Focusing on the works of Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Sir William Hamilton, Thomas Brown and James Frederick Ferrier, this book offers a definitive account of an important philosophical movement, and represents a ground-breaking contribution to scholarship in the area. Essential reading for philosophers or anyone with an interest in the history of philosophical thought.

La parution de ce livre a coïncidé exactement avec les premières ordinations de femmes-prêtres dans l'Église d'Angleterre en mars 1994. L'événement et le livre ont produit un certain émoi dans la presse française et cela à juste titre car un événement trés important avait eu lieu en effet. La décision d'ordonner des femmes à la prêtrise prise par l'Église Mère de la Communion anglicane a eu - et continuera à avoir - des répercussions bien au delà de l'Église anglicane elle-même. (...) Mais d.. (shrink)

La parution de ce livre a coïncidé exactement avec les premières ordinations de femmes-prêtres dans l'Église d'Angleterre en mars 1994. L'événement et le livre ont produit un certain émoi dans la presse française et cela à juste titre car un événement trés important avait eu lieu en effet. La décision d'ordonner des femmes à la prêtrise prise par l'Église Mère de la Communion anglicane a eu - et continuera à avoir - des répercussions bien au delà de l'Église anglicane elle-même. (...) Mais d... (shrink)

We use a method suggested by Kolmogorov complexity to examine some relations between Kolmogorov complexity and noncomputability. In particular we show that the method consistently gives us more information than conventional ways of demonstrating noncomputability . Also, many sets which are awkward to embed into the halting problem are easily shown noncomputable. We also prove a gap-theorem for outputting consecutive integers and find, for a given length n, a statement of length n with maximal proof length.

Let ω be a Kolmogorov–Chaitin random sequence with ω1: n denoting the first n digits of ω. Let P be a recursive predicate defined on all finite binary strings such that the Lebesgue measure of the set {ω|∃nP(ω1: n )} is a computable real α. Roughly, P holds with computable probability for a random infinite sequence. Then there is an algorithm which on input indices for any such P and α finds an n such that P holds within the first (...) n digits of ω or not in ω at all. We apply the result to the halting probability Ω and show that various generalizations of the result fail. (shrink)

Focusing on the works of Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Sir William Hamilton, Thomas Brown and James Frederick Ferrier, this book offers a definitive account of an important philosophical movement, and represents a ground-breaking contribution to scholarship in the area. Essential reading for philosophers or anyone with an interest in the history of philosophical thought.

Focusing on the works of Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Sir William Hamilton, Thomas Brown and James Frederick Ferrier, this book offers a definitive account of an important philosophical movement, and represents a ground-breaking contribution to scholarship in the area. Essential reading for philosophers or anyone with an interest in the history of philosophical thought.

Focusing on the works of Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Sir William Hamilton, Thomas Brown and James Frederick Ferrier, this book offers a definitive account of an important philosophical movement, and represents a ground-breaking contribution to scholarship in the area. Essential reading for philosophers or anyone with an interest in the history of philosophical thought.

Exchanges in the nineteenth century between Sir William Hamilton, James Frederick Ferrier and the French philosopher Victor Cousin are crucial to understanding contemporary efforts to preserve the continuity of the Scottish philosophical tradition on the part of those alive to new themes emanating from Kant and philosophy in Germany. Ferrier's strategy aimed at re-invigorating Descartes and Berkeley by drawing on elements in Adam Smith's social philosophy. But the promising steps taken in this direction in Ferrier's essays on consciousness were seriously (...) undermined, in Cousin's view, by the aprioristic character of his Institutes, in which he abandoned the careful empirical method characteristic of Scottish philosophy as practiced by Reid. (shrink)