A revised translation of Heidegger's most important work.

Plochmann and Robinson closely analyze this great dialogue in the first two-thirds of their book, turning in the final four chapters to a broader discussion of its unity, sweep, and philosophic implications.

Two experiments are reported that evaluated survey learning of youth with DS and typically developing children (TD) matched on Mental Age (MA). In Experiment 1, the experimenter navigated participants through a novel virtual environment along a circuitous path, beginning and ending at a target landmark (i.e., a door). Then, the participants were placed at a pre-specified location in the environment and instructed to navigate to the same door using the shortest possible path from their current location. They completed the task (...) three times: once after being shown the environment one time, once after three exposures, and once after five exposures. Results indicated that the participants with DS exhibited significantly less skill at identifying the shortcut than did the TD participants. In Experiment 2, participants learned two overlapping routes through a simple environment. Following acquisition, they were tested on several measures of survey knowledge: finding a shortcut, identifying the direction of landmarks not currently visible from their location in the environment, and recognizing a bird’s-eye representation of the overall environment. The results of Experiment2 indicated that the participants with DS were at least as good as the TD participants on all of our measures of survey learning. Hence, we concluded that people with DS can acquire some survey knowledge when they learn a simple environment. However, the performance of both groups was relatively poor in Experiment 2, indicating a need to consider identifying the mechanisms underlying the poor performance on wayfinding of people with DS. Identifying the underlying mechanisms, is a logical first step in devising methods of enhancing environmental learning of people with DS. (shrink)

It is a cliché of self-help advice that there are no problems, only opportunities. The rationale and actions of the BSHS in creating its Global Digital History of Science Festival may be a rare genuine confirmation of this mantra. The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 meant that the society's usual annual conference – like everyone else's – had to be cancelled. Once the society decided to go digital, we had a hundred days to organize and deliver our first online festival. (...) In the hope that this will help, inspire and warn colleagues around the world who are also trying to move online, we here detail the considerations, conversations and thinking behind the organizing team's decisions. (shrink)

Virtues are acquirable, so if intellectual humility is a virtue, it’s acquirable. But there is something deeply problematic—perhaps even paradoxical—about aiming to be intellectually humble. Drawing on Edward Slingerland’s analysis of the paradoxical virtue of wu-wei in Trying Not To Try (New York: Crown, 2014), we argue for an anti-individualistic conception of the trait, concluding that one’s intellectual humility depends upon the intellectual humility of others. Slingerland defines wu-wei as the “dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a (...) person who is optimally active and effective” (Trying Not to Try, 7). Someone who embodies wu-wei inspires implicit trust, so it is beneficial to appear wu-wei. This has led to an arms race between faking wu-wei on the one hand and detecting fakery on the other. Likewise, there are many benefits to being (or seeming to be) intellectually humble. But someone who makes conscious, strategic efforts to appear intellectually humble is ipso facto not intellectually humble. Following Slingerland’s lead, we argue that there are several strategies one might pursue to acquire genuine intellectual humility, and all of these involve commitment to shared social or epistemic values, combined with receptivity to feedback from others, who must in turn have and manifest relevant intellectual virtues. In other words, other people and shared values are partial bearers of a given individual’s intellectual humility. If this is on the right track, then acquiring intellectual humility demands epistemic anti-individualism. (shrink)

This book develops arithmetic without the induction principle, working in theories that are interpretable in Raphael Robinson's theory Q. Certain inductive formulas, the bounded ones, are interpretable in Q. A mathematically strong, but logically very weak, predicative arithmetic is constructed. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while (...) presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Theologies of divine action in nature have sought to maximize traction with the sciences to secure their credibility. While varying in significant ways, all extant proposals share a commitment to physical realism, the claim that (at least some) physical entities and facts are both mind‐independent and ontologically basic within creation. However, I will argue that this metaphysical commitment undermines the body of scientific knowledge to which theologians wish to be responsive. Is there an alternative? Building on the work of Howard (...) Robinson, I will show that there is a coherent account of mind's place in nature that denies physical realism. Such an account would enable a theological description of God's sustaining and governing action in nature through the ontological mediation of minds and laws causally constraining their sensations. Furthermore, this proposal yields a positive research program that makes essential use of the contributions of the natural sciences to understand the nature of embodiment. (shrink)

Edward Nelson published in 1986 a book defending an extreme formalist view of mathematics according to which there is animpassable barrierin the totality of exponentiation. On the positive side, Nelson embarks on a program of investigating how much mathematics can be interpreted in Raphael Robinson's theory of arithmetic. In the shadow of this program, some very nice logical investigations and results were produced by a number of people, not only regarding what can be interpreted inbut also what cannot (...) be so interpreted. We explain some of these results and rely on them to discuss Nelson's position. (shrink)

Edward Nelson published in 1986 a book defending an extreme formalist view of mathematics according to which there is an impassable barrier in the totality of exponentiation. On the positive side, Nelson embarks on a program of investigating how much mathematics can be interpreted in Raphael Robinson's theory of arithmetic Q. In the shadow of this program, some very nice logical investigations and results were produced by a number of people, not only regarding what can be interpreted in (...) Q but also what cannot be so interpreted. We explain some of these results and rely on them to discuss Nelson's position. (shrink)

Published in 1982 by CUP (pb. 2009) it discusses the forms of materialism then current, including Davidson, early Rorty, but concentrating on Smart and Armstrong, and arguing that central state materialism fails to give a better 'occurrent' account of conscious states than does behaviourism/functionalism, as Armstrong claims. The book starts with a version of the 'knowledge argument' and ends with a chapter claiming that our conception of matter/the physical is more problematic than our conception of mind.

This is a collection of fifty essays featured in Edward R. Murrow's 1950s This I Believe radio series. It includes such celebrities of the twentieth century as Pearl Buck, Norman Cousins, Margaret Mead, James Michener, Jackie Robinson, and Harry Truman. With an introduction by Edward R. Murrow and a foreword by Dan Gediman, executive producer of the contemporary This I Believe radio broadcasts, heard weekly on public radio.

This is a collection of fifty essays featured in Edward R. Murrow's 1950s This I Believe radio series. It includes such celebrities of the twentieth century as Pearl Buck, Norman Cousins, Margaret Mead, James Michener, Jackie Robinson, and Harry Truman. With an introduction by Edward R. Murrow and a foreword by Dan Gediman, executive producer of the contemporary This I Believe radio broadcasts, heard weekly on public radio.

Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events. Behavior is caused by muscles that contract upon receiving neural impulses, and neural impulses are generated by input from other neurons or from sense organs. On the epiphenomenalist view, mental events play no causal role in this process. Huxley (1874), who held the view, compared mental events to a steam whistle that contributes nothing to the work of (...) a locomotive. James (1879), who rejected the view, characterized epiphenomenalists' mental events as not affecting the brain activity that produces them "any more than a shadow reacts upon the steps of the traveller whom it accompanies". (shrink)

This chapter starts by restating the causal-hallucinatory argument against naive realism. This argument depends on the possibility of “philosophers' hallucinations.” It draws attention to the role of what the chapter refers to as the nonarbitrariness of philosophers' hallucinations in supporting this argument. The chapter then discusses three attempts to refute the argument. Two of them, those associated with John McDowell and with Michael Martin, are explicitly forms of disjunctivism. The third, exemplified by Mark Johnston, has, the chapter claims, disjunctivist features. (...) None of these responses to the argument is plausible. (shrink)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an open access, dynamic reference work designed to organize professional philosophers so that they can write, edit, and maintain a reference work in philosophy that is responsive to new research. From its inception, the SEP was designed so that each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and substantive updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they (...) are made public. (shrink)

How can I give you a reason to believe what I tell you? I can influence the evidence available to you. Or I can simply invite your trust. These two ways of giving reasons work very differently. When a speaker tells her hearer that p, I argue, she intends that he gain access to a prima facie reason to believe that p that derives not from evidence but from his mere understanding of her act. Unlike mere assertions, acts of telling (...) give reasons directly. They give reasons by inviting the hearer’s trust. This yields a novel form of anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony. The status of testimony as a sui generis source of epistemic warrant is entailed by the nature of the act of telling. We can discover the nature of this illocution, and its epistemic role, by examining how it functions in the real world of human relations. (shrink)