This comprehensive account of the history of ancient Greek thought circa 600 to 400 B.C. offers an accessible, nontechnical introduction to Presocratic philosophy.

A new translation of Aristotle's classic work on the natural sciences.

1. It is evident that the contrast between ‘life’ and ‘death’ is an important one for Heraclitus. But his words remain cryptic, perhaps more so on this subject than on most others. Ideally, any elucidation would occur as an application of, and as in its turn confirming, some overall view of his theorising activity. The suggestions which follow are not intended to achieve that. I work within the well-worn assumptions that Heraclitus is putting forward a “general theory of the soul” (...) that goes substantially beyond the evidence available; and that Heraclitus is a highly systematic theorist, and in particular that there is a close analogy between his theory of the soul and his theory of the cosmos, with fire playing the central role in each, and each being an application of the master-pattern of ‘unity-in-opposites’. I hope to show that, even within this “traditional” approach, there is room for new insights, if we respect both the Homeric-Hesiodic background and Heraclitus’ own method of self-expression. (shrink)

In the field of natural science, Aristotle recognizes as his forerunners a select group of theorists such as Heraclitus of Ephesus, Empedocles of Acragas, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and Leucippus and Democritus of Abdera. In addition, he mentions in the same contexts some whose claims to be “natural philosophers” are doubtful, yet who deserve notice in the same context, including Parmenides of Elea, Melissus of Samos, the people called Pythagoreans, and Plato as the author of the Timaeus. Aristotle takes seriously almost (...) all of these people, treating them as exemplary pioneers and valuable partners in the enterprise of “natural philosophy.” This article examines earlier opinions on certain fundamental questions about the natural world, as treated in the first three books of the Physics and in the first book of the Metaphysics. In Physics II and III, Aristotle represents most if not all of his predecessors as disastrously misunderstanding, in more than one way, the nature underlying the natural world. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Homer and Hesiod: A Pre‐scientific Conception of the World Innovation at Miletus: Aristotle on Thales His New Style of Cosmology The Theoretical Enterprise Unfolds: A Post‐Aristotelian Interpretation Theoretical Reflections on the Limits and Presuppositions of Cosmology: The Origins of Greek Philosophy Questions and Disputes Bibliography.

In this paper it is argued that we have three dispositions, each of which is very laudable in itself: a preference for the positive, constructive and creative aspects of human endeavours; a desire to be open‐minded and tolerant concerning ideas and beliefs; and an admiration of profundity. I have suggested that these dispositions can, if exaggerated or employed uncritically, seduce us into intellectual positions that are very dubious. These arguments are applied to some of the debates within the philosophy of (...) nursing. (shrink)

The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion.

This paper is perhaps an impressionistic response to accounts of the extraordinary set-theoretical activity being undertaken by W. Hugh Woodin and colleagues in the present moment, in the context of the mathematical ontology proposed and elaborated by Alain Badiou. The argument presented is that the prevailing and sustained incoherence of the mathematical ontology underscores a contemporary deficit of humanity’s symbolic organization which, in turn, yields confusion and conflict in terms of subjective orientation. But a new axiom promises to realize a (...) coherent set theory, i.e. stable, consistent and complete. This remarkable development offers hope for the pursuit of a modern symbolic, and a consequent resolution of the general subjective disorientation. (shrink)

Timelines is an inquiry into the nature of time, both as an apparent feature of the external physical world and as a fundamental feature of our experience of ourselves in the world. The principal argument of Timelines is that our coventional ideas about time are largely mistaken and that what we think of as independent physical time is actually our calibration of a certain relation between events. Namely, the relation between time-keeping events and the causal sequential differences of physical processes (...) which are real and independent of us. (shrink)

The academic journey to a widely acknowledged Machine Consciousness is anticipated to be an emotional one. Both in terms of the active debate provoked by the subject and a hypothesized need to encapsulate an analogue of emotions in an artificial system in order to progress towards machine consciousness. This paper considers the inspiration that the concepts related to emotion may contribute to cognitive systems when approaching conscious-like behavior. Specifically, emotions can set goals including balancing explore versus exploit, facilitate action in (...) unknown domains and modify existing behaviors, which are explored in cognitive robotics experiments. (shrink)

Chapter 1: Introduction to Social Work Values and Ethics -- Chapter 2: Managing Ethical Issues -- Chapter 3: Social Justice -- Chapter 4: Client Autonomy, Self-Determination, and Informed Consent -- Chapter 5: Privacy, Confidentiality, and Exceptions -- Chapter 6: Professional Competence, Incompetence, and Impairment -- Chapter 7: Cultural Competence, Humility, Awareness, and Responsiveness -- Chapter 8: Professional Boundaries, Dual Relationships, and Conflicts of Interest -- Chapter 9: Responsibilities in Practice Settings -- Chapter 10: Access to Services -- Chapter 11: Honesty (...) and Integrity -- Chapter 12: Social Work Accountability and Regulation -- Chapter 13: Risk-Benefit Management -- Chapter 14: Conclusion. (shrink)

This paper examines two issues related to research of certified fair trade goods. The first is the question of how agendas for fair trade research should be developed. The second issue is the existence of major gaps in the fair trade literature, including the study of the particular features of fair trade practice in individual northern countries. In taking up the first of these issues, the paper proposes that normative analysis should provide the basis for developing research agendas. Such an (...) approach is important to ensure that the necessary types of questions to make normative judgments and policy decisions are posed and that biases that tend to favor mainstreaming practices in the generation of knowledge are minimized. The paper addresses the second research issue by examining the development of research agendas at the level of individual countries, using Canada as a case. (shrink)

The standard philosophical project of analysing the concept of knowledge has radical defects in its arbitrary restriction of the subject matter, and its risky theoretical presuppositions. Edward Craig suggests a more illuminating approach, akin to the `state of nature' method found in political theory, which builds up the concept from a hypothesis about the social function of knowledge and the needs it fulfils. Light is thrown on much that philosophers have written about knowledge, about its analysis and the obstacles (...) to its analysis, and on the debate over scepticism. It becomes apparent why many languages not only have such constructions as `knows whether' and `knows that', but also have equivalents of `knows how to' and `know' followed by a direct object. Thus the inquiry is both broadened in scope and made theoretically less fragile. (shrink)

The volume presents essays on the philosophical explanation of the relationship between body and soul in antiquity from the Presocratics to Galen. The title of the volume alludes to a phrase found in Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, referring to aspects of living behaviour involving both body and soul, and is a commonplace in ancient philosophy, dealt with in very different ways by different authors.

The standard philosophical project of analysing the concept of knowledge has radical defects in its arbitrary restriction of the subject matter, and its risky theoretical presuppositions. Edward Craig suggests a more illuminating approach, akin to the `state of nature' method found in political theory, which builds up the concept from a hypothesis about the social function of knowledge and the needs it fulfils. Light is thrown on much that philosophers have written about knowledge, about its analysis and the obstacles (...) to its analysis, and on the debate over scepticism. It becomes apparent why many languages not only have such constructions as `knows whether' and `knows that', but also have equivalents of `knows how to' and `know' followed by a direct object. Thus the inquiry is both broadened in scope and made theoretically less fragile. (shrink)

In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, _The Fate of Place_ is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of (...) space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray. (shrink)

The received wisdom is that people can mentally invoke a sarcastic tone of voice during silent reading although there is no direct evidence for this claim. We provide an empirical demonstration. In Study 1, participants silently read a set of ambiguous phrases as either being sarcastic or sincere, and chose from a set of adjectives those that best describe the tone of voice that was invoked. Sarcasm-discriminating and sincere-discriminating adjectives were identified. In Study 2, a different sample read a set (...) of phrases in a minimal discourse context. The critical phrase was preceded by one of three contexts: positive, negative, and an ambiguous context that could invoke either a sincere or sarcastic reading. Following each scenario participants were asked to rate a set of adjectives as to the extent the adjective was mentally heard during silent reading: the adjectives were a subset of those that were sarcasm-discriminating, sincere-discriminating or a set of adjectives irrelevant to tone of voice. As predicted, even when not instructed to think sarcastically, participants rated most highly those adjectives chosen as associated with a sarcastic tone of voice in the negative context and least in the positive context. Analogously, the opposite effect was observed for sincere-discriminating items: rated as most applicable to what is being heard internally for positive contexts and rated lowest in negative contexts. These basic findings were replicated when demand characteristics were minimized. (shrink)