This paper describes the application of eight statistical and machine-learning methods to derive computer models for predicting mortality of hospital patients with pneumonia from their findings at initial presentation. The eight models were each constructed based on 9847 patient cases and they were each evaluated on 4352 additional cases. The primary evaluation metric was the error in predicted survival as a function of the fraction of patients predicted to survive. This metric is useful in assessing a model’s potential to assist (...) a clinician in deciding whether to treat a given patient in the hospital or at home. We examined the error rates of the models when predicting that a given fraction of patients will survive. We examined survival fractions between 0.1 and 0.6. Over this range, each model’s predictive error rate was within 1% of the error rate of every other model. When predicting that approximately 30°K of the patients will survive, all the models have an error rate of less than 1.5%. The models are distinguished more by the number of variables and parameters that they contain than by their error rates; these differences suggest which models may be the most amenable to future implementation as paper-based guidelines. (shrink)

Angell's logic of analytic containment AC has been shown to be characterized by a 9-valued matrix NC by Ferguson, and by a 16-valued matrix by Fine. We show that the former is the image of a surjective homomorphism from the latter, i.e., an epimorphic image. The epimorphism was found with the help of MUltlog, which also provides a tableau calculus for NC extended by quantifiers that generalize conjunction and disjunction.

This paper begins by distinguishing three different but related foci of gastronomical aesthetic theory: food preparation and presentation; the gustatory qualities and social meanings of the food we eat; and finally the various actions involved in the ingestion of food. This third, largely ignored dimension of gastronomical theory, constitutes the topic of this paper, which seeks to define the distinctive character of this art, elucidate its diverse values, and analyze its key elements. Particular attention is given to the much overlooked (...) proprioceptive qualities and postural aspects of the art of eating. (shrink)

Current philosophies of art remain sadly dominated by visions of its end and lamentations of decline. Defining the very notions of art and the aesthetic as special products of Western modernity, they suggest that postmodern challenges to traditional high culture pose a devastating danger to Art's future. Richard Shusterman's new book cuts through the seductive confusions of these views by tracing the earthy roots of aesthetic experience and showing how the recent flourishing of aesthetic forms outside modernity's sacralized realm (...) of fine art evince the persistent presence of an artistic impulse far deeper and more durable than the modernist moment. Performing Live defends the abiding power of aesthetic experience by exploring its diverse roles, methods, and meanings, especially in fields marginal to traditional aesthetics but now most vibrantly alive in today's culture and new media. Ranging from rap, techno, and country music to cinema, cyberspace and urban design, Shusterman develops his radical theory of "somaesthetics," charting the complex network of bodily arts so prominent in contemporary life and self-styling. By blending concrete aesthetic analysis with insightful social critique, Shusterman, a well-known pragmatist philosopher, provides a rich menu and critical guide for today's pursuit of the art of living. (shrink)

The primary title of this essay is derived from Arthur Fine's recent book, The Shaky Game, which is a rephrasing of “risky game”, a term Einstein applied to the defenders of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, claiming that “‘most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality‘”. Just as Einstein's term indicates his disagreement with this standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, Fine's term is being used to express disapproval of (...) his interpretation of the philosophy of physics of Einstein and Bohr. The subtitle forecasts my evaluation of Fine's attempt in NOA to provide a satisfactory ontological basis of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that (...) while none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

A promising approach to more refined models consistent with the Caplan & Waters hypothesis is based on similarity-based interference, a general principle that applies across working memory domains. This may explain both the fine details of syntactic working memory phenomena and the gross fractionation for which Caplan & Waters have found evidence. Detailed models of syntactic processing that embody similarity-based interference fare well cross-linguistically.

Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that (...) while none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Substantially re-written and updated, this edition of 'The Existence of God' presents arguments such as the existence of the laws of nature, 'fine-tuning' of the universe, moral awareness and evidence of miracles, to prove the case that there is a God.

Theism is a far simpler hypothesis, and so a priori more probably true, than naturalism, understood as the hypothesis that the existence of this law-governeduniverse has no explanation. Theism postulates only one entity (God) with very simple properties, whereas naturalism has to postulate either innumerableentities all having the same properties, or one very complicated entity with the power to produce the former. If theism is true, it is moderately probable that God would create humanoid beings and so humanoid bodies; but (...) laws of nature would have to have very special properties if they are to bring about the existencne of humaoid bodies. Given laws of the present form (quantum theory with the Pauli principle and the four forces), the constants of the laws and variables of the boundary conditions of the universe would need to be extremely fine-tuned; and no simpler set of laws would allow the existence of humanoid bodies at all. So the evidence of the existence of humanoid bodies adds further to the probability of theismas against naturalism. (shrink)

An investigative team of philosophers uncovers the hidden meanings of this weird and puzzling television show.

It is most improbable a priori that laws of nature should have a form, and their constants have values, and the variables of the boundary conditions of our universe should have values, of such a kind as to lead to the evolution of human bodies. If there is a God it is quite probable that there would be human bodies. Our only grounds for believing that there are other universes, are grounds for believing that those universes are governed by the (...) same laws and have the same boundary conditions as our own. Hence, the existence of our universe is evidence for the existence of God. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: * Fine-Tuning * Notes.

In this book, Richard Dien Winfield builds upon Hegel’s Aesthetics to provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the individual fine arts, which remedies Hegel's inconsistencies and major omissions. In addition to conceiving the general aesthetics and particular stylistic forms of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature, Winfield determines the fundamental character of the new arts of photography and cinema that the master thinkers of aesthetics never had the opportunity to consider. Winfield’s analysis covers a wide-ranging array of (...) artistic creations from diverse periods and cultures, while engaging in debate with the most important aesthetic theorists of the past and present. (shrink)

First coined in modernity, the aesthetic is a vague, polysemic and contested concept whose complexities arise from the variety of the ways it has been defined in the history of its theorization, but also in its formative prehistory in theories of art and beauty that preceded its modern coinage. After noting key points of that prehistory, the article traces three major modern tendencies in construing the aesthetic: as a special mode of sensory perception or experience that is relevant to life (...) in general; as a special faculty or exercise of taste focused on judgments of beauty and related qualities such as the sublime; and as a theory of fine art. The idea of aesthetic disinterestedness is critically examined, and contrasts between the concept of art in Western modernity and in pre-modern and Asian culture are also considered. (shrink)

The primary title of this essay is derived from Arthur Fine's recent book, The Shaky Game, which is a rephrasing of “risky game”, a term Einstein applied to the defenders of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, claiming that “‘most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality‘”. Just as Einstein's term indicates his disagreement with this standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, Fine's term is being used to express disapproval of (...) his interpretation of the philosophy of physics of Einstein and Bohr. The subtitle forecasts my evaluation of Fine's attempt in NOA to provide a satisfactory ontological basis of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

to appear in Lambert, E. and J. Schwenkler (eds.) Transformative Experience (OUP) -/- L. A. Paul (2014, 2015) argues that the possibility of epistemically transformative experiences poses serious and novel problems for the orthodox theory of rational choice, namely, expected utility theory — I call her argument the Utility Ignorance Objection. In a pair of earlier papers, I responded to Paul’s challenge (Pettigrew 2015, 2016), and a number of other philosophers have responded in similar ways (Dougherty, et al. 2015, Harman (...) 2015) — I call our argument the Fine-Graining Response. Paul has her own reply to this response, which we might call the Authenticity Reply. But Sarah Moss has recently offered an alternative reply to the Fine-Graining Response on Paul’s behalf (Moss 2017) — we’ll call it the No Knowledge Reply. This appeals to the knowledge norm of action, together with Moss’ novel and intriguing account of probabilistic knowledge. In this paper, I consider Moss’ reply and argue that it fails. I argue first that it fails as a reply made on Paul’s behalf, since it forces us to abandon many of the features of Paul’s challenge that make it distinctive and with which Paul herself is particularly concerned. Then I argue that it fails as a reply independent of its fidelity to Paul’s intentions. (shrink)

The end of aesthetic experience -- Don't believe the hype -- The fine art of rap -- Affect and authenticity in country musicals -- The urban aesthetics of absence : pragmatist reflections in Berlin -- Beneath interpretation -- Somaesthetics and the body/media issue -- The somatic turn : care of the body in contemporary culture -- Multiculturalism and the art of living -- Genius and the paradox of self-styling.

The primary title of this essay is derived from Arthur Fine's recent book, The Shaky Game, which is a rephrasing of “risky game”, a term Einstein applied to the defenders of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, claiming that “‘most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality‘”. Just as Einstein's term indicates his disagreement with this standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, Fine's term is being used to express disapproval of (...) his interpretation of the philosophy of physics of Einstein and Bohr. The subtitle forecasts my evaluation of Fine's attempt in NOA to provide a satisfactory ontological basis of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Many fine-grained decisions concerning climate change involve significant, even severe, uncertainty. Here, we focus on modelling the decisions of single agents, whether individual persons or groups perceived as corporate entities. We offer a taxonomy of the sources and kinds of uncertainty that arise in framing these decision problems, as well as strategies for making a choice in spite of uncertainty. The aim is to facilitate a more transparent and structured treatment of uncertainty in climate decision making.

Is there an explanation of why the state of x's bearing the non-symmetric binary relation R to y is different from its differential opposite, the state of y's bearing R to x? One traditional view has it that the explanation is that non-symmetric relations hold of objects in an essentially directional way, ordering the relevant relata. We call this view ‘directionalism’. Kit Fine has suggested that this approach is subject to significant metaphysical difficulties, sufficient to motivate seeking an alternative (...) analysis. He considers two such alternative explanations, which he labels ‘positionalism’ and ‘anti-positionalism’. Of these he endorses the latter. We argue that anti-positionalism fails to provide a coherent explanation of the distinction between differential opposites, and that one should simply hold the minimalist position that there is no explanation for this metaphysical difference. (shrink)

Many philosophers nowadays believe Frege was right about belief, but wrong about language: The contents of beliefs need to be individuated more finely than in terms of Russellian propositions, but the contents of utterances do not. I argue that this 'hybrid view' cannot offer no reasonable account of how communication transfers knowledge from one speaker to another and that, to do so, we must insist that understanding depends upon more than just getting the references of terms right.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials ed. by Roger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom SorellRichard A. WatsonRoger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom Sorell, editors. Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii + 170. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $18.95.This volume includes primarily source materials from authors who were contemporary to Descartes’s composition of the Meditations. Thus there are no selections from Augustine, Aquinas, and Montaigne, for (...) example, who were more influential on the Meditations than some of the authors excerpted. Of course their influence is already amply documented by such scholars as Gilson and Gouhier. Probably the most important source included is Suárez, whose role is championed by Jean-Luc Marion in several works. Readers should look for the forthcoming Index Augustino-Cartèsian: Textes et Commentaire by Zbigniew Janowski (Paris: J. Vrin) for a startling challenge to the view that Descartes is Suárezian.In the volume under review, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo is of special interest because Descartes thought of refuting him item by item (but decided exposition of his own view would be adequate). In his youth Descartes had a definite interest in Petrus Ramus, although Beeckman told him his method consisted of tired old tricks. Francisco Sanches and Pierre Charron are important for their expositions of sceptical arguments and attitudes. Christopher Clavius is Descartes’s direct predecessor in mathematical analysis, and none of Descartes’s protests that he never read the man has convinced anyone. Scipion Dupleix is a fine example of how the Old Philosophy appeared to the New Philosophers, and Marin Mersenne, of course, compiled material on every subject Descartes ever had an interest in. Pierre Gassendi exercised Descartes’s ire more than any other commentator on the Meditations, and Descartes again probably read Gassendi’s continuing criticisms even though he claimed he wouldn’t. [End Page 366]Of special interest is Jean de Silhon, an old friend of Descartes’s who published a book containing a proto-cogito three years before the Meditations appeared. François de la Mothe le Vayer represents the libertine strain many detect in Descartes’s writings, while Jean-Baptiste Morin provides fodder for those who detect Descartes’s piety, although Descartes asserts that the man is an idiot for defending the immobility of the earth. Finally, Charles Sorel provides an example of the deductive mode of exposition in a text that shows that the notion of a unified science was more than Cartesian. One contemporary who was left out and should have been included was the Augustinian Guillaume Gibieuf.But overall, this is an interesting and useful collection of works Descartes doubtless knew. [End Page 367]Richard A. WatsonWashington UniversityCopyright © 1999 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

RICHARD RORTY has written one of the most important and challenging books to be published by an American philosopher in the past few decades. Some will find it a deeply disturbing book while others will find it liberating and exhilarating—both, as we shall see, may be right and wrong. Not since James and Dewey have we had such a devastating critique of professional philosophy. But unlike James and Dewey, who thought that once the sterility and artificiality of professional—and indeed (...) much of modern philosophy since Descartes—had been exposed, there was an important job for philosophers to do; Rorty leaves us in a much more ambiguous and unsettled state. I will examine Rorty’s book from a variety of perspectives, beginning with a general overview and then moving to more finely meshed descriptions. My aim is not only to illuminate the power and subtlety of Rorty’s analysis and to show its inner unity, but to locate basic issues that are left unresolved. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Fine Delight that Fathers Thought: Rhetoric and Medievalism in Gerard Manley HopkinsRichard D. LordThe Fine Delight that Fathers Thought: Rhetoric and Medievalism in Gerard Manley Hopkins, by Franco Marucci; 261 pp. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994, $44.95.Paging one day through Hopkins’s notebooks in the library at Campion Hall, I was startled to find the draft of “Spelt From Sibyl’s Leaves” placed directly (...) opposite the tortuous grade computations for one of his classes. This book presents a similar contrast—insights into “The Wreck of the Deutschland” buried in the technical language of structuralism, semiotics, and rhetoric.In his preface, the author calls his book “a revised and updated translation of my I fogli della Sibilla. Retorica et medievalismo in Gerard Manley Hopkins” (p. ix). As the title indicates, it is divided into two parts, the former dealing with Hopkins’s poetic rhetoric viewed synchronically and the latter with his “textuality as a confluence of... cultural codes” (p. 89).In the chapter introducing part one, Marucci dismisses, with few exceptions, criticism from 1918 to the present as being of little use to one investigating “the function and functionality of Hopkins’s poetic rhetoric” (p. 3). The exemplifying portion of this chapter (“Amplification”) addresses “God’s Grandeur” and “The Wreck of the Deutschland” as judicial speech (persuasive), with the reader performing the judicial function. The analysis is useful in providing insights into the poet’s rhetorical planning as he guides the reader in this persuasive process.Moving from the “Deutschland” to the “terrible sonnets” as exemplifications of “autocommunication,” Marucci notes that here the interlocutor gradually disappears as the sender-receiver relationship fades. He believes that Hopkins became “no longer capable of finding in himself (or, more probably, of offering to a receiver who had proved cold and indifferent) the necessary stimuli” (p. 76) and names the editor of The Month, Bridges, and other correspondents as the probable receivers.In the second (and major) part of the book, the author sets out to examine the cultural codes influencing the poet’s textuality. The chapter introducing this section, “‘Integrated’ and ‘Apocalyptic’ Writers,” first looks at “the global syntagmatic model of the Victorian Age” (p. 98) and then divides its texts according to this model into three categories. The first two either reflect or modify the syntagmatic codes (“integrated” writers) while the third opposes these codes (“apocalyptic” writers). The author’s thesis is that Hopkins is not fully any one of these, but that his Victorianism is subsumed in various ways and ultimately subordinated to his medievalism. His position is that Victorian codes essentially ceased to affect the poet after his entrance into the Society of Jesus, when they were replaced by medieval codes. This is developed in some detail in the chapter entitled “Hopkins and Duns Scotus.”Although the book takes a narrow critical approach to Hopkins, it still might [End Page 149] well have been enriched by allowing for the ways in which the Ignatian method of meditation, with its emphasis on the “application of the senses,” so clearly drew Hopkins to find a kindred spirit in Scotus. This, together with the kind of seminary training in vogue in the Catholic Church until after Vatican II, certainly contributed to the medievalism that Marucci finds in the later Hopkins.This is a useful and provocative book for scholars, but many of the footnotes seem unnecessarily long and some chapters conclude too abruptly. The highly specialized language of structuralism and semiotics requires an expertise that probably eludes most undergraduate students.Richard D. LordWillamette UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Sextus Empiricus' Against the Logicians is by far the most detailed surviving examination by any ancient Greek sceptic of the areas of epistemology and logic. It critically examines the pretensions of non-sceptical philosophers to have discovered methods for determining the truth, either through direct observation or by inference from the observed to the unobserved. It is therefore a fine example of the Pyrrhonist sceptical method at work. It also provides a mine of information about the ideas of other Greek (...) thinkers, ideas that are in many cases poorly preserved in other sources. This volume presents Against the Logicians in a new and accurate translation, together with a detailed introduction that sets the work in its philosophical context. (shrink)

(This is for the Cambridge Handbook of Analytic Philosophy, edited by Marcus Rossberg) In this handbook entry, I survey the different ways in which formal mathematical methods have been applied to philosophical questions throughout the history of analytic philosophy. I consider: formalization in symbolic logic, with examples such as Aquinas’ third way and Anselm’s ontological argument; Bayesian confirmation theory, with examples such as the fine-tuning argument for God and the paradox of the ravens; foundations of mathematics, with examples such (...) as Hilbert’s programme and Gödel’s incompleteness theorems; social choice theory, with examples such as Condorcet’s paradox and Arrow’s theorem; ‘how possibly’ results, with examples such as Condorcet’s jury theorem and recent work on intersectionality theory; and the application of advanced mathematics in philosophy, with examples such as accuracy-first epistemology. (shrink)

In his magisterial work Persephone, Zuntz drew a basic distinction between two sets of Orphic gold leaves—those known from the elaborate tumuli at Thurii, which he called Group A, and a more widely scattered series, Group B, then represented by two longer texts from Petelia in southern Italy and Pharsalus in Thessaly, and, in a shortened form, by a series of six short texts from the environs of Eleutherna in Crete. Three further finds have reinforced Zuntz's distinctions: first, a tablet (...) from Hipponium, the colony of Epizephyrian Locri in southern Italy, published by Foti and Pugliese Carratelli, then a lamella said to be from Thessaly but now in Malibu and published by Breslin, and finally a tablet said to be from Entella in Sicily and recently in Geneva, which was published in a bad transcription by Frel and much clarified by Riedweg. The first and third belong to Zuntz's Group B, while the second is close to his Group C. Pugliese Carratelli has published an exceptionally fine set of photographs of all the texts except those from Petelia and Entella. My restudy of the leaf from Petelia has led to some improved readings. Not even a drawing exists of the Entellan leaf, which no scholar except its first editor has ever seen. This fact prompted a reviewer of this article to wonder about its authenticity. In the absence of the object itself, such doubts can only be allayed if its text consistently contributes to improving our understanding of the archetype from which it is derived. One of the aims of this article is to show that it does indeed do so. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dewey's Art as ExperienceThe Psychological BackgroundRichard Shusterman (bio)IThe year 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of John Dewey's birth and also the 75th anniversary of the publication of his aesthetic masterpiece Art as Experience—a book that has been extremely influential within the field of aesthetics, not only in philosophical aesthetics and aesthetic education but also in the arts themselves.1 I am honored to commemorate this double Deweyan anniversary with an (...) essay that reexamines Art as Experience by briefly tracing some of its major themes and clarifying its generative context of production and philosophical roots, while also suggesting, in passing, how some of these themes and roots contribute to its continuing philosophical relevance. Before going further, I should offer two preliminary cautions. First, Dewey's aesthetic magnum opus is obviously too rich and masterful in ideas and influence for any brief commemorative essay to hope to do it sufficient justice. Second, as Dewey defined philosophy as "a criticism of criticisms," so my remarks will include a critical dimension.2 This in no way denies my immense admiration for Dewey's achievement in Art as Experience, just as my noting of some formative influences on this work is in no way meant to diminish the impressive originality of his contribution.Dewey's Art as Experience first established pragmatist aesthetics on the philosophical map, yet his text makes no mention of pragmatism. There are good reasons for Dewey's reluctance to highlight the term. The pragmatic is closely linked to the practical, precisely the idea against which the aesthetic has, since Kant, been traditionally contrasted and often oppositionally defined as purposeless and disinterested. To describe his new aesthetic [End Page 26] explicitly as pragmatist might have aroused too much skepticism to insure Dewey's views a fair hearing. Moreover, the pragmatist movement did not yet have a real tradition of philosophical aesthetics on which Dewey could securely rely, a suspicious lack that encouraged the presumption that pragmatism had nothing worthwhile to offer the arts and no real interest in them. Neither C. S. Peirce (who first conceived and baptized pragmatism) nor William James (who made it an internationally famous movement and converted Dewey to it) provided any treatises on aesthetics in their voluminous and wide-ranging writings.It would be wrong to conclude, however, that these first prophets of pragmatism dismissed the aesthetic dimension as unimportant and that they contributed nothing to our understanding of art and criticism. As the originator of semiotics, Peirce significantly advanced the theory of symbols and interpretation in ways that enrich aesthetics. Appreciative of the role of play in creative expression and thought (which he tried to capture through an intriguing concept he called "musement"), Peirce also emphasized the immediately felt quality of experience (so crucial to aesthetics) as his first category of consciousness or "Firstness." Finally, Peirce urged the continuity and collaboration of aesthetics and ethics, even going so far as "making Ethics dependent upon Esthetics" and treating "the morally good … as a particular species of the esthetically good." If "Ethics is the science of the method of bringing Self-Control to bear to gain" what we desire, "what one ought to desire … will be to make [one's] life beautiful, admirable. Now the science of the Admirable is true Esthetics."3William James, whose keen aesthetic taste, wide culture, and love of art inspired his first career choice for painting, offered almost no theorizing in philosophical aesthetics because he was convinced that its abstract formal principles and discursive definitions necessarily failed to capture (and even tended to obscure) the crucial nameless subtleties of art that make all the difference in actual aesthetic experience. But James held the aesthetic dimension of experience (its immediately and distinctively felt but nameless qualities and the appeal that such qualities exercised on our minds and behavior) to be extremely important, well beyond the field of fine art. Maintaining that such aesthetic considerations deeply pervaded one's ethical and philosophical perspective, he even argued that contentions between rival worldviews rested largely on "aesthetic" discords or conflicting temperaments.4 James also devoted specific attention to the aesthetic emotions as "subtler emotions" (along with intellectual and moral... (shrink)

This magisterial volume achieves a remarkable new synthesis of work on the deep roots of the Homeric poems in Indo-European antiquity with fine-grained historical analyses of the period when the text was crystallizing. Frame’s unmatched range of learning in specialized subjects from Vedic meter and Greek noun morphology to the tangled web of Ionian inter-state relations in the archaic era enables him to buttress a massive structure of argumentation arrayed with architectural artistry over five large parts. The result should (...) change views not just of the underlying poetic structure of the Iliad and Odyssey but also of the place, date, and circumstances of their composition. Few Classics books containing 782 pages of text can be said to reward reading of every paragraph; this one does. (shrink)

As Laudan and Fine show, and Boyd concedes, the attempt to infer the truth of scientific realism from the fact that it putatively provides the best explanation of the instrumental success of science is circular, since what is to be shown is precisely the legitimacy of such abductive inferences. Hacking's "experimental argument for scientific realism about entities" is one of the few arguments for scientific realism that purports to avoid this circularity. We argue that Hacking's argument is as dependent (...) on inference to the best explanation (IBE), and therefore as weak, as the other realist arguments. (shrink)

Many readers of this journal will be familiar with the authors collected in this volume, who are leading Marxian theorists from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The quality of the contributions, combined with the vast range of issues explored, makes this collection all but indispensable for anyone concerned with contemporary Marxian theory. Four of the most important claims distinguishing a Marxian perspective from competing approaches are illuminated here. The first concerns the end of social life in capitalism. As Simon (...) Clarke documents, Adam Smith found the idea that the ultimate goal of economic activity might be something different from the satisfaction of human wants and needs literally unintelligible. Some subsequent mainstream theorists have held that capitalist markets attain this goal more or less automatically; others have insisted that more or less intensive government intervention is required. For Marx, in contrast, an inhuman end – capital accumulation – holds sway, and even the most powerful states must accommodate to it. Human ends tend to be met only to the extent they further (or at least are compatible with) the “the self-valorization of value.” The papers by Clarke, Ben Fine, and Suzanne de Brunhoff provide clear and compelling accounts of this central dimension of Marx’s theory, focusing especially on his theory of money. Other authors in the collection take this understanding of capitalism as their starting point and develop it in original directions. Dick Bryan shows how the.. (shrink)

We show that a Woodin cardinal is necessary for the extender algebra to be complete. Our proof is relatively simple and does not use fine structure.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Richard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New PragmatismRichard RumanaRichard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New Pragmatism, by David L. Hall; xii & 290 pp. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, $49.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.David Hall has written a highly creative, original—and idiosyncratic—work on Rorty, with its idiosyncrasy another aspect that makes the book well worth reading. This does not mean that it is always satisfying, however, and (...) since Hall tries to find a blend of “exuberant praise and testy complaint” (p. 7), this review will adopt the same method.On the positive side, perhaps there is no better way to approach Rorty than by employing Rorty’s own method of reading philosophical and literary works: narrative recontextualization. Since Hall states, “Deductive and dialectical logics are irrelevant to (Rorty’s) thought” (p. 9), he had to find a means of avoiding the point/counterpoint strategy of direct argumentation so as to do justice to Rorty’s own conversational strategy of reading texts. Thus, Hall (compared, for example, to Konstantin Kolenda) is unique in his willingness “to follow Rorty through the looking glass” (a reference to Rorty’s discarding the traditional metaphor of the mind as a mirror) and to take seriously Rorty’s thinking as “beyond the philosophical pale” (p. 3). Hall makes a virtue of his strategy: “The best one can do is to judge the relative attractiveness of Rorty’s views by recourse to alternative visions” (p. 4). The breadth of Hall’s background in philosophy, both Eastern and Western, his fine ear for irony, and his acute sense of history make him an exemplary reader who can offer attractive alternate visions by which to examine Rorty’s own vision.The subtitle of the book (“Poet and Prophet of the New Pragmatism”) announces Hall’s underlying theme; he takes his cue from the pragmatic Deweyan aspect of Rorty’s work, with the phrase “new pragmatism” referring to Rorty’s reinterpretation of pragmatism along linguistic lines. Where the original emphasis of pragmatism was on ideas as habits through which experience could be guided for the satisfaction of desires in terms of either private or public goods, Rorty’s neopragmatism replaces ideas and experience with language and alternate vocabularies as the medium through which desires are fulfilled. With this emphasis on language comes Hall’s reading of Rorty as poet and prophet. The desire for self-creation is accomplished through poetry and literature. The desire for social tolerance is marked by Rorty’s commitment to a form of Utopian Democracy. Hall’s reading of Rorty is well grounded in the mutations of Pragmatism from Peirce to Davidson and from aesthetics to social theory.On the negative side, a number of Hall’s claims are open to objection, some of them are minor, some more substantive. Of the minor variety is a footnote for Chapter 2: “Rorty’s Ph.D. dissertation was on Whitehead and Aristotle”—whereas, in Rorty’s dissertation, The Concept of Potentiality (Yale, 1956), Whitehead appears only in the bibliography and is not mentioned in the text at all. [End Page 144]On more substantive issues, Hall’s contention in Chapter One, where he discusses Rorty’s historicism, is that Rorty is unable to free himself from the Kantian problematic of the autonomy of value; he remains, thus, an heir to the “aims of the Enlightenment” (p. 51). This seems to be a narrowly conceived interpretation. Admittedly, Rorty has recently said that he would now not define his thinking as “postmodern” since the term has become laden with excess baggage from other disciplines (although, he still accepts Lyotard’s definition, “distrust of metanarratives,” as pertinent to what he is doing). On the other hand, except for an acceptance of the secularization of the public realm, there seems to be little in his thinking that characterizes him as an “Enlightenment” figure, and Hall himself seems to concede this when he later refers to Rorty as a “Nihilist” (p. 170). Is it possible to be both a nihilist and committed to the Enlightenment? I find it even harder to follow Hall in his belief that Rorty’s nihilism “expresses itself directly in Rorty... (shrink)

Paul Standish:Some people might expect us to start by explaining why we have written this chapter as a dialogue. Leaving aside the fact that Plato – to whom all philosophy, it has been said, is a series of footnotes – wrote in dialogue form, and never seems to have felt the need to tell us why, we might say that we have written it in this way because it is a dialogue. We push ideas to and fro, question each other, (...) disagree with each other, and so on.Reader:You say that it is a dialogue. Do you mean that this chapter is a transcription of an actual conversation between you?Richard Smith:There have been so many conversations among us that these pages are pretty well bound to be true to our spoken words at some time or another. And of course these conversations have involved Paul Smeyers too, and – for many years – Nigel Blake, whose presence can also be detected in these pages.Reader:So you are saying that there has been something essentially dialogic in your relationship with Paul Smeyers, and you felt that only a dialogue could do justice to that.Paul:Pretty much so. And while there is something worryingly self-confirming in justifying the dialogue form with a dialogic explanation, it would be odd to cast the justification in some other prose form, as if that were superior to dialogue in respect of clarity or persuasive power or in some other way.Richard:Then too dialogue is a fine medium for reminiscence, allowing for uncertainty, different perspectives, and debate rather than assuming that veridical record is what is at issue here.Paul:In any case, reminiscence is largely a way of revisiting philosophical projects and arguments from the past in order to subject their soundness to fresh critique.Reader:So, if I understand you, this dialogue is both true and fictive, and reminiscence looks forward, as much as back.Richard:Splendid. I only hope that what follows isn’t a disappointment to you. (shrink)