ray perkins | Plymouth State University (original) (raw)
Papers by ray perkins
Choice Reviews Online, 1991
This study of G.E. Moore's work in moral philosophy draws upon a close examination of the ear... more This study of G.E. Moore's work in moral philosophy draws upon a close examination of the early essays that preceded the writing of "Principia Ethica" in order to ground the author's view that Moore's famous 'naturalistic fallacy argument' of "Principia" has been widely misunderstood. At the time of his death in 1986, Robert Peter Sylvester was in the process of preparing this book for publication. That process has been brought to completion by Ray Perkins, Jr., and R. W. Sleeper. Sylvester's reappraisal of the moral philosophy of G. E. Moore argues that criticism of the work of this major twentieth-century British philosopher has been based on misinterpretation of his unified position. He treats Moore's ideas about 'What is Good?', 'What things are Good?' and 'What ought we to do?' as forming a coherent system. To bring this work up to date since the author's death, the editors have provided a bibliographic essay following each chapter in which recent scholarship is discussed.Author note: Robert Peter Sylvester was New England Professor of Philosophy at New England College and previously Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire. Ray Perkins, Jr., presently associated with the University System of New Hampshire, is a former colleague of Professor Sylvester at New England College. R. W. Sleeper is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Queens College of the City University of New York.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1989
![Research paper thumbnail of On Odell on Russell [review of S. Jack Odell, <i>On Russell</i>]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/91728497/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2000
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2012
Recent Russell scholarship has made clear the importance of Russell's contributions to ethical th... more Recent Russell scholarship has made clear the importance of Russell's contributions to ethical theory. But his provocative two-page 1922 paper, "Is There an Absolute Good?", anticipating by two decades what has come to be called "error theory", is still little known and not fully understood by students of Russell's ethics. In that little paper, never published in Russell's lifetime, he criticizes the "absolutist" view of G.yE. Moore; and, with the help of his own 1905 theory of descriptions, he exposes what he takes to be the fallacy underlying Moore's (and his own earlier) arguments regarding value judgments and puts forward a new analysis which preserves the "absolutist" meaning at the cost of rendering all value judgments false. This article attempts to: (1) make clear just what Russell was doing in his little paper and how to understand it in the evolution of his metaethical thinking, (2) defend his 1922 theory against some recent criticisms, and (3) suggest the most likely reasons why he so quickly abandoned his new theory. T hanks largely to Charles Pigden, we now know that Bertrand Russell made several innovative and important contributions to moral theory. 1 Almost everybody knows that Russell held, along with G.yE. Moore, an objectivist and intuitionist ethics in the Wrst decade of the last century. So too we know of Russell's subjectivist and emotivist
![Research paper thumbnail of The Early Moore and Russell [review of G.E. Moore, <i>Early Philosophical Writings</i>, edited by Thomas Baldwin and Consuelo Preti]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/91728496/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2013
Political Science Quarterly, 1991
... I particularly recommend the following: Kahane, Howard. Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. ... ... more ... I particularly recommend the following: Kahane, Howard. Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. ... It is especially good on the nature of language, and it has several very usef ul chapters on the application of argument in areas of law, mor-als, science, and philosophy Seech, Zachary. ...
The Journal of Value Inquiry, 1993
One of the most significant contributions that a philosopher-scholar can make is that of putting ... more One of the most significant contributions that a philosopher-scholar can make is that of putting right a long-standing doctrinal misinterpretation of an historically important philosopher. Tom Regan made such a contribution a decade ago in the pages of this journal in his heroic account of the true role of Bishop Butler's famous maxim ("Everything is what it is, and not another thing") in G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica. 1 Prior to Regan's discovery, nearly every major Moore scholar (for example, William Frankena, C.J. Wamock, Arthur Prior, and R.M. Hare) had taken the Butler maxim as Moore's main premise in his naturalistic fallacy argument against the definability of good. 2 Regan's insight was to see that Moore appeals to the maxim, not in the context of the naturalistic fallacy and the problem of defining good (Principia Ethica, ch. 1), but in the quite different context (Principia, ch. 6) of assessing the character of good things. Regan claims that (1) Butler's maxim was not intended by Moore to apply to the question of good's definability and (2) the maxim is applied by Moore to the different question of "how to understand and account for the character of those things we know to be good" (Regan, p. 159). I believe that Regan's insights are crucial for Moore scholarship because, as Regan says, they point us away from what Moore regarded as less important and toward what he took to be the central concerns of Principia Ethica. But although I believe that Regan's conclusions are correct, I am less confident about some of his reasons. In what follows I examine Regan's main arguments, point out some weaknesses and suggest a more accurate justification for his conclusions.. Regan has two principal arguments for (1). The first is a reductio (Regan, p. 156). Suppose, as many have claimed, that the maxim is meant to prove the indefinability of good on the grounds that good is just what it is and The Elements of Ethics, Moore's 1898 lectures on moral philosophy only recently published. See G.E. Moore, The Elements of Ethics, edited and with
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1990
Since the publication o f Tom Regan's Bloomsbury's Prophet: G. E. Moore and the Developme... more Since the publication o f Tom Regan's Bloomsbury's Prophet: G. E. Moore and the Development of His Moral Philosophy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) a controversy has arisen concerning Moore's practical ethical theory. According to Regan, Moore was Bloomsbury's "liberator" whose Principia Ethica provided the rationale for ignoring the conventional rules of morality (except for "a very few") in favor of personal choice. This, says Regan, is the "central thesis" of Principia. Against Regan's interpretation Avrum Stroll (JHP 26: 3, July 1988: 5o4-5o5) insists that Regan's evidence is "exiguous" and that "a careful reading of [Principia's] Chapter 5 shows that Moore argues t h a t . . , we ought always to follow the dictates of common morality." In a similar vein Thomas Baldwin (Mind, Jan. 1988:129-33 ) claims that Regan's thesis rests upon "a misreading of a passage in [Chapter 5 of] Principia Ethica" and yields an interpretation o f Moore which asserts "the opposite" of what Moore actually says. In what follows I wish to examine the crucial passages of Principia to determine just what Moore's view is and whether Regan is indeed guilty of misreading. Because o f the severe limitations regarding our knowledge of cause and effect, the most, according to Moore, that we can obtain in practical ethics, is knowledge that "one kind of action will generally produce better effects than another." ' And this leads him to consider the justification of the rules of common morality. On pp. 162-63 Moore does say that o f "any rule which is generally useful, we may assert that it ought always to be obse rved . . . [and that] though we may be sure that there are cases where the rule should be broken, we can never know which those cases are, and ought, therefore, never to break it." But, as the text reveals, this assertion is preceded by the hypothesis "/f/t is certain that in a large majority of cases the observance of a certain rule is useful" (162, emphasis added). Indeed, Moore's discussion on pp. 162-64 is focused explicitly on "those actions as to which some general rule is certainly true '' (162, emphasis added). So what sorts o f rules are those? Moore has already said on p. 16o: "it seems possible to prove a definite utility in most of those which are in general both recognised and practised." And just which rules are both recognized and practiced? They are those which he frequently refers to as "the rules most universally recognised by Common
International Studies in Philosophy, 1999
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2011
PMz 1: 67. Throughout this paper I shall speak as though this Principiaz argument was Russell's a... more PMz 1: 67. Throughout this paper I shall speak as though this Principiaz argument was Russell's alone. But although the theory of descriptions may be attributed to Russell alone, we should remember, as Russell tells us in My Philosophical Development, p. 74, that virtually "every line" of Principia was "a joint product".
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 1996
![Research paper thumbnail of Accidental Nuclear War and Russell's "Early Warning" [review of Eric Schlosser, <em>Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety</em>]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/80475055/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2014
ric Schlosser has given us a very important and much needed look at the history of us nuclear wea... more ric Schlosser has given us a very important and much needed look at the history of us nuclear weapons safety. The book is well researched and, despite its subtitle, is more than a history of nuclear weapons safety. In the course of developing his thesis that nuclear weapons have been-and continue to be-a shockingly dangerous part of the post-wwii world, we get not only a tutorial on nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but a fascinating and eyeopening account of the dynamic of the nuclear arms race, replete with interservice rivalries, ideological fanaticism, and the struggle for civilian control. It was this dynamic which gave us obscenely bloated nuclear arsenals and a military leadership that too often favoured weapons reliability over safety. The story is cogently covered in the course of recounting in considerable detail what has to be one of the most frightening of us nuclear weapons accidents (and there were hundreds 1)-viz. the 18 September 1980 accident in 1 A Sandia Laboratory study found at least 1,200 "serious" accidents involving nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1968. The most serious are called "broken arrows" in Defense Department parlance. These include unauthorized launch, release of a b= Reviews 85 Damascus, Arkansas involving a Titan ii icbm with a nine-megaton warhead. 2 During a check for a possible fuel system leak, a mechanic near the top of the missile (in a hardened silo beneath ground) dropped a nine-pound wrench socket which fell 70 feet and punctured the fuel tank; eight hours later, despite efforts to contain highly flammable fuel vapours, the missile exploded covering the complex in a huge fireball and toxic gases. The warhead, the largest in the us arsenal at the time, was catapulted 1,000 feet into the air and landed a quarter mile away, largely intact. By good luck (and the grace of God?) 3 , there was no thermonuclear detonation-especially fortuitous since the warhead had long been identified by its designer (Sandia Laboratory) as one of the least safe in the us arsenal, i.e. one of the most likely to detonate in "abnormal environments" (such as intense heat). Sandia had petitioned the Pentagon for more than a decade to retire or retrofit the warhead (p. 334). The Damascus incident concerns, directly or indirectly, most of the book. But the story is told rivetingly with many detours into weapons history, technical information and a cast of interviewees connected with the nuclear military-industrial complex at various levels. One of Schlosser's most important characters, and from whom he gets much of his information, is Bob Peurifoy, a longtime nuclear weapons engineer and vice-president at Sandia who waged a heroic thirty-year campaign against Pentagon resistance to nuclear weapons safety. With the help of the Freedom of Information Act and recently declassified material, Schlosser provides the reader with literally scores of examples of terrifying nuclear accidents, including events that could easily have led to
... Thanks to my students and colleagues at Plymouth State College: Ben Porter, Deb Naro, David H... more ... Thanks to my students and colleagues at Plymouth State College: Ben Porter, Deb Naro, David Haight, Dan Kervick, Robin Bowers, Leo Sandy, Joann Guilmett, Jeannie Poterucha, Gary McCool, and especially to Charlene McLaughlin, through whose hard work and word ...
CONTRIBUTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY, 2002
1 Bertrand Russell and Preventive War Ray Perkins Many commentators have claimed that Bertrand Ru... more 1 Bertrand Russell and Preventive War Ray Perkins Many commentators have claimed that Bertrand Russell advocated preventive war against the Soviet Union ... Russell's hope, in the early years after WWII, was that the United States, with a nuclear mo-nopoly, could effectively ...
CONTRIBUTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY, 2002
1 Bertrand Russell and Preventive War Ray Perkins Many commentators have claimed that Bertrand Ru... more 1 Bertrand Russell and Preventive War Ray Perkins Many commentators have claimed that Bertrand Russell advocated preventive war against the Soviet Union ... Russell's hope, in the early years after WWII, was that the United States, with a nuclear mo-nopoly, could effectively ...
Choice Reviews Online, 1991
This study of G.E. Moore's work in moral philosophy draws upon a close examination of the ear... more This study of G.E. Moore's work in moral philosophy draws upon a close examination of the early essays that preceded the writing of "Principia Ethica" in order to ground the author's view that Moore's famous 'naturalistic fallacy argument' of "Principia" has been widely misunderstood. At the time of his death in 1986, Robert Peter Sylvester was in the process of preparing this book for publication. That process has been brought to completion by Ray Perkins, Jr., and R. W. Sleeper. Sylvester's reappraisal of the moral philosophy of G. E. Moore argues that criticism of the work of this major twentieth-century British philosopher has been based on misinterpretation of his unified position. He treats Moore's ideas about 'What is Good?', 'What things are Good?' and 'What ought we to do?' as forming a coherent system. To bring this work up to date since the author's death, the editors have provided a bibliographic essay following each chapter in which recent scholarship is discussed.Author note: Robert Peter Sylvester was New England Professor of Philosophy at New England College and previously Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire. Ray Perkins, Jr., presently associated with the University System of New Hampshire, is a former colleague of Professor Sylvester at New England College. R. W. Sleeper is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Queens College of the City University of New York.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1989
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2000
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2012
Recent Russell scholarship has made clear the importance of Russell's contributions to ethical th... more Recent Russell scholarship has made clear the importance of Russell's contributions to ethical theory. But his provocative two-page 1922 paper, "Is There an Absolute Good?", anticipating by two decades what has come to be called "error theory", is still little known and not fully understood by students of Russell's ethics. In that little paper, never published in Russell's lifetime, he criticizes the "absolutist" view of G.yE. Moore; and, with the help of his own 1905 theory of descriptions, he exposes what he takes to be the fallacy underlying Moore's (and his own earlier) arguments regarding value judgments and puts forward a new analysis which preserves the "absolutist" meaning at the cost of rendering all value judgments false. This article attempts to: (1) make clear just what Russell was doing in his little paper and how to understand it in the evolution of his metaethical thinking, (2) defend his 1922 theory against some recent criticisms, and (3) suggest the most likely reasons why he so quickly abandoned his new theory. T hanks largely to Charles Pigden, we now know that Bertrand Russell made several innovative and important contributions to moral theory. 1 Almost everybody knows that Russell held, along with G.yE. Moore, an objectivist and intuitionist ethics in the Wrst decade of the last century. So too we know of Russell's subjectivist and emotivist
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2013
Political Science Quarterly, 1991
... I particularly recommend the following: Kahane, Howard. Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. ... ... more ... I particularly recommend the following: Kahane, Howard. Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. ... It is especially good on the nature of language, and it has several very usef ul chapters on the application of argument in areas of law, mor-als, science, and philosophy Seech, Zachary. ...
The Journal of Value Inquiry, 1993
One of the most significant contributions that a philosopher-scholar can make is that of putting ... more One of the most significant contributions that a philosopher-scholar can make is that of putting right a long-standing doctrinal misinterpretation of an historically important philosopher. Tom Regan made such a contribution a decade ago in the pages of this journal in his heroic account of the true role of Bishop Butler's famous maxim ("Everything is what it is, and not another thing") in G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica. 1 Prior to Regan's discovery, nearly every major Moore scholar (for example, William Frankena, C.J. Wamock, Arthur Prior, and R.M. Hare) had taken the Butler maxim as Moore's main premise in his naturalistic fallacy argument against the definability of good. 2 Regan's insight was to see that Moore appeals to the maxim, not in the context of the naturalistic fallacy and the problem of defining good (Principia Ethica, ch. 1), but in the quite different context (Principia, ch. 6) of assessing the character of good things. Regan claims that (1) Butler's maxim was not intended by Moore to apply to the question of good's definability and (2) the maxim is applied by Moore to the different question of "how to understand and account for the character of those things we know to be good" (Regan, p. 159). I believe that Regan's insights are crucial for Moore scholarship because, as Regan says, they point us away from what Moore regarded as less important and toward what he took to be the central concerns of Principia Ethica. But although I believe that Regan's conclusions are correct, I am less confident about some of his reasons. In what follows I examine Regan's main arguments, point out some weaknesses and suggest a more accurate justification for his conclusions.. Regan has two principal arguments for (1). The first is a reductio (Regan, p. 156). Suppose, as many have claimed, that the maxim is meant to prove the indefinability of good on the grounds that good is just what it is and The Elements of Ethics, Moore's 1898 lectures on moral philosophy only recently published. See G.E. Moore, The Elements of Ethics, edited and with
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1990
Since the publication o f Tom Regan's Bloomsbury's Prophet: G. E. Moore and the Developme... more Since the publication o f Tom Regan's Bloomsbury's Prophet: G. E. Moore and the Development of His Moral Philosophy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) a controversy has arisen concerning Moore's practical ethical theory. According to Regan, Moore was Bloomsbury's "liberator" whose Principia Ethica provided the rationale for ignoring the conventional rules of morality (except for "a very few") in favor of personal choice. This, says Regan, is the "central thesis" of Principia. Against Regan's interpretation Avrum Stroll (JHP 26: 3, July 1988: 5o4-5o5) insists that Regan's evidence is "exiguous" and that "a careful reading of [Principia's] Chapter 5 shows that Moore argues t h a t . . , we ought always to follow the dictates of common morality." In a similar vein Thomas Baldwin (Mind, Jan. 1988:129-33 ) claims that Regan's thesis rests upon "a misreading of a passage in [Chapter 5 of] Principia Ethica" and yields an interpretation o f Moore which asserts "the opposite" of what Moore actually says. In what follows I wish to examine the crucial passages of Principia to determine just what Moore's view is and whether Regan is indeed guilty of misreading. Because o f the severe limitations regarding our knowledge of cause and effect, the most, according to Moore, that we can obtain in practical ethics, is knowledge that "one kind of action will generally produce better effects than another." ' And this leads him to consider the justification of the rules of common morality. On pp. 162-63 Moore does say that o f "any rule which is generally useful, we may assert that it ought always to be obse rved . . . [and that] though we may be sure that there are cases where the rule should be broken, we can never know which those cases are, and ought, therefore, never to break it." But, as the text reveals, this assertion is preceded by the hypothesis "/f/t is certain that in a large majority of cases the observance of a certain rule is useful" (162, emphasis added). Indeed, Moore's discussion on pp. 162-64 is focused explicitly on "those actions as to which some general rule is certainly true '' (162, emphasis added). So what sorts o f rules are those? Moore has already said on p. 16o: "it seems possible to prove a definite utility in most of those which are in general both recognised and practised." And just which rules are both recognized and practiced? They are those which he frequently refers to as "the rules most universally recognised by Common
International Studies in Philosophy, 1999
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2011
PMz 1: 67. Throughout this paper I shall speak as though this Principiaz argument was Russell's a... more PMz 1: 67. Throughout this paper I shall speak as though this Principiaz argument was Russell's alone. But although the theory of descriptions may be attributed to Russell alone, we should remember, as Russell tells us in My Philosophical Development, p. 74, that virtually "every line" of Principia was "a joint product".
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 1996
Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 2014
ric Schlosser has given us a very important and much needed look at the history of us nuclear wea... more ric Schlosser has given us a very important and much needed look at the history of us nuclear weapons safety. The book is well researched and, despite its subtitle, is more than a history of nuclear weapons safety. In the course of developing his thesis that nuclear weapons have been-and continue to be-a shockingly dangerous part of the post-wwii world, we get not only a tutorial on nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but a fascinating and eyeopening account of the dynamic of the nuclear arms race, replete with interservice rivalries, ideological fanaticism, and the struggle for civilian control. It was this dynamic which gave us obscenely bloated nuclear arsenals and a military leadership that too often favoured weapons reliability over safety. The story is cogently covered in the course of recounting in considerable detail what has to be one of the most frightening of us nuclear weapons accidents (and there were hundreds 1)-viz. the 18 September 1980 accident in 1 A Sandia Laboratory study found at least 1,200 "serious" accidents involving nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1968. The most serious are called "broken arrows" in Defense Department parlance. These include unauthorized launch, release of a b= Reviews 85 Damascus, Arkansas involving a Titan ii icbm with a nine-megaton warhead. 2 During a check for a possible fuel system leak, a mechanic near the top of the missile (in a hardened silo beneath ground) dropped a nine-pound wrench socket which fell 70 feet and punctured the fuel tank; eight hours later, despite efforts to contain highly flammable fuel vapours, the missile exploded covering the complex in a huge fireball and toxic gases. The warhead, the largest in the us arsenal at the time, was catapulted 1,000 feet into the air and landed a quarter mile away, largely intact. By good luck (and the grace of God?) 3 , there was no thermonuclear detonation-especially fortuitous since the warhead had long been identified by its designer (Sandia Laboratory) as one of the least safe in the us arsenal, i.e. one of the most likely to detonate in "abnormal environments" (such as intense heat). Sandia had petitioned the Pentagon for more than a decade to retire or retrofit the warhead (p. 334). The Damascus incident concerns, directly or indirectly, most of the book. But the story is told rivetingly with many detours into weapons history, technical information and a cast of interviewees connected with the nuclear military-industrial complex at various levels. One of Schlosser's most important characters, and from whom he gets much of his information, is Bob Peurifoy, a longtime nuclear weapons engineer and vice-president at Sandia who waged a heroic thirty-year campaign against Pentagon resistance to nuclear weapons safety. With the help of the Freedom of Information Act and recently declassified material, Schlosser provides the reader with literally scores of examples of terrifying nuclear accidents, including events that could easily have led to
... Thanks to my students and colleagues at Plymouth State College: Ben Porter, Deb Naro, David H... more ... Thanks to my students and colleagues at Plymouth State College: Ben Porter, Deb Naro, David Haight, Dan Kervick, Robin Bowers, Leo Sandy, Joann Guilmett, Jeannie Poterucha, Gary McCool, and especially to Charlene McLaughlin, through whose hard work and word ...
CONTRIBUTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY, 2002
1 Bertrand Russell and Preventive War Ray Perkins Many commentators have claimed that Bertrand Ru... more 1 Bertrand Russell and Preventive War Ray Perkins Many commentators have claimed that Bertrand Russell advocated preventive war against the Soviet Union ... Russell's hope, in the early years after WWII, was that the United States, with a nuclear mo-nopoly, could effectively ...
CONTRIBUTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY, 2002
1 Bertrand Russell and Preventive War Ray Perkins Many commentators have claimed that Bertrand Ru... more 1 Bertrand Russell and Preventive War Ray Perkins Many commentators have claimed that Bertrand Russell advocated preventive war against the Soviet Union ... Russell's hope, in the early years after WWII, was that the United States, with a nuclear mo-nopoly, could effectively ...