what governments do for us or to us.

scholarly journals Re-visiting the Concept of Mens Rea: Challenging the Common Approaches Employed under Islamic Jurisprudence and Statute Law

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Ahadi
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The State ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

In the present paper the traditional and customary perspectives on the concept of Mens Rea are challenged and a new definition of the same is put forward. The challenge is based on the idea that the concepts in criminal law need evolution in order to keep their function and practicality. Such an evolution demands such a condition wherein, while granting the characteristics of adaptability with the contextual conditions and principles of criminal law, the maintenance of the same is ensured. The mens rea is customarily defined as ‘culpable state of mind of the accused when committing an offence under criminal law and ‘rebellion intent’ under Islamic Jurisprudence. Both definitions of the concept have the capability to undergo evolution and, thus, a new definition of the same is envisaged herein as such that the mens rea constitutes ‘the culpable linkage of mind with the forbidden conduct’. Two changes are observable in the new definition compared with the existing one: first, the ‘state of mind’ is replaced with ‘linkage of mind’; second, the interpretation of the term ‘culpable’ as an independent constituent shall differ as per the common sense and the contextual conditions. The new definition grants dynamism to the concept and resolves the problems long associated with the definition of the mens rea under the criminal law.

scholarly journals ONE BELT ONE ROAD FROM THE GEOPOLITICAL POINT OF VIEW

Globus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng Guo ◽  
Yin Qun
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Rising Powers ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
One Belt One Road ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
The Common ◽  
Cognitive Foundations ◽  
And Control

Western geopolitical studies have evolved over a hundred years, forming a systematic and authoritative classical geopolitical theory, providing a set of thought models and epistemological frameworks related to geopolitics, that is, "Western geopolitical imagination." Affected by this, contemporary western geopolitical elites will have two kinds of habitual thinking when interpreting China’s “OBOR” Initiative: the first is the historical analogy, by comparing China with the rising powers in history; the second is the common sense, by imagining that China will imitate itself pursuit of expansion and hegemony. This article critiques the cognitive foundations of traditional western geopolitical theories, and points out that neither the “OBOR” Initiative pursues power and control, nor follow the “state-centrism” path, nor take the perspective of the “dichotomy” of land and sea confrontation. It is an attempt to transcend traditional geopolitical thinking.

The Physiology of Mind, the Unity of Nature, and the Moral Order in Victorian Thought

1981 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. S. Jacyna
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Living Organism ◽  
The State ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind

In 1879 G. H. Lewes described the state of current British mental science. There were, he maintained, three main ‘schools’ of psychology. The first of these Lewes called the ‘ontological’ school; its members traced their lineage to Thomas Reid and to the common sense philosophers of the early nineteenth century, especially Dugald Stewart and William Hamilton. The second school was the ‘empirical’, which stood in the tradition of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Condillac, Hartley, and James Mill. The ontologists and the empiricists differed in their theories of knowledge: the former held that certain beliefs were native to the mind; the latter that all ideas originated, mediately or immediately, from experience. However, both schools agreed on the object of psychological enquiry. They ‘quietly ignore the complex conditions of the living organism, and treat mental facts simply as the manifestations of a Psychical Principle’. Further, the ontological and empiricist schools concurred on the means by which this principle should be studied; both made introspection the ‘exclusive method of research’.

The Legacy of Reid's Common Sense in Analytic Epistemology

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Mark Boespflug
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The Common

The common sense that heavily informs the epistemology of Thomas Reid has been recently hailed as instructive with regard to some of the most fundamental issues in epistemology by a burgeoning segment of analytic epistemologists. These admirers of Reid may be called dogmatists. I highlight three ways in which Reid's approach has been a model to be imitated in the estimation of dogmatists. First, common sense propositions are taken to be the benchmarks of epistemology inasmuch as they constitute paradigm cases of knowledge. Second, dogmatists follow Reid in taking common sense propositions to provide boundaries for philosophical theorizing. Inasmuch as philosophical theorizing leads one to deny a common sense proposition, such theorizing is stepping outside of the bounds of what it can or should do. Third, dogmatists follow Reid in focusing heavily on the problem of skepticism and by responding to it by refusing to answer the demand for a meta-justification that the skeptic wants.

Thomas Reid on Causation and Scientific Explanation

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Barrantes ◽  
Juan M. Durán
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Common

We argue that there is no tension between Reid's description of science and his claim that science is based on the principles of common sense. For Reid, science is rooted in common sense since it is based on the (common sense) idea that fixed laws govern nature. This, however, does not contradict his view that the scientific notions of causation and explanation are fundamentally different from their common sense counterparts. After discussing these points, we dispute with Cobb's ( Cobb 2010 ) and Benbaji's ( Benbaji 2003 ) interpretations of Reid's views on causation and explanation. Finally, we present Reid's views from the perspective of the contemporary debate on scientific explanation.

Motives of espionage against ones own country in the light of idiographic studies

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Michalak
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Common

Motives of espionage against ones own country in the light of idiographic studies The money is perceived as the common denominator among people who have spied against their own country. This assumption is common sense and appears to be self-evident truth. But do we have any hard evidences to prove the validity of such a statement? What method could be applied to determine it? This article is a review of the motives behind one's resorting to spying activity which is a complex and multifarious process. I decided to present only the phenomenon of spying for another country. The studies on the motives behind taking up spying activity are idiographic in character. One of the basic methodological problems to be faced by the researchers of this problem is an inaccessibility of a control group.

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