Prompted by Alfred Landé's appraisal of individual indeterminacy in both ordinary and quantum games of chance, this paper suggests an alternative assessment in terms of the model-structure of physical theory. Whereas Landé explains such indeterminacy by appeal to "the Leibnitzian principle" of causal continuity, the author sees no need for such a special explanation. Instead, he indicates how the partial interpretation of the kinetic and quantum models limits us to statistical generalities--to limited "areas of relative chance." The alleged indeterminism of (...) physics thus resides in the model and its partial interpretation in the sense that the statistical nature of statements about "the next throw" or about individual particles is built into the model that enables the scientist to talk at all about such outcomes or entities. (shrink)

Can history be objective? Is history a science or humanistic discipline? What is its subject-matter? These three questions are variations on a single theme—the objectivity of history—which I want to explore. Faced with the welter of claims and counter-claims regarding objectivity in history, there is need to be explicit about one's approach to these claims. My prime endeavor in this paper is to reformulate these questions from my scheme of reference. I want to consider the objectivity of historical knowledge from (...) a framework that does justice both to philosophic and methological issues and to historical knowledge-claims themselves. How this philosophic framework be labeled is immaterial. What is alone important is that it does distinguish philosophy proper from both science and its methodological analysis. Confusion between the three, I believe, frequently generates problems out of whole cloth. The result is that obfuscation of issues present in much recent literature concerning history. (shrink)

Since Protagoras' classic “man is the measure of all things,” claims of relativism and counter-claims have been tendered. The nineteenth century saw Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Westermarck, Pareto, Marx, and others, suggesting that institutions, customs, moral codes, and the like, are “relative” both to the culture and to the time. At the crest of this wave of “relativism” surged a vicious claim: that truth and knowledge itself were merely functions of particular conditions. The “validity” of knowledge was said to be at the (...) whim of historic, social factors. Not only is no theory really true; no particular statement is ever so. Not only is no theory or statement really true; no theory of knowledge has thus far ever been free from the bias of its genesis. There have been no absolute insights for epistemology. Or so, at least, it was claimed. (shrink)

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In a recent article JRS, 68 f. Nicholas Horsfall sought to demonstrate that Corythus, which Virgil makes the original home of Dardanus, should be identified with Tarquinii, some 50 miles north-west of Rome, on the coast of Etruria, rather than with Cortona, roughly twice as far away, to the north, and inland. In doing so he expressed surprise that the Virgilian evidence should have been completely ignored by previous writers on the subject : and, using the Aeneid as the (...) main source on which his own argument was based, he supported his conclusion with a careful examination of several other aspects of the problem. (shrink)

In his 1995 book Colour vision (New York: Routledge), Evan Thompson proposes a new approach to the ontology of color according to which it is tied to the ecological dispositions-affordances described by J.J. Gibson and his followers. Thompson claims that a relational account of color is necessary in order to avoid the problems that go along with the dispute between subjectivists and objectivists about color, but he claims that the received view of perception does not allow a satisfactory relational account (...) of color. Hence to avoid the problems of the subjectivist/objectivist dispute one must abandon the received view of perception. I describe an account which is similar to Thompson's, but which invokes instead the physical dispositional properties described by the received view. All of the distinguishing characteristics that Thompson claims separate his ecological dispositions from physical dispositions are in fact found in the physical dispositions appealed to by my proposed theory. Because my proposed theory is similar to subjectivism, Thompson's departure from the received view is not as radical as he claims. In a final section I describe the a posteriori manner in which a substantive departure from the received view must be carried out by describing an example of ecological experimentation. (shrink)

A significant number of inmates with mental illness reside within the New York State Department of Corrections (NYSDOCS). New York State has taken the initiative to provide mentally ill inmates with necessary services through a collaboration of the New York State Department of Correctional Services and the New York State Office of Mental Health (NYSOMH). The collaboration results in a mental health delivery system that provides many essential services to mentally ill inmates. This paper focuses on the organization of mental (...) health services within NYSDOCS, best practices, past and current litigation, and staff responsibilities. As the population of mentally ill inmates continues to grow, implications for the Human Services professions of OMH and DOCS needs to continue to address and provide adequate mental health care and resources for this special population. (shrink)