Destabilising empiricism Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9623-4 Authors RogerEbbatson, Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YD UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
Tennysonian shadows : 'in the garden at Swainston' -- Fair ships : a Victorian poetic chronotype -- A Laodicean : Hardy and the philosophy of money -- Sensations of earth : Thomas Hardy and Richard Jefferies -- The guilty river : Wilkie Collins's gothic deafness -- Stevenson's The ebb-tide : missionary endeavour in the islands of light -- Dr Doyle's uncanny prognosis : Sherlock Holmes and the final solution.
Machine generated contents note: 1. -- War on war, by Lewis Thomas -- 2. -- Silent genocide, by Abdus Salam -- 3. -- Error: a stage of knowledge, by Paulo Freire -- 4. -- Doing without a revolution?, by Tahar Ben Jelloun -- 5. -- Stop torture, by Manfred Nowak -- 6. -- Truth, force and law, by Rabindranath Tagore -- 7. -- Violence is an insult to the human being, by Federico Mayor -- 8. -- Totalitarianism banishes politics, by (...) Vaclav Havel -- 9. -- No one will stop us. , by Desmond Tutu -- 10. -- Colonialism and the youth bomb, by Joseph Ki-Zerbo -- 11. -- The shedding of blood -- 12. -- Letter from Nagasaki, by Takashi Nagai -- 13. -- Down with exclusion!, by Herbert de Souza -- 14. -- The nower to sav 'no'. bv loan Martin-Brown -- 15. -- Inquiry into a taboo, by Ouassila Si Saber -- 16. -- The illusions of rationalism, by Ernesto Sabato -- 17. -- The 'poisonous weed', by Ba Jin -- 18. -- Humanity, an ongoing creation, by Ali Ahmad Said Esber (Adonis) -- 19. -- Image, writing and the vandal, by Alberto Moravia -- 20. -- The charms of calumny, by Andres Bello -- 21. -- On the threshold of eternity, by the Abbe Pierre -- 22. -- The control of force, by Karl Jaspers -- 23. -- The nature of force, by Simone Weil -- 24. -- The debt of justice, by Martin Luther King -- 25. -- Democracy and barbarism, by Sergei S. Averintsev -- 26. -- If all the animals should disappear, by Richard Fitter -- 27. -- Irony and compassion, by Octavio Paz -- 28. -- Against all hatred, by Aime Cesaire -- 29. -- Creating differences, by Daniel J. Boorstin -- 30. -- I dislike the word 'tolerance', by Mahatma Gandhi. (shrink)
Roger North's The Musicall Grammarian 1728 is a treatise on musical eloquence in all its branches. Of its five parts, I and II, on the orthoepy, orthography and syntax of music, constitute a grammar; III and IV, on the arts of invention and communication, form a rhetoric; and V, on etymology, consists of a history. Two substantial chapters of commentary introduce the text, which is edited here for the first time in its entirety: Jamie Kassler places his treatise within (...) the broader context not only of North's musical and non-musical writings but also their relation to the intellectual ferment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and Mary Chan describes physical and textual aspects of the treatise as evidence for North's processes of thinking about musical thinking. (shrink)
Professor Sir Roger Penrose's work, spanning fifty years of science, with over five thousand pages and more than three hundred papers, has been collected together for the first time and arranged chronologically over six volumes, each with an introduction from the author. Where relevant, individual papers also come with specific introductions or notes. The first volume covers the beginnings of a career that is ground-breaking from the outset. Inspired by courses given by Dirac and Bondi, much of the early (...) published work involves linking general relativity with tensor systems. Among his early works is the seminal 1955 paper, 'A Generalized Inverse for Matrices', his previously unpublished PhD and St John's College Fellowship theses, and from 1967, his Adam's Prize-winning essay on the structure of space-time. Add to this his 1965 paper, 'Gravitational collapse and space-time singularities', and the 1967 paper that introduced a remarkable new theory, 'Twistor algebra', and this becomes a truly stellar procession of works on mathematics and cosmology. (shrink)
Professor Sir Roger Penrose is one of the truly original thinkers of our time. He has made several remarkable contributions to science, from quantum physics and theories of human consciousness to relativity theory and observations on the structure of the universe. Unusually for a scientist, some of his ideas have crossed over into the public arena. Now his work, spanning fifty years of science, with over five thousand pages and more than three hundred papers, has been collected together for (...) the first time and arranged chronologically over six volumes, each with an introduction from the author. Where relevant, individual papers also come with specific introductions or notes. (shrink)
Professor Sir Roger Penrose's work, spanning fifty years of science, with over five thousand pages and more than three hundred papers, has been collected together for the first time and arranged chronologically over six volumes, each with an introduction from the author. Where relevant, individual papers also come with specific introductions or notes. Many important realizations concerning twistor theory occurred during the short period of this third volume, providing a new perspective on the way that mathematical features of the (...) complex geometry of twistor theory relate to actual physical fields. Following on from the nonlinear graviton construction, a twistor construction was found for (anti-)self-dual electromagnetism allowing the general (anti-)self-dual Yang-Mills field to be obtained. It became clear that some features of twistor contour integrals could be understood in terms of holomorphic sheaf cohomology. During this period, the Oxford research group founded the informal publication, Twistor Newsletter. This volume also contains the influential Weyl curvature hypothesis and new forms of Penrose tiles. (shrink)
Professor Sir Roger Penrose's work, spanning fifty years of science, with over five thousand pages and more than three hundred papers, has been collected together for the first time and arranged chronologically over six volumes, each with an introduction from the author. Where relevant, individual papers also come with specific introductions or notes. Among the new developments that occurred during this period was the introduction of a particular notion of 'quasi-local mass-momentum and angular momentum', the topic of Penrose's Royal (...) Society paper. Many encouraging results were initially obtained but, later, difficulties began to emerge and remain today. Also, an extensive paper (with Eastwood and Wells) gives a thorough account of the relation between twistor cohomology and massless fields. This volume witnesses Penrose's increasing conviction that the puzzling issue of quantum measurement could only be resolved by the appropriate unification of quantum mechanics with general relativity, where that union must involve an actual change in the rules of quantum mechanics as well as in space-time structure. Penrose's first incursions into a possible relation between consciousness and quantum state reduction are also covered here. (shrink)
Professor Sir Roger Penrose's work, spanning fifty years of science, with over five thousand pages and more than three hundred papers, has been collected together for the first time and arranged chronologically over six volumes, each with an introduction from the author. Where relevant, individual papers also come with specific introductions or notes. Publication of The Emperor's New Mind (OUP 1989) had caused considerable debate and Penrose's responses are included in this volume. Arising from this came the idea that (...) large-scale quantum coherence might exist within the conscious brain, and actual conscious experience would be associated with a reduction of the quantum state. Within this collection, Penrose also proposes that a twistor might usefully be regarded as a source (or 'charge') for a massless field of spin 3/2, suggesting that the twistor space for a Ricci-flat space-time might actually be the space of such possible sources. Towards the end of the volume, Penrose begins to develop a quite different approach to incorporating full general relativity into twistor theory. This period also sees the origin of the Diósi-Penrose proposal. (shrink)
Professor Sir Roger Penrose's work, spanning fifty years of science, with over five thousand pages and more than three hundred papers, has been collected together for the first time and arranged chronologically over six volumes, each with an introduction from the author. Where relevant, individual papers also come with specific introductions or notes. This sixth volume describes an actual experiment to measure the length of time that a quantum superposition might last (developing the Diósi-Penrose proposal). It also discusses the (...) significant progress made in relation to incorporating the 'googly' information for a gravitational field into the structure of a curved twistor space. Penrose also covers such things as the geometry of light rays in relation to twistor-space structures, the utility of complex numbers in drawing three-dimensional shapes, and the geometrical representation of different types of musical scales. The turn of the millennium was also an opportunity to reflect on progress in many areas up until that point. (shrink)
Professor Sir Roger Penrose's work, spanning fifty years of science, with over five thousand pages and more than three hundred papers, has been collected together for the first time and arranged chronologically over six volumes, each with an introduction from the author. Where relevant, individual papers also come with specific introductions or notes. Developing ideas sketched in the first volume, twistor theory is now applied to genuine issues of physics, and there are the beginnings of twistor diagram theory (an (...) analogue of Feynman Diagrams). This collection includes joint papers with Stephen Hawking, and uncovers certain properties of black holes. The idea of cosmic censorship is also first proposed. Along completely different lines, the first methods of aperiodic tiling for the Euclidean plane that come to be known as Penrose tiles are described. This volume also contains Penrose's three prize-winning essays for the Gravity Foundation (two second places with both Ezra Newman and Steven Hawking, and a solo first place for 'The Non-linear graviton'). (shrink)
This case study focuses on Roger Boisjoly's attempt to prevent the launch of the Challenger and subsequent quest to set the record straight despite negative consequences. Boisjoly's experiences before and after the Challenger disaster raise numerous ethical issues that are integral to any explanation of the disaster and applicable to other management situations. Underlying all these issues, however, is the problematic relationship between individual and organizational responsibility. In analyzing this fundamental issue, this paper has two objectives: first, to demonstrate (...) the extent to which the ethical ambiguity that permeates the relationship between individual and organizational responsibility contributed to the Challenger disaster; second, to reclaim the meaning and importance of individual responsibility within the diluting context of large organizations. (shrink)
Roger Crisp distinguishes a positive and a negative aspect of the buck-passing account of goodness (BPA), and argues that the positive account should be dropped in order to avoid certain problems, in particular, that it implies eliminativism about value. This eliminativism involves what I call an ontological claim, the claim that there is no real property of goodness, and an error theory, the claim that all value talk is false. I argue first that the positive aspect of the BPA (...) is necessary to explain the negative aspect. I accept the ontological claim but argue that this does not imply any sort of error theory about value. (shrink)
According to the Imprecise Credence Framework (ICF), a rational believer's doxastic state should be modelled by a set of probability functions rather than a single probability function, namely, the set of probability functions allowed by the evidence ( Joyce [2005] ). Roger White ( [2010] ) has recently given an arresting argument against the ICF, which has garnered a number of responses. In this article, I attempt to cast doubt on his argument. First, I point out that it's not (...) an argument against the ICF per se , but an argument for the Principle of Indifference. Second, I present an argument that's analogous to White's. I argue that if White's premises are true, the premises of this argument are too. But the premises of my argument entail something obviously false. Therefore, White's premises must not all be true. (shrink)
Comments on Roger Ariew’s “Descartes and Leibniz as Readers of Suarez," presented at Franscico Suarez, S.J.: Last Medieval or First Early Modern?, London, Ontario, University of Western Ontario, September 2008.
"The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose has received a great deal of both praise and criticism. This review discusses philosophical aspects of the book that form an attack on the "strong" AI thesis. Eight different versions of this thesis are distinguished, and sources of ambiguity diagnosed, including different requirements for relationships between program and behaviour. Excessively strong versions attacked by Penrose (and Searle) are not worth defending or attacking, whereas weaker versions remain problematic. Penrose (like Searle) regards the (...) notion of an algorithm as central to AI, whereas it is argued here that for the purpose of explaining mental capabilities the architecture of an intelligent system is more important than the concept of an algorithm, using the premise that what makes something intelligent is not what it does but how it does it. What needs to be explained is also unclear: Penrose thinks we all know what consciousness is and claims that the ability to judge Go "del's formula to be true depends on it. He also suggests that quantum phenomena underly consciousness. This is rebutted by arguing that our existing concept of "consciousness" is too vague and muddled to be of use in science. This and related concepts will gradually be replaced by a more powerful theory-based taxonomy of types of mental states and processes. The central argument offered by Penrose against the strong AI thesis depends on a tempting but unjustified interpretation of Goedel's incompleteness theorem. Some critics are shown to have missed the point of his argument. A stronger criticism is mounted, and the relevance of mathematical Platonism analysed. Architectural requirements for intelligence are discussed and differences between serial and parallel implementations analysed. (shrink)
Roger Sansom and Robert N. Brandon (eds.): Integrating Evolution and Development: From Theory to Practice Content Type Journal Article Pages 81-86 DOI 10.1007/s10441-010-9121-x Authors Thomas A. C. Reydon, Institute of Philosophy & Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science (ZEWW), Leibniz Universität Hannover, Im Moore 21, 30167 Hannover, Germany Journal Acta Biotheoretica Online ISSN 1572-8358 Print ISSN 0001-5342 Journal Volume Volume 59 Journal Issue Volume 59, Number 1.
My pleasure in being here, at the Studiecentrum Soeterbeeck, to discuss the book Roger Scruton wrote on beauty, is twofold. It so happens that I am finishing a book on facial expression and facial beauty, and the chapter I sent to Roger to request his comments, resurfaced unopened in my own mail box, last week. Apparently something went wrong in the mail. Today I might get some of those comments. Secondly, reading Roger’s book, an impression of a (...) kindred spirit has stuck with me throughout.1) Sometimes, though, something like an ungrounded preference surfaces, which for Roger, clearly has intuitive force, maybe even the force of a conclusion, but for me this doesn’t always ring true. I only mention two instances where my own preferences would be different. One is, where after rightly criticising the reverence allotted to Duchamp’s Fountain, in a single sentence (on p. 98) both Radiohead and Brahms are mentioned, in an obvious effort to disqualify the former. The other is where he defends film as an art by comparing it to traditional art, by pointing to shots from an Ingmar Bergman movie, which “would sit on your wall like an engraving, resonant, engaging and composed.” (p. 102). What the incidental surfacing of such preferences makes available to us is that doing aesthetics is not a merely technical philosophical endeavour, but involves art criticism, from time to time. If you don’t love art or its core values, how could you do aesthetics? And there is a deeper thought behind this in Roger’s writings: that the use of taste belongs to the good life.2) All this, also, indicates my predicament, here and now. I feel most inclined.. (shrink)
In [Dutilh Novaes, Medieval-obligations as logical Games of Consistency maintenance, synthese, (2004)], I proposed a reconstruction of Walter Burley’s theory of obligationes, based on the idea that Burley’s theory of obligationes could be seen as a logical game of consistency maintenance. In the present paper, I intend to test the game hypothesis on another important theory of obligationes, namely Roger Swyneshed’s theory. In his treatise on obligationes [edited by P.V. Spade, cf. Spade History and philosophy of Logic 3(1982) 1-32], (...) Swyneshed introduced significant modifications to the general framework of obligationes. To compare the two theories, I apply the same formal apparatus used in the previous paper. It will become patent that Swyneshed’s theory is considerably different from Burley’s, among other reasons because the dynamic aspects that play a major role in the latter are simply not present in the former. My conclusion is that Swyneshed’s version of obligationes is not directed towards consistency maintenance, but rather towards inference recognition, and that it is, from a game-theoretical perspective, less interesting a theory than Burley’s. (shrink)
A major study of renowned British Philosopher Roger Scruton, one of the most accomplished figures to have emerged from the British academy in the latter half of ...
This paper argues that in attempting to protect the religious life from the sullying influence of worldly affairs, Roger Williams participated, albeit unintentionally, in creating the economic conditions that led to the birth of American capitalism. Although Williams argued for a separation of church and state, he did so not in [...].
Roger Boscovich, belonging to XVIII century, halfway from Newton to Faraday, is traditionally considered as a newtonian philosopher. Nevertheless, following Berkson’s suggestion, he could be a Field Theory forerunner. In this work, we will try to go on with the idea of this suggestion in order to show this possible Boscovich’s contribution.
David Lindberg presents the first critical edition of the text of Roger Bacon's classic work Perspectiva, prepared from Latin manuscripts, accompanied by a facing-page English translation, critical notes, and a full study of the text. Also included is an analysis of Bacon's sources, influence, and role in the emergence of the discipline of perspectiva. -/- About Roger Bacon: Roger Bacon (c.1220-c.1292) is one of the most renowned thinkers of the Middle Ages, a philosopher-scientist praised and mythologized for (...) his attack on authority and his promotion of what he called experimental science. He was a leading figure in the intellectual life of the thirteenth century, a campaigner for educational reform, and a major disseminator of Greek and Arabic natural philosophy and mathematical science. -/- About Perspectiva: The science that Roger Bacon most fully mastered was perspectiva, the study of light and vision (what would later become the science of optics). His great treatment of the subject, the Perspectiva, written in about 1260, was the first book by a European to display a full mastery of Greek and Arabic treatises on the subject, and through it Bacon was instrumental in defining this scientific discipline for the next 350 years. (shrink)
If one looks at the controversial premises of analytical approaches to fascism according to Roger Griffin, it is not surprising that a yawning distance has opened up between Marxist and non-Marxist schools of interpretation. In this situation whereby two camps are mutually ignorant of one another, it is certainly suggestive that the liberal British theoretician of fascism should put himself forward to play the role of a ‘mediator’, even if he faces the danger of significant criticism from both schools (...) of interpretation. But Griffin’s attempt takes place on a predominantly theoretical level. The author of this essay instead places the notion of revolution in historical-empirical perspective, in order to distinguish it from the account associated with (liberal) representatives of the ‘new consensus’. He then examines, in particular, whether National Socialism represented a utopia which satisfied revolutionary aspirations. The author further asks whether fascism could separate itself from its (early) conservative support to an extent that would permit commentators to meaningfully identify a revolutionary breakthrough. And finally he clarifies what the modernizing achievements of fascism during its time in power actually were. Against this background, there does seem at least the possibility of a dialogue between the two approaches that would advance each of them. (shrink)
According to Jim Pryor’s dogmatism, when you have an experience with content p, you have prima facie justification to believe p that does not rest on your independent justification or evidence to believe any proposition. Although dogmatism is intuitive and seems to have an antisceptical punch, it has been targeted by different objections. In this paper I aim to answer the objections by Roger White according to which dogmatism is incoherent with the Bayesian account of how evidence affects rational (...) credences. If this were true, the rational acceptability of dogmatism would be seriously questionable. I respond that these objections don’t get off the ground because they assume that experiences and reports of experience have the same evidential force, whereas the dogmatist is uncommitted to this assumption. I also elucidate what gives dogmatism its antisceptical punch by drawing from recent papers by Brian Weatherson, Peter Kung and Pryor himself in which alternative responses to White’s challenge are delineated. I argue that my rejoinder is more complete and simpler than these responses, for the latter permit White’s objections to go through in many cases, whereas my response doesn’t. Furthermore according to these responses, dogmatism is tenable only if Bayesianism is replaced with alternative formal frameworks, which is not a requirement of my rejoinder. (shrink)
According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton’s scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these cannot force him to give up his notion of the ideal photograph. My approach is to argue that Scruton has misconstrued the role of causation in his discussion of photography. I claim that although Scruton insists that the ideal photograph is defined by (...) its ‘merely causal’ provenance, in fact he fails to take the causal provenance of photographs seriously enough. To replace Scruton’s notion of the ideal photograph, I offer a substantive account of the causal provenance of photographs, centred on the distinctive role of ‘the photographic event’. I conclude that, with a proper understanding of the photographic process, we have good reason to re-open the question of photography as a representational art. (shrink)
Summarizing a surrounding 200 pages, pages 179 to 190 of Shadows of the Mind contain a future dialog between a human identified as "Albert Imperator" and an advanced robot, the "Mathematically Justified Cybersystem", allegedly Albert's creation. The two have been discussing a Gödel sentence for an algorithm by which a robot society named SMIRC certifies mathematical proofs. The sentence, referred to in mathematical notation as Omega(Q*), is to be precisely constructed from on a definition of SMIRC's algorithm. It can be (...) interpreted as stating "SMIRC's algorithm cannot certify this statement." The robot has asserted that SMIRC never makes mistakes. If so, SMIRC's algorithm cannot certify the Goedel sentence, for that would make the statement false. But, if they can't certify it, what is says is true! Humans can understand it is true, but mighty SMIRC cannot certify it. The dialog ends melodramatically as the robot, apparently unhinged by this revelation, claims to be a messenger of god, and the human shuts it down with a secret control. (shrink)
The essays address a wide range of topics, including normativity and naturalized epistemology, holism, consciousness, the philosophy of logic, perception, value ...
