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Ted Honderich, British philosopher, (born 1933) Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London and Visiting Professor, University of Bath. His work has been about five things: determinism's truth and its consequences for our lives; the nature of consciousness and its relation to the brain; right and wrong in the contemporary world, in particular with respect to terrorism; the supposed justifications of punishment by the state; and the political tradition of conservatism. 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ...
Emeritus (IPA pronunciation: or ) is an adjective that is used in the title of a retired professor, bishop or other professional. ...
Affiliations University of London Russell Group LERU EUA ACU Golden Triangle G5 Website http://www. ...
The University of Bath is a campus university located near Bath, England. ...
Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ...
In animals, the brain or encephalon (Greek for in the head), is the control center of the central nervous system, responsible for behaviour. ...
Terrorist redirects here. ...
Look up Punishment in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
This article deals with conservatism as a political philosophy. ...
Biography
Honderich was born Edgar Dawn Ross Honderich on 30 January 1933 in Baden, Ontario, Canada. An undergraduate at the University of Toronto, he came to University College London to study under the Logical Positivist A. J. Ayer. He has since lived in England and become a British citizen. After being a lecturer at the University of Sussex he became Lecturer, Reader, Professor and then Grote Professor at University College. He was visiting professor at the City University of New York and Yale. He is author of many books and articles on such subjects as the correspondence theory of truth, Russell's theory of descriptions, time, causation, Mill's On Liberty, and against John Searle on free will and G. A. Cohen's defence of Marx's theory of history. He has also edited several series of philosophy books. 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ...
The University of Toronto (U of T) is a coeducational public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ...
Affiliations University of London Russell Group LERU EUA ACU Golden Triangle G5 Website http://www. ...
Alfred Jules Ayer (October 29, 1910 - June 27, 1989), better known as simply A. J. Ayer (and called Freddie by friends), was a British philosopher. ...
The University of Sussex (also known colloquially as Sussex Uni) is an English campus university which is situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, and is four miles from Brighton. ...
The City University of New York (CUNY; acronym: IPA pronunciation: ), is the public university system of New York City. ...
YALE (Yet Another Learning Environment) is an environment for machine learning experiments and data mining. ...
A common dictionary definition of truth is agreement with fact or reality.[1] There is no single definition of truth about which the majority of philosophers agree. ...
John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and is noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and consciousness, on the characteristics of socially constructed versus physical realities, and on practical reason. ...
He has been involved in controversy for his moral defence of Palestinian terrorism, despite his justification of the founding and maintaining of Israel in its original 1948 borders. 1948 (MCMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1948 calendar). ...
His papers in philosophical journals have been published in three volumes by Edinburgh University Press. He has appeared on radio and television, is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, has written a philosophical autobiography, and is Chairman of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He is married to Ingrid Coggin Honderich.
Determinism and Freedom A Theory of Determinism: The Mind, Neuroscience and Life-Hopes expounds a theory of causation as well as other lawlike connection. This is used to formulate three hypotheses of a deterministic philosophy of mind. They are argued to be true, mainly on the basis of neuroscience. The clarity of determinism is contrasted with the obscurity of doctrines of free will or origination. The philosophical traditions about determinism and freedom dominant for several centuries, Compatibilism and Incompatibilism are examined. According to the first, determinism is consistent with our freedom and moral responsibility, and according to the second it is inconsistent with them. Honderich considers Compatibilism's argument that our freedom consists in voluntariness, doing what we desire and not being coerced, and hence its conclusion that determinism and freedom can go together. He also examines Incompatibilism's argument that our freedom consists in origination or free will, our choosing without our choosing's being caused -- and hence the conclusion that determinism and freedom are inconsistent. Honderich argues that both views are mistaken, since freedom as voluntariness and freedom as origination are each as fundamental to our lives. The real problem of the consequences of determinism is not choosing between the two traditional doctrines, but a more practical one: trying to give up what must be given up, since we do not have the power of origination. Honderich's rejection of both traditions has been taken up by other philosophers. Many find his criticisms decisive. The theory is summarized in Honderich's How Free Are You?: The Determinism Problem. This article is about causality as it is used in many different fields. ...
Compatibilism, also known as soft determinism and most famously championed by Hume, is a theory which holds that free will and determinism are compatible. ...
Compatibilism, also known as soft determinism and most famously championed by Hume, is a theory which holds that free will and determinism are compatible. ...
Consciousness Honderich's theory of the nature of consciousness is a view near physicalism, partly based on the proposition that the many existing theories of consciousness -- which he divides up into two general categories, devout physicalism and spiritualism or Cartesian Dualism -- fail to satisfy a list of criteria for an adequate theory of consciousness. Physicalism reduces consciousness to nothing more than the physical. Spiritualism takes consciousness out of space and into mystery. Honderich's criteria of adequacy include taking account of the subjectivity of consciousness, which rules out devout physicalism but is an attraction of spiritualism. Other criteria are the reality of consciousness and its causal interaction with the physical world. These rule out spiritualism and seem to demand physicalism. His Theory of Radical Externalism, once called 'Consciousness as Existence', gets going with the question, 'What does it seem for you to be conscious of the room you are now in?' Honderich's answer is that it is for the room in a way to exist, to exist in a specified sense. It is for things to be in space and time outside your head, a world of perceptual consciousness dependent both on an external sub-world and on you neurally. This analysis of perceptual consciousness issues in further analyses of reflective and affective consciousness. Honderich argues that the theory does best at satisfying the criteria, succeeds where both physicalism and dualism fail. Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ...
The term physicalism was coined by Otto Neurath, in a series of early 20th century essays on the subject, in which he wrote According to physicalism, the language of physics is the universal language of science and, consequently, any knowledge can be brought back to the statements on the physical...
Cartesian dualism was Descartess principle of the separation of mind and matter and mind and body. ...
This article is in need of attention. ...
The theory is expounded in On Consciousness and has been defended against 11 philosophers in a special issue of The Journal of Consciousness Studies, republished as the book Radical Externalism: Honderich's Theory of Consciousness Discussed, edited by Anthony Freeman. The theory baffled most of the 11 philosophers. One contributor, E. J. Lowe, called it 'a genuinely new idea in the history of philosophy'.
Mind and Brain Honderich's Union Theory of mind and brain is defended in A Theory of Determinism. The Union Theory takes it as possible that conscious events like our choices and decisions are in a way subjective but are nevertheless physical rather than near-physical events. They stand in a kind of lawlike connection with neural events, sometimes called the supervenience of mental events on neural events. These psychoneural pairs, as Honderich calls them, are just effects of certain causal sequences, and are causes of our actions. This sort of physicalism, a predecessor to the notion of supervenience, has since been succeeded in Honderich's writings by the near-physicalism of Radical Externalism. Radical Externalism holds that perceptual consciousness does not have a nomic sufficient condition in a head but only a necessary one. Honderich argues that reflective and affective consciousness are different again. He also argues that this is consistent with contemporary neuroscience, rescues us from the argument from illusion or brain in a vat, and also from the dubious conclusions of sense-data theory and phenomenalism. In philosophy, supervenience is a well-defined dependency relation between higher-level (. mental) and lower-level (. physical) properties. ...
Drawing of the cells in the chicken cerebellum by S. Ramón y Cajal Neuroscience is a field that is devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. ...
An illusion is a distortion of a sensory perception, revealing how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. ...
In philosophy, the brain-in-a-vat is any of a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning. ...
In epistemology and the philosophy of perception, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e. ...
The Principle of Humanity Honderich argues that the Principle of Humanity is that what is right always consists in what, according to the best available knowledge and judgement, are actually rational steps, effective and not self-defeating ones rather than pretences, to the end of getting and keeping people out of bad lives. Bad lives are defined as those deprived of six fundamental human goods: a decent length of life, bodily well-being, freedom and power in various settings, respect and self-respect, the goods of relationship, and the goods of culture. It is a consequentialist principle, but not the principle of utility, nor just the claim that the ends justify the means. Honderich argues that the principle is fundamental to but not the whole of a morality of humanity. This, he claims, includes certain policies of equality and inequality and certain practices, one being a better democracy than we have. Honderich concludes that the Principle of Humanity is better supported than any other sort of moral principle, on the basis of both consistency and certain facts. He takes it that non-consequentialist reasons are not really reasons at all, nor, he says, does the Principle grant any distinction between acts and omissions.
International Right and Wrong, Democracy, Terrorism Following 9/11, Honderich published After the Terror. The book first lays out facts of bad lives and good lives, both in Africa and in rich countries. With respect to bad lives, Honderich argues that our omissions have resulted in 20 million years of possible living-time lost by a certain sample of Africans. He also considers the creation of Israel in 1948 and records what he describes as the bad lives of Palestinians as a result of what is called the neo-Zionist expansion of Israel since the 1967 war. Honderich asks whether those in the rich societies do wrong in doing nothing about bad lives. He considers natural morality as well as our worked-out or philosophical moralities. Such outlooks as political realism and such ideologies as liberalism and libertarianism are also considered, as is what Honderich calls 'hierarchic democracy'. The Principle of Humanity is used to judge our moral responsibility for the many bad lives, which Honderich tells us is great. The Principle also condemns the terrorist killings of September 11 as hideous. The killings were not rational means to an end that was partly defensible. The West's subsequent attack on Afghanistan is excused. But the taking from Palestinians of at least their freedom in the last fifth of their homeland, historic Palestine, is condemned. Honderich writes: '...the Palestinians have had a moral right to their terrorism as certain as was the moral right, say, of the African people of South Africa against their white captors and the apartheid state'. The date that commonly refers to the attacks on United States citizens on September 11, 2001 (see the September 11, 2001 Attacks). ...
1948 (MCMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1948 calendar). ...
1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ...
Main International Relations Theories and derivates Realism & Neorealism Idealism, Liberalism & Neoliberalism Marxism & Dependency theory Functionalism & Neofunctionalism Critical theory & Constructivism The term realism or political realism collects a wide variety of theories and modes of thought about International Relations that have in common that the motivation of states is in the...
Liberalism is an ideology, philosophical view, and political tradition which holds that liberty is the primary political value. ...
This article does not adequately cite its references. ...
is the 254th day of the year (255th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Holy Land or Palestine Showing not only the Old Kingdoms of Judea and Israel but also the 12 Tribes Distinctly, and Confirming Even the Diversity of the Locations of their Ancient Positions and Doing So as the Holy Scriptures Indicate, a geographic map from the studio of Tobiae Conradi...
Honderich claims that we need to see the power of our societies as deadly. Americans, first of all, because of their unique power, need to think more carefully about their actions. He also argues that we should supplement our democracies with the transformations of the civil disobedience of Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bertrand Russell, and those in Eastern Europe who brought down the wall. Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau[1]) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance...
Martin Luther King redirects here. ...
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, and pacifist. ...
His later book, Humanity, Terrorism, Terrorist War: Palestine, 9/11, Iraq, 7/7... begins by asking if analytic philosophy in considering large questions of right and wrong should proceed by embracing international law, human rights, just war theory or the like. Honderich, finding these means of judgement wanting, again takes up the Principle of Humanity. The book justifies and defends Zionism, defined as the creation of Israel in its original borders, but also reaffirms that Palestinians have had a moral right to their liberation -- to terrorism within historic Palestine against what Honderich calls the ethnic cleansing of Neo-Zionism, the expansion of Israel beyond its original borders. After a further consideration of 9/11, there is an analysis of 10 reasons for what he calls 'our terrorist war' in Iraq. Honderich condemns the war as morally barbaric, given the foreseen and thus intentional killing of many innocents. In condemning the 7/7 terrorist attack on London, Honderich considers the importance of horror to morality. He also argues that Tony Blair and George W. Bush are friends rather than enemies of terrorism. The book ends with a postscript on the charge of anti-semitism against critics of neo-Zionism -- a charge Honderich says is principally a part of Neo-Zionism or at least something insufficiently detached from it. This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ...
For other people of the same name, see Tony Blair (disambiguation) Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born May 6, 1953)[1] is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, Leader of the Labour Party, and Member of Parliament for the constituency...
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the 43rd and current President of the United States, inaugurated on January 20, 2001. ...
Punishment
conservatism
Controversy Honderich has been involved in controversy since the publication of his book After the Terror in 2002. Honderich arranged with Oxfam in Britain and the publisher of After the Terror, Edinburgh University Press, to have the £5,000 advance on royalties go to the chairity, along with more money from the publishers. The Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail suggested that Oxfam was taking money from a terrorist sympathizer, and it then declined the contributions, for which it was judged adversely in the British media. The book was published in a German translation. Mischa Brumlik, director of a holocaust centre and Professor of Pedagogy at Frankfurt University, demanded publicly that the book be withdrawn from sale by the publisher Suhrkamp Verlag. Despite the declaration by the philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who had recommended the translation, that the book was not anti-semitic, it was withdrawn from sale. Honderich demanded the dismissal of Brumllik from his professorhsip, for violation of academic principle. There was a media firestorm in Germany. The book was retranslated and republished by another Jewish publishing house, Melzer Verlag. Riot police were needed at Honderich's lecture in Leipzig. Also see: 2002 (number). ...
Oxfam International logo Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 organizations working together with over 3000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice. ...
I.G.Farben Building at Campus Westend Main building at Campus Bockenheim AfE-Turm at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University The Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main (commonly called the University of Frankfurt) was founded in 1914 as a Citizens University, which means that while it was a State...
Jürgen Habermas Jürgen Habermas (born June 18, 1929 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory. ...
Lesser controversies have included an imputation of anti-semitism by a student newspaper in London, against which Honderich took successful legal action. There have been attacks by Palestinians on Honderich's justification of Zionism too, including disruptions at meetings.
Selected publications - On Being Persona Non Grata to Palestinians, Too, CounterPunch, February 19/20, 2005.
- After the terror. Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7735-2734-6. Revised and expanded edition.
- How free are you? the determinism problem. 2nd ed. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-925197-5.
- Philosopher : a kind of life. London : Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0-415-23697-5.
Articles - Alexander Cockburn, World-Famous Philosopher Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semite" Slur in Germany; Habermas and Suhrkamp Cut and Run, CounterPunch, August 13, 2003.
- Paul de Rooij, Ted Honderich: A Philosopher in the Trenches, CounterPunch, December 4, 2002.
- Paul de Rooij, Why Ted Honderich is Wrong on All Counts, CounterPunch, February 28, 2005. (replies to Honderich's Feb. 19, 2005 article).
- Richard Wolin, Are Suicide Bombings Morally Defensible? The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 24, 2003.
Alexander Claud Cockburn (pronounced , co-burn), born June 6, 1941, is a self-described radical Irish journalist who has lived and worked in the United States since 1973. ...
Richard Wolin is an intellectual historian. ...
Notes
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