One of the strangest of the many strange habits of philosophers, which mark them out as the Ishmaels of the scientific world, is their refusal to agree as to the precise meaning of the words they use. No philosopher, it seems, is bound by the definitions given by predecessors or contemporaries of even the most central terms: each has to define his terms for himself. The resulting situation certainly lends itself to ridicule and caricature, as in the legend of the (...) theological disputants who arrived after long argument at the conclusion that when the one said ‘God’ he meant what the other meant when he said ‘Devil.’ Still it is probable that this idiosyncrasy of philosophers has some real ground in the special nature of the task on which they are engaged, and is not a mere exhibition of aimless malice or sheer incompetence. Whether that is so or not, one of the consequences of this situation is that the titles of philosophic discourses are apt to be singularly unilluminating: as an indication of the problem to be raised they are, to say the least, highly ambiguous. How the reader may understand the title of this paper I do not know; but the question which I had in mind in choosing it was this. (shrink)

Physical arguments stemming from the theory of black-hole thermodynamics are used to put constraints on the dynamics of closed-string tachyon condensation in Scherk–Schwarz compactifications. A geometrical interpretation of the tachyon condensation involves an effective capping of a noncontractible cycle, thus removing the very topology that supports the tachyons. A semiclassical regime is identified in which the matching between the tachyon condensation and the black-hole instability flow is possible. We formulate a generalized correspondence principle and illustrate it in several different circumstances: (...) an Euclidean interpretation of the transition from strings to black holes across the Hagedorn temperature and instabilities in the brane-antibrane system. (shrink)

This article presents the main features of the work of Domenico Vandelli (1735-1816), an Italian-born man of science who lived a large part of his life in Portugal. Vandelli's scientific interests as a naturalist paved the way to his activities as a reformer and adviser on economic and financial issues. The topics covered in his writings are similar to those discussed by Linnaeus, with whom Vandelli corresponded. They clearly reveal that the scientific preparation indispensable for a better knowledge of natural (...) resources was also a fundamental condition for correctly addressing problems of efficiency in their economic allocation. The key argument put forward in this article is that the relationship between natural history and the agenda for economic reform and development deserves to be further analysed. It is indeed a central element in the emergence of political economy as an autonomous scientific discourse during the last decades of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

In order to understand the rise of runaway solutions in the radiation reaction problem a mechanical model is used. An alternative demonstration of Daboul’s theorem, through Hurwitz’s criterion, is given. The origin of runaway solutions in electrodynamics is discussed. They arise when the particle has a negative mechanical mass or when approximations are used in the equation of motion. In the 1-dimensional mechanical model an exact and linear equation of motion for the particle is obtained, the corresponding exact solution is (...) again runaway when the mechanical mass is negative. The exact solution is not runaway when the mechanical mass is positive. However, the use of approximations leads to an equation of motion which has runaway solutions. It is exhibited that the use of approximations in the 3-dimensional mechanical model is completely necessary because the general equation of motion for the particle is non-linear. The analysis of this case proceeds in a very similar way to the one carried out in electrodynamics. This means that the number of dimensions also plays an important role in the analysis. (shrink)

Professor Oswald Szemerényi's Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, first published in 1970, remains the standard introduction to comparative Indo-European linguistics. It is available here in English for the first time, in a revised, enlarged, and updated fifth edition. The introductory section presents a general survey of the principles of diachronic-comparative linguistics, and the remainder of the book is a thorough and detailed analysis, according to those principles, of the phonological and morphological structure of the Indo-European group of languages. Each section (...) of the book has a detailed bibliography, so that the student can progress from the general overview to a more detailed examination of particular topics. (shrink)

A study of moral values is a study of the values relevant to character and conduct. Since conduct consists of actions and character is exhibited in and inferred from actions, the phrase “values relevant to actions” would perhaps suffice. The term “values” needs little amplification. But it is necessary to observe that there are on the face of it two sets of values relevant to actions, namely those which actions themselves possess, so that we differentiate them as good and bad (...) actions—a differentiation which may be made by a spectator in regard to a process in which he himself takes no part; those asserted implicitly by an agent in his action considered as an interference with the course of events. In the most obvious and typical cases this second set of values attach themselves, not to actions, but tothe environment of action as modifiable by it; in particular, to states or events which action may help to maintain or bring about. Thus the act of tidying a room implies a preference under the given circumstances for a tidy rather than an untidy room. (shrink)

In these days, when, if the words of constitutions can be trusted, sovereign Parliaments based on manhood or adult suffrage are rapidly extending their sway over the greater part of the world, there is surely no conception more deserving of the attention of the political theorist than that of Representation. There was a time when government for most men meant monarchy, when ruler meant king or king's minister. To-day for most men ruler means Parliament or ministers responsible to Parliament, and (...) government means representative government. In those former times the political theorist would naturally take the king or prince for his centre-piece, and devote himself to expounding the nature and attributes of the office. “For from the prince, as from a well spring, cometh the flood of all that is good or evil upon the people” . In our own day he would perhaps do well to devote himself first and mainly to reflection on the meaning of this term representation, standing as it does for something which is taken by general consent to constitute the distinctive feature of the normal modern type of government. He may run the risk of speaking merely for his own day; but he should at least be sure of remaining near the centre of his subject. (shrink)

We may look at the relation of will and motive from another side as follows: Will, we have said, is an individual response to an individual situation. Like the situation itself, it is not a fixed thing persisting through change, but involved in a continuous flow of change, re-adapting itself constantly in one respect or another to recognized changes of circumstance. It can have no more immutability than circumstance, and if it is not to be left behind in the march (...) of events and become old-fashioned, it should have the capacity for the same rapidity of change. Now motives also change, but in a different way. First one motive operates, then another, as circum-. (shrink)

We may look at the relation of will and motive from another side as follows: Will, we have said, is an individual response to an individual situation. Like the situation itself, it is not a fixed thing persisting through change, but involved in a continuous flow of change, re-adapting itself constantly in one respect or another to recognized changes of circumstance. It can have no more immutability than circumstance, and if it is not to be left behind in the march (...) of events and become old-fashioned, it should have the capacity for the same rapidity of change. Now motives also change, but in a different way. First one motive operates, then another, as circum-. (shrink)

Putnam’s John Locke Lectures and three related papers: "Literature, Science, and Reflection," which expands some of the "softer" portions of the Lectures, "Reference and Understanding," which defends a "use" or Wittgensteinian notion of understanding language, distinguishing this sharply from the role of truth and reference in explaining the success of our understanding within the broad context of our behavior and the world, and "Realism and Reason," Putnam’s APA Presidential Address, in which he puts the Kantianism or "antirealism" of the whole (...) volume in sharpest focus. Here is an exciting, agreeable, and compact expression of a new departure in Putnam’s thought, one which he is happy to find convergent with Michael Dummett’s work. (shrink)

Professor Oswald Szemerényi's Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, first published in 1970, remains the standard introduction to comparative Indo-European linguistics. It is available here in English for the first time, in a revised, enlarged, and updated fifth edition. The introductory section presents a general survey of the principles of diachronic-comparative linguistics, and the remainder of the book is a thorough and detailed analysis, according to those principles, of the phonological and morphological structure of the Indo-European group of languages. Each section (...) of the book has a detailed bibliography, so that the student can progress from the general overview to a more detailed examination of particular topics. (shrink)

This is a slim volume of essays on meaning that merits use in an undergraduate or graduate course, particularly in that several contributors-Davidson, Quine, Dummett, and Geach—introduce, summarize, and illustrate the views of meaning with which they are associated. There is also a somewhat loosely-woven essay by Follesdal, [[sic]] in part relating the Anglo-American tradition to Continental formulations, and an essay by Anscombe on the first person which concludes, somewhat enigmatically, that "'I’ is not a referring expression.".

Three long papers are collected here which constitute Chomsky’s major theoretical work on syntax and semantics subsequent to the "standard theory" of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Since 1965, transformational-generative linguists have suggested various changes in "standard theory," centering on the relationship between the syntactic and semantic components in natural language grammars. In these papers Chomsky explains several specific problems that require the extension of standard theory and he criticizes the proposals and arguments of the generative semanticists, attempting to (...) show that many of the specific features of language that are claimed to support the generativist position are as well or better explained by extended standard theory, and emphasizing that most of the generativist’s proposals turn out to be mere "notational variants," evidentially indistinguishable from extended standard theory. Aside from appealing to particular data favoring his "lexicalist" defense of syntactic deep structure, Chomsky makes a Popperean appeal that his position is preferable because it is more constraining and more falsifiable. (shrink)

In this book, Katz details, extends, sharpens, and, in comparatively minor ways, amends the notion of semantic theory that he has maintained through the last decade. Philosophers will be interested in the views that Katz derives about logic, analyticity, opacity, natural language, and intensionality; and the main focus is on these topics throughout the book, though considerable attention is given the technical apparatus of semantic markers, projection rules, and so on. The work concludes with a chapter that criticizes the equation (...) of deep syntactic structure and semantico-logico form recently proposed by the "generative semanticists." Separate chapters are devoted to the logic of questions and "temporal specification, state, process, and the converse relation;" but these chapters are taken up with the notion of presupposition and difference in meaning, and so relate to the basic argument of the book quite directly. This is a complicated, forthright, and imaginative work, though some readers may find it puzzlingly incomplete on a few points. (shrink)

This attractive book introduces the central issues of semantics through a judicious mixture of the exposition of views and an attempt to argue for some of these views. Kempson has a reasonable grasp of what philosophers and linguists have to say about these issues, and some insight into the misunderstandings that occur between philosophers and linguists when they discuss these issues. Each of the eleven chapters ends with an annotated bibliography. This book would be a good backbone for a course (...) on semantics. (shrink)