Online research in philosophy

The Philosopher's Banquet is the first sustained study of Plutarch's Table Talk, a Greek prose text which is a combination of philosophical dialogue (in the ...

We briefly describe in this paper the passage from Mendeleev’s chemistry (1869) to atomic physics (in the 1900’s), nuclear physics (in 1932) and particle physics (from 1953 to 2006). We show how the consideration of symmetries, largely used in physics since the end of the 1920’s, gave rise to a new format of the periodic table in the 1970’s. More specifically, this paper is concerned with the application of the group SO(4,2)⊗SU(2) to the periodic table of chemical elements. It is shown how the Madelung rule of the atomic shell model can be used to set up a periodic table that can be further rationalized via the group SO(4,2)⊗SU(2) and some of its sub-groups. Qualitative results are obtained from this nonstandard table.

This essay defends the compatibility of a pair of popular theses in the philosophy of action and rebuts arguments of Hugh McCann’s (1995) designed to show that my earlier efforts, in Springs of Action, to resolve the apparent tension were unsuccessful. One thesis links what agents intentionally do at a time, t, to what they are most strongly motivated to do at t. The other is a thesis about the nature and functions of intent.

The following theorems on the structure inside nonrecursive truth-table degrees are established: Dëgtev's result that the number of bounded truth-table degrees inside a truth-table degree is at least two is improved by showing that this number is infinite. There are even infinite chains and antichains of bounded truth-table degrees inside every truth-table degree. The latter implies an affirmative answer to the following question of Jockusch: does every truth-table degree contain an infinite antichain of many-one degrees? Some but not all truth-table degrees have a least bounded truth-table degree. The technique to construct such a degree is used to solve an open problem of Beigel, Gasarch and Owings: there are Turing degrees (constructed as hyperimmune-free truth-table degrees) which consist only of 2-subjective sets and therefore do not contain any objective set. Furthermore, a truth-table degree consisting of three positive degrees is constructed where one positive degree consists of enumerable semirecursive sets, one of coenumerable semirecursive sets and one of sets, which are neither enumerable nor coenumerable nor semirecursive. So Jockusch's result that there are at least three positive degrees inside a truth-table degree is optimal. The number of positive degrees inside a truth-table degree can also be some other odd integer as for example nineteen, but it is never an even finite number.

The central topic of this paper is to study joint intention to perform a joint action or to bring about a certain state. Here are some examples of such joint action: You and I share the plan to carry a heavy table jointly upstairs and realize this plan, we sing a duet together, we clean up our backyard together, and I cash a check by acting jointly with you, a bank teller, and finally we together elect a new president for our country. In these cases the participants can be said to have a joint intention jointly or as a group to carry the table upstairs: the content of the intention involves our performing something together and the pronoun “we” refers to us, viz. you and me and the possible other participants considered together. When we jointly intend to carry the table, each of us can be said to..

Disjunctivists (Hinton 1973, Snowdon 1990, Martin 2002, 2006) often motivate their approach to perceptual experience by appealing in part to the claim that in cases of veridical perception, the subject is directly in contact with the perceived object. When I perceive a table, for example, there is no table-like sense-impression that stands as an intermediary between the table and me. Nor am I related to the table as I am to a deer when I see its footprint in the snow. I do not experience the table by experiencing some- thing else over and above the table and its facing surface. I see the facing surface of the table directly.

1 23 Fig. 2 25 Fig. 3 25 Fig. 4 60 Fig. 5 159 Fig. 6 161 Fig. 7 161 TABLES Table 1 28 Table 2 29 Table 3 48 Table 4 53 Table 5 67 Table 6 .72-73 Table 7 80 ...

A critical edition of three works of Bentham, Deontology and The Article on Utilitarianism were previously unpublished. Together with An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, they provide a comrehensive exposition of Bentham's views. Based entirely on manuscripts by Bentham of his amanuenses, this edition's full introduction linking the three works. Each work is supplemented with detailed and critical notes.

What is the connection between action that is caused by inauthentic antecedent springs of action, such as surreptitiously engineered-in desires and beliefs, and moral obligation? If, for example, an agent performs an action that derives from such antecedent springs can it be that the agent is not obligated to perform this action owing to the inauthenticity of its causal antecedents? I defend an affirmative response, assuming that we morally ought to bring about the states of affairs that occur in the intrinsically best worlds accessible to us and that a version of attitudinal hedonism is the axiology for ranking worlds.