Saturday, 13 January 2018

My blog ebook: Research Thoughts on... Lady Mary Shepherd - Volume 1







Research Thoughts on…
Lady Mary Shepherd – Volume 1
Liba Kaucky

Series: Research Thoughts on…
Lady Mary Shepherd - Volume 1
Sole author: Liba Kaucky
Copyright © Liba (Libuse) Kaucky 2015-2018 (Copyright acquired automatically under UK law.) 




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First published 2018 by Liba (Libuse) Kaucky as a blog ebook on blogger.com at The Lady Mary Shepherd Philosophy Salon, available at:

 Liba Kaucky ResearcherID: P-2484-2016


Liba Kaucky ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1598-0833 
ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0003-1598-0833
Academic Website: https://libakaucky.academia.edu/ 

First edition.
Editor: Liba Kaucky
Cover photo: Copyright © Liba (Libuse) Kaucky (photographer) 2009
All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission from Liba Kaucky. No part of this blog ebook may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means now known or hereafter invented including printing, photocopying or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from Liba Kaucky. You must not circulate this ebook in any way other than by referring people to read it on this site:
Notices:
Practitioners and researchers must rely on themselves in evaluating and using any information and methods described herein and do so at their own risk.
To the fullest extent of the law, the publisher, author, editor does not assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, including negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Current titles in this series:
Research Thoughts on… Spinoza - Volume 1
Forthcoming titles:
Research Thoughts on… Spinoza - Volume 2
Research Thoughts on… Lady Mary Shepherd - Volume 2

I would like to dedicate this book to my mother, Jana, without whose endless love, continual encouragement and support this book would not have been possible. I want to take this opportunity to thank her for always being there for me throughout life’s ups and downs and for always having total belief in me and giving me the confidence to follow my dreams. I love you!
Contents

EDITOR’S NOTE

AUTHOR’S NOTE  

PREFACE

PART 1: SHEPHERD: THE FIRST ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHER IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY?



CHAPTER 3: UNDERSTANDING THE ANALYTIC APPROACH TO CIRCULARITY AND BEGGING THE QUESTION
http://theladymaryshepherdphilosophysalon.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/shepherd-vol-1-ebook-chapter-3.html


PART 2: SHEPHERD’S CLAIM THAT HUME’S ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES IS FLAWED


CHAPTER 5: WHAT IS SHEPHERD ARGUING AGAINST? UNPACKING HUME’S ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES
http://theladymaryshepherdphilosophysalon.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/shepherd-vol-1-ebook-chapter-5.html

CHAPTER 7: GIVEN SHEPHERD’S OBJECTIONS, DO HUME’S VIEWS ON MIRACLES NEED ADJUSTING TO BE PLAUSIBLE IN THEIR ERA?
http://theladymaryshepherdphilosophysalon.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/shepherd-vol-1-ebook-chapter-7.html

CHAPTER 8: GIVEN SHEPHERD’S OBJECTIONS, DO HUME’S VIEWS ON MIRACLES NEED ADJUSTING TO BE PLAUSIBLE TODAY?
http://theladymaryshepherdphilosophysalon.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/shepherd-vol-1-ebook-chapter-8.html

PART 3: SHEPHERD ON THE AFTERLIFE









Editor’s Note:

The references for Hume are according to the standard scholarly system for his works and in accordance with citation convention for the Selby-Bigge-Nidditch editorial version of Hume’s 1777 edition. So, to clarify the system for those who are unfamiliar with it so it remains accessible for all readers, EHU stands for Hume’s Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding (and Concerning the Principles of Morals), the first number refers to the section, the second number refers to the paragraph in the third edition of Selby-Bigge-Nidditch, SBN refers to the editors and the number after that refers to the page number for their 3rd edition. For example, EHU 10.86; SBN 109 reads as Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section/essay 10, paragraph 86, page 109 of the 3rd edition of the Selby-Bigge-Nidditch edition of Hume’s work.


Author’s Note:













Preface
This blog ebook has been based on academic conference papers I’ve written and presented as an independent scholar for over 2 years as well as including my abstracts and thoughts published on my Lady Mary Shepherd Salon blog which relate to my papers and abstract. I have re-written my works with this ebook in mind. I’ve been reading, thinking about and researching Lady Mary Shepherd since 2015 but I have taken a keen interest in Early Modern Women Philosophers (broadly construed as 17th-19th century) since the beginning of my University course which is why I included Sophie de Grouchy and contemporary feminist philosophers in my final year dissertation on Hume.
I’d firstly like to thank Professor Susan James to whom I am deeply indebted for her inspiring lectures and talks in Early Modern History of Philosophy and for being such an excellent role model all of which has given me the impetus to go on to do research (as an independent scholar) in philosophy post-graduation including on women philosophers and feminist philosophy. Unfortunately, women philosophers and feminist philosophy was not included on my BA degree course. I am also indebted greatly to my mother, an amazing educationalist and teacher, who sat me down in front of non-verbal reasoning workbooks as a fun activity at an incredibly early age and then let me get on with it however I wanted!  I still enjoy non-verbal reasoning to this day. It has helped me appreciate and enjoy doing Logic in Philosophy at University. In this respect, I also want to thank Professor Oystein Linnebo and Dr Simon Hewitt (a PhD student/tutor during my BA) both of whom encouraged and challenged me to stretch myself to understand complex logic, including Higher Order Logic, especially within the realm of Metaphysics, during my BA course.
I’d like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the conference ‘Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, Religion and Science’ (which took place 21/03/16 at the University of Groningen) who provided   useful, positive feedback in 2015 on my abstract ‘Lady Mary Shepherd on Religion and Metaphysics’.  They thought it was an excellent topic but were unsure how the logic in Shepherd worked so I have addressed this issue in Part 1 and hope I have written it such that it is accessible to all and lucid.
I would like to thank Dr Dan O’Brien for giving me the opportunity to present my paper on Hume and Miracles in which I used Shepherd’s critical essay on Hume’s views on miracles to analyse his arguments. I’d also like to thank all those who attended and presented at O’Brien’s workshop: ‘Hume on Miracles’ Nov. 26th 2016 at Oxford Brookes University, UK for their thoughtful questions at Q&A after my presentation. Dr Brian Pitts’s (Cambridge) comments after my talk was instrumental in my researching the historical and philosophical context of Shepherd and her contemporaries because he was interested whether those around Shepherd thought similarly. I have responded here in chapter 1, my discussions of Whately and Babbage, and in my blogging on Lady Mary Shepherd. Thanks also to Dr Dan O’Brien who further discussed the draft of this paper with me over the conference dinner after this workshop.
I am deeply grateful to the British Society for the History of Philosophy (BSHP) for giving me the honour of presenting my paper on Lady Mary Shepherd on the Afterlife at their annual Conference which last year was held at Sheffield University (6-8th April 2017). Thanks to the organizers Dr. Mogens Laerke and Dr. Jeremy Dunham for making the conference so enjoyable and for giving me the opportunity to chair a session. That was fun! Thanks also go to all those who came to my presentation for their constructive comments at Q&A which I develop here in the Appendix.
December 31st 2017, marked the 240th anniversary of the birth of Lady Mary Shepherd, so I wanted to publish this book to mark her 240th anniversary. And hope that Lady Mary Shepherd is accepted into the canon of philosophical works where she deserves to be.
2018 is an auspicious year for women in the UK so this publication on the first Scottish female philosopher is timed to commemorate the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918 (meaning it was the first time some women could vote) and the (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 (the first time women could be MPs) and by the end of that year, women could both stand to be elected as well as vote for the first time. It is also the 60th anniversary of the Life Peerages Act 1958, meaning women could sit in the House of Lords.
In May 2017, I set up a philosophy circle about Lady Mary Shepherd which, I believe, is the first circle or society in the world which is dedicated to her.
I named it ‘The Lady Mary Shepherd Philosophy Salon’ after the intellectual salons she hosted. The ethos of the circle follows on from the egalitarian, inclusive, open to all, discursive, friendly social space that salons attempted to achieve. On its website, I blog about Shepherd, her circle of friends, things that catch my eye, such as finding a photo of the castle she was born in which is in my google plus collection on her and other thoughts that occur to me as I research her.
(‘Lady Mary Shepherd Information’ available at: https://plus.google.com/collection/8K7FWE)

Structure of this ebook
Logic runs throughout this book because I noticed that Shepherd draws on logic and rules of reasoning throughout her works, more than meets the eye. My aim in this series on Shepherd is to show that she has a complete, overall philosophical system of thought and so can be appreciated as a philosopher in her own right. Nevertheless, I shall demonstrate how Shepherd is a valuable commentator on other major philosophers. In part 2 of this volume, I show how Shepherd takes Hume to task over his argument on miracles. I also wish to tease out the more unusual aspects of her, for example, her thoughts on the afterlife and her inclusion of foetal consciousness, both in this volume and throughout the series.
In part 1, I attempt to give a flavour of her background and the intellectual environment her ideas developed in. My overall aim in this part is to bring out the logical underpinning and analytical structure of her philosophical argumentation and system of thought. In part 2, I narrow my focus to show how she unpicks Hume’s stance on miracles to expose logical flaws in his argumentation. In part 3, I narrow my focus somewhat differently, this time to show how Shepherd goes about arguing for her own particular philosophical stance, in this instance, on continuous existence, eternity, immortality and the afterlife. It also shows, I think, what an exciting philosopher she is to research.
The appendix provides additional material coming out of the Q&A at Sheffield University BSHP Conference which especially furthers the scientific aspect (considered part of the Logic of Science and quasi-scientific methodology in analytic philosophy) in Shepherd and the topics in part 3.



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