The fact that many modal operators are part of an adjunction is probably folklore since the discovery of adjunctions. On the other hand, the natural idea of a minimal propositional calculus extended with a pair of adjoint operators seems to have been formulated only very recently. This recent research, mainly motivated by applications in computer science, concentrates on technical issues related to the calculi and not on the significance of adjunctions in modal logic. It then seems a worthy enterprise (both (...) for these contemporary topical pursuits and also for historical interest) to trace the concept of adjunction back to the origins of the algebraic semantics of modal logic and to make explicit its ubiquity in this branch of mathematics. (shrink)

Médecins Sans Frontières is not morally required to continue providing the same therapeutic and preventative interventions for lead poisoning in Nigeria in the face of conditions that negatively impact on the achievement of their objectives. Nevertheless, Médecins Sans Frontières may have reasons to revise their objectives and adopt different interventions or methods.

Understanding how people comprehend visual narratives (including picture stories, comics, and film) requires the combination of traditionally separate theories that span the initial sensory and perceptual processing of complex visual scenes, the perception of events over time, and comprehension of narratives. Existing piecemeal approaches fail to capture the interplay between these levels of processing. Here, we propose the Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT), as applied to visual narratives, which distinguishes between front-end and back-end cognitive processes. Front-end processes occur (...) during single eye fixations and are comprised of attentional selection and information extraction. Back-end processes occur across multiple fixations and support the construction of event models, which reflect understanding of what is happening now in a narrative (stored in working memory) and over the course of the entire narrative (stored in long-term episodic memory). We describe relationships between front- and back-end processes, and medium-specific differences that likely produce variation in front-end and back-end processes across media (e.g., picture stories vs. film). We describe several novel research questions derived from SPECT that we have explored. By addressing these questions, we provide greater insight into how attention, information extraction, and event model processes are dynamically coordinated to perceive and understand complex naturalistic visual events in narratives and the real world. (shrink)

Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

This paper applies Plato's cave allegory to Enron's success and downfall. Plato's famous tale of cave dwellers illustrates the different levels of truth and understanding. These levels include images, the sources of images, and the ultimate reality behind both. The paper first describes these levels of perception as they apply to Plato's cave dwellers and then provides a brief history of the rise of Enron. Then we apply Plato's levels of understanding to Enron, showing how the company created its image (...) and presented information to support that image, and how the public eventually emerged from the cave to realize the truth about Enron's actual accounting practices and financial state, which led to the corporation's downfall. We find Plato's allegory both useful in analyzing the relationship between Enron and the public and instructive about the power and moral responsibility of Enron's executives. (shrink)

MEDIEVAL LOGICS LAMBERT MARIE DE RIJK (ed.), Die mittelalterlichen Traktate De mod0 opponendiet respondendi, Einleitung und Ausgabe der einschlagigen Texte. (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge Band 17.) Miinster: Aschendorff, 1980. 379 pp. No price stated. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MARTA FATTORI, Lessico del Novum Organum di Francesco Bacone. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1980. Two volumes, il + 543, 520 pp. Lire 65.000. VIVIAN SALMON, The study of language in 17th century England. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory (...) and History of Linguistic Science, Series 111: Studies in theHistory of Linguistics, Volume 17.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1979.x + 218 pp. Dfl. 65. Theoria cum Praxi. Zum Verhaltnis von Theorie und Praxis im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. (Akten des 111. Internationalen Leibnizkongress, Hannover, 12. bis 17.November 1977, Band 111: Logik, Erkenntnistheorie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Metaphysik, Theologie.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980. vii + 269 pp. DM 48. CLASSICAL AND NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS MICHAEL CLARK, The place of syllogistic in logical theory. Nottingham: University of Nottingham Press, 1980. ix + 151 pp. £3.00. A.F. PARKER-RHODES, The theory of indistinguishables. Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981. xvii + 216 pp. Dfl.90.00/$39.50. NICHOLAS RESCHER and ROBERT BRANDOM, The logic of inconsistency. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1980. x + 174 pp. f 11.50. MISCELLANEOUS J. ZELENY, The logic of Marx. Translated from the German by T. Carver. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. xcii + 247 pp. £12.50. FELIX KAUFMANN, The infinite in mathematics. Edited by Brian McGuinness. Introduction by E. Nagel. Translation from the German by Paul Foulkes. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978. xvii + 235 pp. Dfl 85/$39.50 (cloth); Dfl 45/$19.95 (paper). PAMELA MCCORDUCK, Machines who think. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979. xiv + 275 pp. $14.95. J. MITTELSTRASS (ed.), Enzyklopadie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie Bd. 1 : A-G. Mannheim, Wien, Ziirich: Bibliographisches Institut, 1980. 835 pp. DM 128. (shrink)

The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between childhood IQ of parents and characteristics of their adult offspring. It was a prospective family cohort study linked to a mental ability survey of the parents and set in Renfrew and Paisley in Scotland. Participants were 1921-born men and women who took part in the Scottish Mental Survey in 1932 and the Renfrew/Paisley study in the 1970s, and whose offspring took part in the Midspan Family study in 1996. There (...) were 286 offspring from 179 families. Parental IQ was related to some, but not all characteristics of offspring. Greater parental IQ was associated with taller offspring. Parental IQ was inversely related to number of cigarettes smoked by offspring. Higher parental IQ was associated with better education, offspring social class and offspring deprivation category. There were no significant relationships between parental IQ and offspring systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, lung function, weight, body mass index, waist hip ratio, housing, alcohol consumption, marital status, car use and exercise. Structural equation modelling showed parental IQ associated with offspring education directly and mediated via parental social class. Offspring education was associated with offspring smoking and social class. The smoking finding may have implications for targeting of health education. (shrink)

Though the philosopher will undoubtedly find this study too elementary for many of his purposes, the student of literature and the generally interested reader will be delighted by this rich source of reference material. Published under the general editorship of Mortimer J. Adler by the Institute for Philosophical Research, The Idea of Love has one of the most accessible formats of the Concepts in Western Thought Series. Preliminary chapters explain critical notions used in later schematizations of various figures, and relate (...) in neat topical divisions controversies about natural and supernatural human love. Next, illustrative chapters present different authors according to whether they hold that love can be either acquisitive or benevolent desire, is only acquisitive desire, must include benevolence, is wholly or primarily judgment. Two final divisions which overlap these give judgmental aspects of wholly and primarily tendential conceptions of love. Expositions within each of these divisions both justify the classification and adequately develop particular sub-themes. In toto, more than forty philosophers, writers, theologians, and psychologists receive a fairly extensive treatment, including generous citations, while brief references are also made to minor figures. Among those given major consideration are Plato, Augustine, Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, Dante, Kierkegaard, Kant, Freud, Jung, and William James ; Plotinus, Andreas Capellanus, Stendhal, Schopenhauer, Santayana, Darwin, Rousseau, Spinoza, Leibniz ; Adam Smith, Hegel, C. S. Lewis, Ortega Y Gasset, Erich Fromm ; Descartes, Hume, Locke, and Pascal. The work is indexed and supplemented by a seven-page bibliography.--C. M. R. (shrink)

At least four different frameworks — psychiatric, cognitive, functional and decision-making — are used in the evaluation of competence, all of which remain more or less unrelated in the literature. In the first section of this paper we consider various meanings of competence, in order to arrive at a definition of the term relevant to the medical and legal setting. Patient or client competence, we conclude, refers to the practical abilities that individuals employ in pursuing their own autonomous goals in (...) life. We then show how a systematic categorization of these practical abilities — which we call a taxonomy of practical judgment — allows us to show when the traditional frameworks for the evaluation of competence may or may not be useful in the evaluation of a particular competence.In the final section we explore some of the normative considerations underlying the taxonomy. For instance, competence is not only related to intrinsic abilities but to resources available in the community. Here we touch on questions related to the fair distribution of community resources. (shrink)

The fact that many modal operators are part of an adjunction is probably folklore since the discovery of adjunctions. On the other hand, the natural idea of a minimal propositional calculus extended with a pair of adjoint operators seems to have been formulated only very recently. This recent research, mainly motivated by applications in computer science, concentrates on technical issues related to the calculi and not on the significance of adjunctions in modal logic. It then seems a worthy enterprise (both (...) for these contemporary topical pursuits and also for historical interest) to trace the concept of adjunction back to the origins of the algebraic semantics of modal logic and to make explicit its ubiquity in this branch of mathematics. (shrink)

This volume of essays examines the problem of mind, looking at how the problem has appeared to neuroscientists from classical antiquity through to contemporary times. Beginning with a look at ventricular neuropsychology in antiquity, this book goes on to look at Spinozan ideas on the links between mind and body, Thomas Willis and the foundation of Neurology, Hooke’s mechanical model of the mind and Joseph Priestley’s approach to the mind-body problem. The volume offers a chapter on the 19th century Ottoman (...) perspective on western thinking. Further chapters trace the work of nineteenth century scholars including George Henry Lewes, Herbert Spencer and Emil du Bois-Reymond. The book covers significant work from the twentieth century, including an examination of Alfred North Whitehead and the history of consciousness, and particular attention is given to the development of quantum consciousness. Chapters on slavery and the self and the development of an understanding of Dualism bring this examination up to date on the latest 21st century work in the field. At the heart of this book is the matter of how we define the problem of consciousness itself: has there been any progress in our understanding of the working of mind and brain? This work at the interface between science and the humanities will appeal to experts from across many fields who wish to develop their understanding of the problem of consciousness, including scholars of Neuroscience, Behavioural Science and the History of Science. (shrink)

The mind cannot be an object. An object can be conceived only as that which may possibly become an object to something else. Now what can the mind become an object to? Not to me for I am it and not to something else. Not to something else without again being denuded of consciousness.And how could we descend into the depths of our nervous system to ascertain what is the nature of the psychical correlative of the physiological bottom? If we (...) could, we could only describe that correlative psychical in terms of object-consciousness, which would be a pseudo description of it.John Hughlings-Jackson.If Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952) was the most philosophically aware neurophysiologist of the late 19th to early 20th .. (shrink)

We argue that Madole & Harden's distinction between shallow versus deep genetic causes can bring some clarity to causal claims arising from genome-wide association studies (GWASs). However, the authors argue that GWAS only finds shallow genetic causes, making GWAS commensurate with the environmental studies they hope to supplant. We also assess whether their distinction applies best to explanations or causes.

The ArgumentThis paper makes use of the 1860 clash between T. H. Huxley and Richard Owen to examine the role of social context in scientific advance in the biological sciences. It shows how the social context of nineteenth-century England first favored the Coleridge-Owenite interpretation of the biological world and then, at mid-century and subsequently, allowed the Darwin-Huxley interpretation to win through. It emphasizes the complexity of the clash. Professional, personal, and generational agendas as well as scientific theory and fundamental philosophical (...) intuition were at stake. The history, ultimately, provides a useful instance of Schutz ‘s and Scheler ‘s concept of societal factors controlling and selecting between flows of idealfactoren. Although Huxley is conventionally regarded as the victor I conclude by suggesting that the issue is not yet closed and that profound philosophical issues remain unresolved. (shrink)

Coleridge has been seen by some not so much as a poet spoiled by philosophy, but as a philosopher who was also a poet. It could be argued that his major endeavor was an attempt to save the life sciences form the mechanistic interpretation which he saw as the outcome of Lockean "mechanico-corpuscularian" philosophy. This contribution describes that endeavour. It shows its connection to the social circumstances of the time. It discussess its relationship to the poetic sensibility of the "Lake (...) poets" and to the German thought which Coleridge absorbed during and after his sojourn in Gottingen in 1798-99. It describes the nature of his "Theory of Life" as seen not only from the posthumous publication itself, but also from the numerous hints and struggles recorded in his voluminous notebooks, letters and lecture notes. It is concluded that, although never adequately assembled, it forms the only serious attempt to construct a profound alternative to the ultimately mechanistic biology of Charles Darwin and the physiologists of the second half of the century. As such it strongly influenced the young Richard Owen and, as is well known, was eventually overwhelmed by the Darwin-Huxley synthesis of the 1860s. Nevertheless, insofar as Coleridge's concept of life ultimately derived from his ambition to find a way of healing the Cartesian divide, we may wonder whether the recent upsurge in consciousness studies may cause us to look again at his panentheistic ideas and, discarding the obsolete and fanciful metaphysics, recast them into a more acceptable form. (shrink)