The various attempts to make sense of ‘sequitur,’ e.g. Palmer ‘naturally follows,’ taking pudor as subject and amorem as object, seem to me most unsatisfactory. Sedlmayer reads ‘quitur’ which Palmer calls ‘mira coniectura.’ But it is obvious that as far as sense and transcriptional probability go the correction is excellent, and also that since a passive infinitive is understood, it is grammatically right or at least would be if we found it in Lucretius. The only, and it may be thought (...) fatal, objection is that this passive use of potestur, quitur, nequitur, etc., has not been found in any writ er later than Lucretius, with the possible and not very relevant exception of Apuleius. Birt, the original author of the conjecture, met this objection by adducing other archaisms in Ovid. My purpose here is not to discuss these, but to add to them the fact that Quintilian did not consider that quitur was obsolete. (shrink)

Does law matter regarding public health outcomes? Regardless of what one may think about the answer to this age-old question, in recent years the public health community has increasingly demonstrated and recognized the roles that public health laws and policies play in effectuating long-lasting and broad-based population-wide changes. Public health laws and policies have been instrumental in the following ways: reducing smoking prevalence; reducing underage alcohol-related drinking, driving, crashes, and fatalities; reducing exposure to second-hand smoke; eliminating vaccine–associated paralytic poliomyelitis ; (...) increasing seat-belt use and reducing traffic fatalities; reducing dental carries; and reducing access to and consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages sold in schools and to reductions in caloric intake and overweight. In fact, in a review of the ten greatest public health achievements in the 20th century, all were influenced by policy change. (shrink)

Does law matter regarding public health outcomes? Regardless of what one may think about the answer to this age-old question, in recent years the public health community has increasingly demonstrated and recognized the roles that public health laws and policies play in effectuating long-lasting and broad-based population-wide changes. Public health laws and policies have been instrumental in the following ways: reducing smoking prevalence; reducing underage alcohol-related drinking, driving, crashes, and fatalities; reducing exposure to second-hand smoke; eliminating vaccine–associated paralytic poliomyelitis ; (...) increasing seat-belt use and reducing traffic fatalities; reducing dental carries; and reducing access to and consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages sold in schools and to reductions in caloric intake and overweight. In fact, in a review of the ten greatest public health achievements in the 20th century, all were influenced by policy change. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;We are mental beings whose identity is absolute, intrinsic and real. This conception of the self, which, it is argued, corresponds to our deeper beliefs about, and attitudes towards, ourselves and others, is a consequence of taking the experienced unity and continuity of consciousness as the key to self-identity. Some of the difficulties often taken as fatal to this "subjectivist" view of the self, considerations concerning private languages and (...) the individuation of conscious beings from within pure consciousness, are disposed of in Chapter 2. The next two chapters focus on the stream of consciousness. It is shown that the unity and copersonality of intra-streamal experiences both at and over time is constituted by and experience of unity. Building on this result, in Chapter 5 an account of the self as a mental entity whose identity consists in the persistence of potential streamal experience is developed. The notion of the Pure Ego is then examined; the reasons for positing such an entity are found wanting; but the neoHumean account of the self which has by this point emerged is compatible with the intuition that the self is a simple and basic entity, distinct from its actual mental states. In Chapter 7 the alleged possibility of selves undergoing fission and fusion is investigated. This is found to be a genuine possibility, but the claim that we should conclude from this that self-identity is not a relation which deeply matters is rejected, on the grounds that when a self divides, the products of fission are identical with one another. The apparent absurdity of this result is reduced by taking seriously the notion of topologically deviant subjective time dimensions; our identity matters, but our lives need not be linear. (shrink)

This paper examines how people in West Africa are reacting to the Ebola virus disease, an epidemic presently prevalent in the region. Certain lifestyle changes are suggested. Additionally, the heart of the paper focuses on the request by governments to be allowed access to experimental drugs, such as Zmapp and TKM-Ebola, for their infected populations. The author argues that granting such a request would circumvent research ethics procedures, which could potentially constitute significant risk to users of the drugs. The Pfizer (...) Kano meningitis trial of 1996 is cited as an example to buttress how unapproved drugs could prove fatal. (shrink)

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a novel stance on semantic representation, and its relationship to context sensitivity. Connectionist-minded philosophers, including Clark and van Gelder, have espoused the merits of viewing hidden-layer, context-sensitive representations as possessing semantic content, where this content is partially revealed via the representations'' position in vector space. In recent work, Bodén and Niklasson have incorporated a variant of this view of semantics within their conception of semantic systematicity. Moreover, Bodén and Niklasson contend that they (...) have produced experimental results which not only satisfy a kind of context-based, semantic systematicity, but which, to the degree that reality permits, effectively deals with challenges posed by Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988), and Hadley (1994a). The latter challenge involved well-defined criteria for strong semantic systematicity. This paper examines the relevant claims and experiments of Bodén and Niklasson. It is argued that their case fatally involves two fallacies of equivocation; one concerning ''semantic content'' and the other concerning ''novel test sentences''. In addition, it is argued that their ultimate construal of context sensitive semantics contains serious confusions. These confusions are also found in certain publications dealing with "latent semantic analysis". Thus, criticisms presented here have relevance beyond the work of Bodén and Niklasson. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas’s Natural Theology inSumma contra gentiles I by Norman KretzmannJohn F. WippelNorman Kretzmann. The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles I. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 302. Cloth, $45.00.In this book Kretzmann intends to contribute to our understanding of Aquinas’s natural theology as it is presented in Bk I of his Summa contra gentiles(SCG). He hopes that it (...) will be of value to medieval philosophical scholarship. Because he regards Aquinas’s natural theology as an ongoing active enterprise, he also wants to present a viable metaphysics of theism along the lines laid down by the medieval Doctor. Thomas himself indicates that in Bks. I–III of the four Books of this work he will set forth those aspects of Christian belief about God which can be established by unaided human reason. Kretzmann views Aquinas’s project in these three Books as the most promising and “most fully accomplished natural theology” of which he is aware.In ch. 1 Kretzmann discusses the relationship between philosophy and theology and suggests that a philosophical theology might be regarded as theology from the top down. Philosophy from the bottom up would seem to be the only kind of philosophy that can be distinguished from it. Kretzmann mentions the “philosophical theology” produced by many medieval theologians and by current philosophers of religion but, in a departure from Aquinas’s own terminology, regards this as a part of revealed theology. Kretzmann reserves the name “natural theology” for the theology that is a part of philosophy, and refers to it as theology from the bottom up. But, he suggests, if one were to take a metaphysically grounded natural theology as the first phase in a systematic presentation of the rest of philosophy, one could then refer to philosophy as proceeding from the top down, i.e., from an original demonstration of the existence of God and discussion of his nature to an examination of created reality and human nature and behavior as following from God as the first principle. It is this approach that he finds Thomas following in SCG I–III and which Kretzmann will subsequently refer to as his “natural theology.”In ch. 2 Kretzmann examines Thomas’s efforts in SCG I, c. 13 to demonstrate God’s existence. He thinks Aquinas is too demanding in requiring demonstrative argumentation for God’s existence at this point. For Rretzmann it will be enough initially to offer argumentation to show that the existence of God is an acceptable working hypothesis, and to move from this to an investigation of the divine nature. Thomas offers five a [End Page 528]posteriori arguments for God’s existence in c. 13, of which the first two, by far the lengthiest, are based on motion and deeply indebted to Aristotle. Kretzmann notes the close relationship between this first argument from motion and the later “first way” of Summa theologiae1, 2, 3. But because this argument has been ably analyzed and defended by Scott MacDonald, Kretzmann unfortunately bypasses it here and concentrates on the more complicated second argument. After submitting this to close analysis, he concludes that it has some fatal flaws which prevent it from being accepted as demonstrative.This result forces him in ch. 3 to move forward in his presentation of Thomas’s natural theology without having a conclusive argument for the existence of God or even of an extraordinary first being. But he is willing to use its conclusion, that there is an ultimate explanatory principle, as a working hypothesis, even though at this point he is not ready to identify this with even a hypothetically existing God. Instead, he will refer to it as “Alpha.” He follows Thomas’s employment of the way of negation in cc. 14–28 in removing a series of names that should not be predicated of God. As part of his effort in c. 15 to prove that God is eternal, Aquinas introduces a special argument based on the difference between possible (=corruptible) and necessary (=incorruptible) beings. Kretzman correctly takes this as in effect another argument for the existence of God... (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To ascertain which conditions nurses believe should be in a law allowing active voluntary euthanasia (AVE). DESIGN: Survey questionnaire posted to registered nurses (RNs). SETTING: Australian Capital Territory (ACT) at the end of 1996, when active voluntary euthanasia was legal in the Northern Territory. SURVEY SAMPLE: A random sample of 2,000 RNs, representing 54 per cent of the RN population in the ACT. MAIN MEASURES: Two methods were used to look at nurses' opinions. The first involved four vignettes which (...) varied in terms of critical characteristics of each patient who was requesting help to die. The respondents were asked if the law should be changed to allow any of these requests. There was also a checklist of conditions, most of which have commonly been included in Australian proposed laws on AVE. The respondents chose those which they believed should apply in a law on AVE. RESULTS: The response rate was 61%. Support for a change in the law to allow AVE was 38% for a young man with AIDS, 39% for an elderly man with early stage Alzheimer's disease, 44% for a young woman who had become quadriplegic and 71% for a middle-aged woman with metastases from breast cancer. The conditions most strongly supported in any future AVE law were: "second doctor's opinion", "cooling off period", "unbearable protracted suffering", "patient fully informed about illness and treatment" and "terminally ill". There was only minority support for "not suffering from treatable depression", "administer the fatal dose themselves" and "over a certain age". CONCLUSION: Given the lack of support for some conditions included in proposed AVE laws, there needs to be further debate about the conditions required in any future AVE bills. (shrink)

Motivated by Drerup’s and Terhart’s stimulating contribution (Analyse & Kritik 1/80) to the notorious “Critical Rationalism and Contemporary Politics” -affair with its fatal repercussions on Popper’s original position. Part One of this paper discusses the development of Popperian philosophy of science and society from the hopeful beginnings to the rather unsatisfactory present state, with the main emphasis on the separate fate of his Social Philosophy in German speaking countries. A reconstruction and evaluation of this development is made in comparison to (...) Popper’s basic idea of an open-minded Social Philosophy and critical Social Science. The German mainstream development adds to Popper’s own radically liberal interpretation a positivistic, a normativistic and a conformistic phase, thus leading this degenerating research programme to the present philosophical stagnation and badly compensating political reideologization. The intellectual as well as the institutional causes and consequences of the deviant German case are analysed. − This exposition of the present state of reception is to be completed, in Part Two, by an analysis of the resulting state of problems with regard to the remaining chances for the realization of the original Popperian programme just-mentioned in contemporary rebuilding. (shrink)

"Adaptation properties," as individuated according to evolutionary biology, cannot be reduced to physical properties of the token items that have the adaptation properties. This causes serious if not fatal trouble for several of Kim's crucial theses: the Causal Individuation of Kinds, Weak Supervenience, Alexander's Dictum, the synchronicity thesis (that all psychological kinds supervene on the contemporaneous physical states of the organism), the Correlation Thesis, and indeed his Restricted Correlation Thesis. All these theses are strongly individualist, in the sense of entailing (...) that all a thing's properties are determined by its own physical properties and relations, contrary to many properties in biology and psychology. (shrink)

The professional mining engineer has a number of different duties. He must: produce engineering designs, meet the production requirements set by the mining operation he works for, ensure efficient cooperation between the different departments in a mine, and he is responsible for mine planning. Also, and very importantly, he is responsible for meeting high safety standards and ensuring that his mine is as injury and fatality free as possible. However, it is unfortunately the case that accidents do occur in mines, (...) and that miners are sometimes injured or even killed. Such tragedies raise questions about whether the mining engineer bears some responsibility for the injuries or deaths. In this paper, we argue that the engineer does bear responsibility, but that depending on the circumstances surrounding any particular accident, ascriptions of moral responsibility do not always mean that the engineer is morally blameworthy. We conclude that professional accountability and moral responsibility require that the mining engineer take practical steps to ensure that high safety standards are upheld, and that, when accidents occur, steps are taken to identify the causes so that similar tragedies can be avoided in the future. (shrink)

Cigarette smoking and other addictive behaviors are among the main preventable risk factors for several severe and potentially fatal diseases. It has been argued that addictive behavior is controlled by an automatic-implicit cognitive system and by a reflective-explicit cognitive system, that operate in parallel to jointly drive human behavior. The present study addresses the formation of implicit attitudes towards smoking in both smokers and non-smokers, using a Go/NoGo association task, and behavioral and electroencephalographic measures. The GNAT assesses, via quantifying participants’ (...) reaction times, the strength of association between a target category and either pole of an evaluative dimension. EEG analysis is performed to determine the temporal course of the event-related potential components underlying Go/NoGo decisions and implicit attitude formation. Both smokers and non-smokers showed prolonged reaction times to smoking-related pictures when the pictures were coupled with positive evaluative words. This indicates negative implicit attitudes towards smoking in both groups alike at the time point of the behavioral response. However, only the non-smokers, not the smokers, were found to show a delay of the N200 component in the incongruent condition. This is interpreted as reflecting ambivalent or even positive implicit attitudes towards smoking in the smoker group at the time point of the N200. Our study thus provides evidence for the hypothesis that implicit attitudes are subject to changes within several hundred milliseconds after stimulus presentation, and can be altered in the course of their formation. (shrink)

This landmark work provides a systematic introduction to systems of modal logic and stands as the first presentation of what have become central ideas in philosophy of language and metaphysics, from the "new theory of reference" and non-linguistic necessity and essentialism to "Kripke semantics.".

Appearing in English for the first time, Schelling’s 1842 lectures develop the idea that many philosophical concepts are born of religious-mythological notions.

With precision and profundity born of 30 years of devoted study, John Boyle offers an essential introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas on Scripture, shedding helpful light on the goals, methods, and commitments that animate the Angelic Doctor's engagement with the sacred page. Because the genius of St. Thomas's approach to the Bible lies not so much in its novelty but rather in the fidelity and clarity with which he recapitulates the riches of the preceding interpretive Tradition, this initiation into St. (...) Thomas's vision of Scripture is itself an orientation to the Church's vision of Scripture, from the Fathers through and beyond the Middle Ages. St. Thomas's embeddedness within the Church's Tradition and his own historical context is integral to his approach to Scripture, yet it sets him at some distance from modern readers, for whom his interpretive vision may seem perplexing or even impenetrable. In this Primer, Boyle first provides an acclimation to this medieval context through a survey and explanation of pertinent technical terminology used by St. Thomas and characteristic of the scholastic theology of the time. With an eye to the medieval practice of considering Scripture according to the fourfold division of causes, Boyle builds on this initial foundation by exploring in turn St. Thomas's accounts of the end or use of Scripture (final cause), its divine and human authorship (efficient cause), its order and division (material cause), and its literary styles or genres (formal cause). Drawing on writings from across St. Thomas's corpus, but especially his work On the Commendation and Division of Sacred Scripture and the prologues to his biblical commentaries, Boyle masterfully elucidates both the hermeneutical principles and deep wisdom of the Angelic Doctor's approach to Scripture, imparting invaluable guidance not only for reading and understanding St. Thomas and other great masters of the Tradition, but also-and ultimately-for understanding Scripture in light of this Tradition and reading it with greater benefit and joy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:684 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER 1995 "Private I.anguage" and the pivotal paper in the Stoic section, "The Conjunctive Model," bring out a third feature of Brunschwig's method. Many of his essays take their start from a small text or a relatively local problem, one which does not primafacie bear significantly on large philosophical issues. Yet in a rigorously conceived philosophical system, the whole is often (...) reflected in the details; where possible Brunschwig elicits the larger significance. He shows how Epicurean physics provides a normative model for Epicurean psychology without falling into the reductionist error; the Epicurean does extrapolate from physical theory to human experience, but in so doing he does not forget that human beings are not just atomic; they are atomic compounds. Reductionism does not follow from materialism, for Epicurus or for us. Similarly in "The Conjunctive Model" Brunschwig connects, in a manner which is speculative but nevertheless compelling, a important Stoic thesis in logic (that a conjunction is false if even one of its conjuncts is false) with a comprehensive understanding of Stoic ethics and physics, thereby giving definite content to the Stoic claims about the coherence of their system. The other Stoic papers focus on ontology and logic, showing how central these are to Stoicism. The titles speak for themselves: "Remarks on the Stoic Theory of the Proper Noun," "Remarks on the Classification of Simple Propositions in Hellenistic Logics," "The Stoic Theory of the Supreme Genus and Platonic Ontology," and "Did Diogenes of Babylon Invent the Ontological Argument?" (the answer is 'no'). One essay ("On a Stoic Way of Not Being") disguises by its title a crucial contribution to the philosophy of mind. The papers on Scepticism include "The 6oov ~t~ x~ ~.6"f.t 9 Formula in Sextus Empiricus," a definitive treatment of a verbal formula crucial to understanding the precise character of his sceptical stance, and "Sextus Empiricus on the xptxfl0tov," the only paper in the volume which has previously appeared in English. The papers "Once Again on Eusebius on Aristocles on Timon on Pyrrho" and "The Title of Timon's lndalmoi: From Odysseus to Pyrrho" deal with early Pyrrhonism, for which the evidence is so thin that no firm conclusions can be drawn. Yet even here Brunschwig's care and skill are exemplary, and his argument that we should look to Timon rather than Pyrrho as the creator of Pyrrhonism is as convincing as anything could be in this area. This is a collection which specialists must read and even nonspecialists will value for its elegant combination of rigor, intellectual honesty, and philosophical insight. BRAD INWOOD University of Toronto Michael J. B. Allen. Nuptial Arithmetic: Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on the Fatal Number in Book VIII of Plato's Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. PP. x + 291. Cloth, $5o.oo. Marsilio Ficino was born in 1433 and died in 1499 at the age of 66. He would have been pleased if he could have known that. For three years before in 1496 (or slightly earlier) he declared in his Commentary on the Fatal Number that 6 was the perfect number and BOOK R~VIEWS 685 that contemplations of the sextile relations of the planets might lead to the return of the golden age of Saturn "some day," This is the fifth volume of Michael Allen's seminal studies of Ficino's Platonic commentaries; if his notable additional articles on further Ficino commentaries were assembled, as they sometime must be, it would be his sixth--not that he takes the same pleasure in numbers as his subject Ficino did. But 6 is the key to Ficino's unraveling of Plato's "fatal number" in Republic 546. To end the suspense, Ficino's solution, aided by Aristotle, Politics V. 1316, is (4 + 3 + 5)3or (6 x 2)3 or 1728. But 1728 what? There is no clue. The book is itself a valuable contribution to the history of philosophy. Allen reviews the history of this topos up to Brumbaugh and Rees. Although Ficino's entry was known and discussed in the sixteenth century, it has been lost from sight since, and Alien restores it importantly to... (shrink)

"The chief business of twentieth-century philosophy” is “to reckon with twentieth-century history," claimed R. G. Collingwood. In this remarkable collection of essays, Frank Ankersmit demonstrates the prescience of that remark and goes a long way toward meeting its challenge. Responding to the work of Hayden White, Arthur Danto, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, he examines such issues as the difference between historical representation and artistic expression, the status of metaphor in historical description, and the relation of postmodernism to historicism. Ankersmit's fluent grasp (...) of European thought and his ability to incorporate concepts from literary theory, art history, the philosophy of science, and political thought into his analyses assure that this collection will interest readers throughout the humanities. (shrink)

"Not only one of the best but also the most comprehensive treatment of Stoicism written in this century." --Times Literary Supplement.

Ethics for Enemies comprises three original philosophical essays on torture, terrorism, and war. F. M. Kamm deploys ethical theory in her challenging new treatments of these most controversial practical issues. First she considers the nature of torture and the various occasions on which it could occur, in order to determine why it might be wrong to torture a wrongdoer held captive, even if this were necessary to save his victims. In the second essay she considers what makes terrorism wrong--whether it (...) is the intention to harm civilians, rather than harm to them being 'collateral damage,' or something else--and whether terrorism is always wrong. The third essay discusses whether having a right reason, in the sense of a right intention, is necessary in order for a war to be just. Kamm then examines ways in which the harms of war can be proportional to the achievement of the just cause and other goods that war can bring about, so as to make the declaration of war permissible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III by John F. WippelTherese Scarpelli CoryWIPPEL, John F. Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021. ix + 321 pp. Cloth, $65.00; eBook, $65.00This volume is the third in what can now be considered informally a series of volumes collecting some of John F. Wippel's most important writings. (Two previous volumes, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas (...) Aquinas and Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II, were published in 1984 and 2007, respectively, by the same press.) In this volume, Wippel has collected nine of his articles or book chapters, originally published from 2002–2019, on a wide range of topics: (1) "Aquinas on Separatio and Our Discovery of Being as Being," (2) "Thomas Aquinas on Philosophy and the Preambles of Faith," (3) "Cornelio Fabro on the Distinction and Composition of Essence and Esse in the Metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas," (4) "Cornelio Fabro on Participation and Aquinas's Quarta Via," (5) "Aquinas on Creation and Preambles of Faith," (6) "Thomas Aquinas and the Unity of Substantial Form," (7) "Thomas Aquinas on the Separated Soul's Natural Knowledge," (8) "Metaphysical Themes in De Malo I," and (9) "Metaphysical Composition of Angels in Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Godfrey of Fontaines."Such collections provide a valuable opportunity for the author's retrospective on the work thus collected. In this respect, it is especially worth noting the usefulness of the introduction to this volume, in which Wippel has provided a detailed précis for each included chapter. The introduction thus serves as a helpful roadmap to orient new and returning readers of Wippel's work to some of his most important writings.In a book review of this length, it is impossible to summarize adequately the content of each essay. Indeed, it would be redundant to try, given the much more authoritative content of Wippel's own introduction to the volume. Consequently, I will limit myself to highlighting one of the notable inclusions in this collection, namely, chapter 6, "Thomas Aquinas and the Unity of Substantial Form." Despite the modest title, the piece is an extensive and wide-ranging study of the development and fate of Aquinas's controversial doctrine, the anxieties it raised among his contemporaries, and the debate that raged at Paris in the late thirteenth century, and during which the doctrine appears to have narrowly escaped inclusion on the list of condemnations of 1270. Wippel correlates some interesting historical anecdotes and documentary evidence with Aquinas's series of changing formulations in discussions of the unity of substantial form. He is thereby able to document a particularly nuanced case in which Aquinas attempts to make his own thought clearer in the face of a developing controversy, but without giving up on the essentials of his own position.Nonetheless, Wippel points out that Aquinas never fully resolved the theological criticisms lodged against his position. Within the debate over the number of substantial forms in a substance, the identity of Christ's dead body in the tomb between the crucifixion and resurrection ended up becoming a test case: What makes Christ's living body and his dead body in the tomb both be identically the same body? The problem is as follows: [End Page 371] Since substantial form is what secures the identity of a substance across time, if there is just one substantial form in a human substance, and that form (the human soul) departs Christ's body in his death on the cross, then after his death whatever is left can no longer be identified as Christ's body. It must be some new substance with its own substantial form.For opponents, this difficulty was fatal. How did Aquinas respond? Disappointingly, he only asserts that Christ's dead body is numerically identical with his living body, just not "in every way"—but without explaining why he thinks this identity is preserved. It is left to Giles of Rome to fill out a tentative solution: Although the matter of Christ's body does take on a new substantial form, it remains Christ's, because it remains united to the person of the Word.The problem is... (shrink)

This is an English translation of Schelling's Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (first published in 1797 and revised in 1803), one of the most significant works in the German tradition of philosophy of nature and early nineteenth-century philosophy of science. It stands in opposition to the Newtonian picture of matter as constituted by inert, impenetrable particles, and argues instead for matter as an equilibrium of active forces that engage in dynamic polar opposition to one another. In the revisions of (...) 1803 Schelling incorporated this dialectical view into a neo-Platonic conception of an original unity divided upon itself. The text is of more than simply historical interest: its daring and original vision of nature, philosophy, and empirical science will prove absorbing reading for all philosophers concerned with post-Kantian German idealism, for scholars of German Romanticism, and for historians of science. (shrink)

The limited aim here is to explain what John Dewey might say about the formulation of the grue example. Nelson Goodman’s problem of distinguishing good and bad inductive inferences is an important one, but the grue example misconstrues this complex problem for certain technical reasons, due to ambiguities that contemporary logical theory has not yet come to terms with. Goodman’s problem is a problem for the theory of induction and thus for logical theory in general. Behind the whole discussion of (...) these issues over the last several decades is a certain view of logic hammered out by Russell, Carnap, Tarski, Quine, and many others. Goodman’s nominalism hinges in essential ways on a certain view of formal logic with an extensional quantification theory at its core. This raises many issues, but the one issue most germane here is the conception of predicates ensconced in this view of logic. (shrink)

The essays in this collection address different aspects of Dewey's philosophy of logic, from his work at the beginning of the twentieth century to the culmination of his logical thought in the 1938 volume, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.

Laughter as superiority -- The elements of laughter -- The one necessary thing -- Objections to the normative thesis -- Comic virtues and vices -- The social virtues -- The charismatic virtues -- Machine law -- Machine scholarship -- Machine art and machine cities -- The battle of the norms -- Resistance to laughter -- The sociability thesis -- Conclusion.

Neuroscience has studied deductive reasoning over the last 20 years under the assumption that deductive inferences are not only de jure but also de facto distinct from other forms of inference. The objective of this research is to verify if logically valid deductions leave any cerebral electrical trait that is distinct from the trait left by non-valid deductions. 23 subjects with an average age of 20.35 years were registered with MEG and placed into a two conditions paradigm (100 trials for (...) each condition) which each presented the exact same relational complexity (same variables and content) but had distinct logical complexity. Both conditions show the same electromagnetic components (P3, N4) in the early temporal window (250–525 ms) and P6 in the late temporal window (500–775 ms). The significant activity in both valid and invalid conditions is found in sensors from medial prefrontal regions, probably corresponding to the ACC or to the medial prefrontal cortex. The amplitude and intensity of valid deductions is significantly lower in both temporal windows (p = 0.0003). The reaction time was 54.37% slower in the valid condition. Validity leaves a minimal but measurable hypoactive electrical trait in brain processing. The minor electrical demand is attributable to the recursive and automatable character of valid deductions, suggesting a physical indicator of computational deductive properties. It is hypothesized that all valid deductions are recursive and hypoactive. (shrink)

I present a possible worlds semantics for a hyperintensional belief revision operator, which reduces the logical idealization of cognitive agents affecting similar operators in doxastic and epistemic logics, as well as in standard AGM belief revision theory. (Revised) belief states are not closed under classical logical consequence; revising by inconsistent information does not perforce lead to trivialization; and revision can be subject to ‘framing effects’: logically or necessarily equivalent contents can lead to different revisions. Such results are obtained without resorting (...) to non-classical logics, or to non-normal or impossible worlds semantics. The framework combines, instead, a standard semantics for propositional S5 with a simple mereology of contents. (shrink)

razdel I. Istoriko-filosofskie issledovanii︠a︡ -- razdel II. Filosofskie i sot︠s︡ialʹno-politicheskie problemy -- razdel III. Istorii︠a︡ v lit︠s︡akh.