My apology for reverting to this subject is a recent article by Mr. W. C. F. Walters in the April number of the Classical Quarterly for 1910 on the signatures in the Vatican Codex . Mr. Walters does not seem to have been aware that this manuscript, though not of direct value in the constitution of the text of Livy, is one whose interest from a palaeographical point of view has long been recognized. A number of articles have been written (...) concerning it, most of which deal with the signatures, the subject of Mr. Walters' paper, more fully and more accurately than he has done. Beyond giving the signatures, two of them incorrectly, Walters does nothing more than to conclude that there were eight scribes, who copied 42 quaternions. But a great deal more than this is known about the scribes and the manuscript. In fact, thanks to the ingenious combinations of Chatelain and Traube in piecing together the hints suggested by the signatures, more is known about this particular manuscript and the circumstances under which it was made than is the case with any other manuscript of a classical author of so early a date. It may therefore be worth while to summarize the known data concerning the manuscript, with a brief account of how they were worked out, referring the reader for the details to the articles mentioned in the footnotes. (shrink)

From the editors of Voprosy filosofii: December 23, 1972, marked the seventieth birthday of A. F. Shishkin, leading Soviet philosopher, major specialist in the field of ethics, one of the oldest and at the same time most active members of the editorial board of our journal. The editors sincerely congratulate Aleksandr Fedorovich on this anniversary and wish him further successes in his work, firm health, and long years of life.

The editors planned the appearance of this article to coincide with the seventy-fifth birthday of the author, which was to have been marked in December. The issue had already been approved for publication when the sad news came of the sudden death of Aleksandr Fedorovich Shishkin, prominent Soviet philosopher, member of the editorial board of our journal, a remarkable human being, our comrade and friend.

The globalization in business and tourism becomes crucial more and more for the economical sustainability of local communities. In the presence of an epidemic outbreak, there must be such a decision on the policy by the host community as whether to accept visitors or not, the number of acceptable visitors, or the condition for acceptable visitors. Making use of an SIRI type of mathematical model, we consider the influence of visitors on the spread of a reinfectious disease in a community, (...) especially assuming that a certain proportion of accepted visitors are immune. The reinfectivity of disease here means that the immunity gained by either vaccination or recovery is imperfect. With the mathematical results obtained by our analysis on the model for such an epidemic dynamics of resident and visitor populations, we find that the acceptance of visitors could have a significant influence on the disease’s endemicity in the community, either suppressive or supportive. (shrink)

Participants in conferences organized by the editors of our journal have repeatedly expressed the desire that questions pertaining to the ethics of the scientist be examined in its pages.

Findings in dynamic unit formation suggest that completion processes reflect the optics of our world. Dynamic unit formation may depend on patterns of motion signals that are consistent with the causes of optical changes. In addition, dynamic completion conforms to a local curvature minimization constraint. Such relational aspects of vision are important to consider in linking perceptual experience and neural activity.

As in Marx's and Lenin's time, bourgeois critics of Marxism are accusing Marxists of denying ethics in principle. Some of them say that Marxist economic theory entirely rules out any element of free choice of actions and ethical judgment. Others say that Marx's economic analysis includes a moral indictment of capitalism as an unjust society, but that this means no more than that the ethical element in Marxism is entirely pushed aside by economic analysis and plays no independent role. In (...) the opinion of these critics, Marxism merely reduces such questions as what man should do, and what the ethical norms of his life are, to acceptance of the justice and moral rightness of whatever emerges in history as economic necessity. In other words, Marxism allegedly "makes a virtue of necessity" where ethics is concerned, and demands of human beings nothing more than adaptation to what is or to what will be. In either case, according to that interpretation of Marxism, people must accept without qualification that which corresponds to historical necessity. Free choice, reason, and human conscience can play no role. (shrink)

This problem was not the subject of any single book or article of Lenin's. However, in his writings , Lenin often had to deal with this problem and to elucidate significant aspects of it. We believe it necessary, to the degree that is possible within the confines of an article, to examine Lenin's major postulates with respect to this problem, bearing in mind not only the constant need to study this great heritage but also the fact that Lenin's postulates on (...) cognition and evaluation are of current importance in connection with present discussions on questions closely related to this. (shrink)

In my Steinberger 2009 I argued that Neil Tennant’s Harmony requirement is untenable because of its failure to account for the standard quantifier rules.1 Instead of justifying the customary rules for the existential and universal quantifiers, Tennant’s account appears to sanction only wholly unrestricted – and so patently disharmonious – quantifier rules. In his characteristically thoughtful response Tennant 2010, Tennant offers a sequent calculus version of his Harmony requirement that rules out such pathological would-be quantifiers. While I agree with Tennant (...) that recasting his Harmony requirement in the sequent format as he proposes blocks the said disharmonious quantifier rules, I submit that Tennant’s revamped Harmony requirement nevertheless misses the mark. I present two objections to substantiate my claim. First, I show that the crucial additional assumption underlying Tennant’s sequent calculus-based account – what I call the admissibility assumption – is excessively strong: so strong, in fact, that it renders otiose the core of Tennant’s original account. Second, I argue that the admissibility assumption, as a global requirement on deductive systems, is ill-suited for the purposes of codifying the intuitive notion of harmony. Fortunately, though, as I will demonstrate, we can dispense with the admissibility assumption altogether. (shrink)

Debates over the causes and consequences of the “Axial Age” – and its relevance for understanding and explaining “modernity” – continue to rage within and across a wide variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, archaeology, history, social theory, and cognitive science. We present a computational model that synthesizes three leading theories about the emergence of axial civilizations. Although these theories are often treated as competitors, our computational model shows how their most important conceptual insights and empirically based causal claims (...) can be integrated within a single computational architecture. The plausibility of the latter is supported by the results of our simulation experiments, which were able to simulate the emergence and growth of an axial civilization. The model shows how the relevant theories can be rendered consistent, while challenging the claims of any one to comprehensiveness. (shrink)

How might philosophy of religion be impacted by developments in computational modeling and social simulation? After briefly describing some of the content and context biases that have shaped traditional philosophy of religion, this article provides examples of computational models that illustrate the explanatory power of conceptually clear and empirically validated causal architectures informed by the bio-cultural sciences. It also outlines some of the material implications of these developments for broader metaphysical and metaethical discussions in philosophy. Computer modeling and simulation can (...) contribute to the reformation of the philosophy of religion in at least three ways: by facilitating conceptual clarity about the role of biases in the emergence and maintenance of phenomena commonly deemed “religious,” by supplying tools that enhance our capacity to link philosophical analysis and synthesis to empirical data in the psychological and social sciences, and by providing material insights for metaphysical hypotheses and metaethical proposals that rely solely on immanent resources. (shrink)

I am extremely grateful to Brandon Daniel-Hughes and Jeffrey Speaks for their careful reading of my proposals in Theology after the Birth of God and Practicing Safe Sects and for their insightful suggestions for clarifying the project and following out its social implications. Both essays were instructive and provocative, providing exactly the kind of critical and constructive commentary that authors hope their work will evoke. We share a great deal in common, including a robustly naturalist metaphysics, an appreciation for the (...) pragmatic philosophical tradition, and a deep concern about the psychological and political shape of future human communities. Instead... (shrink)