Books Reviewed in this Article: Transforming Bible Study. By Walter Wink. Pp.175, London, SCM Press, 1981, £3.50. Isaiah 1–39. By R.E. Clements. Pp.xvi. 301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1980, £3.95. Isaiah 40–66. By R.N. Whybray. Pp.301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1975, Reprinted 1981, £3.95. Die Gestalt Jesu in den synoptischen Evangelien. By Heinrich Kahlefeld. Pp.264, Frankfurt, Verlag Josef Knecht, 1981, no price given. Following Jesus: Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark. By Ernest Best. Pp.283, Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1981, (...) £15.00, £5.95. The Origin of Paul's Gospel. By Seyoon Kim. Pp.xii, 391, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1981, 78 DM. An die Römer. By Ernst Käsemann. Pp.xvi, 411, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1980, 48 DM. Les Récits de Resurrection des Morts dans le Nouveau Testament. By Gerard Rochais. Pp.xv, 252, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £15.00. Prêtres Anciens, Prétre Nouveau selon le Nouveau Testament. By Albert Vanhoye. Pp.366, Paris Editions du Seuil, 1980, no price given. Woman in the World of Jesus. By Evelyn and Frank Stagg. Pp.292, Edinburgh, The St Andrew Press, 1981, no price given. Jesus, Man and the Church. By Karl Rahner. Pp.260, London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1981, £14.50. Jesus Lord and Savior: A Theopathic Christology and Soteriology. By William M. Thompson. Pp.ix, 287, Leominster, Fowler Wright, 1981, £7.45. God and World in Schleiermacher's ‘Dialektik’ and ‘Glaubenslehre’. Criticism and the Methodology of Dogmatics. By John E. Thiel. Pp.xiv, 239, Bern, Frankfurt and Las Vegas, Peter Lang, 1981, SF 49.50. Ministry: A Case for Change. By Edward Schillebeeckx. Pp.ix, 165, London, SCM Press, 1981, £4.95. The Sacraments: Readings in Contemporary Sacramental Theology. Edited by Michael J. Taylor. Pp.274, New York, Alba House, 1981, $7.95. Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith. A Report by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England. Pp.ix, 310, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.50. Confessing the Faith in the Church of England Today. By R.T. Beckwith. Pp.36, Oxford, La timer House, 1981, £1.00. A Kind of Noah's Ark? The Anglican Commitment to Comprehensiveness. By J.I. Packer. Pp.39, Oxford, Latimer House, 1981, £1.00. Reasonable Belief: A Survey of the Christian Faith. By Anthony Hanson and Richard Hanson. Pp.xii, 283, Oxford University Press, 1981, £8.50. Doctrine in the Church of England. The 1938 Report with a new introduction by G.W.H. Lampe. Pp.lx, 242, London, SPCK, 1982, £8.50. The Divine Right of the Papacy in Recent Ecumenical Theology. By J. Michael Miller. Pp.xvi, 322, Rome, Università Gregoriana Editrice, 1980, 18,000 Lire. Der heilige Geist in der Theologie von Heribert Mühlen: Versucheiner Darstellung und Würdigung. By John B. Banawiratma. Pp.ix, 310, Frankfurt and Bern: Peter D. Lang, 1981, SFr. 60.00. Standing Before God: Studies on Prayer in Scriptures and Tradition with Essays in Honor of John M. Oesterreicher. Edited by Asher Frinkel and Lawrence Frizzell. Pp.410, New York, Ktav Publishing House, 1981, $29.50. Judaism and Healing. By J. David Bleich. Pp.xiii, 199, New York, Ktav, 1981, $15.00. The Diversity of Moral Thinking. By Neil Cooper. Pp.x, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1981, £15.00. L'Homme: Sujet ou Objet? By Jacques Croteau. Pp.260, Montreal, Bellarmin: Tournai, Desclée et Cie, 1981, $15.00. The Texture of Knowledge: An Essay on Religion and Science. By James W. Jones. Pp.97, Washington, University Press of America, 1981, no price given. Cosmos and Creator. By Stanley L. Jaki. Pp.xii, 168, Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, 1980, £6.75. Dante, Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos. By Patrick Boyde. Pp.vii, 408, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £30.00. Dissidence et Philosophie au Mayen Âge. By E.L. Fortin. Pp.201, Montreal, Bellarmin, 1981, $12.00. The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton. By Richard Acworth. Pp.x, 388, Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1979, 74 DM. Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought. By David Miller. Pp.xii, 218, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £15.00. Hegelianism. By John Edward Toews. Pp.x, 450, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £25.00. One Hundred Years of Thomism. Edited by V.B. Brezik. Pp.210, Houston, Centre for Thomistic Studies, 1981, no price given. Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process. By J.V. Femia. Pp.xiii, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £17.50. Greek and Roman Slavery. By Thomas Wiedemann. Pp.xvi, 284, London, Croom Helm, 1981, £10.95, £5.95. Prophecy and Millenarianism. Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves. Edited by Ann Williams. Pp.x, 355, London, Longman, 1980, £25.00. Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate. By Felicity Heal. Pp.xv, 353, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £17.50. Radical Religious Movements in Early Modern Europe. By Michael Mullett. Pp.xxiv, 193, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1980, £10.50. The Jesuits. By J.C.H. Aveling. Pp.390, London, Blond and Briggs, 1981, £16.95. The Beginnings of Ideology. By Donald R. Kelley. Pp.xv, 351, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £24.00. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700. By J.C. Davis. Pp.x, 427, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £25.00. Eastern Politics of the Vatican 1917–1979. By Hansjakob Stehle. Pp.466, Athens, Ohio University Press, 1981, £16.20, £8.10. Structuralism or Criticism? By Geoffrey Strickland. Pp.viii, 209, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £17.50. The Call of God: The Theme of Vocation in the Poetry of Donne and Herbert. By Robert B. Shaw. Pp.xiii, 123, Cambridge, Mass., Cowley Publications, 1981, $5.00. John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, Journal Notes, Sermons, Letters and Treatises. Edited by Frank Whaling. Pp.xx, 412, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.95. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. By Robert D. Pelton. Pp.312, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980, £15.00. (shrink)

Knobe (2003a, 2003b, 2004b) and others have demonstrated the surprising fact that the valence of a side-effect action can affect intuitions about whether that action was performed intentionally. Here we report the results of an experiment that extends these findings by testing for an analogous effect regarding knowledge attributions. Our results suggest that subjects are less likely to find that an agent knows an action will bring about a side-effect when the effect is good than when it is bad. It (...) is further argued that these findings, while preliminary, have important implications for recent debates within epistemology about the relationship between knowledge and action. (shrink)

Based on a conference held at Wesleyan University, this book offers an illuminating compendium of opinion on several cardinal issues related to induction; specifically, the nature of explanation, probability, prediction, behavior theory, and the role of values in scientific inferences. Papers are presented by Hughes Leblanc, Wesley Salmon, W. Ross Ashby, Daniel Berlyne, Herbert Robbins, Adolf Grünbaum, N. R. Hanson, Sidney Morgenbesser, and Richard Braithwaite. Contributors to the subsequent discussions include Max Black, Michael Scriven, and Wilfrid Sellars. Both (...) the papers read and most of the ensuing discussions are reproduced in full, and the reader can witness the gestation of opinion and the sharpening of issues as vividly as though he were present himself.—T. S. V. (shrink)

In the first section, I consider what several logicians say informally about the notion of logical consequence. There is significant variation among these accounts, they are sometimes poorly explained, and some of them are clearly at odds with the usual technical definition. In the second section, I first argue that a certain kind of informal account—one that includes elements of necessity, generality, and apriority—is approximately correct. Next I refine this account and consider several important questions about it, including the appropriate (...) characterization of necessity, the criterion for selecting logical constants, and the exact role of apriority. I argue, among other things, that there is no need to recognize a special logical sense of necessity and that the selection of terms to serve as logical constants is ultimately a pragmatic matter. In the third section, I consider whether the informal account I have presented and defended is adequately represented by the usual technical definition. I show that it is, and provably so, for certain limited ways of selecting logical constants. In the general case, however, there seems to be no way to be sure that the technical and informal accounts coincide. (shrink)

In the first section, I consider what several logicians say informally about the notion of logical consequence. There is significant variation among these accounts, they are sometimes poorly explained, and some of them are clearly at odds with the usual technical definition. In the second section, I first argue that a certain kind of informal account—one that includes elements of necessity, generality, and apriority—is approximately correct. Next I refine this account and consider several important questions about it, including the appropriate (...) characterization of necessity, the criterion for selecting logical constants, and the exact role of apriority. I argue, among other things, that there is no need to recognize a special logical sense of necessity and that the selection of terms to serve as logical constants is ultimately a pragmatic matter. In the third section, I consider whether the informal account I have presented and defended is adequately represented by the usual technical definition. I show that it is, and provably so, for certain limited ways of selecting logical constants. In the general case, however, there seems to be no way to be sure that the technical and informal accounts coincide. (shrink)

Often a physician’s first introduction to a patient is not a physical encounter but a review of their chart. A glaring “violence risk” flag in an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is often noticeable...

Policy disputes arise at all scales of governance: in clubs, non-profits, firms, nations, and alliances of nations. Both the means and ends of policy are disputed. While many, perhaps most, policy disputes arise from conflicting ends, important disputes also arise from differing beliefs on how to achieve shared ends. In fact, according to many experts in economics and development, governments often choose policies that are “inefficient” in the sense that most everyone could expect to gain from other feasible policies. Many (...) other kinds of experts also see existing policies as often clearly inferior to known alternatives. (shrink)

In "Logical consequence: A defense of Tarski" (Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 25, 1996, pp. 617-677), Greg Ray defends Tarski's account of logical consequence against the criticisms of John Etchemendy. While Ray's defense of Tarski is largely successful, his attempt to give a general proof that Tarskian consequence preserves truth fails. Analysis of this failure shows that de facto truth preservation is a very weak criterion of adequacy for a theory of logical consequence and should be replaced by a stronger (...) absence-of-counterexamples criterion. It is argued that the latter criterion reflects the modal character of our intuitive concept of logical consequence, and it is shown that Tarskian consequence can be proved to satisfy this criterion for certain choices of logical constants. Finally, an apparent inconsistency in Ray's interpretation of Tarski's position on the modal status of the consequence relation is noted. (shrink)

The claims that learning systems must build causal models and provide explanations of their inferences are not new, and advocate a cognitive functionalism for artificial intelligence. This view conflates the relationships between implicit and explicit knowledge representation. We present recent evidence that neural networks do engage in model building, which is implicit, and cannot be dissociated from the learning process.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a proper context for reading Jacques Derrida's The Gift of Death, which, I contend, can only be understood fully against the backdrop of "Violence and Metaphysics." The later work cannot be fully understood unless the reader appreciates the fact that Derrida returns to "a certain Abraham" not only in the name of Kierkegaard but also in the name of Levinas himself. The hypothesis of the reading that follows therefore would be that Derrida (...) writes The Gift of Death not as an attempt to re-present Kierkegaard's Abraham either rightly or wrongly but as an effort to do with Kierkegaard's Abraham what is possible with his thought in a broadly Levinasian/Derridean framework. That the reading he provides of the Abraham story would not be recognizable to Kierkegaard is not the principal point of Derrida's effort; his aim is to demonstrate that Levinas should not have been so hasty to dismiss Kierkegaard but could have recovered his interpretation of Abraham for purposes that Derrida and Levinas both share. (shrink)

This paper questions the nature and existence of the ego and I from a Western and Eastern viewpoint, which has been a question for 2,500 years when the Buddha rejected the Brahman idea of ātman. The answer for an ego depends partly on the state of consciousness; the existence of the Western objectifying ego is undeniable in ordinary consciousness, but not in extraordinary consciousness with no objectifying. The subtle question remains about the existence of an I that is distinct from (...) the ego and that is best represented by most meditative or contemplative states. Here a subjectified, witnessing, consciousness-maintaining I still seems to exist. This may be called the "High-I," which appears to provide for all states of consciousness a constancy and awareness not provided by the ego. This finding has implications for psychology and religion as well as philosophy. (shrink)

Some widely accepted arguments in the philosophy of mathematics are fallacious because they rest on results that are provable only by using assumptions that the con- clusions of these arguments seek to undercut. These results take the form of bicon- ditionals linking statements of logic with statements of mathematics. George Boolos has given an argument of this kind in support of the claim that certain facts about second-order logic support logicism, the view that mathematics—or at least part of it—reduces to (...) logic. Hilary Putnam has offered a similar argument for the view that it is indifferent whether we take mathematics to be about objects or about what follows from certain postulates. In this paper I present and rebut these arguments. (shrink)

Jotkowitz, Glick, and Gesundheit (2008) rightly critique Manninen (2006) for an errant analysis of the Groningen protocol. However, they draw conclusions about the protocol itself that are not justified. Because of the nature of the care of infants, the Groningen protocol doesn't break new ethical ground. We already have to treat infants without direct access to their autonomous preferences or values; therefore, we are already making the decisions that Jotkowitz, Glick, and Gesundheit argue we are beginning to take once active (...) euthanasia of infants is allowed. (shrink)

Imagine two people share a secret which would hurt them each $1000 worth if it got out. You offer to pay them each $1 to (verifiably) tell you their secret. If this is a one-shot simultaneous game, there are two pure-strategy equilibria: one where they both tell and another where neither of them tell. But since the no-tell equilibria makes them both better off, your chances aren’t good.

This paper describes a Bayesian method for constructing a super-resolved surface model by combining information from a set of images of the given surface. We develop the theory and algorithms in detail for the 2-D reconstruction problem, appropriate for the case where all images are taken from roughly the same direction and under similar lighting conditions. We show the results of this 2-D reconstruction on Viking Martian data. These results show dramatic improvements in both spatial and gray-scale resolution. The Bayesian (...) approach uses a neighbor correlation model as well as pixel data from the image set. Some extensions of this method are discussed, including 3-D surface reconstruction and the resolution of diffraction blurred images. (shrink)

Structural realists claim that structure is preserved across instances of radical theory change, and that this preservation provides an argument in favor of realism about structure. In this paper, I use the shift from Newtonian gravity to Einstein’s general relativity as a case study for structural preservation, and I demonstrate that two prominent views of structural preservation fail to provide a solid basis for realism about structure. The case study demonstrates that (i) structural realists must be epistemically precise about the (...) concrete structure that is being preserved, and (ii) they must provide a metaphysical account of how structure is preserved through re-interpretation in light of a new theory. Regarding (i), I describe a means of epistemic access to the unobservable that I call “thick detection” of structure, which isolates the structure that will be preserved. Regarding (ii), I argue that thickly detectable structure is preserved across theory change through a process of extracting the old structure from the new structure, much like what has been done with geometrized versions of Newtonian gravity. With these two responses in hand, the structural realist can adequately account for the preservation of structure and can provide a strong argument in favor of structural realism. (shrink)

Not since Ernest Nagel’s 1939 monograph on the theory of probability has there been a comprehensive elementary survey of the philosophical problems of probablity and induction. This is an authoritative and up-to-date treatment of the subject, and yet it is relatively brief and nontechnical. Hume’s skeptical arguments regarding the justification of induction are taken as a point of departure, and a variety of traditional and contemporary ways of dealing with this problem are considered. The author then sets forth his own (...) criteria of adequacy for interpretations of probability. Utilizing these criteria he analyzes contemporary theories of probability, as well as the older classical and subjective interpretations. (shrink)

1. 1735-1738 -- 2. 1738-1743 -- 3. 1743-1754 -- 4. 1755-1765 -- 5. 1765-1775 -- 6. 1776-1786 -- 7. 1787-91.

Many people accept, at least implicitly, what I call the asymmetry claim: the view that moral realism is more defensible than aesthetic realism. This article challenges the asymmetry claim. I argue that it is surprisingly hard to find points of contrast between the two domains that could justify their very different treatment with respect to realism. I consider five potentially promising ways to do this, and I argue that all of them fail. If I am right, those who accept the (...) asymmetry claim have a significant burden of proof. (shrink)

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a (...) robust argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

As Nair-Collins and Joffe note, the concern that our tests for brain death do not successfully show that all brain functions have stopped is not new (Nair-Collins and Joffe 2023). As our abilities...

Many thinkers believe that the next transformational change in human organisation will be the onset of human-level artificial intelligence, and that the most likely method of achieving this will come through brain emulations or "ems": the ability to scan human brains and program their connections into ever faster computers. Taking this as his starting point, Hanson describes what a world dominated by these ems will be like.