We can best begin from Wilson's "simple little puzzle" about Caesar and Antony: "What would the world be like if Julius Caesar had all the properties of Mark Antony and Mark Antony had all the properties of Julius Caesar?" Wilson's own approach to an answer is indirect--he begins by telling us not what such a world would be like but what it would look like. "Clearly the world would look exactly the same under our supposition." But this assumes that the (...) question "What would such a world look like?" is a proper one; which it surely is not. For his answer to it is meaningless until he specifies to whom this supposed world would look as he says it would. It would look exactly the same to him or to me; but would it have looked the same to Caesar or to Antony? In fact Julius Caesar had the experiences of being called "Julius Caesar," being murdered on the Ides of March, and so on, and these are very different experiences from being called "Mark Antony," dallying on the Nile with Cleopatra, and so on; so I don't see how this alternative course of events could possibly have looked the same to Julius Caesar; or--using a similar line of argument--to Mark Antony. So I cannot agree that, as Wilson goes on to say, "our attempt to describe a distinct possible world has produced just the same old world all over again." I am not, indeed, convinced that even a world which looked to everyone just as the actual one does would necessarily be the same world ; but even putting this doubt aside, since the world mentioned wouldn't look to everyone as the actual world does, it wouldn't be the same even by Wilson's own standards. (shrink)

A broad survey of the problem of aesthetics, founded on a dynamic and organismic conception of the work of art. The term "formativity" is coined to emphasize the primacy of the making process as against the implied stasis of "form," and what the author regards as the epiphenomenal nature of "expression." The definition, genesis, and internal economy of the work of art, and the problem of criticism are discussed. Contains little that is particularly new or original.--S. A. N.

Arthur Norman Prior was born on 4 December 1914 in Masterton, New Zealand. He studied philosophy in the 1930s and was a significant, and often provocative, voice in theological debates until well into the 1950s. He became a lecturer in philosophy at Canterbury University College in Christchurch in 1946 succeeding Karl Popper. He became a full professor in 1952. He left New Zealand permanently for England in 1959, first taking a chair in philosophy at Manchester University, and then becoming (...) a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1966. Prior died on 6 October 1969 in Trondheim, Norway. After Prior’s death, many logicians and philosophers have analysed and discussed his approach to formal and philosophical logic. In particular, his contributions to modal logic, tense-logic and deontic logic have been studied. -/- In 1957, A.N. Prior proposed the three-valued modal logic Q as a ‘correct’ modal logic from his philosophical motivations, see Prior (1957). Prior developed Q in order to offer a logic for contingent beings, in which one could intelligibly and rationally state that some beings are contingent and some are necessary, see Akama & Nagata (2005). According to Akama & Nagata (2005), Q has a natural semantics. In other words, from the philosophical point of view, Q can be regarded as an ‘actualist’ modal logic. -/- This review article is a developed description of, and discussion on, ‘The System Q’ that is the fifth chapter of Prior (1957). In addition, in his logical analysis of ‘Time & Existence’ (that is the eights chapter of Prior (1967)), Prior has worked on system Q. Thus, Prior (1967) has also been very useful for this article. This article analyses the logical structure of system Q in order to provide a more understandable description as well as logical analysis for today’s logicians, philosophers, and information-computer scientists. In the paper, the Polish notations are translated into modern notations in order to be more comprehensible and to support the developed formal descriptions as well as semantic analysis. (shrink)

In the early 1960s A. N. Prior was commissioned to write a review of J. L. Austin’s S ense and Sensibilia. The review was never published. The present article presents a transcription of the review from the material available in the Virtual Lab For Prior Studies maintained at Aalborg University, together with an edited version of the transcription of a longer commentary on Sense and Sensibilia from which the review was condensed.

BackgroundAlthough the peer review process is believed to ensure scientific rigor, enhance research quality, and improve manuscript clarity, many investigators are concerned that the process is too slow, too expensive, too unreliable, and too static. In this feasibility study, we sought to survey corresponding authors of recently published clinical research studies on the speed and efficiency of the publication process.MethodsWeb-based survey of corresponding authors of a 20% random sample of clinical research studies in MEDLINE-indexed journals with Ovid MEDLINE entry (...) dates between December 1 and 15, 2016. Survey addressed perceived manuscript importance before first submission, approximate first submission and final acceptance dates, and total number of journal submissions, external peer reviews, external peer reviewers, and revisions requested, as well as whether authors would have considered publicly sharing their manuscript on an online platform instead of submitting to a peer-reviewed journal.ResultsOf 1780 surveys distributed, 27 corresponding authors opted out or requested that we stop emailing them and 149 emails failed (e.g., emails that bounced n = 64, returned with an away from office message n = 70, or were changed/incorrect n = 15), leaving 1604 respondents, of which 337 completed the survey (21.0%). Respondents and non-respondents were similar with respect to study type and publication journals’ impact factor, although non-respondent authors had more publications (p = 0.03). Among respondents, the median impact factor of the publications’ journal was 2.7 (interquartile range (IQR), 2.0–3.6) and corresponding authors’ median h-index and number of publications was 9 (IQR, 3–20) and 27 (IQR, 10–77), respectively. The median time from first submission to journal acceptance and publication was 5 months (IQR, 3–8) and 7 months (IQR, 5–12), respectively. Most respondents (62.0%, n = 209) rated the importance of their research as a 4 or 5 (5-point scale) prior to submission. Median number of journal submissions was 1 (IQR, 1–2), external peer reviews was 1 (IQR, 1–2), external peer reviewers was 3 (IQR, 2–4), and revisions requested was 1 (IQR, 1–1). Sharing manuscripts to a public online platform, instead of submitting to a peer-reviewed journal, would have been considered by 55.2% (n = 186) of respondents.ConclusionCorresponding authors have high perceptions of their research and reported requiring few manuscript submissions prior to journal acceptance, most commonly by lower impact factor journals. (shrink)

No single author presented Darwin with a more difficult question about his priority in discovering natural selection than the British comparative anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen. Owen was arguably the most influential biologist in Great Britain in Darwin’s time. Darwin wanted his approbation for what he believed to be his own theory of natural selection. Unfortunately for Darwin, when Owen first commented in publication about Darwin’s theory of descent he was openly hostile. Darwin was taken off-guard. In private meetings and (...) correspondence prior to 1860 Owen had been nothing but polite and friendly, even helping Darwin in cataloguing and analyzing Darwin’s zoological specimens from the Beagle voyage. Every early indication predicted a life-long friendship and collaboration. But that was not to be. Owen followed his slashing review with a mounting campaign in the 1860s to denounce and discredit both Darwin and his small but ascendant circle of friends and supporters. But that was not enough for Owen. Starting in 1866, perhaps by now realizing Darwin had landed the big fish, Owen launched a new campaign, to claim the discovery of “Darwin’s theory” for himself. Darwin naturally fought back, mainly in the “Historical Sketch” that he prefaced to Origin starting in 1861. But when we peel back the layers of personal animus and escalating vituperation we discover in fact their quarrel was generated more by mutual misunderstanding than scientific disagreement. The battle ended only when Darwin finally penetrated to the crux of the matter and put an end to the rivalry in 1872, in the final version of the Sketch. (shrink)

Surveys and extens work that has been done in the past two years on 'tense logic' and is a sequel to the author's book, Time and Modality.

The deepest beliefs’ about personal identity whose consequences Unger seeks to draw out are the beliefs of those who already share his theoretical convictions; and his pain-avoidance’ experiments show nothing unless one already assumes those convictions. If there is a risk’ that I may not survive a brain operation even though I know exactly which chunks of brain will be removed and replaced, that shows that I am a separate thing from my body and brain, about which the latter provide (...) normally reliable, but still fallible evidence. (shrink)

In a pair of very important papers, namely “Space, Time and Individuals” in the Journal of Philosophy for October 1955 and “The Indestructibility and Immutability of Substances” in Philosophical Studies for April 1956, Professor N. L. Wilson began something which badly needed beginning, namely the construction of a logically rigorous “substance-language” in which we talk about enduring and changing individuals as we do in common speech, as opposed to the “space-time” language favoured by very many mathematical logicians, perhaps most notably (...) by Quine. This enterprise of Wilson's is one with which I could hardly sympathize more heartily than I do; and one wishes for this logically rigorous “substance-language” not only when one is reading Quine but also when one is reading many other people. How fantastic it is, for instance, that Kotarbinski1 should call his metaphysics “Reism” when the very last kind of entity it has room for is things —instead of them it just has the world-lines or life-histories of things; “fourdimensional worms”, as Wilson says. Wilson, moreover, has at least one point of superiority to another rebel against space-time talk, P. F. Strawson; namely he does seriously attempt to meet formalism with formalism—to show that logical rigour is not a monopoly of the other side. At another point, however, Strawson seems to me to see further than Wilson; he is aware that substance-talk cannot be carried on without tenses, whereas Wilson tries to do without them. Wilson, in short, has indeed brought us out of Egypt; but as yet has us still wandering about the Sinai Peninsula; the Promised Land is a little further on than he has taken us. (shrink)

Arthur Prior (1914-69) is regarded as New Zealand's greatest 20th-century philosopher. Until World War II, Prior seriously considered a career as a religious journalist, especially when traveling and living on the Continent and in England with his first wife. During these years, Prior wrote widely on theology and contemporary Christianity. In his correspondence with Ursula Bethell and Hugh Teague, Prior discusses in detail his religious and theological thoughts, including his shift from formal theological study into a (...) world of journalism and philosophy. These previously unknown letters, which cover the years from 1936 to 1941, chronicle a substantial part of a fascinating period in Prior's development, both theologically and philosophically, and have been transcribed and annotated for this volume. (shrink)

This latest volume of the Husserliana continues the process of making available to a wider philosophical public the treasure of Husserl's unpublished writings at Louvain, formerly accessible only to a limited circle. Much of the work of later phenomenological psychologists is foreshadowed in this volume. After acknowledging the contributions of Dilthey and Brentano, Husserl proceeds to apply the analytical method of transcendental phenomenology as formulated in the Ideen to the concrete constitution of the living subject in the world. The priority (...) of the subject's world of spontaneous experience over the "objective world" of science is stressed. From an investigation of this direct experience the activity of the ego and the structure of the world as a realm of possible knowledge and action are systematically developed. There are appended the sketches and original text for the Encyclopaedia Britannica article "Phenomenology," and many brief essays amplifying the discussion. An essential book for anyone concerned with a most vital and productive current in continental thought.--S. A. N. (shrink)