Opinion surveys were taken in an effort to determine the philosophical beliefs of students beginning philosophy. Correlated sets were made of those who took the survey before and after a first course in philosophy; and opinion shifts noted. The acquired information may be of interest to people in various disciplines. The authors tested the semantic usage of certain epistemological terms, the change in religious beliefs, the degree of consistency between general skepticism and particular knowledge claims. Finally, the authors proposed a (...) consistency test for the measure of the extent to which a sample of students “clarified their beliefs,”; and attempted to measure their own pedagogical efficiency with reference to this test. (shrink)

Hart and Honoré contend, in their book Causation in the Law, that causal appraisals in everyday life and in the law can be made, with justifiable confidence, without appealing to relevant general laws; that in order to grasp the workings of causal notions in everyday life and the law, it is sufficient to note that causes are events which interfere with or intervene in the course of events which would normally have taken place. This thesis is criticized on the ground (...) that what purport to be purely causal appraisals are hopelessly vulnerable to moral considerations, especially when such appraisals are presumed to take place in complete independence of scientific theory. (shrink)

This work provides a welcome antidote to some of the distortions and biases which the two dominant schools of Anglo-American philosophical thinking, logical positivism and ordinary language analysis have introduced into the philosophy of history in the past three or four decades. In particular, it challenges two powerful stereotypes: that philosophy and history are conceptually independent of each other; and that there exists a sharp division between "analytical" (reputable) and "speculative" (disreputable) philosophy of history. By offering and defending his own (...) conception of philosophy, the author seeks to show that there is indeed common ground between philosophy and history, that speculative philosophy of history lies between philosophy and history, not because it is neither philosophy nor history, but because it is both philosophy and history. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Previous criteria of narrative coherence have failed to come to terms with narrative intelligibility. The principle of chronology is only a negative criterion. The one entity-one story criterion, which requires every episode to~ refer to one and the same entity, fails both in its positive and negative forms. The Aristotelian concept of necessary connection is useless for historians because there are no natural beginnings or endings in history. Yet genetic relationships in narrative, though they cannot be reduced to causal or (...) probabilistic relationships, do give coherences. History becomes science when historians transform stories into histories by seeking the mechanisms which underlie the genetic relationships between historical incidents. The construction of history in narrative form does not, therefore, cut the historian off from science, as positivists contend. (shrink)

Comprehensive account of constructive theory of first-order predicate calculus. Covers formal methods including algorithms and epi-theory, brief treatment of Markov’s approach to algorithms, elementary facts about lattices and similar algebraic systems, more. Philosophical and reflective as well as mathematical. Graduate-level course. 1963 ed. Exercises.

CHAPTER Addenda to Pure Combinatory Logic This chapter will treat various additions to, and modifications of, the subject matter of Chapters-7. ...

We study the Vapnik–Chervonenkis density of definable families in certain stable first-order theories. In particular, we obtain uniform bounds on the VC density of definable families in finite $\mathrm {U}$-rank theories without the finite cover property, and we characterize those abelian groups for which there exist uniform bounds on the VC density of definable families.

Rod photoreceptors are among the most sensitive light detectors in nature. They achieve their remarkable sensitivity across a wide variety of species through a number of essential adaptations: a specialized cellular geometry, a G‐protein cascade with an unusually stable receptor molecule, a low‐noise transduction mechanism, a nearly perfect effector enzyme, and highly evolved mechanisms of feedback control and receptor deactivation. Practically any change in protein expression, enzyme activity, or feedback control can be shown to impair photon detection, either by decreasing (...) sensitivity or signal‐to‐noise ratio, or by reducing temporal resolution. Comparison of mammals to amphibians suggests that rod outer‐segment morphology and the molecules and mechanism of transduction may have evolved together to optimize light sensitivity in darkness, which culminates in the extraordinary ability of these cells to respond to single photons at the ultimate limit of visual perception. (shrink)

Light adaptation is modulated almost exclusively by changes in intracellular Ca2+ concentration, and other Ca2+-independent mechanisms are likely to play only a minor role. Changes in Ca2+i may be not only necessary for light adaptation to take place but sufficient to cause it.