THE LEGALIST SCHOOL1 AND LEGAL POSITIVISM2

Law is the authoritative principle for the people and is the basis of government; it is what shapes the people.
The Book of Lord Shang, Chap. V, Par. 26.
If the people be led by laws and controlled by punishments, they will try to evade them but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue and controlled by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame and will moreover attain character.
Analects, book ii, Chap. iii
Lcgge, Vol. 1. p. 146     

Semantical Anthropology1

The association between the smell and the bacon is ".natural"., that is to say it is not the result of any human behavhior. But the association between the word ".breakfast". and breakfast is a social matter, which exists only for English speaking people.—B. Russell, ".An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth".     

CHINESE AND WESTERN INTERPRETATIONS OF JENb (HUMANITY)1

The concept of jen (humanity, love, humaneness; pronounced ren ) is a central concept of Confucian thought and has gone through a long evolution of more than 2000 years. The story of that evolution has been told elsewhere. The purpose here is to see how the Chinese have understood the concept and how the West has interpreted it. We shall discuss the Chinese understanding under seven headings.     

REMOVING VEILS OF IGNORANCE1

For more than two millennia the development of philosophy in what is called the West has been the province of men who trace their intellectual heritage to (some) men in ancient Greece. Within “the development of philosophy” I include the training of philosophers as well as publishing and preserving philosophical work in libraries. Thus I regard philosophy as a very material as well as spiritual enterprise. My focus here is on the spiritual impact, actual and potential, of recent changes in the material base of philosophy and the material impact of recent changes in the spiritual focus of philosophers. Before the Twentieth Century, the most significant transitions in the development of Western philosophy were its coming under the domination of Christian religious institutions and then its becoming relatively freed from such domination. Since the advent of the Twentieth Century, the most significant transitions may come from the increasing access to academic institutions of the middle and working classes, of people of color with histories of oppression by white societies, and of women from all classes and ethnic backgrounds—people who do not always or only trace their intellectual heritages to men of ancient Greece. What differences might these changes make to, and call for in, the development of philosophy? What I have thought about most are differences made by women and differences that have drawn in women to academic philosophy in Western democracies, such as the United States. Twentieth Century women in these contexts have published substantial bodies of philosophical inquiry with feminist agendas (both philosophy of feminism and philosophy manifesting feminist perspectives in ethics, epistemology, etc.). I want to comment on two features of such inquiry that often make it attractive to women less readily engaged by the traditions defined by privileged men. These features are holism and what I call “historical particularism.” I begin with “particularism.”     

Causal Theories of Knowledge1

Causal theories of knowledge require some causal connection between belief and the conditions whose existence make that belief true. Lacking this connection, the belief may be true, it may be altogether reasonable, but it is not knowledge.     

Conflicting Intuitions about Causality1

In this article I examine five kinds of conflicting intuitions about the nature of causality. The viewpoint is that of a probabilistic theory of causality, which I think is the right general framework for examining causal questions. It is not the purpose of this article to defend the general thesis in any depth but many of the particular points I make are meant to offer new lines of defense of such a probabilistic theory. To provide a conceptual framework for the analysis, I review briefly the more systematic aspects of the sort of probabilistic theory of causality I advocate. I first define the three notions of prima facie cause, spurious cause, and genuine cause. The technical details are worked out in an earlier monograph (Suppes 1970) and are not repeated.     

Whither Multiculturalism?2

The ideal of multiculturalism has been upheld as a solution to intolerance, prejudice, and intergroup conflict. "Integration", rather than "assimilation", is in turn proposed to be the social-psychological (as well as political) mechanism leading to multiculturalism. Berry is one of the foremost proponents of this view, as elaborated in the lead article. He notes that host society attitudes (towards immigrants) should be taken into consideration but nevertheless claims that integration is the best acculturation strategy even in assimilationist contexts. Although this view is supported by some research, quoted by Berry, it may be positing the necessary but not the sufficient conditions for attaining intergroup harmony. Indeed, if other crucial measures are not taken, unexpected opposite results may ensue, as evidenced by recent ethnic/religious conflict all over the world, including the industrialised West.     

BROWN ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND DISCRIMINABILITY1

Abstract:  In her recent book Anti-Individualism and Knowledge , Jessica Brown has presented a novel answer to the self-knowledge 'achievement problem' facing the proponent of anti-individualism. She argues that her answer is to be preferred to the traditional answer (based on Burge, 1988a). Here I present three objections to the claim that her proposed answer is to be preferred. The significance of these objections lies in what they tell us about the nature of the sort of knowledge that is in dispute. Perhaps the most important lesson I draw from this discussion is that, given the nature of knowledge of one's own thoughts, discriminability (from relevant alternatives) is not a condition on knowledge as such.     

A Type of Non-Causal Explanation1

There is a type of explanation frequently employed in the sciences, particularly the quantitative ones, that I intend to focus on. It seeks to understand some phenomenon or regularity that occurs in a type of system S by deriving an equation describing that phenomenon or regularity from a set of equations that govern S. I want to propose a way of understanding such explanations.