πγχυ δ' εμαρες σνετον πóησαι | πντι τοτο, sang Sappho ; but, to judge from the controversies which have marked the scholarly discussion of her poem in the sixty-five years since its first publication, her confidence was at least premature. Some problems can indeed be considered to have been settled, either through new finds or through gradual consensus: thus the man of line 7 is Menelaus, not Paris, and few today would see in the poem merely an affirmation of exclusively (...) feminine as opposed to masculine values. But to the twin questions of the function first of the story of Helen in the poem, and especially second of the words with which Helen is introduced — γρ πóλυ περσκθοισα | κλλος νθρώπων 'Eλνα — no satisfactory answer has yet been found. The strictures of Fränkel and of Page on this passage are well known; yet even where their judgements have not been simply taken over, the explanations that have been offered for these two distinct but closely connected problems fail to convince. (shrink)

This volume is a critical edition of the ten-year correspondence between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of Europe’s most influential early modern thinkers, and Bartholomew Des Bosses, a Jesuit theologian who was keen to bring together Leibniz’s philosophy and the Aristotelian philosophy and religious doctrines accepted by his order. The letters offer crucial insights into Leibniz’s final metaphysics and into the intellectual life of the eighteenth century. Brandon C. Look and Donald Rutherford present seventy-one of Leibniz’s and Des Bosses’s letters (...) in the original Latin and in careful English translation. Few of the letters have been translated into English before. The editors also provide extensive annotations, deletions, and marginalia from Leibniz’s various drafts, and a substantial introduction setting the context for the correspondence and analyzing the main philosophical issues. (shrink)

Saul Kripke is one of the most original and creative philosophers writing today. His work has had a tremendous impact on the direction that philosophy has taken in the last thirty years and continues to dominate some of its most fundamental aspects. Given Kripke's importance it is perhaps surprising that there is no introduction to his philosophy available to the general student. This book fills that gap. As much of Kripke's work is highly technical, the book's central aim (...) is to provide clear exposition of Kripke's ideas in a form that is understandable to a beginning readership as well as a commentary on them that more advanced students will find useful. The book begins with a discussion of Kripke's early work on modal logic, which provides the foundation for many of his later philosophical contributions, before examining in detail Kripke's central ideas and arguments contained in Naming and Necessity. In further chapters, Kripke's work on semantic paradoxes and his theory of truth are outlined as well as his controversial interpretation of Wittgenstein's famous private language argument. Kripke's ideas are situated alongside those of his precursors and some of the most important and interesting responses to them are explored. The reader is thus able to appreciate the path-breaking nature of Kripke's contributions, how they have challenged fundamentally traditional interpretations, and how they have sparked some of the most important philosophical debates of recent years. (shrink)

Saul Kripke is one of the most original and creative philosophers writing today. His work has had a tremendous impact on the direction that philosophy has taken in the last thirty years and continues to dominate some of its most fundamental aspects. Given Kripke's importance it is perhaps surprising that there is no introduction to his philosophy available to the general student. This book fills that gap. As much of Kripke's work is highly technical, the book's central aim (...) is to provide clear exposition of Kripke's ideas in a form that is understandable to a beginning readership as well as a commentary on them that more advanced students will find useful. The book begins with a discussion of Kripke's early work on modal logic, which provides the foundation for many of his later philosophical contributions, before examining in detail Kripke's central ideas and arguments contained in Naming and Necessity. In further chapters, Kripke's work on semantic paradoxes and his theory of truth are outlined as well as his controversial interpretation of Wittgenstein's famous private language argument. Kripke's ideas are situated alongside those of his precursors and some of the most important and interesting responses to them are explored. The reader is thus able to appreciate the path-breaking nature of Kripke's contributions, how they have challenged fundamentally traditional interpretations, and how they have sparked some of the most important philosophical debates of recent years. (shrink)

This is an abridgement of the complete translation of the New Essays, first published in 1981, designed for use as a study text. The material extraneous to philosophy - more than a third of the original - and the glossary of notes have been cut and a philosophical introduction and bibliography of work on Leibniz have been provided by the translators. The marginal pagination has been retained for ease of cross-reference to the full edition. The work itself is an acknowledged (...) philosophical classic, in which Leibniz argues point by point with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The result is the single most important confrontation between the philosophical traditions of rationalism and empiricism. It makes an extremely suitable focus for the study of Leibniz's thought and of those two traditions in relation to one another. (shrink)

[Plutarch] records that Augustus passed a winter on the island of Aegina, rather than in Athens, as a sign of his wrath toward the Athenians. Paul Graindor assumed that the most likely time for Augustus to have been angry with the Athenians was immediately after Actium, and so he dated [Plutarch]'s anecdote to the winter of 31/30. This is impossible.

Strawson's attempt to refute scepticism about the existence of other minds has itself been a popular target of sceptical criticism. But the very persistence of the attacks suggests that no clinching rebuttal has yet been produced. One of the earliest and still one of the most effective responses to Strawson is Ayer's celebrated paper ‘The Concept of a Person’, in which he reasserts the position of classical empiricist scepticism on the existence of other minds. By reinterpreting and partly reconstructing (...) Strawson's arguments I shall try to show that the sceptical position represented by Ayer is indeed incoherent, as Strawson maintains, and I shall suggest why a conclusive rebuttal of Strawson's anti-sceptical arguments has not been and is unlikely to be produced. (shrink)

Mr. Norman H. Baynes thinks that the conclusions which I reached in my essay on the ‘Chronology of the Ninth Book of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius’ are ‘difficult to believe.’ That is due, he says, to the fact that I based my reconstruction ‘on one of the most doubtful sections of that book’—that in which Eusebius states that the Emperor Maximin wrote his letter to Sabinus after he received the ‘Edict of Milan.’ From it I inferred that the (...) letter was dispatched early in 313. No doubt Eusebius' assertion raises difficulties. But when a contemporary witness of high authority speaks it may be wise not to reject his evidence before the difficulties which seem to overthrow it are scrutinized. In the present instance the difficulties seem to me to vanish on examination. But Mr. Baynes appears to have overlooked my attempt to deal with them. His own view of the date of the letter is expressed in a single sentence ‘In November of 312 Maximin would receive news of Constantine's victory [at the Milvian Bridge], and as a result he issues the letter to Sabinus permitting Christian worship late in 312.’ But where is his evidence? All I can find is that in his edict of toleration Maximin affirms that ‘last year’ he wrote the letter. ‘This passage proves that that letter dates from the year 312.’ Yes, if Maximin's year began in January. But is that certain? In the East, New Year's Day was not uncommonly in September. (shrink)

The essay brings a summation of human efforts seeking to understand our existence. Plato and Kant & cognitive science complete reduction of philosophy to a neural mechanism, evolved along elementary Darwinian principles. Plato in his famous Cave Allegory explains that between reality and our experience of it there exists a great chasm, a metaphysical gap, fully confirmed through particle-wave duality of quantum physics. Kant found that we have two kinds of perception, two senses: By the spatial outer sense we perceive (...) phenomena, objects in space. Our temporal inner sense lets us perceive our inner state, noumena . Kant's two senses are fully confirmed through bilateral brain duality of cognitive science. The bilateral brain serves inner, temporal sense, logic & noumena in the left hemisphere. The right brain half is for the outer, spatial sense, geometry & phenomena. We form a whole system, a bilateral interior cosmos, a kind of world model, expressing what may lie beyond the metaphysical gap. In the right brain we build a phenomenal cosmos, to resemble the outer environment. In the brain's left hemisphere a noumenal cosmos, a model of our private world including Saint Teresa of Avila's castillo interior. The cosmos is regularly updated with novel sense data integrated into our memory banks. This was recognized early by Helmholtz (1860s). Our lives, health & well-being depend on us keeping our interior cosmos in good order. This used to be seen as saving one's precious soul from perdition. While we endeavour to keep our phenomenal cosmos neat & orderly by protecting the environment from harm, our noumenal cosmos to be livable requires us to engage in ethical conduct. This bilateral cosmos is responsible for our common sense judgment power, that we depend on for being able to lead a good & benign life. The 200 million neurons of BA10 in the prefrontal lobe have global access to the interior cosmos, & apply massive feedback to identify environmental conditions rapidly. The global access also gives conscious presence of the individual to itself, all that is present in the interior cosmos, for total freedom of action. In the left brain private ego, we are guarded by faith in divine mercy, & guided to choose the best course of action, able to survive under the most adverse conditions. For this, we receive directions from the Holy Ghost in Saint Teresa's castillo interior. (shrink)

Most of the time when historians study chemistry the subject dealt with is what might be called élite chemistry. This is chemistry at the cutting edge, chemistry which makes a difference to how we come to understand the properties of matter, molecules, reactions, and so on. Other associated matters which may be explored by historians of chemistry concern social, economic or political relationships with élite chemistry. In this Debus Lecture I want to consider what possibilities there were that the (...) working-class would be able to learn about chemistry in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, and how and why this was achieved. (shrink)

One of the most important insights that Russell had in presenting his philosophy of language was his view of singular definite descriptions. Russell held that singular phrases of the form ‘the so-and-so’ should not be viewed as names, but rather incomplete symbols which can be said to have meaning only in a context. We should not represent the sentence The inventor of bifocals is bald.as a simple subject-predicate sentence of the form ‘Fa.’ but rather as a complex existential sentence. (...) According to Russell we should analyze as There is a unique x such that x invented bifocals and x is bald.Moreover, if Russell's analysis is correct then the proposition expressed by will be true in a given circumstance provided that there is a unique inventor of bifocals who is bald in that circumstance. (shrink)

A very slight reading of Clement of Alexandria is enough to prove how deeply he is indebted to Plato both in respect of language and of thought. Quotations from Plato are to be found throughout Clement's works, and in many cases acknowledgment is made of their origin. In addition there are frequent allusions, which for the most part the student of Plato can easily recognize. Clement invariably shows a profound respect for the Greek philosopher, whom he looks upon as (...) a seeker after truth and as an authority, we may almost say, second only to the Scriptures. A careful comparison of the Protrepticus with the Phaedrus, results of which are given below, will furnish a striking illustration of the close dependence of Clement upon Plato. The Protrepticus is a short work, occupying in space not more than one–twelfth of Clement's extant writings, while the Phaedrus is even smaller in proportion to the whole of Plato. It is remarkable that so much inter-connexion should be found in so small a field, especially when we remember that the references to the Phaedrus represent by no means the whole of Clement's drawing upon Plato in the Protrepticus. There are allusions also to the Theaetetus, Republic, Charmides, Laws and Epistles, and possibly to the Politicus, Cratylus, Philebus, Symposium and Apology. (shrink)

In his recent pamphlet on Herodotus the Historian, Friederich Focke has discussed the lion-portent which accompanied the birth of Pericles: έκ δ Ίππоκπτεоς Μεγακλνσ τε Ξλλоσ κα ᾈγαπоτνς, ;λ· λπ τα ᾽Αγαριστŋς хоυσα τò о;νоѵоνα. σооνικńσασ τε ξανθππψ τ᾽ Απιφρоνоς κα λκυоς éоûα εδε ψℓν ν τ πν. δκεε δ λοντα τεκεṿ κα υετ᾽ ợλγας υρας τκτει Пερικλα ξανθππψ. As this is the only occasion on which Herodotus mentions Pericles by name, those critics who are concerned to show that Herodotus (...) was ‘Pericles' man’ have made much of the passage, and have deduced therefrom that Herodotus here means to express all his pent-up admiration for Pericles, which otherwise the scope of his work did not give him an opportunity of displaying. This admiration is at least conveyed in cryptic form, and Focke, following up a hint of Nissen that Pericles is here called a lion ambiguously, combats the view that Herodotus is expressing great reverence for him; and after examining fifth-century parallels, comes to the conclusion that Herodotus was repeating a tradition that had been set afoot as a purposely ambiguous and derogatory reference to Pericles as a ‘tyrannical man of might.’ After an examination of Focke's evidence, however, I remain unconvinced. It seems possible to account for most of thes quotations which Focke makes by bringing them into line with the ordinary Greek use of leonine symbolism, which, as I shall try to show, was complimentary, not derogatory. (shrink)

Guided by key insights of the four great philosophers mentioned in the title, here, in review of and expanding on our earlier work (Burchard, 2005, 2011), we present an exposition of the role played by language, & in the broader sense, λογοζ, the Logos, in how the CNS, the brain, is running the human being. Evolution by neural Darwinism has been forcing the linguistic nature of mind, enabling it to overcome & exploit the cognitive gap between an animal and its (...) world by recognizing environmental structures. Our work was greatly influenced by Heidegger’s lecture notes on metaphysics (Heidegger, 1935). We found agreement with recent progress in neuroscience, but also mathematical foundations of language theory, equating Logos with the mathematical concept of structure. The mystery of perception across the gap is analyzed as radiation and molecules impinging on sensory neurons that carry linguistic information about gross environmental structures, and only remotely about the physical reality of elementary particles. The most important logical brain function is Ego or Self, guiding the workings of the brain as a logos machine. Ego or Self operates from neurons in frontopolar cortex with global receptive fields. The logos machine can function only by availing itself of global context, its internally stored noumenal cosmos NK, and the categorical-conceptual apparatus CCA, updated continually through the neural default mode network (Raichle, 2005). In the Transcendental Deduction, Immanuel Kant discovered that Ego or Self is responsible for conscious control in perception relying on concepts & categories for a fitting percept to be incorporated intoNK. The entire CNS runs as a “movie-in-the-brain” (Parvizi & Damasio, 2001), at peak speed processing simultaneously in a series of cortical centers a stack of up to twelve frames in gamma rhythm of 25 ms intervals. We equate global context, or NK, with our human world, Heidegger’s Dasein being-in-the-world, and are able to demonstrate that the great philosopher in EM parallels neuro-science concerning the human mind. (shrink)

This article argues that the movement of dogs from pounds to medical laboratories played a critically important role in debates over the use of animals in science and medicine in the United States in the twentieth century, not least by drawing the scientific community into every greater engagement with bureaucratic political governance. If we are to understand the unique characteristics of the American federal legislation that emerges in the 1960s, we need to understand the long and protracted debate over the (...) use of pound animals at the local municipal and state level between antivivisectionists, humane activists, and scientific and medical researchers. We argue that the Laboratory Animal Care Act of 1966 reflects the slow evolution of a strategy that proved most successful in local conflicts, and which would characterize a “new humanitarianism”: not the regulation of experimental practices but of the care and transportation of the animals being provided to the laboratory. Our analysis is consistent with, and draws upon, scholarship which has established the productive power of public agencies and civil society on the periphery of the American state. (shrink)

In “The Impossibility of Pure Libertarianism” Braham and van Hees prove that four conditions on rights—completeness, conclusiveness, non-imposition, and symmetry—cannot be satisfied simultaneously. If Braham and van Hees’s proof is to have any relevance, at least some prominent libertarians must endorse their four conditions, and libertarianism as a philosophical position must in some way be committed to all the axioms. In this paper we demonstrate the irrelevance of Braham and van Hees’s proof by showing that some of the most (...) prominent libertarians do not endorse the completeness and conclusive conditions, and that there is nothing about libertarianism as a philosophical position that commits the libertarian to these two axioms. Indeed, we show that, more generally, there are strong reasons for libertarians to reject both conditions. As such, libertarians should not lose any sleep over Braham and van Hees’s proof. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOne of the most powerful claims of disability theology is that the rejection of persons with disabilities somehow correlates with a rejection of God. This ‘correlative rejection’ is, however, frequently just stated rather than explored in detail, something this article therefore seeks to remedy by examining one example of the correlative rejection that draws together the ethical concerns of theologians writing on intellectual disability with Meister Eckhart’s teaching on the human relationship with God. Here, the correlative rejection is exposed (...) as an inevitable result of the narrow emphasis on autonomy and rationality in human self-perception which shape the habituated, even ritualised ways that we try to know persons with intellectual disabilities and God. By contrast, truly knowing and relating to persons with intellectual disabilities, God, and finally also ourselves, relies on a reconciliation with the dependence, vulnerability, and non-rational forms of exchange that a narrow attachment to a... (shrink)

The ancient dualism of a sensible and an intelligible world important in Neoplatonic and medieval philosophy, down to Descartes and Kant, would seem to be supplanted today by a scientific view of mind-in-nature. Here, we revive the old dualism in a modified form, and describe mind as a symbolic language, founded in linguistic recursive computation according to the Church-Turing thesis, constituting a world L that serves the human organism as a map of the Universe U. This methodological distinction of L (...) vs. U helps to understand how and why structures of phenomena come to be opposed to their nature in human thought, a central topic in Heideggerian philosophy. U is uncountable according to Georg Cantor’s set theory but Language L, based on the recursive function system, is countable, and anchored in a Gray Area within U of observable phenomena, typically symbols, prelinguistic structures, genetic-historical records of their origins. Symbols, the phenomena most familiar to mathematicians, are capable of being addressed in L-processing. The Gray Area is the human Environment E, where we can live comfortably, that we manipulate to create our niche within hostile U, with L offering overall competence of the species to survive. The human being is seen in the light of his or her linguistic recursively computational mind. Nature U, by contrast, is the unfathomable abyss of being, infinite labyrinth of darkness, impenetrable and hostile to man. The U-man, biological organism, is a stranger in L-man, the mind-controlled rational person, as expounded by Saint Paul. Noumena can now be seen to reside in L, and are not fully supported by phenomena. Kant’s noumenal cause is the mental L-image of only partly phenomenal causation. Mathematics occurs naturally in pre-linguistic phenomena, including natural laws, which give rise to pure mathematical structures in the world of L. Mathematical foundation within philosophy is reversed to where natural mathematics in the Gray Area of pre-linguistic phenomena can be seen to be a prerequisite for intellectual discourse. Lesser, nonverbal versions of L based on images are shared with animals. (shrink)

This essay examines how Ngugi wa Thiong'o, East Africa's most prominent writer, treats the landscape as a fundamental social phenomenon in two of his most important novels, A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood. Basing his ideas in an ecological theory of landscape aesthetics resembling one recently developed in America, Ngugi understands that ability to control and manipulate a landscape defines a society. Nostalgia for the landscape lost to colonialism and to the corrupting and alienating influences of (...) international capitalism needs to be replaced by its progressive evaluation as it is reshaped by collective action for a new future. Alienation from, and loss of responsibility for, the land may be a major factor contributing to Africa's environmental problems. Ngugi 's position casts doubt on professional land management's ultimate ability to influence the shape of the landscape in the face of the collective social will. (shrink)

Bioregionalists have championed the utility of the concept of the watershed as an organizing framework for thought and action directed to understanding and implementing appropriate and respectful human interaction with particular pieces of land. In a creative analogue to the watershed, permaculturist Arthur Getz has recently introduced the term “foodshed” to facilitate critical thought about where our food is coming from and how it is getting to us. We find the “foodshed” to be a particularly rich and evocative metaphor; but (...) it is much more than metaphor. Like its analogue the watershed, the foodshed can serve us as a conceptual and methodological unit of analysis that provides a frame for action as well as thought. Food comes to most of us now through a global food system that is destructive of both natural and social communities. In this article we explore a variety of routes for the conceptual and practical elaboration of the foodshed. While corporations that are the principal beneficiaries of a global food system now dominate the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food, alternatives are emerging that together could form the basis for foodshed development. Just as many farmers are recognizing the social and environmental advantages to sustainable agriculture, so are many consumers coming to appreciate the benefits of fresh and sustainably produced food. Such producers and consumers are being linked through such innovative arrangements as community supported agriculture and farmers markets. Alternative producers, alternative consumers, and alternative small entrepreneurs are rediscovering community and finding common ground in municipal and community food councils. Recognition of one's residence within a foodshed can confer a sense of connection and responsibility to a particular locality. The foodshed can provide a place for us to ground ourselves in the biological and social realities of living on the land and from the land in a place that we can call home, a place to which we are or can become native. (shrink)

Analyses of height variation using the 1970 UK national cohort study (12,508 children at age 10 and 5470 at age 16) found clear evidence that children of higher socioeconomic status (as measured by social class, crowding, tenure, type of accommodation, income and receipt of government financial assistance) were on average taller than children of lower socioeconomic status but there was little or no difference in average stature between children living in urban or rural areas. Significant differences in height remained for (...) most of the variables after removing the effects of father’s social class suggesting that reliance on social class perse to explain height variation is inadvisable. (shrink)

The human sciences—including psychology, anthropology, and social theory—are widely held to have been born during the eighteenth century. This first full-length, English-language study of the Enlightenment sciences of humans explores the sources, context, and effects of this major intellectual development. The book argues that the most fundamental inspiration for the Enlightenment was the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Natural philosophers from Copernicus to Newton had created a magisterial science of nature based on the realization that the physical world (...) operated according to orderly, discoverable laws. Eighteenth-century thinkers sought to cap this achievement with a science of _human_ nature. Belief in the existence of laws governing human will and emotion; social change; and politics, economics, and medicine suffused the writings of such disparate figures as Hume, Kant, and Adam Smith and formed the basis of the new sciences. A work of remarkable cross-disciplinary scholarship, this volume illuminates the origins of the human sciences and offers a new view of the Enlightenment that highlights the period's subtle social theory, awareness of ambiguity, and sympathy for historical and cultural difference. (shrink)

"The largest Ebola outbreak to date—first detected in December 2013 and still ongoing as of April 2015—has cast new light on the shortfalls of international public health systems.1 As in previous health crises, scrutiny has reemerged over the pharmaceutical industry’s ability and willingness to innovate new medicines for underserved disease areas. The public debate has intensified following revelations that promising drug candidates to treat Ebola had gone undeveloped despite compelling preclinical results.2 This lack of development is especially troubling because it (...) occurred after a recently implemented U.S. incentive scheme—the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) tropical disease priority review voucher program—designed to counteract exactly this problem. Taking Ebola as a case in point, it is useful to examine the short history and ongoing refinement of this voucher program, since it represents one of the most significant legislative efforts to systematically address the relative absence of com- mercial rewards for drugs targeting tropical diseases. This analysis evaluates the voucher program’s effectiveness for both stimulating private sector innovation and achieving positive health impacts among populations most severely burdened by tropical diseases. It then proposes specific recommendations for how law- makers can improve the program’s legislation to better achieve these objectives. ". (shrink)

Biotechnology is one of the fastest-growing areas of scientific, technical and industrial innovation and one of the most controversial. As developments have occurred such as genetic test therapies and the breeding of genetically modified food crops, so the public debates have become more heated and grave concerns have been expressed about access to genetic information, labelling of genetically modified foods and human and animal cloning. Across Europe, public opinion has become a crucial factor in the ability of governments and (...) biotech industries to exploit the new technology. This 2002 book presents the results of a unique cross-national and cross-disciplinary study of the relationship between the development of new biotechnology and public perception, media coverage and policy formulation. It outlines a conceptual framework for understanding these issues and contains a number of empirical studies including studies of the international controversies surrounding the cloning of Dolly the sheep and GM Soya. (shrink)

We have synthesized a 582,970-base pair Mycoplasma genitalium genome. This synthetic genome, named M. genitalium JCVI-1.0, contains all the genes of wild-type M. genitalium G37 except MG408, which was disrupted by an antibiotic marker to block pathogenicity and to allow for selection. To identify the genome as synthetic, we inserted "watermarks" at intergenic sites known to tolerate transposon insertions. Overlapping "cassettes" of 5 to 7 kilobases (kb), assembled from chemically synthesized oligonucleotides, were joined by in vitro recombination to produce intermediate (...) assemblies of approximately 24 kb, 72 kb ("1/8 genome"), and 144 kb ("1/4 genome"), which were all cloned as bacterial artificial chromosomes in Escherichia coli. Most of these intermediate clones were sequenced, and clones of all four 1/4 genomes with the correct sequence were identified. The complete synthetic genome was assembled by transformation-associated recombination cloning in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, then isolated and sequenced. A clone with the correct sequence was identified. The methods described here will be generally useful for constructing large DNA molecules from chemically synthesized pieces and also from combinations of natural and synthetic DNA segments. 10.1126/science.1151721. (shrink)

Fetal pain has long been a contentious issue, in large part because fetal pain is often cited as a reason to restrict access to termination of pregnancy or abortion. We have divergent views regarding the morality of abortion, but have come together to address the evidence for fetal pain. Most reports on the possibility of fetal pain have focused on developmental neuroscience. Reports often suggest that the cortex and intact thalamocortical tracts are necessary for pain experience. Given that the (...) cortex only becomes functional and the tracts only develop after 24 weeks, many reports rule out fetal pain until the final trimester. Here, more recent evidence calling into question the necessity of the cortex for pain and demonstrating functional thalamic connectivity into the subplate is used to argue that the neuroscience cannot definitively rule out fetal pain before 24 weeks. We consider the possibility that the mere experience of pain, without the capacity for self reflection, is morally significant. We believe that fetal pain does not have to be equivalent to a mature adult human experience to matter morally, and so fetal pain might be considered as part of a humane approach to abortion. (shrink)

Themistokles was ostracized in the late 470's, probably in spring 471 or 470; if we are to believe Thucydides, he did not write to Artaxerxes in Persia until 465 at the earliest. In some way or other his stay in Argos and visits to the rest of the Peloponnese, his wanderings in northern Greece, and his delay in Asia Minor must be extended to fill this gap of at least five years. There is evidence of a sort, there are arguments (...) good and bad for the lengthening or shortening of any of these episodes, but none of this evidence or argument is conclusive. Between 470 and 465 no event in Themistokles' life can be securely dated; there is no fixed chronological pattern into which a reconstruction of the political history of Athens and the Peloponnese during these years must fit. Since the reconstruction which I attempt here is itself based on evidence which is far from adequate, plausibility is the most that can be claimed for it or for the chronological scheme which I infer from it. (shrink)

The “function debate” in the philosophy of biology and the “venom debate” in the science of toxinology are conceptually related. Venom systems are complex multifunctional traits that have evolved independently numerous times throughout the animal kingdom. No single concept of function, amongst those popularly defended, appears adequate to describe these systems in all their evolutionary contexts and extant variations. As such, a pluralistic view of function, previously defended by some philosophers of biology, is most appropriate. Venom systems, like many (...) other functional traits, exist in nature as points on a continuum and the boundaries between “venomous” and “non-venomous” species may not always be clearly defined. This paper includes a brief overview of the concept of function, followed by in-depth discussion of its application to venom systems. A sound understanding of function may aid in moving the venom debate forward. Similarly, consideration of a complex functional trait such as venom may be of interest to philosophers of biology. (shrink)

In this paper, missing attribute values in incomplete data sets have three possible interpretations: lost values, attribute-concept values and ‘do not care’ conditions. For rule induction, we use characteristic sets and generalized maximal consistent blocks. Therefore, we apply six different approaches for data mining. As follows from our previous experiments, where we used an error rate evaluated by ten-fold cross validation as the main criterion of quality, no approach is universally the best. Thus, we decided to compare our six approaches (...) using complexity of rule sets induced from incomplete data sets. We show that the smallest rule sets are induced from incomplete data sets with attribute-concept values, while the most complicated rule sets are induced from data sets with lost values. The choice between interpretations of missing attribute values is more important than the choice between characteristic sets and generalized maximal consistent blocks. (shrink)

The, Contrasted with the Intuitional-Causal Approach. There are two states of sophistication in the attitude which men of science have taken towards theories of natural phenomena. In the more abstract state, the purpose has been to seek the most harmonious scheme of coordination of the phenomena without raising the question of underlying causes and without adherence to some, or any, set of preconceived principles regarded primarily as fundamental starting points. In this state, the starting points have been sought in (...) the phenomena themselves. (shrink)

This book is the result of a series of discussions among Cambridge theologians on the general topic of the relevance of established religion and theology to the problems and values of the mid-twentieth century. A wide range of problems is treated: the methodology and importance of natural theology, the effect of recent philosophies of science on theology, the analogical use of the notion of the transcendent, Freudian analysis, and moral theology, the authority of scriptures and the church, prayer, the grounds (...) of moral judgments and the role of the established church in society. The essays reflect the varied interests and capabilities of the writers and should be of interest to a quite varied audience. Most of the essays reveal fresh viewpoints, perspicuous analysis, and rigorous thought.--W. G. E. (shrink)

The two basic forms of action distinguished in the preceding articles, viz., moral action, where praxis is for praxis sake, and action for a good, where praxis is for the sake of theôria, are found in close relationship to one another in human life. The part they play is rather that of abstract moments in a practical process than that of self-contained and isolable bits of conduct. No philosopher is likely to discount the importance of thus analysing the concrete into (...) its factors before he rectifies the abstraction by showing how they co-operate in actual experience. In any individual biography we can find acts and courses of action in which duty is the dominant motive, and others in which the dominant motive is desire of good. Similarly, when we compare different biographies with one another, some exemplify most strikingly the struggle for righteousness against unruly passion, others the spontaneous aspiration of the soul to attain the goal of its desire. But neither the moral law nor the summum bonum wields an exclusive sovereignty. St. Paul and Luther, in their warfare against carnal desire, drew strength from the ideal vision; nor were St. Bernard or Spinoza, for all their absorption upon union with the divine, strangers to the call of moral obligation. In the lives of ordinary men, the types of conduct are, perhaps, more evenly balanced; yet here also the distinction is discernible. Moreover, it is easy to see how, despite their intrinsic difference, they come to be associated and “by just exchange” to effect a mutual enrichment. (shrink)

IN the heroic Latin hexameter, after the essential alternation of long and short syllables, by far the most important feature is unquestionably the caesura. Nevertheless, ancient writers on metre dismiss it with the most cursory notice; all we get from them is that the chief caesura is the penthemimeral, the trochaic and hephthemimeral coming next; the fourth trochaic and the bucolic are usually rejected, and the trihemimeral is mentioned only by Ausonius, Modern writers, among whom are Müller and (...) Winbolt, deal with the question at greater length, but do not agree even on fundamental points, and often base their statements on an insufficient analysis of the extant remains of Latin hexameter verse. The purpose of the following paper is to attempt a more complete analysis, at least in the case of Virgil, the acknowledged master of the Latin hexameter. But before we proceed further there are two preliminaries which must be settled—what are the main types of caesura, and how many caesurae are admissible in one verse? (shrink)

In this collection of essays, Feinberg gathers together a number of articles which he has written over the past few years, most of which have appeared in print elsewhere. The few changes made for the present edition do not alter the fundamental content of any of the articles. In the introduction, Feinberg suggests that just as there are general areas of philosophical interest called "theory of value," "theory of knowledge," etc., so there should similarly be a general rubric for (...) the area dealing with questions which are applicable both to the philosophy of law and moral philosophy. For this purpose, Feinberg chooses "theory of responsibility." Both the title of the book and the name for this area of philosophical concern reflect the difficulties inherent in this general area. "Doing" can be applied to an individual who performs actions. Does "deserving" have an equivalent extension? "Responsibility" is a concept which covers both the moral notion of "culpability" and the legal notion of "liability." But is the same criterion for application of the concept of responsibility operative in both the legal and moral domains? Is the concept of "at fault" used univocally in moral and legal contexts? These are just a few of the many questions which arise when discussing a "theory of responsibility." Feinberg has answers for some. He points readers in a direction from which other answers might be found. If nothing else this book is a good launching pad into an area of philosophical concern which is just beginning to be explored.--W. P. G. (shrink)

Following an analytical introduction by Weiss, this work presents writings by Maimonides on the dispositions of the soul, especially its virtues and vices; on equanimity and the achievement of mental health; on secular and religious authority; on the knowledge of good and evil; on reasoning in respect to right and wrong; on awaiting the Messiah; on repentance; and on war and peace. Aside from a few extracts from the Guide of the Perplexed, for which an existing translation by Shlomo Pines (...) is reprinted here, all the materials included were translated by one or both of the editors, including the letter to Joseph ben Judah on secular and religious authority, which was translated into English for the first time. The materials from which selections were made include Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, his Commentary on the Mishneh, his Introduction to the Mishneh tractate "Chapters of the Fathers," and his Logic. Most of these works are articulations and defenses of traditional Jewish ethical mandates, developed by Maimonides in the light of his knowledge of philosophy.—W.G. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays in ethics and the philosophy of religion contributed by former students and colleagues of Professor W. Harry Jellema to honor his 70th birthday and his retirement from Calvin College. The essays are quite diverse but uniformly worthwhile. They are nicely balanced between such traditional approaches as in Veatch's "For a Renewal of an Old Departure in Ethics" and Parker's "Traditional Reason and Modern Reason," contemporary analytic approaches as in Plantinga's "Necessary Being" and Brouwer's "A (...) Restricted Motive Theory of Ethics," and historical studies such as Stob's "The Ethics of Jonathan Edwards" and De Boer's "First Steps in Mysticism." The quality and seriousness of the collection as a whole appropriately honors a man who has been one of the most devoted and effective teachers in the American philosophic community for the past fifty years.—W. G. E. (shrink)

The author of this study declares as his purpose "to demonstrate the continuity and identity of projects between ‘traditional philosophy’ and existentialism," as against the view commonly held that existentialism constitutes "a radical break from traditional philosophy." The "radical break" in modern philosophy occurred, according to the author, when Kant reoriented philosophy to man, giving rise to the man-centered, human-life-centered deliberations of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and others in this line of descent. It is true, Solomon admits, that (...) "most of the writings of the authors we shall study are concerned with metaphysics rather than ethics," but their ontologies entail "very definite conceptions of man." The last three of the book’s seven chapters deal with Husserl, Heidegger, and the main French existentialists ; this choice "necessitated neglect of some excellent philosophers who might have been included." Each chapter is a monograph of extensive proportions, the one on French existentialists running to about 55,000 words. The pages are double-columned, and the type small. It is hard to keep in mind, in the forest of illuminating and well-integrated detail, the book’s stated purpose of showing that existentialism is continuous with traditional philosophy. Nevertheless, as an intelligible account of how existentialist thought evolved, the book requires one to admit at the end that the story has been told, and well told, in the idiom of traditional philosophy.—W. G. (shrink)

The first of twelve fascicles to be published quarterly and as a single volume at the end of the series. This fascicle presents Weiss's philosophic journal from June 24th to September 21st, 1955. The main problem worried with in these pages is that of the togetherness of the basic modes of being, a central issue for a systematic pluralist such as Weiss. We see him approaching the problem from different angles, pushing ideas as far as they will go, testing them (...) against other parts of his system, revising, rejecting and refining. At times Weiss sketches out the logical permutations and combinations of his leading themes and then seeks out applications in more concrete subject matter. At other times a seemingly unrelated analysis of something as concrete as the relations between men and women is used to illumine highly abstract problems. The fascicle as a whole is a study in the logic of opposition and togetherness, though many other points are touched along the way, such as the problem of simple location. Weiss's analysis is more mathematical and logical than linguistic. It is remarkably thorough and radical, free and original. But precisely because of this, it is also difficult to follow, at times even frustratingly opaque. But the fascicles do provide two things: a valuable dialectical key to Modes of Being, and a clear insight into the working methods and style of thought of one of the most creative of contemporary philosophers.--W. G. E. (shrink)

Watt takes a somewhat fast and sketchy look at an extremely complex period of history, religion and philosophy from an equally complex viewpoint. He is interested in the place and role of the various kinds of intellectuals in classic Islamic religion and society and their own conceptions of that religious society and their place in it. The central figure is Al-Ghazali who personally embodies the tensions which beset the first six centuries of Islam, and whose attitudes and solutions most (...) characteristically reflect the broad consensus within historic Islam toward those tensions. Watt's book can be of profit as an encapsulation of six centuries of highly complex movements and sub-movements in the personality, career and ideas of one highly complex and brilliant intellectual figure.--W. G. E. (shrink)

Classical French spirituality, ornate and delicate, rich and stylized, like the Louis Quatorze furniture of the same period, is perhaps not to everyone's taste. Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, the great "Eagle of Meaux," was the most eloquent and elegant sacred orator of the period of the great Louis, and his prose has remained ever since a model of that style. This is the first translation of his Méditations sur l'Evangile, perhaps more elegant and certainly more personally intense than the great (...) state sermons. The translation, however, is too close to the French style; it would have been better to match the elegance of the French with comparably elegant English.--W. G. E. (shrink)

The best that has been thought and said in the analytical tradition since 1950 is here enshrined in a monumental testament to an idea. The naked sense of the idea is that the deepest problems encountered by man in understanding himself and his world will yield more readily to rapier-sharp conceptual analysis than to bold, creative, oracular, synoptic Anschauungen [[sic]] which are hard to get a handle on empirically. Although this beguiling idea, this analytical imperative, is itself only heuristic and (...) not substantive, its application has led to the accumulation of a staggeringly rich and brilliant treasury of philosophical illumination. Sixty-eight selections by giants of contemporary thought, from Ayer to Ziff, are deployed here under eight captions: reference and descriptions; analyticity and necessity; truth and meaning; problems of knowledge; the mental and physical; induction, laws, and causation; logic and ontology; and free will. Included are five selections each by Chisholm and Quine; four by Carnap; three each by Feigl, Pap, Sellars, and Strawson; two each by Austin, Bergmann, Cornman, Firth, and Rescher; and one each by 32 others. Some of the most famous philosophical papers of our century are represented here, such as Strawson’s "On Referring," Quine’s "On What There Is," Carnap’s "Meaning and Necessity," and Austin’s "Ifs and Cans." An index of 209 names and a knowledgeably prepared subject index bring this truly regal work to a close. It is a more-than-worthy successor to the uncommonly valuable Readings in Philosophical Analysis, edited by Feigl and Sellars and published in 1949.—W. G. (shrink)

Philosophers traditionally have tried to establish general principles on solid grounding that would validly state and clarify what actually happens and what should happen in a polis. Infrequently, they sullied their hands with attempts to apply their general principles to specific, complex, time-bound, exigent, controversial situations. Now, however, numbers of professional philosophers have turned to the difficult task of applying broad generalizations to thorny issues of the day. Eleven attempts to carry out that task—essays on reform, principled law-breaking, violence, revolution, (...) and the responsibilities of philosophers vis-à-vis public affairs—are included in the present volume. Noam Chomsky, in an essay on philosophers and public policy, wistfully describes as having "a great deal of force," and then rejects, the argument that the only duty of a philosopher qua philosopher, in a time of turmoil, is to do his work with integrity. Of the essays on civil disobedience, one by Gordon J. Schochet critically examines, and in the end comes close to defending once more, the often-defended assumption that the practitioner of civil disobedience should accept the standard penalty. These eleven essays are partisan and practical in that, instead of examining the presuppositions or meaning or bearing of political judgments or ideologies, they present and vigorously support specific judgments, mostly unorthodox judgments, about political issues. This is a distinctly useful and needed book; but more clarification should be forthcoming on the extent to which philosophers as philosophers should take stands on political controversies.—W. G. (shrink)

To state the central argument of this book would be to miss a great deal of the author's achievement. Munz is concerned with tracing the metaphysical foundations of ethics and furthermore the nature and roots of these, and all, metaphysical conceptions. He does all of this in a resolutely original and tough-minded way, exploring alternatives in the fullest possible manner, arguing with great resourcefulness and force. His originality can be seen in his serious and thorough oppositions to classical and contemporary (...) positions. He never scores off straw men, but takes the trouble to develop opposing positions fully so that his argument will strike at the most fundamental and stringent point. Thus, his thesis, that the basic ethical stances of absolute commitment to others and absolute detachment from others, are dialectically interdependent, is honestly and articulately supported. He is to be credited with developing concepts, arguments, and positions which derive their considerable force on their own merits, while encountering a full range of opposition. He has produced a book with which one can disagree, which may puzzle and even seem peculiar, but which must nonetheless be sincerely admired.—W. G. E. (shrink)

This book is the result of a series of discussions among Cambridge theologians on the general topic of the relevance of established religion and theology to the problems and values of the mid-twentieth century. A wide range of problems is treated: the methodology and importance of natural theology, the effect of recent philosophies of science on theology, the analogical use of the notion of the transcendent, Freudian analysis, and moral theology, the authority of scriptures and the church, prayer, the grounds (...) of moral judgments and the role of the established church in society. The essays reflect the varied interests and capabilities of the writers and should be of interest to a quite varied audience. Most of the essays reveal fresh viewpoints, perspicuous analysis, and rigorous thought.--W. G. E. (shrink)

This translation of the Fons Vitae, "specially abridged," is stiflingly verbal. There is no critical apparatus, no index, no attempt to lay bare the philosophic doctrine, no explanation of the "abridgment." The book is useless to a serious student and too clumsy to interest any but the most general reader.--W. G. E.