Yves R. Simon: A Philosopher's Quest for Science and Prudence

AbstractThis essay treats the inspiration and nature of Yves Simon's philosophical life. His embrace of that life was importantly shaped by his engagement with the republican tradition in France, his passionate opposition to the fascist threat to France, and his later attachment to the aspirations of American democracy. However, his early philosophical interests took direction and inspiration from his encounter with Jacques Maritain who drew him to Thomism. His devotion to the truth was fierce, and he confronted honestly the threats to this defining quality of philosophical life from the pressures of social conformity and from the discouragement of seeing the inadequacies and disagreements in the history of philosophy. He came, as especially evident in his most influential book, Philosophy of Democratic Government, to esteem highly the virtue of prudence, seeking to protect it from both philosophy and social science.

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Measuring the Unmeasurable? Taking Stock of QoG Measures

The Oxford Handbook of the Quality of Government ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198858218.013.6 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 92-114

Author(s):

Nicholas Charron

Keyword(s):

Social Science ◽

Quality Indicator ◽

Social Science Research ◽

Science Research ◽

Wide Scope ◽

Scientific Impact ◽

History Of ◽

Cross Country ◽

Future Work

This chapter discusses a wide scope of the available indicators of quality of government. It begins with a brief history of the development of the indicators and their scientific impact on social science research. The chapter posits a typology of the various ways in which indicators of governance can differ and implications of such differences. The chapter then reveals the degree to which contemporary cross-country indicators of corruption in particular correlate. Next, several well-established critiques of contemporary data are presented. The chapter concludes with several comments on what makes a good quality indicator and puts for several suggestions for future work in this ever-growing field.

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“I’m an Expert on Public Space”

10.1093/oso/9780190691332.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Gordon C.C. Douglas

Keyword(s):

Urban Planning ◽

Social Science ◽

Public Space ◽

Social Science Research ◽

Science Research ◽

Professional Background ◽

History Of ◽

Do It Yourself ◽

Official Sources

Chapter 4 focuses on the personal and professional background of many do-it-yourselfers who employ sophisticated knowledge of professional planning and scholarly urbanism in their interventions. In doing so, it begins to challenge binary notions of formality and informality in urbanism. The chapter includes discussion of the history of informality in cities and the development of professionalized urban planning and placemaking practices. It then discusses how many do-it-yourself urban designers have professional design training that they to use in their projects. Where others lack such a background, they often seek information from official sources in order to strengthen and legitimate their interventions, from tools, techniques, and guidelines to justifications grounded in social science research. Although this may lead to better-designed and more effective improvements, it also gives the individuals a certain confidence in the quality of their actions and their right to make them.

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Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind Volume 1

10.1093/oso/9780198845850.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Keyword(s):

Philosophy Of Mind ◽

Traditional Approach ◽

History Of Philosophy ◽

Cutting Edge ◽

General Philosophy ◽

Gender Balance ◽

History Of ◽

Armchair Philosophy ◽

Annual Publication

Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind is an annual publication of some of the most cutting-edge work in the philosophy of mind. The philosophy of mind has, for at least half a decade, been torn between a traditional, armchair-led approach and a naturalistic, empirically driven approach. The most prestigious general philosophy journals tend to favor the traditional approach, while journals dedicated to the philosophy of mind tend to favor the naturalistic approach. Meanwhile, the history of philosophy of mind gets no play in philosophy-of-mind-dedicated journals, and is of course published mostly in history-of-philosophy journals. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind will publish work from all three sectors: armchair philosophy of mind, empirically driven philosophy of mind, and history of philosophy of mind. As far as invited contributions are concerned, Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind will observe a strict gender balance, with exactly half of the invitees being women and half men. It does not control, of course, the ultimate delivery of manuscripts by the invitees, nor the quantity and quality of submissions from each gender. This inaugural volume contains thirteen articles focused on three themes: the value of consciousness, naturalism and physicalism, and the nature of content.

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Adhering to Inherence: A New Look at the Old Steps in Berkeley's March to Idealism

Canadian Journal of Philosophy ◽

10.1080/00455091.1984.10716390 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 421-443 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Alan Hausman

Keyword(s):

History Of Philosophy ◽

Blue Flower ◽

Considerable Difficulty ◽

History Of ◽

The Mind ◽

New Look

When Keats identified truth and beauty, he surely intended mere extensionality. I myself have never had much trouble with either half of the equivalence. Others have considerable difficulty. A case in point is the Watson-Allaire-Cummins interpretation of Berkeley's idealism, which I shall refer to henceforth as the inherence account (IA). That account is put forward to answer an extremely perplexing question in the history of philosophy: Why did Berkeley embrace idealism, i.e., why did he hold that esse est percipi, that to be is to be perceived, indeed that what is perceived must be perceived in order to exist? In essence, the IA answers these questions very simply and elegantly: perceived qualities are, for Berkeley, qualities of the mind in the same sense that, in the tradition of substance metaphysics, blue is a quality of a blue flower; just as the blue of the flower is inseparable from it, so the perceived blue is inseparable from the mind that perceives it.

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Theory by Analogy

PMLA ◽

10.1632/pmla.2015.130.3.750 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 130 (3) ◽

pp. 750-758

Author(s):

C. D. Blanton

Keyword(s):

Karl Marx ◽

History Of Philosophy ◽

Wallace Stevens ◽

Science Of Logic ◽

Medieval Latin ◽

History Of ◽

The Individual ◽

Identity And Difference

A is—A.—G. W. F. Hegel (Science of Logic 415)The thing stated and the restatement have constituted an analogy.—Wallace Stevens (129)M-C-M'.—Karl Marx (257)There is a hint of Minerva's owl in medieval philosophy's relation to the apparently mundane formal question of analogy. The problem is everywhere in scholastic thought, inherited from Aristotle and Averroës, then adapted as one of the basic formal mechanisms through which Thomistic logic both transposes its own theological categories onto an older classical framework and apprehends metaphysical relations of being, of identity and difference. Classically, it is by analogy that one conceives the likeness of the unlike, extracting a concept from the individual instances and scattered genera in which it otherwise resides: the quality of wisdom that characterizes God, say, but might differently characterize humans; the property of animation that attaches to humans but differently qualifies beasts. Hegel notes this problem of scholastic analogy in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, when he comments of Aquinas that the category of “substance (forma substantialis) is, for instance, analogous to” Aristotle's notion of entelechy (3: 71) or when he dismisses medieval Latin more generally as “a quite unsuitable instrument” for the consideration of older philosophical forms—in effect, an imprecise exercise in analogy (38).

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