Citing of previous publications is an important factor in knowledge development. Because of the great amount of publications available, only a selection of studies gets cited, for varying reasons. If the selection of citations is associated with study outcome this is called citation bias. We will study determinants of citation in a broader sense, including e.g. study design, journal impact factor or the funding source of the publication. As a case study we assess which factors drive citation in the human (...) literature on phthalates, specifically the metabolite mono phthalate. A systematic literature search identified all relevant publications on human health effect of MEHP. Data on potential determinants of citation were extracted in duplo. Specialized software was used to create a citation network, including all potential citation pathways. Random effect logistic regression was used to assess whether these determinants influence the likelihood of citation. 112 Publications on MEHP were identified, with 5684 potential citation pathways of which 551 were actual citations. Reporting of a harmful point estimate, journal impact factor, authority of the author, a male corresponding author, research performed in North America and self-citation were positively associated with the likelihood of being cited. In the literature on MEHP, citation is mostly driven by a number of factors that are not related to study outcome. Although the identified determinants do not necessarily give strong indications of bias, it shows selective use of published literature for a variety of reasons. (shrink)

The editors welcome letters from readers, although we cannot guarantee that all will be published. To ensure timeliness, correspondents must respond to an article within seven weeks and not exceed two double‐spaced pages. Letters become the property of the editors and may be edited and shortened at our discretion.

Reflecting Alan Robinson's fundamental contribution to computational logic, this book brings together seminal papers in inference, equality theories, and logic programming. It is an exceptional collection that ranges from surveys of major areas to new results in more specialized topics. Alan Robinson is currently the University Professor at Syracuse University. Jean-Louis Lassez is a Research Scientist at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Gordon Plotkin is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh. Contents: Inference. Subsumption, A Sometimes (...) Undervalued Procedure, Larry Wos, Ross Overbeek, and Ewing Lusk. The Markgraf Karl Refutation Procedure, Hans Jurgen Ohlbach and Jorg H. Siekmann. Modal Logic Should Say More than it Does, Melvin Fitting. Interactive Proof Presentation, W. W. Bledsoe. Intelligent Backtracking Revisited, Maurice Bruynooghe. A Science of Reasoning, Alan Bundy. Inductive Inference of Theories from Facts, Ehud Y. Shapiro. Equality. Solving Equations in Abstract Algebras: A Rule-based Survey of Unification, Jean-Pierre Jouannaud and Claude Kirchner. Disunification: A Survey, Hubert Comon. A Case Study of the Completion Procedure: Proving Ring Commutativity Problems, Deepak Kapur and Hantao Zhang. Computations in Regular Rewriting Systems I and II, Girard Huet and JeanJacques Levy. Unification and ML Type Reconstruction, Paris Kanellakis, Harry Mairson, and John Mitchell. Automatic Dimensional Analysis, Mitchell Wand. Logic Programming. Logic Programming Schemes and Their Implementations, Keith Clark. A Near-Horn Prolog for Compilation, Donald Loveland and David Reed. Unfold/Fold Transformations of Logic Programs, P. A. Gardner and J. C. Shepherdson. An Algebraic Representation of Logic Program Computations, Andrea Corradini and Ugo Montanari. Theory of Disjunctive Logic Programs, Jack Minker, Arcot Rajasekar, and Jorge Lobo. Bottom-Up Evaluation of Logic Programs, Jeffrey Naughton and Raghu Ramakrishnan. Absys, the First Logic Programming Language: A View of the Inevitability of Logic Programming, E. W. Elcock. (shrink)

The editors welcome letters from readers, although we cannot guarantee that all will be published. To ensure timeliness, correspondents must respond to an article within seven weeks and not exceed two double‐spaced pages. Letters become the property of the editors and may be edited and shortened at our discretion.

It is common to assume that if Locke is to be regarded as a consistent epistemologist he must be read as holding that either ideas are the objects of perception or that (physical) objects are. He must either be a direct realist or a representationalist. But perhaps, paradoxical as it at first sounds, there is no reason to suppose that he could not hold both to be true. We see physical objects and when we do so we have ideas. We (...) see or hear birds and bells but we also have visual and auditory ideas of birds and bells. This suggestion is explored through examination of what Locke says about perception in his Elements of Natural Philosophy and the accounts offered both by Locke in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and by some of Locke's successors. (shrink)

Causal accounts of perception are often believed to lead inevitably to the conclusion that we only indirectly perceive things. The paper argues that there are no incompatibilities between accepting causal accounts of perception (e.G., Many scientific explanations of perception) and holding that we directly perceive physical objects, Without the mediation of sense data. Further, There are strong analogical arguments which support the view that talk of causal accounts of perception is consistent with the philosophical position of direct realism.

The relationship between John Locke and Isaac Newton, his co-founder of, in the apt phrase of one recent writer, ‘the Moderate Enlightenment’ of the eighteenth century, has many dimensions. There is their friendship, which began only after each had written his major work, and which had its stormy interlude. There is the difficult question of their mutual impact. In what ways did each draw intellectually on the other? That there was some debt of each to the other is almost certain, (...) but its exact extent is problematic. Questions may be asked over a whole range of intellectual issues, but not always answered. Thus their theology, which was in many respects close, and which forms the bulk of their surviving correspondence, may yet reveal mutual influence. There is the question of their political views, where both were firmly Whig. But it is upon their philosophy, and certain aspects of their philosophy in particular, that this paper will concentrate. My main theme is the nature of their empiricism, and my main contention is that between them they produced a powerful and comprehensive philosophy. (shrink)

Each title in the "Key Issues" series aims to set the work in its historical context. In this collection of contemporary responses to "Leviathan", attention is focused on its critics who attacked Hobbes's moral, political and religious ideas in a series of pamphlets and short books.

The relationship between John Locke and Isaac Newton, his co-founder of, in the apt phrase of one recent writer, ‘the Moderate Enlightenment’ of the eighteenth century, has many dimensions. There is their friendship, which began only after each had written his major work, and which had its stormy interlude. There is the difficult question of their mutual impact. In what ways did each draw intellectually on the other? That there was some debt of each to the other is almost certain, (...) but its exact extent is problematic. Questions may be asked over a whole range of intellectual issues, but not always answered. Thus their theology, which was in many respects close, and which forms the bulk of their surviving correspondence, may yet reveal mutual influence. There is the question of their political views, where both were firmly Whig. But it is upon their philosophy, and certain aspects of their philosophy in particular, that this paper will concentrate. My main theme is the nature of their empiricism, and my main contention is that between them they produced a powerful and comprehensive philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophers and natural scientists have often drawn a distinction between two kinds of properties that physical objects may have. It is particularly associated with atomistic accounts of matter, and is as old as the ancient Greek theories of Democritus and Epicurus. According to the atomists, matter consists of tiny particles ‐ atoms ‐ having no other properties than those such as shape, weight, solidity, and size. Other putative properties ‐ for example, those of color, taste, and smell ‐ were regarded (...) as the names of experiences caused by the impact of particles on an observer, and had no independent existence as qualities in the object. Since the seventeenth century it has been normal to characterize the division between these two supposedly different kinds of properties as the primary‐secondary quality distinction. (shrink)

'It would ... be a pity if the sketch of religious controversy in the 1670s contained in Richard Ashcraft's bold and exhilarating attempt to reconstruct the argument and intellectual framework of Locke's political thinking and activity should be thought to represent the entire debate accurately.' (Spurr 1988, 567 n. 17) 'has also taken the view that Locke equated the dissolution of government with the state of nature [pp. 576–6]. Important opponents of this view include Dunn [1969, p. 181] and Franklin (...) [1978, p. 107].' (Levitin MPhil diss., p. 32). (shrink)

John Rogers explores the concepts of recognition, command and authority and tests their validity in several cases presented by Hobbes, ranging from parental authority to the omnipotence of God. The general thesis he defends is that, for Hobbes, autonomy always goes hand in hand with the possession of power. Even for the individuals in a civil society, there is no autonomy but in a condition of empowerment. But, at the same time, the strength of the laws of nature rests in (...) their rationality, and there can be no doubt that their compelling force comes from their being rational. The comparison with mathematical theorems furnishes an important element of understanding, since the laws of nature are conclusions concerning that which conduces to the conservation of oneself. Although there is an empirical element in the deduction of those practical theorems, this is no objection to the analogy being drawn, since this empirical element belongs to the learning process and not to the rationality of the law itself. In the light of this conception of natural law, Hobbes thus appears as a rationalist in morals and politics. (shrink)

Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset, on 29 August 1632. After the Civil War he was sent to Westminster School, and in 1652 to Christ Church, Oxford. A feature of the university in Locke's early years was growing interest in the natural sciences, fostered by, amongst others, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Robert Hooke. After graduating, Locke was much attracted to the work of these men, and soon he was engaged in medical research with Robert Boyle. He remained in Oxford (...) until 1667, when a chance meeting with Anthony Ashley Cooper, later Lord Shaftesbury, led to his joining Shaftesbury's London household, which from then on became Locke's usual residence, and where he acted as Shaftesbury's personal physician, conducted research with Thomas Sydenham. and became a Fellow of the Royal Society. (shrink)

Seventeenth-century philosophy scholars come together in this volume to address the Insiders--Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, and Hobbes--and Outsiders--Pierre Gassendi, Kenelm Digby, Theophilus Gale, Ralph Cudworth and Nicholas Malebranche--of the philosocial canon, and the ways in which reputations are created and confirmed. In their own day, these ten figures were all considered to be thinkers of substantial repute, and it took some time for the Insiders to come to be regarded as major and original philosophers. Today these Insiders all feature in (...) the syllabi of most history of philosophy courses taught in western universities, and the papers in this collection, contrasting the stories of their receptions with those of the Outsiders, give an insight into the history of philosophy which is generally overlooked. (shrink)

Title: Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century BritainPublisher: University of Minnesota PressISBN: 0816660581Author: John W. YoltonTitle: Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to ReidPublisher: University of Minnesota PressISBN: 0816611629Author: John W. Yolton.