This chapter describes some basic, often puzzling features of intentionality, with an eye to its role not so much in ordinary folk ascriptions but in serious psychological explanations, especially in many of Noam Chomsky's own presentations of his theory. It then considers Chomsky's censure of the notion, leading him to deny what would seem to be the explicit intentionalisms on which he seems to rely. Implicit in Chomsky's treatment of grammar is the idea that the positing of the language faculty (...) offers an “abstract” perspective on a physical system (the human brain) that implements the relevant features of the abstracta in ways we currently don’t understand. Two initial problems might be raised for this picture, one regarding inference and the other, generalization. The proposed model is effectively saying that theorists track states and generalizations of the linguistic system in an explicitly representational format, but what the theory is true of need not have such representational properties. (shrink)

The Proceedings of the National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control is based on a two-part conceptual framework composed of public health and legal perspectives. The public health perspective comprises the six target areas and intervention settings that are the focus of the obesity prevention and control efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.This paper presents the legal perspective. Legal preparedness in public health is the underpinning of the framework for the four “assessment” papers and (...) the four “action” papers that are integral to the application of public health law to any particular health issue. In addition, this paper gives real-world grounding to the legal framework through examples that illustrate the four core elements of legal preparedness in public health that are at work in obesity prevention and control. (shrink)

The Proceedings of the National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control is based on a two-part conceptual framework composed of public health and legal perspectives. The public health perspective comprises the six target areas and intervention settings that are the focus of the obesity prevention and control efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.This paper presents the legal perspective. Legal preparedness in public health is the underpinning of the framework for the four “assessment” papers and (...) the four “action” papers that are integral to the application of public health law to any particular health issue. In addition, this paper gives real-world grounding to the legal framework through examples that illustrate the four core elements of legal preparedness in public health that are at work in obesity prevention and control. (shrink)

What is a technical object? At the beginning of Western philosophy, Aristotle contrasted beings formed by nature, which had within themselves a beginning of movement and rest, and man-made objects, which did not have the source of their own production within themselves. This book, the first of three volumes, revises the Aristotelian argument and develops an innovative assessment whereby the technical object can be seen as having an essential, distinct temporality and dynamics of its own. The Aristotelian concept persisted, in (...) one form or another, until Marx, who conceived of the possibility of an evolution of technics. Lodged between mechanics and biology, a technical entity became a complex of heterogeneous forces. In a parallel development, while industrialization was in the process of overthrowing the contemporary order of knowledge as well as contemporary social organization, technology was acquiring a new place in philosophical questioning. Philosophy was for the first time faced with a world in which technical expansion was so widespread that science was becoming more and more subject to the field of instrumentality, with its ends determined by the imperatives of economic struggle or war, and with its epistemic status changing accordingly. The power that emerged from this new relation was unleashed in the course of the two world wars. Working his way through the history of the Aristotelian assessment of technics, the author engages the ideas of a wide range of thinkers—Rousseau, Husserl, and Heidegger, the paleo-ontologist Leroi-Gourhan, the anthropologists Vernant and Detienne, the sociologists Weber and Habermas, and the systems analysts Maturana and Varela. (shrink)

Collins’ method is to make an internal textual study of Spinoza’s doctrine on nature with emphasis on his general model of nature that underlies and gov­erns his arguments on particular issues. Separate chapters are devoted to each of his early writings. Two chapters discuss the _Ethics. _Collins concludes with a uni­fying view of Spinoza’s perspective on nature that has a bearing upon many contemporary philosophical issues.

Prostate cancer has become a major health concern of male Americans. It is now the most common nondermatologic cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among men. The incidence of detected prostate cancer rose rapidly in recent years, partly because of prostate-specific antigen testing; it is only now tapering off. Screening for prostate cancer with PSA is widespread in the United States, yet controversial: the American Urological Association recommends PSA screening and the American Cancer Society recommends offering screening; (...) however, the United States Preventive Services Task Force and the American College of Physicians recommend against routine screening; and the American Academy of Family Physicians believes that the decision to screen should be left to the patient. (shrink)

Prostate cancer has become a major health concern of male Americans. It is now the most common nondermatologic cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among men. The incidence of detected prostate cancer rose rapidly in recent years, partly because of prostate-specific antigen testing; it is only now tapering off. Screening for prostate cancer with PSA is widespread in the United States, yet controversial: the American Urological Association recommends PSA screening and the American Cancer Society recommends offering screening; (...) however, the United States Preventive Services Task Force and the American College of Physicians recommend against routine screening; and the American Academy of Family Physicians believes that the decision to screen should be left to the patient. (shrink)

According to the “Folieism” I have been recently defending, communication is a kind of folie à deux in which speakers and hearers enjoy a stable and innocuous illusion of producing and hearing standard linguistic entities (“SLE”s) that are seldom if ever actually produced. In the present paper, after summarizing the main points of the view, I defend it against efforts of Barber, Devitt and Miščević to rescue SLEs in terms of social, response-dependent proposals. I argue that their underlying error is (...) a failure to appreciate the important shift of the explanatory locus in modern linguistics, from external objects to internal conceptions. I go on to show how (i) pace Devitt, this shift is entirely compatible with there being conventional aspects to language, and also serves to distinguish the ease of natural language from the waggle dance of the bees; and (ii) pace Barber and Smith, it is compatible with an appearance / reality distinction, and with reliance on testimony in epistemology. I conclude with further arguments about why, pace Collins and Matthews, intentionality is a crucial feature of linguistic explanation, even if it is ultimately spelt out largely in terms of computational role. (shrink)

Selfless Persons. Steven Collins. Cambridge University Press, 1982. ix + 323 pp. £22.50.

In the beginning, says the ancient Hindu text the _Rg Veda_, was man. And from man’s sacrifice and dismemberment came the entire world, including the hierarchical ordering of human society. _The Head Beneath the Altar _is the first book to present a wide-ranging study of Hindu texts read through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory of the sacrificial origin of religion and culture. For those interested in Girard and comparative religion, the book also performs a careful reading of Girard’s (...) work, drawing connections between his thought and the work of theorists like Georges Dumézil and Giorgio Agamben. Brian Collins examines the idea of sacrifice from the earliest recorded rituals through the flowering of classical mythology and the ancient Indian institutions of the duel, the oath, and the secret warrior society. He also uncovers implicit and explicit critiques in the tradition, confirming Girard’s intuition that Hinduism offers an alternative anti-sacrificial worldview to the one contained in the gospels. (shrink)

_This book relates Hegel to later philosophers and philosophies._.

If we think of artistic creation as a basic dimension of humanity we need to question the absence of female artists in history. We should also look at their gradual emergence in the late 20th century, an emergence that coincides with the feminist movement and a change in the conception of art itself, revealed chiefly by Duchamp. But does art by women have some specificity? Without giving a definite answer as far as subject matter is concerned, we note that the (...) conditions suited to both history and the history of art may affect their creation but without specifying it ontologically. If, moreover, some women artists define their work as feminist, it is through an act that combines artistic and political transgression. The exhibition currently arranged by the Georges Pompidou Centre, elles@ beaubourg, provides new resources for these complex questions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:110 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY analogo, e che l"'analogia entis" constituisce nello spinozismo ancora uno dei principali presupposti della metafisica, sebbene il termine "analogia" non sia quasi mai usato da Spinoza. Non costituisce obiezione il fatto che per Spinoza non c'~ altro ente reale che l'ente necessario. Si ~ veduto, e meglio si vedr~tnel seguito, chela necessit~ spettante a Dio non puo essere confusa in nessun modo con quella che (...) tocca "sub specie aeternitatis" agli enti reali, questa essendo semplicemente derivata dall'eternit~t divina, e implicando un rapporto dell'essenza con l'esistenza affatto diverso da quello che l'essenza di Dio ha con la sua esistenza. L'analogia del concetto di ente reale, a nostro giudizio, ~ tale per attribuzione e per proporzionalit ~. Ma in codesta analogia alia attribuzione spetta il senso primitivo, ealla proporzioualit~t quello derivato (p. 251). HERBERTW. SCnNEIDEg Claremont, Caliyornia Leibniz et Spinoza. By Georges Friedmann. (Paris: Gallimard, 1962. Pp. 350. 23 NF.) This is a "new edition revised and enlarged," the first edition having appeared in 1946. On its first appearance, the book was welcomed as a fresh and well-executed approach to one of the classical places for fruitful comparison in the history of philosophy: the doctrinal and personal relations between Spinoza and Leibniz. For a long while, historians relied upon the 1890 study by Ludwig Stein, who depicted Leibniz as having passed through an early phase of basic agreement with Spinoza and as having worked out his mature position largely through his tardy reaction to the Dutch philosopher's metaphysical views. But Friedmann felt that the evidence adduced by Stein did not justify the attribution of an early phase of Spinozism to Leibniz. The relationship was nmch more complex than that of a young Leibniz giving untroubled assent to Spinoza and then becoming disturbed about the pantheistic implications of the Ethics. Instead, Friedmann pointed out that the very writings of Leibniz cited by Stein show the German thinker to be in possession of his own governing ideas even as a young man and admirer of Spinoza. Moreover, a study of the standard edition of Leibniz's correspondence was sufficient to show that he gave ambivalent opinions about Spinoza even during his early years. When Leibniz.wrote to the friends of Spinoza, he was much more laudatory than when he wrote to his own friends among the Catholic and Protestant theologians. Friedmann concluded that there was a certain objective duplicity displayed by Leibniz and that this stood in sharp contrast with Spinoza's straightforward concern for truth. In his preface to this new edition (Friedmann calls it "the second edition," thus correcting the publisher's claim in my copy of a "fourth edition" issued late in 1946), the author specifies the sense in which this is a revised and enlarged edition. He has introduced nuances to make it perfectly clear that he is passing no moral judgment upon Leibniz for duplicity, which he equates with a multiplicity of attitudes and evaluations in respect to Spinoza's work taken as a whole. Furthermore, he takes account of recent work done by Belaval, Robinet, and others on the reactions in later seventeenth-century France to Spinozism. These researches show that Leibniz was not unique in looking both favorably and unfavorably upon the political and religious doctrines of Spinoza and then in concentrating fire upon a concocted phantom of Spinozistic pantheism. But the main justification for reconsidering the matter is the publication since World War II of many relevant manuscripts (in the collection made by Gaston Grua) and of a few important historical studies, notably Grua's own volumes on universal justification in Leibniz and Belaval's book on Leibniz as a critic of Descartes. In his first edition, BOOK REVIEWS 111 Friedmann had relied mainly on the same sources available in 1890 to Stein; now he adds evidence taken from these later publications. He is able to specify more closely the presence of Leibniz's own principles at least in germ in his early writings, as well as the only gradual discovery by Leibniz of the metaphysical teachings of the Ethics. But the use of the new materials is made quite firmly within the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:110 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY analogo, e che l"'analogia entis" constituisce nello spinozismo ancora uno dei principali presupposti della metafisica, sebbene il termine "analogia" non sia quasi mai usato da Spinoza. Non costituisce obiezione il fatto che per Spinoza non c'~ altro ente reale che l'ente necessario. Si ~ veduto, e meglio si vedr~tnel seguito, chela necessit~ spettante a Dio non puo essere confusa in nessun modo con quella che (...) tocca "sub specie aeternitatis" agli enti reali, questa essendo semplicemente derivata dall'eternit~t divina, e implicando un rapporto dell'essenza con l'esistenza affatto diverso da quello che l'essenza di Dio ha con la sua esistenza. L'analogia del concetto di ente reale, a nostro giudizio, ~ tale per attribuzione e per proporzionalit ~. Ma in codesta analogia alia attribuzione spetta il senso primitivo, ealla proporzioualit~t quello derivato (p. 251). HERBERTW. SCnNEIDEg Claremont, Caliyornia Leibniz et Spinoza. By Georges Friedmann. (Paris: Gallimard, 1962. Pp. 350. 23 NF.) This is a "new edition revised and enlarged," the first edition having appeared in 1946. On its first appearance, the book was welcomed as a fresh and well-executed approach to one of the classical places for fruitful comparison in the history of philosophy: the doctrinal and personal relations between Spinoza and Leibniz. For a long while, historians relied upon the 1890 study by Ludwig Stein, who depicted Leibniz as having passed through an early phase of basic agreement with Spinoza and as having worked out his mature position largely through his tardy reaction to the Dutch philosopher's metaphysical views. But Friedmann felt that the evidence adduced by Stein did not justify the attribution of an early phase of Spinozism to Leibniz. The relationship was nmch more complex than that of a young Leibniz giving untroubled assent to Spinoza and then becoming disturbed about the pantheistic implications of the Ethics. Instead, Friedmann pointed out that the very writings of Leibniz cited by Stein show the German thinker to be in possession of his own governing ideas even as a young man and admirer of Spinoza. Moreover, a study of the standard edition of Leibniz's correspondence was sufficient to show that he gave ambivalent opinions about Spinoza even during his early years. When Leibniz.wrote to the friends of Spinoza, he was much more laudatory than when he wrote to his own friends among the Catholic and Protestant theologians. Friedmann concluded that there was a certain objective duplicity displayed by Leibniz and that this stood in sharp contrast with Spinoza's straightforward concern for truth. In his preface to this new edition (Friedmann calls it "the second edition," thus correcting the publisher's claim in my copy of a "fourth edition" issued late in 1946), the author specifies the sense in which this is a revised and enlarged edition. He has introduced nuances to make it perfectly clear that he is passing no moral judgment upon Leibniz for duplicity, which he equates with a multiplicity of attitudes and evaluations in respect to Spinoza's work taken as a whole. Furthermore, he takes account of recent work done by Belaval, Robinet, and others on the reactions in later seventeenth-century France to Spinozism. These researches show that Leibniz was not unique in looking both favorably and unfavorably upon the political and religious doctrines of Spinoza and then in concentrating fire upon a concocted phantom of Spinozistic pantheism. But the main justification for reconsidering the matter is the publication since World War II of many relevant manuscripts (in the collection made by Gaston Grua) and of a few important historical studies, notably Grua's own volumes on universal justification in Leibniz and Belaval's book on Leibniz as a critic of Descartes. In his first edition, BOOK REVIEWS 111 Friedmann had relied mainly on the same sources available in 1890 to Stein; now he adds evidence taken from these later publications. He is able to specify more closely the presence of Leibniz's own principles at least in germ in his early writings, as well as the only gradual discovery by Leibniz of the metaphysical teachings of the Ethics. But the use of the new materials is made quite firmly within the... (shrink)

The structure of people’s conceptual knowledge of concrete nouns has traditionally been viewed as hierarchical (Collins & Quillian, 1969). For example, superordinate concepts (vegetable) are assumed to reside at a higher level than basic‐level concepts (carrot). A feature‐based attractor network with a single layer of semantic features developed representations of both basic‐level and superordinate concepts. No hierarchical structure was built into the network. In Experiment and Simulation 1, the graded structure of categories (typicality ratings) is accounted for by the (...) flat attractor network. Experiment and Simulation 2 show that, as with basic‐level concepts, such a network predicts feature verification latencies for superordinate concepts (vegetable ). In Experiment and Simulation 3, counterintuitive results regarding the temporal dynamics of similarity in semantic priming are explained by the model. By treating both types of concepts the same in terms of representation, learning, and computations, the model provides new insights into semantic memory. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to reconstruct Anthony Collins’ challenge to the authority of orthodox Anglican figures, which arises due to arguments Collins develops in his Vindication of the Divine Attributes (1710) and Discourse on Free-Thinking (1713). In addition to shedding light on a hitherto underappreciated argument by Collins, my reconstruction allows me to propose a solution to the interpretive problem posed by §§16–22 of the fourth dialogue of Berkeley’s Alciphron (1732). While it has been acknowledged (...) that Collins looms large in the background of these sections, Berkeley’s argumentative strategy has remained perplexing to commentators, particularly his references to several Scholastic thinkers. I argue that we can make sense of Berkeley’s strategy and references if we appreciate that these sections are intended to evade Collins’ challenge. (shrink)

An original argument about how scientific models often times distort reality rather than accurately reflect it. And it's this distortion that often gives scientific models their epistemic power.

La critique de la religion est pour l'essentiel terminée : voilà ce que Marx écrivait en 1843. Le début du XXIe siècle semble lui donner tort. Fondamentalistes de tous poils qui relèvent la tête veulent imposer leurs brigades des moeurs et réglementer la liberté de la parole, djihadistes qui font régner la terreur au Levant, terroristes qui manient la AK47 au nom d'Allah, camions qui foncent dans des foules pacifiques et tuent des dizaines de personnes : ceux qui pensaient que (...) nous étions définitivement entrés dans un monde désenchanté en sont pour leurs frais. Denis Collin s'inscrit dans cette tradition philosophique pour laquelle vivre sous la conduite de la raison, c'est s'émanciper de la servitude religieuse et défendre le libre esprit et le libre examen. Il s'agit donc ici de revenir aux principes afin d'examiner ce qu'il en est du fait religieux aujourd'hui et de proposer quelques lignes d'une bataille à mener sur le terrain des idées. (shrink)

This paper draws an earlier book (with Evans and Higgins) entitled _Bad Call: Technology’s Attack on Referees and Umpires and How to Fix It_ (hereafter _Bad Call_) and its various precursor papers. These show why it is that current match officiating aids are unable to provide the kind of accuracy that is often claimed for them and that sports aficianados have been led to expect from them. Accuracy is improving all the time but the notion of perfect accuracy is a (...) myth because, for example, lines drawn on sports fields and the edges of balls are not perfectly defined. The devices meant to report the exact position of a ball—for instance ‘in’ or ‘out’ at tennis—work with the mathematically perfect world of virtual reality, not the actuality of an imperfect physical world. Even if ball-trackers could overcome the sort of inaccuracies related to fast ball speeds and slow camera frame-rates the goal of complete accuracy will always be beyond reach. Here it is suggested that the purpose of technological aids to umpires and referees be looked at in a new way that takes the viewers into account. (shrink)

In Search of Excellence was the book that launched a thousand popular management books. In this concise book, David and Jack Collins demonstrate the emptiness of business excellence and in so doing reveal the flawed foundations of popular management theory. Focusing upon the conduct of those organizations vaunted as 'exemplars of excellence' the authors build upon insightful case reports to demonstrate wholesale misconduct at the very heart of the excellence project. Indeed, The Emptiness of Business Excellence demonstrates that the (...) exemplars of excellence indulged bribery, corruption, racism, sexism and anti-Semitism...and more besides! Furthermore, the book demonstrates that, despite their claims to knowledge, Peters and Waterman often knew little about the financial performance of their excellent organizations and were either unaware of or had chosen to overlook reports which highlighted deeply problematic conduct within those formations, which they offered as beacons for change and renewal. This book will be of interest to researchers, scholars and students with an interest in business and management, especially those focusing on the realities of managerial practice. (shrink)