"Using an historical approach, Virtue's Own Feature explores nine of Shakespeare's most successful works as representations of the passions, virtues, and vices as they are complexly and extensively set out by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas." "The work first undertakes to describe the late Elizabethan poetic of Sir Philip Sidney, which is demonstrated to be Shakespeare's poetic as well. Second, this study explores Shakespeare's plays in relation to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of moral philosophy, one important branch of a major sixteenth-century philosophical (...) tradition."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

The basic argument of the essay is that in The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare represents Aristotelian-Thomistic notions of love and friendship. In the attraction of Bassanio for Portia we have the three-fold analysis of love as desire for the useful, the pleasurable and the virtuous. In the male friendship between Antonio and Bassanio we see the liberal man’s virtuous desire to give and share his wealth with his friends. Both relationships are concerned with giving and taking, a reflection of the (...) Aristotelian-Thomistic distinction between love as desire and love as friendship. A final note is the play’s conclusion in the Aristotelian goods of happiness, gratuitous good fortune with the safe arrival of Antonio’s ships, union in friendship and marriage with Portia and Bassanio, Nerissa and Gaziano, and the wonder and delight that is to follow with Portia’s answer to all remaining questions. (shrink)

With reference to the virtue-ethics tradition, especially the system of St. Thomas Aquinas, this essay interprets the pentangle emblazoned on Gawain’s shield as symbolizing the perfection of interconnected virtues, and the Green Knight as figuring Christ in his martyrdom. Linking these two strands of meaning is the Thomist idea of fortitude, the virtue under particular scrutiny in the poem. Gawain fulfills the secondary part of fortitude, attack, while the Green Knight fulfills the primary part, endurance, and is identified with Christ. (...) His axe, holly bob, and green coloration, and even his menacing aspect, all foster this significance. (shrink)

What were Shakespeare's final thoughts on history, tragedy, and comedy? Shakespeare's Last Plays focuses much needed scholarly attention on Shakespeare's "Late Romances." The work--a collection of newly commissioned essays by leading scholars of classical political philosophy and literature--offers careful textual analysis of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, All is True, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The essays reveal how Shakespeare's thought in these final works compliments, challenges, fulfills, or transforms previously held conceptions of the playwright (...) and his political-philosophical views. (shrink)

With reference to the virtue-ethics tradition, especially the system of St. Thomas Aquinas, this essay interprets the pentangle emblazoned on Gawain’s shield as symbolizing the perfection of interconnected virtues, and the Green Knight as figuring Christ in his martyrdom. Linking these two strands of meaning is the Thomist idea of fortitude, the virtue under particular scrutiny in the poem. Gawain fulfills the secondary part of fortitude, attack, while the Green Knight fulfills the primary part, endurance, and is identified with Christ. (...) His axe, holly bob, and green coloration, and even his menacing aspect, all foster this significance. (shrink)

'The Person at the Crossroads: A Philosophical Approach' brings together scholars from around the world who share a common interest in the nature and activity of the human person. Personhood is examined from a variety of perspectives, both philosophical and theological, drawing on the rich traditions of both Western and Eastern thought. Readers will find themselves on a journey through the works of past and current scholars including, Confucius, Augustine, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Horace Bushnell, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michael Polanyi, (...) Rudolf Carnap, Karol Wojtyla, Erazim Kohak, and many other authors who touch upon the personalist tradition and the human person. This volume will be of particular interest to readers interested in the nature of the human person, as well as philosophy and theology undergraduate and graduate students and professors teaching in these areas. -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

A Neuroscientist Offers Evidence of Where the Brain Ends and Consciousness Begins.

In 1927 at the fifth Solvay Council, that reunited all the aristocracy of theoretical physics, Einstein, regarding with solicitude the new-born “quantum mechanics” of Louis de Broglie, Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac, discerned with his usual sagacity an indelible mark that was destined to become, with time, a subject of passionate discussion among those whose vocation is to adulate this enigmatic and capricious personality.In 1926 Born had given the prophetic stroke to the portrait. Turning to probability as to the official factotum (...) of the reconciliation of the continuous and the discontinuous-here, the associated wave and particle-he transmuted the waves of de Broglie and Schr6dinger into an undulatory calculus o f probabilities, deducing, from a surprising principle, consequences that were even more surprising but always verified through experiment. Parting from the idea that the intensity of the wave is the probability of the detection of the particle at a given point and time, Born replaced the classic principle of addition of partial probabilities with his “principle of the addition of partial amplitudes” that are, as in classical optics, represented by “complex” dimensions, with one real part and one imaginary part. In general, the square of the module of the sum of amplitudes will be the probability. This expression contains, of course, the terms “square” and “rectangular.” The first, if they were alone, would give the former law; as for the second, they express the existence of phenomena of interference that are at the origin of the thousand and one well verified paradoxes of the “new mechanics “-the one thousand and first being the one under consideration here. (shrink)

From religion to philosophy to science, all human systems of definition are formed by human brains. The nature and limits of the human brain are the nature and limits of those systems. This essay shows how the human brain works normally then unusually, and what this reveals about the limits of human knowledge. There are many conditions and instances where the brain processes information unusually, including mental disorders, physical events, and drug use. This essay focuses on the neurological events called (...) mystical experiences. (shrink)

This short peer-reviewed text is a concise look at the psychology of how human beings make decisions, including how they form their worldviews and make arguments.

This paper aims to provide two abductive considerations adducing in favor of the thesis of Necessitism in modal ontology. I demonstrate how instances of the Barcan formula can be witnessed, when the modal operators are interpreted 'naturally' -- i.e., as including geometric possibilities -- and the quantifiers in the formula range over a domain of natural, or concrete, entities and their contingently non-concrete analogues. I argue that, because there are considerations within physics and metaphysical inquiry which corroborate modal relationalist claims (...) concerning the possible geometric structures of spacetime, and dispositional properties are actual possible entities, the condition of being grounded in the concrete is consistent with the Barcan formula; and thus -- in the geometric setting -- merits adoption by the Necessitist. (shrink)

Part of the appeal of the biological approach to personal identity is that it does not have to countenance spatially coincident entities. But if the termination thesis is correct and the organism ceases to exist at death, then it appears that the corpse is a dead body that earlier was a living body and distinct from but spatially coincident with the organism. If the organism is identified with the body, then the unwelcome spatial coincidence could perhaps be avoided. It is (...) argued that such an identification would be a mistake. A living organism has a different part/whole relationship and persistence conditions than the alleged body. A case will be made that the concept ‘human body’ is a conceptual mess, vague in an unprincipled manner, and that an eliminativist stance towards dead bodies is the appropriate response. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Oxford Philosophical Texts Series Editor: John Cottingham The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of authoritative teaching editions of canonical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world down to modern times. Each volume provides a clear, well laid out text together with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist, giving the student detailed critical guidance on the intellectual context of the work and the structure and philosophical importance of the main arguments. Endnotes are supplied which provide further commentary (...) on the arguments and explain unfamiliar references and terminology, and a full bibliography and index are also included. The series aims to build up a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, which will form a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike. David Hume's aim in writing An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding was to introduce his philosophy to a European culture in which many educated people read original works of philosophy. He gives an elegant and accessible presentation of strikingly original and challenging views about the limited powers of human understanding, the attractions of scepticism, the compatibility of free will and determinism, and weaknesses in the foundations of religion. Hume's philosophy was highly controversial in the eighteenth century and remains so today. The text printed in this edition is that of the Clarendon critical edition of Hume's works. A substantial introduction by the editor explains the intellectual background to the work and surveys its main themes. The volume also includes detailed explanatory notes on the text, a glossary of terms, a full list of references, and a section of supplementary readings. (shrink)

As a continuation of the work of the third author in [5], we make further observations on the features of Galois cohomology in the general model theoretic context. We make explicit the connection between forms of definable groups and first cohomology sets with coefficients in a suitable automorphism group. We then use a method of twisting cohomology (inspired by Serre’s algebraic twisting) to describe arbitrary fibres in cohomology sequences—yielding a useful “finiteness” result on cohomology sets. Applied to the special case (...) of differential fields and Kolchin’s constrained cohomology, we complete results from [3] by proving that the first constrained cohomology set of a differential algebraic group over a bounded, differentially large, field is countable. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

A drastic resolution of the quantum paradoxes is proposed, combining (I) von Neumann's postulate that collapse of the state vector is due to the act of observation, and (II) my reinterpretation of von Neumann's quantal irreversibility as an equivalence between wave retardation and entropy increase, both being “factlike” rather than “lawlike” (Mehlberg). This entails a coupling of the two de jure symmetries between (I) retarded and (II) advanced waves, and between Aristotle's information as (I) learning and (II) willing awareness. Symmetric (...) acceptance of cognizance as a source of retarted waves, and of will as a sink of advanced waves, is submitted as a central “paradox” of the Copernican or Einsteinian sort, out of which new light is shed upon previously known paradoxes, such as the EPR paradox, Schrödinger's cat, and Wigner's friend. Parapsychology is thus found to creep into the picture. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to Lewis's work in metaphysics and epistemology. Topics covered include properties, ontology, possibility, truthmaking, probability, the mind-body problem, vision, belief, and knowledge. The purpose of this collection, and the volumes that precede and follow it, is to disseminate more widely the work of an eminent and influential contemporary philosopher. The volume will serve as a useful work of reference for teachers and students of philosophy.

Brillouin sees order as generated by tapping negentropy sources existing upstream, while Prigogine sees it as generated by dumping entropy downstream. Joining both ideas yields a picture of the computer closely paralleling that of Carnot's heat engine. The difference is that the one delivers information and the other, work. In either case the irretrievable (that is, by definition) loss occurs at the last step. Bennett and Landauer very rightly emphasize this, but their fixation on the condenser blinds them to the (...) necessity of the furnace; thus they are led to believe in the possibility of “perpetual duplication of the second kind,” which Brillouin explicitly denies. (shrink)

In this classic work David Bohm, writing clearly and without technical jargon, develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole.

Bohr's 1930 derivation of the uncertainty relation c 2 δm δt≥h bears a close relationship to Einstein's 1913 derivation of the “gravitational redshift” via the “equivalence principle.” A rewording of Bohr's argument is presented here, not taking the last step of acceleration as “equivalent” to a uniform gravity field, thus yielding a derivation of the formula c 2 δm δt≥h, avoiding Treder's 1971 objection.

As shown by Ramarkrishnan, the faithful mapping, in the sense of Lie groups, of the real line onto the finite segment−1

Special Relativity in Philosophy of Physical Science

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On relativistic covariance, modelism vs. formalism, and poetry.

A derivation by Fröhner of non-relativistic quantum mechanics via Fourier analysis applied to probability theory is not extendable to relativistic quantum mechanics because Schrödinger's positive definite probability density ψ*ψ is lost (Dirac's spin 1/2 case being the exception). The nature of the Fourier link then changes; it points to a redefinition of the probability scheme as an information carrying telegraph, the code of which is Born's as extended by Dirac and by Feynman. Hermitian symmetry of the transition amplitude 〈ϕ∣ψ〉 between (...) Dirac representations expresses reciprocity of preparation and measurement (the quantal coding and decoding), two equally active interventions of the physicist; as “the measurement perturbs the system” retrodiction implies retroaction evidenced in “delayed choice.” Reciprocity of knowledge and organization vindicates Wigner's claim that “reciprocal to the action of matter upon mind there exists a direct action of mind upon matter”: psychokinesis, branded by Jaynes as “a psychiatric disorder of the Copenhagen school.” As for factlike irreversibility, it is expressed by the enormity of the change rate from information to negentropy: while gain in knowledge is normal psychokinesis is paranormal. Stapp's recent discussion of psychokinesis in a quantum context should be resumed in association with an EPR correlation; an experimental test is proposed. (shrink)

Religion, science, and naturalism -- Perception and religious experience -- Panexperientialism, freedom, and the mind-body relation -- Naturalistic, dipolar theism -- Natural theology based on naturalistic theism -- Evolution, evil, and eschatology -- The two ultimates and the religions -- Religion, morality, and civilization -- Religious language and truth -- Religious knowledge and common sense.