Christian discourse for moral edification by a Catholic Bishop; written in the form of confessions of a Christian sinner.

Persistence through time is like extension through space. A road has spatial parts in the subregions of the region of space it occupies; likewise, an object that exists in time has temporal parts in the various subregions of the total region of time it occupies. This view — known variously as four dimensionalism, the doctrine of temporal parts, and the theory that objects “perdure” — is opposed to “three dimensionalism”, the doctrine that things “endure”, or are “wholly present”.1 I will (...) attempt to resolve this dispute in favor of four dimensionalism by means of a novel argument based on considerations of vagueness. But before argument in this area can be productive, I believe we must become much clearer than is customary about exactly what the dispute is, for the usual ways of formulating the dispute are flawed, especially where three dimensionalism is concerned. (shrink)

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our (...) continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

The View from Here is a study of our must fundamental attitudes toward the past. The book explores the dynamics of affirmation and regret, tracing the connections of each to our ongoing attachments. The focus is on situations in which our attachments commit us to affirming events or decisions that we know to have been unfortunate or regrettable.

A large body of literature agrees that persons with schizophrenia suffer from a Theory of Mind deficit. However, most empirical studies have focused on third-person, egocentric ToM, underestimating other facets of this complex cognitive skill. Aim of this research is to examine the ToM of schizophrenic persons considering its various aspects, to determine whether some components are more impaired than others. We developed a Theory of Mind Assessment Scale and administered it to 22 persons with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia (...) and a matching control group. Th.o.m.a.s. is a semi-structured interview which allows a multi-component measurement of ToM. Both groups were also administered a few existing ToM tasks and the schizophrenic subjects were administered the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale and the WAIS-R. The schizophrenic persons performed worse than control at all the ToM measurements; however, these deficits appeared to be differently distributed among different components of ToM. Our conclusion is that ToM deficits are not unitary in schizophrenia, which also testifies to the importance of a complete and articulated investigation of ToM. (shrink)

A large body of literature agrees that persons with schizophrenia suffer from a Theory of Mind deficit. However, most empirical studies have focused on third-person, egocentric ToM, underestimating other facets of this complex cognitive skill. Aim of this research is to examine the ToM of schizophrenic persons considering its various aspects, to determine whether some components are more impaired than others.We developed a Theory of Mind Assessment Scale and administered it to 22 persons with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia and (...) a matching control group. Th.o.m.a.s. is a semi-structured interview which allows a multi-component measurement of ToM. Both groups were also administered a few existing ToM tasks and the schizophrenic subjects were administered the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale and the WAIS-R.The schizophrenic persons performed worse than control at all the ToM measurements; however, these deficits appeared to be differently distributed among different components of ToM.Our conclusion is that ToM deficits are not unitary in schizophrenia, which also testifies to the importance of a complete and articulated investigation of ToM. (shrink)

In a first part, I defend that formal semantics can be used as a guide to ontological commitment. Thus, if one endorses an ontological view \(O\) and wants to interpret a formal language \(L\) , a thorough understanding of the relation between semantics and ontology will help us to construct a semantics for \(L\) in such a way that its ontological commitment will be in perfect accordance with \(O\) . Basically, that is what I call constructing formal semantics from an (...) ontological perspective. In the rest of the paper, I develop rigorously and put into practice such a method, especially concerning the interpretation of second-order quantification. I will define the notion of ontological framework: it is a set-theoretical structure from which one can construct semantics whose ontological commitments correspond exactly to a given ontological view. I will define five ontological frameworks corresponding respectively to: (i) predicate nominalism, (ii) resemblance nominalism, (iii) armstrongian realism, (iv) platonic realism, and (v) tropism. From those different frameworks, I will construct different semantics for first-order and second-order languages. Notably I will present different kinds of nominalist semantics for second-order languages, showing thus that we can perfectly quantify over properties and relations while being ontologically committed only to individuals. I will show in what extent those semantics differ from each other; it will make clear how the disagreements between the ontological views extend from ontology to logic, and thus why endorsing an ontological view should have an impact on the kind of logic one should use. (shrink)

This monograph discusses the sources for ancient propositional logic, mainly in Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius bk. VII. It is argued that most of the sources in Sextus which have hitherto been taken to be sources for Stoic logic either do not report Stoic logic at all or report pre-Chrysippean Stoic logic. These texts report (in the first case) a group labelled the Dialecticians whose most prominent members were Diodorus Cronus and Philo or else (in the second case) early Stoic (...) logicians heavily influenced by the Dialecticians. The texts discussed concern the theory of signs, the theory of proof and the classifications of propositions and of arguments. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is on the one hand to remind the Western reader of some aporias of Chinese antiquity, and on the other hand to show that a logic of sorts or of types similar to that which has been proposed to explain the relation between categories (in the mathematical sense of the term) and logic brings much light on these aporias. This should be contrasted with older traditional explanations using conventional syllogistics or feeling satised with too simple (...) explanations such as the confusion between inclusion and identity. The article is based on preceding papers of the Author, but stresses the basic unity of the solutions which were proposed there. (shrink)

The species concept is one of the oldest and most fundamental in biology. And yet it is almost universally conceded that no satisfactory definition of what constitutes a species has ever been proposed. The present article is devoted to an attempt to review the status of the problem from a methodological point of view. Since the species is one of the many taxonomic categories, the question of the nature of these categories in general needs to be entered into.

Th. W. Adorno y los demás autores de la Teoría Crítica supieron captar procesos sociales incipientes que no han hecho sino desplegarse y confirmarse con el tiempo. Frente a quienes denuncian sus supuestas aporías y exagerado negativismo, se reivindica aquí la actualidad de una de sus tesis más conocidas y discutidas, la de la aniquilación del individuo. El paso del capitalismo liberal al monopolista sirve de horizonte para analizar las contradicciones del individuo burgués y su constitución social. En una segunda (...) parte se aborda la «debilidad del yo» como aquella configuración psíquica que se corresponde con la liquidación del individuo en la sociedad tardocapitalista. En el centenario del nacimiento de Th. W. Adorno valgan estas reflexiones de homenaje a un pensador y un pensamiento cada día más imprescindibles. (shrink)

Th. Dobzhansky played a special role in the reception and development of the “synthetic theory of evolution,” as well as in the establishment of scientific connections between Soviet and U.S. evolutionists, and first and foremost, geneticists. These connections greatly influenced the development of Soviet genetics, of evolutionary theory and evolutionary biology as a whole, and in particular the restoration of Soviet genetics in the late 1960s. A discussion of Dobzhansky’s correspondence and collaboration with colleagues in his native country, moreover, allows (...) for an improved understanding of the complex and dramatic history of Soviet genetics and evolutionary theory. It also provides novel insights into the interactions between scientists and authorities in the Soviet Union. (shrink)

En este trabajo se pretende mostrar el sentido político que adquirió la defensa de la teoría por parte de Adorno en los últimos años de su vida. él empleó esta defensa como una respuesta a los imperativos de los estudiantes de izquierda de plegar la teoría crítica a la intervención práctica inmediata. Para justificar esta tesis se atiende no sólo a lo que decía, sino también, en un nivel discursivo diferente, a lo que estaba haciendo cuando empleaba concentraciones de términos (...) y enunciados densos y eruditos para manifestarse. Esto lleva a incluir las reflexiones y valoraciones de Adorno referentes a la actitud teorética y a la praxis, principalmente aquellas esbozadas en Dialéctica negativa, en un contexto más amplio. This work pretends to show the political sense that the defense of the theory by Adorno acquired in the last years of his life. He used this defense as an answer to the students's imperatives of applying the critical theory to the immediate practical intervention. In order to justify this thesis will be considered not only what Adorno said, but also, in a different discursive level, what he was doing on having used concentrations of terms and dense and erudite declarations. This entails, then, to relate Adorno's reflections and assessments concerning to the theoretical and practical approach -specially those outlined in Negative Dialectic- to a broader contextual framework. (shrink)