ABSTRACT Love centers Zora Neale Hurston's art and her life. Her most celebrated novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and her sharply criticized autobiography, Dust Tracks on A Road, explore the beauty and difficulties of love for women in the early twentieth century. Janie in Their Eyes was forced to choose between love and freedom to be herself. For Hurston, passionate love for one man competed with her deep desire for a career as a writer and playwright. In all instances, (...) self-fulfillment won out over love. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:242 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY his political and religious predispositions prodded him to demonstrate that the roots of modern science were in the Christian Middle Ages. Sarton's particular foibles are best understood by referring them to his pacifist commitments and the moralistic assumption that the values of science are transferable to other human endeavors. Categories such as inductivism, conventionalism and Popperianism are of little help in gaining historical understanding. For (...) this, they are in fact Platonic ideals which have little heuristic value. I would venture that a truly historical historiography of science would aid us in spotting errors in the past and help us in the future. My guess is that a good analysis would reveal a major source of trouble to have stemmed from preconceived notions which the history of science was meant to illustrate. Surely some of them have been philosophical in character, and even Baconian or conventionalist. But until recent times, most of these preconceptions have stemmed from religious, nationalistic, or personal motivations, or from scientists who wanted support for a particular concept. I agree with Agassi only in the suggestion that a parti pris was at the root of our troubles. Why, then, substitute a Popperian preconception for a conventionalist one? Why not, on the contrary, combat their distorting influence and reduce their impact? This is in fact what has happened in recent times. As the history of science has fallen into the hands of a gradually organized profession, the blatant motivations --of any type--which colored past historical writings have slowly receded. By a constant and critical confrontation of opposing views among specialists, the purpose for examining the history of science has slowly been transformed. The older external motivations have given way to an interest in the subject for its own sake and a gradual transformation has been in the making for the last few decades. As happens in other human endeavors, professionalization has already raised the standards in the discipline and there is every reason to think it will continue to do so in the future. We need not really be as pessimistic as Agassi, nor embrace his particular salvation. ROGEa HAm~ University o] Cali]ornia, Berkeley A MEDIEVAL ANALYSIS OF INFINITY IN THE COURSEof arguing that time must have had a beginning, St. Bonaventure (1221-74) put forward a demonstration which in some ways seems to anticipate Cantor's definition of infinity.1 Bonaventure pointed out that, if the world were infinitely old, then there would have been an infinite number of annual revolutions of the sun around the ecliptic. But during each such period there occur (roughly) twelve revolutions of the moon, i.e. lunar months or lunations. Thus there would be one infinity which was twelve times another--which, says Bonaventure, is impossible. This attempted proof might be formulated as the following For other adumbrationsof this definition,see I. Thomas,"A TwelfthCentury Paradoxof the Infinite,"Journal o] Symbolic Logic, XXIII (1958), 133-134, and W. & M. Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford,1962),p. 440. NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 243 reductio ad absurdum, in which a revolution of the sun is specified as the period between successive vernal equinoxes. If there could be an infinite set of past lunations, then clearly it could be put in a one-to-one correspondence with a proper sub-set of itself--viz., with the set of past lunar months during which vernal equinoxes occurred. But this consequence is preposterous; no set could be so correlated with its own sub-set. Therefore the set of past lunar months cannot be infinite, and the world must have had a beginning. The passage, which is found in Bonaventure's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, reads as follows :2 Si mundus est aeternus, revolutiones solis in orbe suo sunt infmitae ; rursus, pro una revolutions solis necesse est fuisse duodecim ipsius lunae: ergo plus revoluta est luna quam sol; et sol infinities: ergo infinitorum ex ea parle, qua infinita sunt, est reperire excessum. Hoe autem est impossibile : ergo etc. PA~-r~asoN BROWN Harpur College, State University o] New York Sententiarum L/b. H, Dist. I, P.I, Art. I, Quaest. II, as found in S. Bonaventurme, Opera Omnla... (shrink)

This celebratory Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprises some 23 articles by friends, former students and colleagues, many of whom first presented their papers at the international "Presocratics and Plato" Symposium in his honor. The conference was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies, Parmenides Publishing, and Starcom AG, with endorsements from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. While Kahn's work reaches far beyond the Presocratics and (...) Plato, it is in these subject areas that the distinction of his scholarship has come to be regarded as virtually unrivaled. The articles contributed to this volume are by some of the most renowned scholars working on these topics today, their breadth and depth bearing witness to his profound impact and influence on the discipline of Ancient Greek Philosophy._ Charles Kahn taught Classics and Philosophy at Columbia University from 1957 to 1965, and has since been teaching in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He spent a year as Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and had additional Visiting Fellowships at Balliol College, Oxford and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a term as Visiting Professor at Harvard. He is the recipient of several prestigious research grants, from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of _Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and Essays on Being_. His latest book,_Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue_, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. _ Contributors: Julia Annas Sarah Broadie Lesley Brown Tomás Calvo-Martínez Diskin Clay John M. Dillon Dorothea Frede Arnold Hermann Carl A. Huffman Enrique Hülsz Piccone D. M. Hutchinson Paul Kalligas Vassilis Karasmanis Aryeh Kosman Anthony A. Long Richard McKirahan Susan Sauvé Meyer Alexander P.D.Mourelatos Satoshi Ogihara Richard Patterson Christopher J. Rowe David Sedley Richard Sorabji. (shrink)

Stephen Morse’s illuminating scholarship on law and neuroscience relies on a “folk psychological” account of human behavior in order to defend the law’s foundations for ascribing legal responsibility. The heart of Morse’s account is the notion of “mental state causation,” in which mental states cause behavior. Morse argues that causation of this sort is necessary to support legal responsibility. We challenge this claim. First, we discuss problems with the conception of mental causation on which Morse appears to rely. Second, we (...) present an alternative account to explain the link between mental states, reasons, and actions. We argue that the alternative account avoids the conceptual problems that arise for Morse’s conception of mental causation and that it also undergirds ascriptions of legal responsibility. If the alternative succeeds, then Morse’s conception of “mental state causation” is not necessary to support legal responsibility. (shrink)

Drawing from Goffman’s original observations on stigma and the consequences of interactions between the stigmatized and supportive or stigmatizing audiences, we conduct a 20-year review of the diverse literature on stigma to revisit the collective nature of stigmatization processes. We find that studies on stigma’s origins, responses, processes, and outcomes have diverged from Goffman’s relational view of stigma as they have overlooked important relational mechanisms explaining the processes of (de)stigmatization. We draw from those conclusions to justify the need to study (...) stigma as a collective phenomenon. We develop a relational perspective on stigma based on understanding how attributes are stigmatized (or not) by audiences in their interactions. We argue that to advance stigma research, it is necessary to build on Goffman’s theory to include the stigmatizers (i.e., the normal) and supporters (i.e., the wise); how they create, sustain, or remove stigma; and how they relate to the stigmatized (i.e., the targets). Accordingly, we provide a research agenda on stigma as a collective phenomenon that theorizes a relational perspective, proposes a typology of how audiences relate to stigmatization, and identifies patterns of relations between audiences. We thus offer a missing piece to existing accounts of stigma by focusing on the key role of audiences (i.e., stigmatizers or supporters of the stigmatized) rather than on the targets of stigma (i.e., the own). (shrink)

This book addresses the philosophical questions that arise when neuroscientific research and technology are applied in the legal system. The empirical, practical, ethical, and conceptual issues that Pardo and Patterson seek to redress will deeply influence how we negotiate and implement the fruits of neuroscience in law and policy in the future.

At the invitation of the Editors, we wrote an article (entitled, “Minds, Brains, and Norms”) detailing our views on a variety of claims by those arguing for the explanatory power of neuroscience in matters of law and ethics. The Editors invited comments on our article from four distinguished academics (Walter Glannon, Carl Craver, Sarah Robins, and Thomas Nadelhoffer) and invited our reply to their critique of our views. In this reply to our commentators, we correct some potential misunderstandings of our (...) views and further clarify our positions with discussions of the conceptual-empirical distinction, rule-following, explanations at the personal and subpersonal levels, memory, and lie detection. Although we acknowledge many of the criticisms advanced by our distinguished colleagues, we conclude that, in several important respects, their criticisms confirm the points made in our original article. (shrink)

In this review we deal with open quantum systems within the Bohmian mechanics framework which has the advantage to provide a clear picture of quantum phenomena in terms of trajectories, originally in configuration space. The gradual decoherence process is studied from linear and nonlinear Schrödinger equations through Bohmian trajectories as well as by using the so-called quantum-classical transition differential equation through scaled trajectories. This transition is governed by a continuous parameter, the transition parameter, covering these two extreme open dynamical regimes. (...) Thus, two sources of decoherence of different nature are going to be considered. Several examples will be presented and discussed in order to illustrate the corresponding theory behind each case, namely: the so-called Brownian–Bohmian motion leading to quantum diffusion coefficients, dissipative diffraction in time, dissipative tunnelling for a parabolic barrier under the presence of an electric field and stochastic early arrivals for the same type of barrier. In order to simplify the notations and physical discussion, the theoretical developments will be carried out in one dimension throughout all this wok. One of the main goals is to analyze the gradual decoherence process existing in these open dynamical regimes in terms of trajectories, leading to a more intuitive way of understanding the underlying physics in order to gain new insights. (shrink)

The essays can be seen as addressing Tarski's seminal treatment of four basic questions about logical consequence. (1) How are we to understand truth, one of ...

Bringing together the latest work from leading scholars in this emerging and vibrant subfield of law, this book examines the philosophical issues that inform the intersection between law and neuroscience.

First collected in Italy in 1985, _Art's Claim to Truth_ is considered by many philosophers to be one of Gianni Vattimo's most important works. Newly revised for English readers, the book begins with a challenge to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, who viewed art as a metaphysical aspect of reality rather than a futuristic anticipation of it. Following Martin Heidegger's interpretation of the history of philosophy, Vattimo outlines the existential ontological conditions of aesthetics, paying particular attention to the works of (...) Kandinsky, which reaffirm the ontological implications of art. Vattimo then builds on Hans-Georg Gadamer's theory of aesthetics and provides an alternative to a rationalistic-positivistic criticism of art. This is the heart of Vattimo's argument, and with it he demonstrates how hermeneutical philosophy reaffirms art's ontological status and makes clear the importance of hermeneutics for aesthetic studies. In the book's final section, Vattimo articulates the consequences of reclaiming the ontological status of aesthetics without its metaphysical implications, holding Aristotle's concept of beauty responsible for the dissolution of metaphysics itself. In its direct engagement with the works of Gadamer, Heidegger, and Luigi Pareyson, _Art's Claim to Truth_ offers a better understanding of the work of Vattimo and a deeper knowledge of ontology, hermeneutics, and the philosophical examination of truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art's DetourA Clash of Aesthetic TheoriesS. K. Wertz (bio)Both John Dewey1 and Martin Heidegger2 thought that art's audience had to take a detour in order to appreciate or understand a work of art. They wrote about this around the same time (mid-1930s) and independently of one another, so this similar circumstance in the history of aesthetics is unusual since they come from very different philosophical traditions. What was it (...) about the climate of the times that led them to such an idea? Is it still viable today? Both philosophers thought that art's audience is not in a position to immediately appreciate works of art—that we are missing something for a direct appreciation or apprehension—so we must take a detour. Why the detours and what are they? Are the detours similar? And are Dewey and Heidegger right about this? The essay that unfolds below attempts to answer these questions.First a definition is in order so we know what the term "detour" means when I use it. What is a detour? It is a deviation from a direct course or the usual procedure; a roundabout way temporarily replacing part of a route; in other words, a bypass or a roundabout way to some destination. The Little Oxford Dictionary adds a different twist on my characterization: "a course that leaves and rejoins [the] direct route."3 Applying this idea to art, we can say that a detour describes an audience who ordinarily perceives an artwork is a legitimate beginning for an appreciation of it, but that course must be bypassed for another (conception) before it can rejoin the direct route (perception). In other words, perceptions in the aesthetic experience must be aided by conceptions—a decidedly Kantian stance taken by Dewey and Heidegger. Their illustrations make my interpretation plausible.One of Heidegger's examples is Van Gogh's painting of a pair of peasant boots.4 He selects this painting to illustrate his metaphysics, which centers around the notion of "equipment." Peasant boots are equipment in [End Page 100] the sense that they are worn or used; the mere thing (like shoes or boots in a store [exhibited] or a closet [in storage]) disappears in use and becomes equipment. Between equipment and mere things—these two categories of being—are artworks. They are pictorial representations of equipment (in Heidegger's illustration; a pair of shoes as mere things could be a pictorial representation, like an advertisement, but it wouldn't be the same). Through the painted boots, a world comes into focus—a network of meaning. The world Heidegger sees in the Van Gogh painting is captured in the following descriptions: "In the vicinity of the [art]work we were suddenly somewhere else than we usually tend to be…. The art work let us know what shoes are in truth" (ATCR 233). So the nature of art is still a question about the nature of representation for Heidegger: it is what the shoes disclose to us about human existence. As he says, it is not just merely a pair of shoes portrayed but shoes "from the dark opening of the worn insides … the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth" (ATCR 232). In other words, we see the difficult labor that this particular owner toiled with in her daily chores.In Tralbaut's book, he quotes Heidegger in a caption alongside the painting: "Engraving in the intimate obscurity of the hollow of a boot is the weariness of the steps of work. The rough and solid weight of the clog tells of the slow and obstinate trudge across the fields."5 Heidegger continues in the same vein:In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles slides the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls. In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of... (shrink)

In many animals, early development of the embryo is characterized by synchronous, biphasic cell divisions. These cell divisions are controlled by maternally inherited proteins and RNAs. A critical question in developmental biology is how the embryo transitions to a later pattern of asynchronous cell divisions and transfers the prior maternal control of development to the zygotic genome. The most‐common model regarding how this transition from maternal to zygotic control is regulated posits that this is a consequence of the limitation of (...) maternal gene products, due to their titration during early cell divisions. Here we discuss a recent article by Crest et al.1 that instead proposes that the balance of Cyclin‐dependent Kinase 1 and Cyclin B (Cdk1‐CycB) activity relative to that of the Drosophila checkpoint kinase Chk1 determines when asynchronous divisions begin. BioEssays 29:949–952, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Through advances in production and treatment technologies, transparent glass has become an increasingly versatile material and a global hallmark of modern architecture. In the shape of invisible barriers, it defines spaces while simultaneously shaping their lighting, noise, and climate conditions. Despite these unique architectural qualities, little is known regarding the human experience with glass barriers. Is a material that has been described as being simultaneously there and not there from an architectural perspective, actually there and/or not there from perceptual, behavioral, (...) and social points of view? In this article, we review systematic observations and experimental studies that explore the impact of transparent barriers on human cognition and action. In doing so, the importance of empirical and multidisciplinary approaches to inform the use of glass in contemporary architecture is highlighted and key questions for future inquiry are identified. (shrink)

First collected in Italy in 1985, _Art's Claim to Truth_ is considered by many philosophers to be one of Gianni Vattimo's most important works. Newly revised for English readers, the book begins with a challenge to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, who viewed art as a metaphysical aspect of reality rather than a futuristic anticipation of it. Following Martin Heidegger's interpretation of the history of philosophy, Vattimo outlines the existential ontological conditions of aesthetics, paying particular attention to the works of (...) Kandinsky, which reaffirm the ontological implications of art. Vattimo then builds on Hans-Georg Gadamer's theory of aesthetics and provides an alternative to a rationalistic-positivistic criticism of art. This is the heart of Vattimo's argument, and with it he demonstrates how hermeneutical philosophy reaffirms art's ontological status and makes clear the importance of hermeneutics for aesthetic studies. In the book's final section, Vattimo articulates the consequences of reclaiming the ontological status of aesthetics without its metaphysical implications, holding Aristotle's concept of beauty responsible for the dissolution of metaphysics itself. In its direct engagement with the works of Gadamer, Heidegger, and Luigi Pareyson, _Art's Claim to Truth_ offers a better understanding of the work of Vattimo and a deeper knowledge of ontology, hermeneutics, and the philosophical examination of truth. (shrink)

Introduction : the last of the German Jewish philosophers -- The philosophical roots of the Holocaust -- The Jewish encounter with modern philosophy -- The matter of singularity -- From Auschwitz to Jerusalem -- Tikkun haolam -- Closing reflections.

The title of this paper may, at first glance, somewhat surprise the casual reader. That the writings of a philosopher who was, by his own confession, an atheist should contain a trenchant critique of the theistic position is only to be expected; but the suggestion that any positive contribution to the philosophy of religion can be found in them may appear somewhat startling, and even paradoxical.

Since the launch of applications such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, generative artificial intelligence has been controversial as a tool for creating artwork. While some have presented longtermist worries about these technologies as harbingers of fully automated futures to come, more pressing is the impact of generative AI on creative labour in the present. Already, business leaders have begun replacing human artistic labour with AI-generated images. In response, the artistic community has launched a protest movement, which argues that AI (...) image generation is a kind of theft. This paper analyzes, substantiates, and critiques these arguments, concluding that AI image generators involve an unethical kind of labour theft. If correct, many other AI applications also rely upon theft. (shrink)

Descartes says that the Meditations contains the foundations of his physics. But how does the work advance his geometrical view of the corporeal world? His argument for this view of matter is often taken to be concluded with the proof of the existence of bodies in the Sixth Meditation. This paper focuses on the work that follows the proof, where Descartes pursues the question of what we should think about qualities such as light, sound and pain, as well as the (...) size and shape of particular bodies. His inquiry makes crucial use of the notion of a teaching of nature originating from God, as contrasted with an apparent teaching of nature originating from habit. I attempt to reconstruct Descartes's use of these notions in order to clarify the way in which he makes space for his geometrical conception of the corporeal world. (shrink)

The Art of War application to education is about solving problems to improve student and school success. The Art of War describes the significance of a leader and his knowledge and prudent application of the strategies. At the core of theses strategies is the non-negotiable moral purpose of the leader to be reinforced by other fine qualities as wisdom, commitment, discipline, and courage.

This essay examines the possible systematic bias against the disabled in the structure and practice of genetic counseling. Finding that the profession's “nondirective” imperative remains problematic, the authors recommend that methodology developed by feminist standpoint epistemology be used to incorporate the perspective of disabled individuals in genetic counselors' education and practice, thereby reforming society's view of the disabled and preventing possible negative effects of genetic counseling on the self-concept and material circumstance of disabled individuals.

: This essay examines the possible systematic bias against the disabled in the structure and practice of genetic counseling. Finding that the profession's "nondirective" imperative remains problematic, the authors recommend that methodology developed by feminist standpoint epistemology be used to incorporate the perspective of disabled individuals in genetic counselors' education and practice, thereby reforming society's view of the disabled and preventing possible negative effects of genetic counseling on the self-concept and material circumstance of disabled individuals.