Recent research in ethics education shows a potentially problematic variation in content, curricular materials, and instruction. While ethics instruction is now widespread, studies have identified significant variation in both the goals and methods of ethics education, leaving researchers to conclude that many approaches may be inappropriately paired with goals that are unachievable. This paper speaks to these concerns by demonstrating the importance of aligning classroom-based assessments to clear ethical learning objectives in order to help students and instructors track their progress (...) toward meeting those objectives. Two studies at two different universities demonstrate the usefulness of classroom-based, formative assessments for improving the quality of students’ case responses in computational modeling and research ethics. (shrink)

Background To describe the preferences for disclosure of individual biomarker results among mothers participating in a longitudinal birth cohort. Methods We surveyed 343 mothers that participated in the Health Outcomes and Measures of the Environment Study about their biomarker disclosure preferences. Participants were told that the study was measuring pesticide metabolites in their biological specimens, and that the health effects of these low levels of exposure are unknown. Participants were asked whether they wanted to receive their results and their child's (...) results. In addition, they were asked about their preferred method (letter vs in person) and format (more complex vs less complex) for disclosure of results. Results Almost all of the study participants wanted to receive their individual results (340/343) as well as their child's results (342/343). However, preferences for receiving results differed by education level. Mothers with less than a college degree preferred in-person disclosure of results more often than mothers with some college education or a college degree (34.3% vs 17.4% vs 7.9%, p<0.001). Similarly, mothers with less than a college education preferred a less complex disclosure format than mothers with some college education or a college degree (59.7% vs 79.1% vs 86.3%, p<0.0001). Conclusion While almost all study participants preferred to receive results of their individual biomarker tests, level of education was a key factor in predicting preferences for disclosure of biomarker results. To ensure effective communication of this information, disclosure of biomarker results should be tailored to the education level of the study participants. (shrink)

Background: There is a growing interest in using cognitive behavioural therapy with people who have Asperger Syndrome and comorbid mental health problems. Aims: To examine whether modified group CBT for clinically significant anxiety in an AS population is feasible and likely to be efficacious. Method: Using a randomised assessor-blind trial, 52 individuals with AS were randomised into a treatment arm or a waiting-list control arm. After 24 weeks, those in the waiting-list control arm received treatment, while those initially randomised to (...) treatment were followed-up for 24 weeks. Results: The conversion rate for this trial was high, while attrition was 13%. After 24 weeks, there was no significant difference between those randomised to the treatment arm compared to those randomised to the waiting-list control arm on the primary outcome measure, the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety. Conclusions: Trials of psychological therapies with this population are feasible. Larger definitive trials are now needed. Declaration of Interest: None Trial Registration: ISRCTN 30265294, UKCRN 8370. (shrink)

We present the first comprehensive taxonomic revision and review the biology of the olingos, the endemic Neotropical procyonid genus Bassaricyon, based on most specimens available in museums, and with data derived from anatomy, morphometrics, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, field observations, and geographic range modeling. Species of Bassaricyon are primarily forest-living, arboreal, nocturnal, frugivorous, and solitary, and have one young at a time. We demonstrate that four olingo species can be recognized, including a Central American species (Bassaricyon gabbii), lowland species with (...) eastern, cis-Andean (Bassaricyon alleni) and western, trans-Andean (Bassaricyon medius) distributions, and a species endemic to cloud forests in the Andes. The oldest evolutionary divergence in the genus is between this last species, endemic to the Andes of Colombia and Ecuador, and all other species, which occur in lower elevation habitats. Surprisingly, this Andean endemic species, which we call the Olinguito, has never been previously described; it represents a new species in the order Carnivora and is the smallest living member of the family Procyonidae. We report on the biology of this new species based on information from museum specimens, niche modeling, and fieldwork in western Ecuador, and describe four Olinguito subspecies based on morphological distinctions across different regions of the Northern Andes. (shrink)

We present a new road map for research on “How the Brain Got Language” that adopts an EvoDevoSocio perspective and highlights comparative neuroprimatology – the comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in extant monkeys and great apes – as providing a key grounding for hypotheses on the last common ancestor of humans and monkeys and chimpanzees and the processes which guided the evolution LCA-m → LCA-c → protohumans → H. sapiens. Such research constrains and is constrained by analysis of (...) the subsequent, primarily cultural, evolution of H. sapiens which yielded cultures involving the rich use of language. (shrink)

There is now general agreement about the optionality of scalar implicatures: the pragmatic interpretation will be accessed depending on the context relative to which the utterance is interpreted. The question, then, is what makes a context upper- (vs. lower-) bounding. Neo-Gricean accounts should predict that contexts including factual information will enhance the rate of pragmatic interpretations. Post-Gricean accounts should predict that contexts including psychological attributions will enhance the rate of pragmatic interpretations. We tested two factors using the quantifier scale all, (...) some >: (1) the existence of factual information that facilitates the computation of pragmatic interpretations in the context (here, the cardinality of the domain of quantification) and (2) the fact that the context makes the difference between the semantic and the pragmatic interpretations of the target sentence relevant, involving psychological attributions to the speaker (here a question using all ). We did three experiments, all of which suggest that while cardinality information may be necessary to the computation of the pragmatic interpretation, it plays a minor role in triggering it; highlighting the contrast between the pragmatic and the semantic interpretations, while it is not necessary to the computation of the pragmatic interpretation, strongly mandates a pragmatic interpretation. These results favor Sperber and Wilson's ( 1995 ) post-Gricean account over Chierchia's ( 2013 ) neo-Gricean account. Overall, this suggests that highlighting the relevance of the pragmatic vs. semantic interpretations of the target sentence makes a context upper-bounding. Additionally, the results give a small advantage to the post-Gricean account. (shrink)

The following represents excerpts from a transcription of the informal discussion that ensued after Stephen Pope and Philip Hefner delivered the preceding papers at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., 20 February 2000. These excerpts are presented with a minimum of editing, to preserve the extemporaneous, informal, oral character of the conversation. The excerpts end with a fragmentary comment by E. O. Wilson, conveying the spirit of the actual conversation, which (...) was halted when the allotted time had elapsed and the sense of the group was that areas had been opened up for further conversation that could not be continued at this meeting. (shrink)

This paper provides an empirically informed perspective on the notion of responsibility using an ethical framework that has received little attention in the engineering-related literature to date: ethics of care. In this work, we ground conceptual explorations of engineering responsibility in empirical findings from engineering student’s writing on the human health and environmental impacts of “backyard” electronic waste recycling/disposal. Our findings, from a purposefully diverse sample of engineering students in an introductory electrical engineering course, indicate that most of these engineers (...) of tomorrow associated engineers with responsibility for the electronic waste problem in some way. However, a number of responses suggested attempts to deflect responsibility away from engineers towards, for example, the government or the companies for whom engineers work. Still other students associated both engineers and non-engineers with responsibility, demonstrating the distributed/collective nature of responsibility that will be required to achieve a solution to the global problem of excessive e-waste. Building upon one element of a framework for care ethics adopted from the wider literature, these empirical findings are used to facilitate a preliminary, conceptual exploration of care-ethical responsibility within the context of engineering and e-waste recycling/disposal. The objective of this exploration is to provide a first step toward understanding how care-ethical responsibility applies to engineering. We also hope to seed dialogue within the engineering community about its ethical responsibilities on the issue. We conclude the paper with a discussion of its implications for engineering education and engineering ethics that suggests changes for educational policy and the practice of engineering. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When an Arab Laughs in Toledo: Cervantes’s Interpellation of Early Modern Spanish OrientalismE. C. Graf (bio)My purpose has been to place in the plaza of our republic a game table which everyone can approach to entertain themselves without fear of being harmed by the rods; by which I mean without harm to spirit or body, because honest and agreeable exercises are always more likely to do good than harm.—Miguel (...) de Cervantes Saavedra, Prologue to Novelas ejemplares [my translation]We are engaged in a technical enterprise at the species scale.—Jacques Lacan, “L’agressivité en psychanalyse” [my translation]While I was all intent on watching him, he looked at me, and with his hands he spread his chest and said: “See how I split myself!”!—Dante Alighieri, Inferno 28.28–30 Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child (c. 1490). Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; ©1999 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.Salvador Dalí, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening (1941). Courtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; ©1999 Artists' Rights Society (ARS), New York.For much of this century, Hispanists have labored in an effort to elevate Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) to the coveted status of the “first modern novel.” Today this kind of criticism may strike our postmodern sensibilities as a rather traditional enterprise, the kind more interested in establishing an elite hierarchy of literary tastes than in saying anything new about an author or text. For many, the study of literature is still an aesthetic beauty pageant in which “great books” like Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1767) or Marie de la Vergne de La Fayette’s La princesse de Clèves (1678) are paraded across the stage in a contest to seduce the Western intelligentsia. 1 The postmodern student of literature may not have much concern for this age-old territorial contest, but she might be interested to learn that the fallout from Hispanism’s quest for the “first modern novel” has involved so much attention to, indeed complication of, Don Quixote, that the book now resembles more a postmodern text than an early modern one. At the turn of the century, we have been left with what Jorge Luis Borges would recognize as an “aleph”: an infinite ideological labyrinth that reflects and/or cannibalizes all forms, thereby escaping all attempts [End Page 68] to describe it. 2 Whatever we currently mean by “Cervantes” (an author, a collection of texts, an ideological construction, and so forth) carries with it an impressive range of critical responses. Cervantes has been labeled converso (Castro, Canavaggio), Christian humanist (Castro, Bataillon, Forcione, Herrero, Vilanova), disillusioned secularist (Lukács, Cascardi), precapitalist (Johnson), anti-essentialist (Wilson), anti-Eusebian (Presberg), Menippean (Bakhtin), feminist (El Saffar, Rabin, Cruz), sadist (Nabokov), ethnocentric imperialist (Mariscal), medieval (Gorfkle), homophobic (Martín), non-organicist Aristotelian (Read), and either discursively or actually homosexual (Combet, Rossi, Smith, Arrabal). This list is nowhere near complete, but the reader will grasp the robust effects of the plurality of perspectives on Cervantes.Each of these interpretations is valid to varying degrees within various contexts, but at present I am interested in reading Cervantes as the author of a multicultural manifesto on behalf of the Moriscos of Southern Spain. 3 Within the contexts of French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and Palestinian postcolonial literary critic Edward Said, materialist, postcolonial, and multicultural critiques of various forms of power and their ideologies can be seen as the fundamental propositions of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. 4 Cervantes’s ultimate orientation may perhaps be inescapably Eurocentric, but his responses to the European experience of the rise and expansion of an ethnocentric militaristic nation state are relatively centrifugal when compared to the attitudes of many of his contemporaries.In surveying some of the antihegemonic details of Cervantes’s novel, I am also interested in dispelling the popular myth of Don Quixote. Especially in the English-speaking world, and particularly in the United States, Don Quixote remains captive to a... (shrink)

De acordo com a concepção dominante de causação, eventos espácio-temporalmente localizáveis que podem ser designados por termos singulares e descrições definidas são os únicos relata genuínos da relação causal. Isto dá apoio e é apoiado pela dicotomia aceita entre a explicação causal, concebida como uma relação intensional entre fatos ou verdades, e a relação natural e extensional da causação. O ensaio questiona este modo de ver e argumenta pela legitimidade da noção de causação por fatos: os relata de muitas relações (...) expressas pelo conector sentencial ‘(O fato) C causa (o fato) E’ podem ser causas e efeitos genuínos (I). Esta visão expandida da causação é então aplicada ao problema da causação mental. Assumindo a verdade do realizacionismo físico, o ensaio explora a conexão entre eficácia causal e relevância contrafactual de propriedades. Mostra-se que, pelo menos em muitos casos, as ligações contrafactuais corretas, requeridas pela causação, podem ser encontradas somente no nível dos fatos realizados, não no nível mais básico dos fatos realizadores (II). Finalmente, dadas as similaridades entre a defesa do fisicismo não-reducionista esboçada aqui e as tentativas menos modestas de justificação científica das pretensões do materialismo metafísico, justamente criticadas por van Fraassen como manifestações da ‘falsa consciência’, considera-se se e como a argumento principal do ensaio pode evitar o juízo crítico de van Fraassen (III). (shrink)

We present a new road map for research on “How the Brain Got Language” that adopts an EvoDevoSocio perspective and highlights comparative neuroprimatology – the comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in extant monkeys and great apes – as providing a key grounding for hypotheses on the last common ancestor of humans and monkeys and chimpanzees and the processes which guided the evolution LCA-m → LCA-c → protohumans → H. sapiens. Such research constrains and is constrained by analysis of (...) the subsequent, primarily cultural, evolution of H. sapiens which yielded cultures involving the rich use of language. (shrink)

The electronic and muonic hydrogen energy levels are calculated very accurately [1] in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) by coupling the Dirac Equation four vector (c ,mc2) current covariantly with the external electromagnetic (EM) field four vector in QED’s Interactive Representation (IR). The c -Non Exclusion Principle(c -NEP) states that, if one accepts c as the electron/muon velocity operator because of the very accurate hydrogen energy levels calculated, the one must also accept the resulting electron/muon internal spatial and time coordinate operators (ISaTCO) (...) derived directly from c without any assumptions. This paper does not change any of the accurate QED calculations of hydrogen’s energy levels, given the simplistic model of the proton used in these calculations [1]. The Proton Radius Puzzle [2, 3] may indicate that new physics is necessary beyond the Standard Model (SM), and this paper describes the bizarre, and very different, situation when the electron and muon are located “inside” the spatially extended proton with their Centers of Charge (CoCs) orbiting the proton at the speed of light in S energy states. The electron/muon center of charge (CoC) is a structureless point that vibrates rapidly in its inseparable, non-random vacuum whose geometry and time structure are defined by the electron/muon ISaTCO discrete geometry. The electron/muon self mass becomes finite in a natural way due to the ISaTCOs cutting off high virtual photon energies in the photon propagator. The Dirac-Maxwell-Wilson (DMW) Equations are derived from the ISaTCO for the EM fields of an electron/muon, and the electron/muon “look” like point particles in far field scattering experiments in the same way the electric field from a sphere with evenly distributed charge “e” “looks” like a point with the same charge in the far field (Gauss Law). The electron’s/muon’s three fluctuating CoC internal spatial coordinate operators have eight possible eigenvalues [4, 5, 6] that fall on a spherical shell centered on the electron’s CoM with radius in the rest frame. The electron/muon internal time operator is discrete, describes the rapid virtual electron/positron pair production and annihilation. The ISaTCO together create a current that produce spin and magnetic moment operators, and the electron and muon no longer have “intrinsic” properties since the ISaTCO kinematics define spin and magnetic moment properties. (shrink)

In the last number of the Journal of Philology a change of punctuation in Sophist 244 C, together with a new interpretation, is proposed. To this serious exception must be taken; or perhaps not too serious, because the proposal can hardly be due to anything but haste and want of revision.It is not only in disagreement with a familiar idiom, but is easily seen to be inconsistent with the context, which can have barely received attention.The passage is as follows: ξE.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS THERE A PRUSSIAN HUME? or How Far Is It from Könisberg to Edinburgh! Lewis White Beck has recently argued that Hume, in spite of his empiricist commitment, implicitly recognized the limitations of that position when he incorporated in his thinking ideas that are essentially Kantian and incompatible with his official empiricism. Beck is not, of course, the first so to argue; Robert Paul Wolff made a 2 similar (...) claim some years ago in a well-known paper. Wolff's case has, however, been challenged, and it is the aim of the present paper to challenge Beck's somev.'hat different case. 4 Beck argues that Hume has two causal principles: (1)Every event has a cause (2)Same cause, same effect the second of which he claims Hume defends, and the first of which he claims Hume does not defend. He then turns to the case of perception, where we observe an object once intermittently and once continuously. The result is a gappy series of impressions in the first case, and a non-gappy one in the second. The existence of the gap falsifies principles (1) and (2). In order to save principle (2), Beck argues, Hume relies on principle (1). The latter enables Hume to "feign" unobserved events to fill the gap. But (1) is also falsified by the empirical data, that is, the existence of the gap. So this appeal to (1) is illegitimate. At least it is illegitimate if the only support we are permitted to use is observational data. And that is all that the official Hume, committed to empiricism, is permitted to use. However, Hume does use (1), contrary to what his official position allows. This suggests that he recognizes, what Kant explicitly argued, that there are non-empirical reasons justifying the acceptance of (1). And it is here that we see the Prussian aspects of the Scots sceptic. Beck's case depends upon three points: (a)He must separate principles (1) and (2). (b)He must argue that gappy series of impressions are filled by appealing to (1). (c)He must argue that gappy series of impressions falsify (1), rendering its use to fill those gaps illegitimately. In what follows it is argued that the distance from Königsberg to Edinburgh cannot thus be bridged. Specifically, it is argued, first, that (a) is false, or, more specifically that for Hume (2) entails (1) ; second, that, when (1) and (2) are so understood, then (b) is partially correct; and third, that, when (1) and (2) are taken as Hume takes them, then (c) is incorrect: the gaps do not falsify (1), its use remains legitimate. Let us begin with principle (2), the "same cause, same effect" principle. This principle is Rule 4 of Hume's rules by which to judge of causes and effects. He states it as The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises hut from the same cause. (T173) Rules 1-3 give the analysis of the causal relation insofar as it is an ob8 jective relation among things. Rule 4 then makes a claim about events and causes. Rule 4 is followed by four rules which are the best statement of Mill's Methods of eliminative induction prior to Herschell's Preliminary Discourse. When one of these methods is used, the data eliminate all possible hypotheses but one, and the conclusion is that this uneliminated hypothesis must be true, correctly describing the relevant causal relation. Hume carefully points out that we draw this conclusion not from the data alone, but 3. also from the "same cause, same effect" principle. Thus, when Hume states Rule 5, the method of agreement, he writes There is another principle, which hangs upon this [i.e., upon Rule 4, "same cause, same effect"], viz. that where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common amongst them. For as_ like effects imply like causes, we must always ascribe the causation to the circumstance, wherein we discover the resemblance. (T174, italics added) We can bring out the logic of the situation if we translate this into the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS THERE A PRUSSIAN HUME? or How Far Is It from Könisberg to Edinburgh! Lewis White Beck has recently argued that Hume, in spite of his empiricist commitment, implicitly recognized the limitations of that position when he incorporated in his thinking ideas that are essentially Kantian and incompatible with his official empiricism. Beck is not, of course, the first so to argue; Robert Paul Wolff made a 2 similar (...) claim some years ago in a well-known paper. Wolff's case has, however, been challenged, and it is the aim of the present paper to challenge Beck's somev.'hat different case. 4 Beck argues that Hume has two causal principles: (1)Every event has a cause (2)Same cause, same effect the second of which he claims Hume defends, and the first of which he claims Hume does not defend. He then turns to the case of perception, where we observe an object once intermittently and once continuously. The result is a gappy series of impressions in the first case, and a non-gappy one in the second. The existence of the gap falsifies principles (1) and (2). In order to save principle (2), Beck argues, Hume relies on principle (1). The latter enables Hume to "feign" unobserved events to fill the gap. But (1) is also falsified by the empirical data, that is, the existence of the gap. So this appeal to (1) is illegitimate. At least it is illegitimate if the only support we are permitted to use is observational data. And that is all that the official Hume, committed to empiricism, is permitted to use. However, Hume does use (1), contrary to what his official position allows. This suggests that he recognizes, what Kant explicitly argued, that there are non-empirical reasons justifying the acceptance of (1). And it is here that we see the Prussian aspects of the Scots sceptic. Beck's case depends upon three points: (a)He must separate principles (1) and (2). (b)He must argue that gappy series of impressions are filled by appealing to (1). (c)He must argue that gappy series of impressions falsify (1), rendering its use to fill those gaps illegitimately. In what follows it is argued that the distance from Königsberg to Edinburgh cannot thus be bridged. Specifically, it is argued, first, that (a) is false, or, more specifically that for Hume (2) entails (1) ; second, that, when (1) and (2) are so understood, then (b) is partially correct; and third, that, when (1) and (2) are taken as Hume takes them, then (c) is incorrect: the gaps do not falsify (1), its use remains legitimate. Let us begin with principle (2), the "same cause, same effect" principle. This principle is Rule 4 of Hume's rules by which to judge of causes and effects. He states it as The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises hut from the same cause. (T173) Rules 1-3 give the analysis of the causal relation insofar as it is an ob8 jective relation among things. Rule 4 then makes a claim about events and causes. Rule 4 is followed by four rules which are the best statement of Mill's Methods of eliminative induction prior to Herschell's Preliminary Discourse. When one of these methods is used, the data eliminate all possible hypotheses but one, and the conclusion is that this uneliminated hypothesis must be true, correctly describing the relevant causal relation. Hume carefully points out that we draw this conclusion not from the data alone, but 3. also from the "same cause, same effect" principle. Thus, when Hume states Rule 5, the method of agreement, he writes There is another principle, which hangs upon this [i.e., upon Rule 4, "same cause, same effect"], viz. that where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common amongst them. For as_ like effects imply like causes, we must always ascribe the causation to the circumstance, wherein we discover the resemblance. (T174, italics added) We can bring out the logic of the situation if we translate this into the... (shrink)

What methodology should philosophers follow? Should they rely on methods that can be conducted from the armchair? Or should they leave the armchair and turn to the methods of the natural sciences, such as experiments in the laboratory? Or is this opposition itself a false one? Arguments about philosophical methodology are raging in the wake of a number of often conflicting currents, such as the growth of experimental philosophy, the resurgence of interest in metaphysical questions, and the use of formal (...) methods. This outstanding collection of specially-commissioned chapters by leading international philosophers discusses these questions and many more. It provides a comprehensive survey of philosophical methodology in the most important philosophical subjects: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, philosophy of science, ethics, and aesthetics. A key feature of the collection is that philosophers discuss and evaluate contrasting approaches in each subject, offering a superb overview of the variety of methodological approaches - both naturalistic and non-naturalistic - in each of these areas. They examine important topics at the heart of methodological argument, including the role of intuitions and conceptual analysis, thought experiments, introspection, and the place that results from the natural sciences should have in philosophical theorizing. The collection begins with a fascinating exchange about philosophical naturalism between Timothy Williamson and Alexander Rosenberg, and also includes contributions from the following philosophers: Lynne Rudder Baker, Matt Bedke, Greg Currie, Michael Devitt, Matthew C. Haug, Jenann Ismael, Hilary Kornblith, Neil Levy, E.J. Lowe, Kirk Ludwig, Marie McGinn, David Papineau, Matthew Ratcliffe, Georges Rey, Jeffrey W. Roland, Barry C. Smith, Amie L. Thomasson, Valerie Tiberius, Jessica Wilson, and David W. Smith. (shrink)

Leibniz entertained the idea that, as a set of “striving possibles” competes for existence, the largest and most perfect world comes into being. The paper proposes 8 criteria for a Leibniz-world. It argues that a) there is no algorithm e.g., one involving pairwise compossibility-testing that can produce even possible Leibniz-worlds; b) individual substances presuppose completed worlds; c) the uniqueness of the actual world is a matter of theological preference, not an outcome of the assembly-process; and d) Goedel’s theorem implies that (...) there can be no algorithm for producing optimal worlds, assuming an optimal world contains truth-discerning creatures, though this is not to say that such worlds cannot arise naturally. (shrink)

Leibniz entertained the idea that, as a set of “striving possibles” competes for existence, the largest and most perfect world comes into being. The paper proposes 8 criteria for a Leibniz-world. It argues that a) there is no algorithm e.g., one involving pairwise compossibility-testing that can produce even possible Leibniz-worlds; b) individual substances presuppose completed worlds; c) the uniqueness of the actual world is a matter of theological preference, not an outcome of the assembly-process; and d) Goedel’s theorem implies that (...) there can be no algorithm for producing optimal worlds, assuming an optimal world contains truth-discerning creatures, though this is not to say that such worlds cannot arise naturally. (shrink)

Aristotle and the sea battle, by G. E. M. Anscombe.--Aristotle's different possibilities, by K. J. J. Hintikka.--On Aristotle's square of opposition, by M. Thompson.--Categories in Aristotle and in Kant, by J. C. Wilson.--Aristotle's Categories, chapters I-V: translation and notes, by J. L. Ackrill.--Aristotle's theory of categories, by J. M. E. Moravcsik.--Essence and accident, by I. M. Copi.--Tithenai ta phainomena, by G. E. L. Owen.--Matter and predication in Aristotle, by J. Owens.--Problems in Metaphysics Z, chapter 13, by M. J. Woods.--The (...) meaning of agathon in the Ethics of Aristotle, by H. A. Prichard.--Agathon and eudaimonia in the Ethics of Aristotle, by J. L. Austin.--The final good in Aristotle's Ethics, by W. F. R. Hardie.--Aristotle on pleasure, by J. O. Urmson.--Bibliography (p. 335-341). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS THERE A PRUSSIAN HUME? or How Far Is It from Könisberg to Edinburgh! Lewis White Beck has recently argued that Hume, in spite of his empiricist commitment, implicitly recognized the limitations of that position when he incorporated in his thinking ideas that are essentially Kantian and incompatible with his official empiricism. Beck is not, of course, the first so to argue; Robert Paul Wolff made a 2 similar (...) claim some years ago in a well-known paper. Wolff's case has, however, been challenged, and it is the aim of the present paper to challenge Beck's somev.'hat different case. 4 Beck argues that Hume has two causal principles: (1)Every event has a cause (2)Same cause, same effect the second of which he claims Hume defends, and the first of which he claims Hume does not defend. He then turns to the case of perception, where we observe an object once intermittently and once continuously. The result is a gappy series of impressions in the first case, and a non-gappy one in the second. The existence of the gap falsifies principles (1) and (2). In order to save principle (2), Beck argues, Hume relies on principle (1). The latter enables Hume to "feign" unobserved events to fill the gap. But (1) is also falsified by the empirical data, that is, the existence of the gap. So this appeal to (1) is illegitimate. At least it is illegitimate if the only support we are permitted to use is observational data. And that is all that the official Hume, committed to empiricism, is permitted to use. However, Hume does use (1), contrary to what his official position allows. This suggests that he recognizes, what Kant explicitly argued, that there are non-empirical reasons justifying the acceptance of (1). And it is here that we see the Prussian aspects of the Scots sceptic. Beck's case depends upon three points: (a)He must separate principles (1) and (2). (b)He must argue that gappy series of impressions are filled by appealing to (1). (c)He must argue that gappy series of impressions falsify (1), rendering its use to fill those gaps illegitimately. In what follows it is argued that the distance from Königsberg to Edinburgh cannot thus be bridged. Specifically, it is argued, first, that (a) is false, or, more specifically that for Hume (2) entails (1) ; second, that, when (1) and (2) are so understood, then (b) is partially correct; and third, that, when (1) and (2) are taken as Hume takes them, then (c) is incorrect: the gaps do not falsify (1), its use remains legitimate. Let us begin with principle (2), the "same cause, same effect" principle. This principle is Rule 4 of Hume's rules by which to judge of causes and effects. He states it as The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises hut from the same cause. (T173) Rules 1-3 give the analysis of the causal relation insofar as it is an ob8 jective relation among things. Rule 4 then makes a claim about events and causes. Rule 4 is followed by four rules which are the best statement of Mill's Methods of eliminative induction prior to Herschell's Preliminary Discourse. When one of these methods is used, the data eliminate all possible hypotheses but one, and the conclusion is that this uneliminated hypothesis must be true, correctly describing the relevant causal relation. Hume carefully points out that we draw this conclusion not from the data alone, but 3. also from the "same cause, same effect" principle. Thus, when Hume states Rule 5, the method of agreement, he writes There is another principle, which hangs upon this [i.e., upon Rule 4, "same cause, same effect"], viz. that where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common amongst them. For as_ like effects imply like causes, we must always ascribe the causation to the circumstance, wherein we discover the resemblance. (T174, italics added) We can bring out the logic of the situation if we translate this into the... (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to defend the deductive-nomological model of explanation against a number of criticisms that have been made of it. It has traditionally been thought that scientific explanations were causal and that scientific explanations involved deduction from laws. In recent years, however, this three-fold identity has been challenged: there are, it is argued, causal explanations that are not scientific, scientific explanations that are not deductive, deductions from laws that are neither causal explanations nor scientific explanations, and (...) causal explanations that involve no deductions from laws. The aim of the present essay is to defend the traditional identities, and to show that the more recent attempts at invalidating them fail in their object. More specifically, this essay argues that a Humean version of the deductive-nomological model of explanation can be defended as the correct account of scientific explanation of individual facts and processes, and as the correct account of causal explanations of individual facts and processes. The deductive-nomological model holds that to explain an event E, say that a is G, one must find some initial conditions C, say that a is F, and a law or theory T such that T and C jointly entail E, and both are essential to the deduction. (shrink)