This book analyzes the prominent view that language is basically a system of signs and symbols; outlines an alternative that builds on aspects of the philosophies of Heidegger, Gadamer, Buber, and Bakhtin; and employs this alternative to criticize accounts of language developed by V.N. Volosinov, Kenneth Burke, and Calvin O. Schrag. From the perspective of communication theory, this book extends some features of the postmodern critique of representationalism to develop a post-semiotic account of the nature of language as dialogic.

The essays in this book engage the original and controversial claims from Michael Boylan's A Just Society. Each essay discusses Boylan's claims from a particular chapter and offers a critical analysis of these claims. Boylan responds to the essays in his lengthy and philosophically rich reply.

Biographical essays explore the careers of two major early photographers, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey and William James Stillman. in addition, portfolios with works by Maxime Du Camp, John Beasley Greene, Francis Frith, Robert Macpherson, Adolphe Braun and others testify to the strength and consistency of other early photographers who captured the antique worlds around the Mediterranean."--BOOK JACKET.

This updated edition of a well-established anthology of social and political philosophy combines extensive selections from classical works with significant recent contributions to the field, many of which are not easily available. Its central focus is on the liberal currents in modern Western political thought--variants of classical liberalism, modern liberalism, and libertarianism--with specific focus on differing conceptions of political obligation, freedom, distributive justice, and representative democracy. The text is organized into four thematic sections: Political Obligation and Consent, Freedom and Coercion, (...) Justice and Equality, and Democracy and Representation, making it easily accessible to students. Each chapter features selections from classical thinkers alongside writings by influential contemporary philosophers and political theorists, thus tracing the historical development and transformation of Western political thought on key issues in the field. Among the classical authors represented in this collection are Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Mill. Contemporary contributors include John Rawls, Isaiah Berlin, Thomas Scanlon, Robert Nozick, Thomas Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, and Hanna Pitkin. Each section is preceded by an introductory overview and followed by a helpful, current bibliography providing guides to further reading. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of contemporary discourses that reconsider the relationship of democracy as a political ideology and American ideal and education as the foundation of preparing democratic citizens in America.

This updated edition of a well-established anthology of social and political philosophy combines extensive selections from classical works with significant recent contributions to the field, many of which are not easily available. Its central focus is on the liberal currents in modern Western political thought--variants of classical liberalism, modern liberalism, and libertarianism--with specific focus on differing conceptions of political obligation, freedom, distributive justice, and representative democracy. The text is organized into four thematic sections: Political Obligation and Consent, Freedom and Coercion, (...) Justice and Equality, and Democracy and Representation, making it easily accessible to students. Each chapter features selections from classical thinkers alongside writings by influential contemporary philosophers and political theorists, thus tracing the historical development and transformation of Western political thought on key issues in the field. Among the classical authors represented in this collection are Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Mill. Contemporary contributors include John Rawls, Isaiah Berlin, Thomas Scanlon, Robert Nozick, Thomas Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, and Hanna Pitkin. Each section is preceded by an introductory overview and followed by a helpful, current bibliography providing guides to further reading. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

The first edition of Thomas Robert Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population is best understood as an exploration of human nature and the role of necessity in shaping the individual and society. The author’s liberal education, both from his father and his tutors at Warrington and Cambridge, is evident in his heterodox views on hell, his Lockean conceptualization of the mind, and his Foxite Whig politics. Malthus’ unpublished essay, “Crises,” his sermons, and the the last two chapters of (...) the Essay reveal a pragmatic, compassionate side of the young author that was under appreciated by both his contemporary critics and modern historians. The Essay has been mischaracterized by David McNally as a “Whig response to Radicalism” and by Patricia James as a reaction by Malthus against his father’s liberalism. This article argues that when he wrote the first edition of the Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus was himself a liberal dissenter and Foxite Whig rather than an orthodox Anglican or a Burkean defender of traditional class relations. (shrink)

Some authors have claimed that ante rem structuralism has problems with structures that have indiscernible places. In response, I argue that there is no requirement that mathematical objects be individuated in a non-trivial way. Metaphysical principles and intuitions to the contrary do not stand up to ordinary mathematical practice, which presupposes an identity relation that, in a sense, cannot be defined. In complex analysis, the two square roots of –1 are indiscernible: anything true of one of them is true of (...) the other. I suggest that ‘i’ functions like a parameter in natural deduction systems. I gave an early version of this paper at a workshop on structuralism in mathematics and science, held in the Autumn of 2006, at Bristol University. Thanks to the organizers, particularly Hannes Leitgeb, James Ladyman, and Øystein Linnebo, to my commentator Richard Pettigrew, and to the audience there. The paper also benefited considerably from a preliminary session at the Arché Research Centre at the University of St Andrews. I am indebted to my colleagues Craige Roberts, for help with the linguistics literature, and Ben Caplan and Gabriel Uzquiano, for help with the metaphysics. Thanks also to Hannes Leitgeb and Jeffrey Ketland for reading an earlier version of the manuscript and making helpful suggestions. I also benefited from conversations with Richard Heck, John Mayberry, Kevin Scharp, and Jason Stanley. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Editors Wanda Teays, John-Stewart Gordon, and Alison Dundes Renteln have assembled the works of an interdisciplinary, international team of experts in bioethics into a comprehensive, innovative and accessible book. Topics covered range from torture and lethal injection to euthanasia, sex selection, vulnerable human subjects, to health equity, safety and public health, and environmental disasters like Bhopal, Fukushima, and more.

Kierkegaard’s Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard’s writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard’s thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard’s contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, (...) literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines. -/- Contents: Envy, Janne Kylliäinen; Epic, Nassim Bravo Jordán; Epigram, David R. Law; Ethics, Azucena Palavicini Sánchez; Evil, Azucena Palavicini Sánchez and William McDonald; Exception/Universal, Geoffrey Dargan; Existence/Existential, Min-Ho Lee; Experience, Jakub Marek; Fairytale, Nathaniel Kramer; Faith, William McDonald; Finitude/Infinity, Erik M. Hanson; Forgiveness, John Lippitt; Freedom, Diego Giordano; Genius, Steven M. Emmanuel; God, Paul Martens and Daniel Marrs; Good, Azucena Palavicini Sánchez; Governance/Providence, Jack Mulder, Jr.; Grace, Derek R. Nelson; Gratitude, Corey Benjamin Tutewiler; Guilt, Erik M. Hanson; Happiness, Benjamin Miguel Olivares Bøgeskov; Hero, Sean Anthony Turchin; History, Sean Anthony Turchin; Holy Spirit, Leo Stan; Hope, William McDonald; Humility, Robert B. Puchniak; Humor, Alejandro González; Hypocrisy, Thomas Martin Fauth Hansen; Identity/Difference, Claudine Davidshofer; Imagination, Frances Maughan-Brown; Imitation, Leo Stan; Immanence/Transcendence, Leo Stan; Immediacy/Reflection, Zizhen Liu; Immortality, Lee C. Barrett; Incognito, Martijn Boven. (shrink)

John Clarke of Hull, one of the eighteenth century's staunchest proponents of psychological egoism, defended that theory in his Foundation of Morality in Theory and Practice. He did so mainly by opposing the objections to egoism in the first two editions of Francis Hutcheson's Inquiry into Virtue. But Clarke also produced a challenging, direct argument for egoism which, regrettably, has received virtually no scholarly attention. In this paper I give it some of the attention it merits. In addition to (...) reconstructing it and addressing interpretive issues about it, I show that it withstands a tempting objection. I also show that although Clarke's argument ultimately fails, to study it is instructive. It illuminates, for example, Hutcheson's likely intentions in a passage relevant to egoism. (shrink)

Wee people at London, are so humbly immersd in slavish business, & taken up wth providing for a wretched Carkasse; yt there's nothing almost, but what is grosse & sensuall to be gotten from us. If a bright thought springs up any time here, ye Mists & Foggs extinguish it again presently, & leaves us no more, yn only ye pain, of seeing it die & perish away from us. Humphrey Ditton to Roger Cotes, ca. 1703THE CALCULUS OF ACCOMPLISHMENTDuring the (...) last decade of his life, Sir Isaac Newton took the measure of achievement. Probably shortly before 1725, Newton scribbled on the undated cover of a letter a brief list of those discoveries he believed belonged entirely ‘to the English’. Included were ‘the variation of the Variation’ ; the circulation of the blood; telescopic sights and the micrometer variously improved by his contemporaries, Robert Hooke and John Flamsteed; and ‘the Libration of the Moon’ likely in reference to Newton's own explanation of lunar eccentricity. Notably, this was not simply a personal calculation. Newton makes no mention of such controversial matters as the fluxional calculus, the refraction of light, or even the measure of universal gravitation, which he otherwise might have claimed as his own efforts. Even the private lights of the solitary genius could still accommodate a distinctly broader sense of the depth of national accomplishment. (shrink)

Corcoran’s 27 entries in the 1999 second edition of Robert Audi’s Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge UP]. -/- ancestral, axiomatic method, borderline case, categoricity, Church (Alonzo), conditional, convention T, converse (outer and inner), corresponding conditional, degenerate case, domain, De Morgan, ellipsis, laws of thought, limiting case, logical form, logical subject, material adequacy, mathematical analysis, omega, proof by recursion, recursive function theory, scheme, scope, Tarski (Alfred), tautology, universe of discourse. -/- The entire work is available online free at more (...) than one website. Paste the whole URL. http://archive.org/stream/RobertiAudi_The.Cambridge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy/Robert.Audi_The.Cambridge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy -/- The 2015 third edition will be available soon. Before you think of buying it read some reviews on Amazon and read reviews of its competition: For example, my review of the 2008 Oxford Companion to Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Logic,29:3,291-292. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01445340701300429 -/- Some of the entries have already been found to be flawed. For example, Tarski’s expression ‘materially adequate’ was misinterpreted in at least one article and it was misused in another where ‘materially correct’ should have been used. The discussion provides an opportunity to bring more flaws to light. -/- Acknowledgements: Each of these entries was presented at meetings of The Buffalo Logic Dictionary Project sponsored by The Buffalo Logic Colloquium. The members of the colloquium read drafts before the meetings and were generous with corrections, objections, and suggestions. Usually one 90-minute meeting was devoted to one entry although in some cases, for example, “axiomatic method”, took more than one meeting. Moreover, about half of the entries are rewrites of similarly named entries in the 1995 first edition. Besides the help received from people in Buffalo, help from elsewhere was received by email. We gratefully acknowledge the following: José Miguel Sagüillo, John Zeis, Stewart Shapiro, Davis Plache, Joseph Ernst, Richard Hull, Concha Martinez, Laura Arcila, James Gasser, Barry Smith, Randall Dipert, Stanley Ziewacz, Gerald Rising, Leonard Jacuzzo, George Boger, William Demopolous, David Hitchcock, John Dawson, Daniel Halpern, William Lawvere, John Kearns, Ky Herreid, Nicolas Goodman, William Parry, Charles Lambros, Harvey Friedman, George Weaver, Hughes Leblanc, James Munz, Herbert Bohnert, Robert Tragesser, David Levin, Sriram Nambiar, and others. -/- . (shrink)

It is startling to realize that Canadian literature was canonized in fewer than twenty years. Here is how it happened.At the end of World War II, Canadian literature was not taught as an independent subject in Canadian schools. There was no canon. In 1957, the publishing firm McClelland and Stewart introduced its mass-market paperback reprint series entitled the New Canadian Library. It allowed teachers to discuss the work of many Canadian authors who had never been the subject of formal (...) academic study. This New Canadian Library was truly “new”: prior to its conception, there was no “library” in use. There were no Canadian classics. Northrop Frye recalls that at that time the notion of finding a classic Canadian writer remained but “a gleam in a paternal critic’s eye.”1Frye’s comment must be placed in context: he was remembering the efforts that produced the first Literary History of Canada in 1965. In T. D. MacLulich’s words, its publication “gave a definitive imprimatur of respectability to the academic study of Canadian writing.”2 It made a Canadian canon seem possible; to many, it made the canon seem real. With the advent of this history, the institution called Canadian literature was born.3 1. Northrop Frye, “Conclusion,” in Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, 2d ed., ed. Carl F. Klinck et al., 3 vols. , 3:319.2. T. D. MacLulich, “What Was Canadian Literature? Taking Stock of the Canlit Industry,” Essays on Canadian Writing 30 : 19; hereafter abbreviated “WWCL.”3. My use of the term “Canadian literature” applies to English-Canadian literature; the canonization of French-Canadian, or Québecois literature, invokes another story and another set of political imperatives that cannot be adequately treated within the scope of this discussion.4. John Guillory, “Canonical and Non-Canonical: A Critique of the Current Debate,” ELH 54 : 483. Robert Lecker is professor of English at McGill University. He is the author of several critical studies, including On the Line , Robert Kroetsch , and An Other I , and coeditor of Essays on Canadian Writing, the multi-volume Canadian Writers and Their Works , and the eight-volume Annotated Bibliography of Canada’s Major Authors . Lecker is currently preparing a collection of essays on the Canadian canon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Clinical Bioethics at NIH:History and A New VisionJohn C. Fletcher (bio)On July 3, 1995, Dr. John I. Gallin, Director of the Magnuson Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), convened a one-day "Conference on the Future of Clinical Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Intramural Program." Conferees included NIH officials and a panel of consultants from bioethics programs around the nation.1 The subject was the (...) future of NIH's intramural bioethics program and specifically a vision of a new multi-component program, presented by Dr. Gallin, the first speaker. Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of NIH, was there to assure his support for Dr. Gallin's vision. This author, honored to be second speaker, was invited to sketch a brief history of bioethics at NIH. The present article reviews some of this history and then reports on Dr. Gallin's proposal, points of consensus among speakers and conferees, and the search for a Chief of the Clinical Bioethics Program.History of Bioethics at NIHIt is often said that NIH is a well-kept secret as the nation's leading biomedical research facility. Also, few people know that NIH has a long history in bioethics. Some key events in that history are shown in Figure 1, beginning with two that occurred prior to the birth of bioethics. NIH made an early policy response to protect human subjects of research and to find acceptable limits for scientific freedom. The Clinical Center (CC), a 550-bed research hospital, opened in 1953. A subcommittee of the Medical Board, the Clinical Research Committee (CRC), was formed for prior group review of all studies with normal volunteers. The traditional practice was for researchers themselves to decide when studies would begin, which subjects to recruit, and whether informed consent would be sought. The CRC intervention bit into this tradition. In addition, patient studies that posed significant risks or departed widely from medical practice were reviewed by referral from the Clinical Directors of the various Institutes. Was this CRC an early institutional review [End Page 355] board (IRB)? As a guest researcher, I was permitted to observe the CRCs meetings between 1966 and 1969. It functioned much like an IRB but had no community or non-scientist members. Other IRB-like review groups undoubtedly existed prior to the CRC. Robert Levine (personal communication, September 7, 1995) recalls that Beth Israel Hospital in Boston had one in 1938. Historical research is clearly needed on the earliest forms of research review.Table 1. Bioethics at NIHEventYearClinical Research Committee1953Surgeon-General's PPO #1291966NIGMS funds Hastings Genetics Group1973OPRR's Mission1974NLM's grant to KennedyInstitute for Bibliography of Bioethics1974Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee1974STEP Series Bioethics Speakers1975Pre-IRBs at the CC1975-76Assistant for Bioethics to Director, CC1977RAC-Human Gene Therapy Subcommittee1983Lipsett Proposal (ICD)1983Liaison Group, CC1983Bioethics Program, CC1985Durable Power of Attorney for Researchwith Incapacitated Subjects1985-86NLM funds National Reference Centerfor Bioethics Literature1985National Institute for Nursing Research1986Bioethics Post-Doctoral Fellows Program1989ELSI Program1989Bioethicists on CC-IRBs1989CC-Ethics Committee1990Office of Human Subjects Research1992 [End Page 356]Between 1963 and 1967, the media exposed instances of ethically troubling research, and Beecher (1966) and Pappworth (1967) published sharp criticisms of the weak state of research ethics. In 1966, Surgeon-General William Stewart and NIH Director James Shannon issued a policy requiring local group review of all research involving human subjects before making an application for NIH peer review (Surgeon General 1966). The policy was the first in any nation to mandate ethics committees for clinical research. However, it did not apply to the NIH intramural program until Congress passed the National Research Act in 1974 (Public Law 93-348; 202, 88 Stat. 342, 1974). This lag permitted NIH intramural investigators the luxury of feeling above the norms imposed on ordinary mortals and guaranteed more resistance to the inevitable change to come. Resistance to change marked the intramural program from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s... (shrink)

Many have claimed that ceteris paribus (CP) laws are a quite legitimate feature of scientific theories, some even going so far as to claim that laws of all scientific theories currently on offer are merely CP. We argue here that one of the common props of such a thesis, that there are numerous examples of CP laws in physics, is false. Moreover, besides the absence of genuine examples from physics, we suggest that otherwise unproblematic claims are rendered untestable by the (...) mere addition of the CP operator. Thus, “CP all Fs are Gs” when read as a straightforward statement of fact, cannot be the stuff of scientific theory. Rather, we suggest that when ``ceteris paribus'' appears in scientific works it plays a pragmatic role of pointing to more respectable claims. (shrink)

Much of the literature on "ceteris paribus" laws is based on a misguided egalitarianism about the sciences. For example, it is commonly held that the special sciences are riddled with ceteris paribus laws; from this many commentators conclude that if the special sciences are not to be accorded a second class status, it must be ceteris paribus all the way down to fundamental physics. We argue that the (purported) laws of fundamental physics are not hedged by ceteris paribus clauses and (...) provisos. Furthermore, we show that not only is there no persuasive analysis of the truth conditions for ceteris paribus laws, there is not even an acceptable account of how they are to be saved from triviality or how they are to be melded with standard scientific methodology. Our way out of this unsatisfactory situation to reject the widespread notion that the achievements and the scientific status of the special sciences must be understood in terms of ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

The title of Stewart’s biography is a tribute to Alain Locke’s seminal work, The New Negro: An Interpretation. This 1925 anthology highlighted the works of several up-and-coming black writers of the 20th century, planting these authors and, thus, a new black intellectual movement squarely in the public eye. While Alain Locke and John Dewey did not work directly together, Dewey’s philosophical approaches, specifically aesthetic valuation, significantly influenced Locke’s life. John C. Stewart provides a dense and thorough (...) illustration of Locke’s use of aesthetic valuation in his personal, professional, and educational experiences. Locke was pursuing his doctoral degree at Harvard University in Dewey’s discipline at... (shrink)

Henri Bergson's philosophy is centered on forming a concept of lived time or durée, which he saw as a process of continuous variation and flux. He believed that the study of time should be the foundation of philosophy. By studying time, we find an integration of concrete, infinite, qualitative multiplicity within consciousness that we should use to understand the essence of reality. I show that his insights into the reality of duration come directly from a metaphysical or phenomenological interpretation of (...) integral and differential calculus. Drawing on the recently published lectures from 1902–1905, I show how An Introduction to Metaphysics schematizes the methodology of Matter and Memory and Time and Free Will by means of this mathematical analogy. To Bergson, the concepts of calculus are not mere metaphors; they unleash certain metaphysical implications that problematize the mind's relation to movement, life, consciousness, time, and consequently, reality itself. (shrink)

This is the first part of a two-part article in which we defend the thesis of Humean Supervenience about Laws of Nature (HS). According to this thesis, two possible worlds cannot differ on what is a law of nature unless they also differ on the Humean base. The Humean base is easy to characterize intuitively, but there is no consensus on how, precisely, it should be defined. Here in Part I, we present and motivate a characterization of the Humean base (...) that, we argue, enables HS to capture what is really stake in the debate, without taking on extraneous commitments. (shrink)

We examine the responses of South African multinational enterprises to corruption in African markets in the context of institutional voids. Corruption is a source of uncertainty and additional transactional costs for MNEs and it necessitates a strategic response. The research employs a qualitative study of a sample of MNEs with experience in internationalising into Africa. The results indicate that corruption in African markets is pervasive and closely associated with the institutional voids in these countries. MNEs see themselves as ‘institution takers’ (...) responding to countries’ institutional makeup at the organisational and individual level but fail to fully appreciate their impact on institutions both positively and negatively. Rather MNEs focus on strategic responses at the organisational level to address corruption operationally in the host country. We add to the existing literature by providing a dynamic framework of the complex webs of association between institutions, MNEs and corruption in conditions of economic underdevelopment. The research suggests that MNEs do not need to get caught in a vicious cycle whereby they perpetuate corruption in conditions of underdevelopment and institutional voids but instead can contribute towards a virtuous cycle through which they institutionalise ethical foundations. (shrink)

The role of intensity in Aristotelian philosophy is obscure. The problem has historically been approached through his logic and categorical sense of motion. Scholars have largely failed to consider the role of intensity in psychology and ethics, the consideration of which greatly clarifies the situation. To this end, I identify three types of intensity present in the corpus Aristotelicum: comparative, modal, inceptive. I show that the intensity of physical contraries is primary in nature but is different from those found in (...) organic processes. I then show that the intensifications found in life, produced by the soul, are of paramount importance to Aristotle’s philosophy. Inceptive intensity is the backbone of psychical activities: concoction, sensation, pleasure, perception, effort, attention, and self-awareness. I outline two essential characteristics of these intensifications: (1) they imply an intransitive causality that is intrinsic to the entity’s nature or form; (2) that they involve an interaction of many parts which mutually amplify each other so that the whole is beyond (irreducible to) the totality of the parts. I end by comparing Aristotle’s views on intensity to contemporary ideas of emergence: feedback, holism, intentionality, and supervenience. (shrink)

Intuitively we feel that we ought to (attempt) to save the lives, or ameliorate the suffering, of identifiableIdentifiable individuals where we can (Rulli and Millum, 2016, p. 261). But this comes at a price. It means that there may not be any resources to save the lives of others in similar situations in the future. Or worse, there may not be enough resources left to prevent others from ending up in similar situations in the future. This chapter asks whether this (...) is justifiable or whether we would be better served focusing on public health in the form of preventative medicine. It looks briefly at the supposed difference between benefiting individuals and benefiting populations by considering the difference between interventions aimed at ‘rescue’ and those which are preventative. It then considers the rule of rescueRule of rescue in the health care setting, and looks at some of the reasons stemming from this that we might have for allocating resources to rescue interventions. If these reasons do not provide adequate justification for preferring these types of interventions, then the implication is that our current mode of resource allocation may need to be revised in favour of a more public health-oriented model. (shrink)

There was a long and lively debate in Ancient Greece on the nature of music, spanning philosophy, cosmology, and psychology. Peripatetic musicology based its understanding of the nature of music on philosophical principles derived from Aristotle’s psychology in order to address debates among their predecessors, primarily to shift the focus away from the physical sounds or their mathematical ratios, towards the investigation of the psyche, which I show was a sort of proto-phenomenology. Music involves a voluntary activity accompanied by a (...) natural joy. This joy grows and intensifies the energeia of the psyche. The nature of music is related directly to the nature, essence, or activity, of the psyche. (shrink)

In Part I, we presented and motivated a new formulation of Humean Supervenience about Laws of Nature (HS). Here in Part II, we present an epistemological argument in defense of HS, thus formulated. Our contention is that one can combine a modest realism about laws of nature with a proper recognition of the importance of empirical testability in the epistemology of science only if one accepts HS.

In Part I, we presented and motivated a new formulation of Humean Supervenience about Laws of Nature (HS). Here in Part II, we present an epistemological argument in defense of HS, thus formulated. Our contention is that one can combine a modest realism about laws of nature with a proper recognition of the importance of empirical testability in the epistemology of science only if one accepts HS.

This the first part of a two‐part article in which we defend the thesis of Humean Supervenience about Laws of Nature (HS). According to this thesis, two possible worlds cannot differ on what is a law of nature unless they also differ on the Humean base. the Humean base is easy to characterize intuitively, but there is no consensus on how, precisely, it should be defined. Here in Part I, we present and motivate a characterization of the Humean base that, (...) we argue, enables HS to capture what is really stake in the debate, without taking on extraneous commitments. “I tend to picture the [facts of the form “it is a law that s” and “is is not a lw that s”] as having been sprinkled been sprinkled like powdered sugar over the doughy surface of the non‐nomic facts.”—Marc Lange2 “Avoid empty carbohydrates.”—Runner's World3. (shrink)

The human brain is the first computer to which all others are compared. Yet we know painfully little about how a brain accomplishes its peculiar computations. In particular, consciousness is at once familiar and mysterious, and needs to be understood both for science and for medicine. Boldly, but gently this book introduces a reader to the neural circuitry that achieves consciousness. This amazing interconnection enables consciousness to flow like a stream, intimately relevant to the outside world; and for this to (...) happen, fundamental cues emerge from mental images to bring forth associated recalls. Alas cues can be inconsistent, causing memory failure; fortunately a subliminal cue editor encourages remembering forgotten items. Furthermore, cues generally address several memories, forcing the brain to make a selection. This necessitates another special circuit whose purpose is subliminal editing. The simplified explanations provided in this book make it clear that neurons do far more than ordinary devices, since a single neuron is capable of remarkably dense combinational and sequential logic. Beginning with their interesting and unexpected logical behavior, the reader will genuinely enjoy Dr. Burger's synthesis of a system for biological consciousness, a system that may someday result in credible artificial consciousness. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that there are both particulars and universals. Many of these philosophers, in turn, believe that universals are immanent. On this view, universals are wholly located where their instances are located. Both Douglas Ehring and E.J. Lowe have argued that immanent universals do not exist on the grounds that nothing can be wholly located in multiple places simultaneously without contradiction. In this paper, I focus on Lowe’s argument, which has received far less attention in the literature. Using the (...) theory of location found in Josh Parsons (2007), I show how Lowe’s argument against immanent universals can be resisted. (shrink)