COMMENTARY ON ELIZABETH COREY'S INTERPRETATION OF MICHAEL OAKESHOTT

Elizabeth Corey suggests that in order to understand Michael Oakeshott's worldview one should pay special attention to two subjects, religion and aesthetics, and analyze the connection between these two realms and the idea of practical life in general and of politics in particular. Her book provides a sympathetic but also critical conversation with Oakeshott's ideas, ultimately offering us a coherent picture of the place of the religious, poetical, and political in the totality of his thought. Corey persuasively shows that the major ideas of the mature Oakeshott originated in his earlier religious convictions and that his philosophy of aesthetics, contrary to what his critics claimed, fit nicely in the general framework of his thought.     

MICHAEL POLANYI'S DARING EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE HUNGER FOR TELEOLOGY

Abstract. The linking of Michael Polanyi's name with a center (now changed to another name) at Baylor University that espoused intelligent‐design theory calls for examination of Polanyi's teleology. This examination attempts to put Polanyi's epistemology in the perspective of his total philosophical work by looking at the clarification of teleology in philosophy of biology and in the framework of three major features of Polanyi's thought: open and truth‐oriented, purposive but open to truth, and transcendent yet intelligible. The conclusion is that Polanyi would not support intelligent design according to the nature of his own theory.     

The Intelligent‐Design Movement: Science or Ideology?

The past decade has seen the rise of a new wave of criticism of evolutionary biology, led by claims that it should be replaced by a new science of intelligent design. While the general question of inferring design may fairly be considered worthy of attention, claims that intelligent-design theory (IDT) constitutes a biological science are highly problematic. This article briefly summarizes the assertions made about IDT as a biological science and indicates why they do not stand up to analysis. While claiming that IDT is a biological science, its advocates have failed to actually produce a research program that merits serious attention. As such, it is clear that IDT is more driven by ideological considerations than by attention to actual scientific research.     

Shared intentions,public reason,and political autonomy

John Rawls claims that public reasoning is the reasoning of ‘equal citizens who as a corporate body impose rules on one another backed by sanctions of state power’. Drawing upon an amended version of Michael Bratman’s theory of shared intentions, I flesh out this claim by developing the ‘civic people’ account of public reason. Citizens realize ‘full’ political autonomy as members of a civic people. Full political autonomy, though, cannot be realised by citizens in societies governed by a ‘constrained proceduralist’ account of democratic self-government, or the ‘convergence’ account of public justification formulated recently by Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier.     

CAN PERSONALITY UNDERPIN ATTITUDES TO BOTH SCIENCE AND RELIGION?

Drawing on Peter Harrison's argument that individuals should be attributed a central role in analyses of the relationship between science and religion, this article proposes that an understanding of personality can help us better appreciate a person's attitudes to both science and religion. Rather than seeing an individual's attitudes to these two topics as separate, if sometimes overlapping, parts of their lives, it is suggested that both may result from psychological drives and sometimes from the same psychological drive. Two contrasting case studies are employed to illustrate this proposal. First, Paul Dirac who, it is argued, was on the autistic spectrum, a personality profile that is often linked to both mathematical physics and atheism. By contrast, Michael Faraday's scientific practice and his commitment to a specific form of Christianity were underpinned by his need for security, as assured by the God‐given laws that operated in both the physical and moral domains.     

Against the new Cartesian Circle

In two recent papers, Michael Della Rocca accuses Descartes of reasoning circularly in the Fourth Meditation. This alleged new circle is distinct from, and more vicious than, the traditional Cartesian Circle arising in the Third Meditation. We explain Della Rocca’s reasons for this accusation, showing that his argument is invalid.     

NATURAL DOUBTS

Abstract: Many philosophers now argue that the doubts of the philosophical sceptic are unnatural ones, in that they are not forced on us by considerations that any reasonable person would have to accept as compelling but only arise if one has already accepted certain controversial theoretical commitments. In this article I defend the naturalness of philosophical scepticism against such criticisms. After defining “global ontological scepticism,” I examine the work of a number of anti‐sceptical philosophers—Michael Huemer, Michael Williams, and John McDowell. Although McDowell does move the debate to a deeper level by interpreting scepticism as a challenge to the very possibility of the mind's apprehending reality by being in a rational rather than a merely causal relation to it, none of them succeeds in showing that global ontological scepticism is, in the relevant sense, unnatural. This is not to say that the sceptic is correct; simply that it has not been shown that we can reasonably dismiss the sceptical questions and thereby evade the need to engage seriously with the sceptical arguments.