Peircean scholars in particular and historians of philosophy in general will welcome this initial volume of a new critical edition of the most important writings of this scientist/philosopher, not inaptly referred to as the "Socrates of America" because of the richness of seminal ideas to be found in his philosophical speculations. Until now, students of his basic philosophy have had to rely mainly on the topological Hartshorne-Weiss edition of his "collected works," which introduced the philosophical world to the goldmine of (...) original conceptions to be found in this hitherto unknown thinker. Like virtually all systematic philosophers, however, Peirce's seminal notions underwent development during almost six decades of literary activity. Those reading his collected works soon discovered that to reach any adequate idea of his system, they needed to know not only the time the item was written but also its context, and this meant going back to the manuscripts in the Houghton Library of Harvard, available in microfilm. It was here the enterprising researcher was confronted with substantial problems, for the material contained therein, would run to approximately a hundred thousand printed pages. Many of the manuscripts were repetitious, representing subsequent working drafts, but each with some new and exciting idea or important digression. The serious and intrigued scholar was both prompted on the one hand to pursue a particular topic further and at the same time repelled by the time and effort required to do so. It was to remedy this unhappy situation, particularly in view of the widespread growing interest in America's most original thinker both here and abroad, that resulted in the creation of the "Pierce Edition Project" at Indiana University/purdue University of Indianapolis under the general editorship of that internationally famous Peirce scholar, Max H. Fisch, aided by a staff directed by Professor Edward C. Moore. Almost a decade has passed since they began the gargantuan task of sifting through the mass of unpublished manuscripts, arranging dated items in chronological order, and determining as far as possible from paper watermarkings, similarity of thought and expression, etc. the approximate time of composition of the numerous bits and pieces of undated material spanning a period of some sixty years. More than three years time was devoted to this dating process alone, and the job of determining the final ordering and renumbering of the known manuscripts assigned to the project's principal associate editor, Christian J. W. Kloessel. In the Preface to the present volume, Moore sets out the general plan of this elaborate edition. "Each volume will contain a brief historical introduction giving an account of the activities of Peirce within its time span, including the work he was doing in the sciences, in mathematics, and in the history of science. Each volume will also include a single chronological list of all the papers Peirce wrote within the period covered by that volume. Thus readers who wish to make a thorough study of Peirce's work will find within each volume a guide to the complete Peirce corpus for the years of the particular volume. The historical introduction near the beginning and the chronological list near the end of each volume will serve as a frame for the papers that appear between them. It is hoped that reference to these additional materials will provide a comprehensive sense of Peirce's work in mathematics, the sciences, and philosophy". Because most of the texts in this initial volume exist only in a manuscript form of a working copy, never intended for publication as they exist, with their haphazard punctuation, phonetic spellings, abbreviations, etc., the editors felt it necessary to append over a hundred pages of editorial notes to satisfy the most meticulous historiophile who might like to reconstruct the original form of the writings in question, but which to the general user will probably seem to be an unnecessary expenditure of time and effort that might have been used to better purpose. Be that as it may, those interested in the history of ideas will be more than gratified that the many years of careful and patient labor by the editorial staff of the Peirce Edition Project at the Indiana University/ Purdue University of Indianapolis has begun to bear fruit. (shrink)

We investigate computational properties of propositional logics for dynamical systems. First, we consider logics for dynamic topological systems (W.f), fi, where W is a topological space and f a homeomorphism on W. The logics come with ‘modal’ operators interpreted by the topological closure and interior, and temporal operators interpreted along the orbits {w, f(w), f2 (w), ˙˙˙} of points w ε W. We show that for various classes of topological spaces the resulting logics are not recursively enumerable (and so not (...) recursively axiomatisable). This gives a ‘negative’ solution to a conjecture of Kremer and Mints. Second, we consider logics for dynamical systems (W, f), where W is a metric space and f and isometric function. The operators for topological interior/closure are replaced by distance operators of the form ‘everywhere/somewhere in the ball of radius a, ‘for a ε Q +. In contrast to the topological case, the resulting logic turns out to be decidable, but not in time bounded by any elementary function. (shrink)

Thomas Williams has developed a radical interpretation of Duns Scotus’s voluntarism using an earlier interpretation of my own as a foil. He argues that the goodness of creatures and the rightness of actions are wholly dependent on the divine will, apart from any reference to the divine intellect, human nature, or any principle other than God’s own arbitrary will. I explain how his interpretation fails to account for the roles that essential goodness and divine justice play in divine volition. The (...) unmitigated voluntarism that Williams develops does not conform to the full range of authentic Scotistic texts. Despite the interest Williams’s voluntarism may have if taken as a theoretical position, it does not do justice to the nuance and speculative depth of Scotus’s actual understanding of the divine will, whose creative artistry is repugnant to arbitrary volition. I am grateful to Williams for the provocation to develop further the richness of Scotus’s volutarism. (shrink)

This work is typical of the cautious approach to metaphysical problems by the new breed of Oxonian analysts. Unlike Wittgenstein and his early followers, they do not believe metaphysics deals solely with pseudo-problems that will evaporate with a clearer understanding of how ordinary language functions. Rather they believe, as is the case with scientists evaluating various theoretical models, a cost/benefit analysis of the more meaningful solutions philosophers have given to important metaphysical problems will lead to a clarification of the merits (...) and weaknesses of each and hence lend some measure of probability to one's preferential options. This third approach by David Armstrong to the problem of universals falls in this literary genre. As a volume in the new "Focus Series," it is designed to provide case studies of this key philosophical problem for a special clientele or class of students--those advanced undergraduates or philosophy majors in schools where contemporary analytical writings in the Oxford tradition are still the basis of the curriculum. As such it is broader in scope than his two previous works, intended to introduce its readers to views other than his own. Since the neo-metaphysicians that draw their inspiration from Oxford are cautious about the lasting value of their work, still less will their writings be suitable for courses in the history of philosophy or useful for a core curriculum in schools where philosophical analysis is not the dominant orientation. But where that approach to philosophy still prevails, as at Armstrong's University of Sydney, or many other Anglo-American universities, this work will undoubtedly fill a needed gap not covered by other survey courses of a more general nature. (shrink)

These two volumes, the seventh and eighth respectively of William of Ockham's Opera theologica, together with volume nine, which contains Joseph Wey's edition of the Quodlibeta Septem, published in 1980, and volume X containing his two treatises on quantity, De sacramento Altaris and De corpore Christi, promised for later this year, will complete the critical edition by the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University of Ockham's Opera theologica. The remaining two volumes IV and V of the Opera philosophica, covering his (...) commentaries on the Physics, are also in press and should appear before the end of this year. Since the Opera politica, done by the Manchester University Press, have been available for some time, this will make all the extant authentic works of Ockham available in a modern critical edition by the end of 1985. The staff of Franciscan Institute and their collaborators are to be congratulated on the record time taken to complete this monumental edition, with its extensive indices, especially the topical, which makes it so valuable as a research tool for medieval philosophy and theology. (shrink)

These volumes continue the Franciscan Institute's splendid critical edition of Ockham's lectures on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. As the editors note, each is a "reportatio" or student report of the actual lectures Ockham gave as a bachelor of theology at Oxford rather than an Ordinatio or revision prepared for publication and distribution to the book sellers, which a bachelor usually did in the interval between the completion of the lectures and the formal proceedings connected with his inception as master. (...) Ockham, for whatever reason, found time only to do such a detailed revision on his lectures on the first book, and this mainly on the earlier questions he had treated there. An idea of the extent of such a revision can be gleaned from the fact that Ockham's questions on the first book alone ran to four volumes whereas his questions on each of the next two books is easily contained in a single volume of normal size. (shrink)

This article discusses two puzzles regarding identity questions: (i) certain definites cannot occur in the post-copular position of identity questions; and (ii) the same definites are the only possible answers to identity questions with post-copular names. We demonstrate that the range of these definites crucially depends on interlocutors' shared assumptions about how entities in the physical surroundings are perceived and categorized. We propose that these definites are directly referential in the sense of Kaplan (1989a,b), and only contribute the referent itself (...) to the semantic composition. To explain the asymmetry between perceptually grounded descriptions and proper names, we draw on Gupta's (1980) framework of relative identity. This analysis suggests that direct reference is not always determined lexically, but is—at least in part—a pragmatic phenomenon. More generally, this phenomenon shows that natural language is sensitive to the source of information in the common ground. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 517 she does on these issues; this is hardly the case. And lastly she fails to discern that some feminist christology does not spring from a love for Jesus and what he has done through his cross and resurrection; rather, Jesus is merely used (and thus abused) to further a theological and political agenda. [Men obviously are not immune from this either.] Despite my disagreements with some (...) of Johnson's arguments and conclusions, and despite my disappointment at the way she addresses the feminist issues, I found this hook to he a basically reliable and clear summary of the christology of the last forty years. Whether it has all been true development, as Johnson maintains, is a debatable question. Nonetheless, this book does elaborate the contemporary issues and possible answers that confront christology today, and for this makes it a book well worth reading. Mother of God Community Washington. D.C. THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M. Cap. The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus. By ALLAN B. WOLTER, O.F.M. Ed. Marilyn McCord Adams. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990. Pp. ix+ 356. $47.50. Duns Scotus was a brilliant light that flashed a brief time across the medieval sky hut was destined ultimately to he outshone by other luminaries immediately preceding him (Aquinas) and following him (Ockham). Perhaps no individual in the past half century has done more to illuminate the Subtle Doctor's thought and times than Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. Both his editing and his translating of primary sources as well as his detailed readings and expositions of Scotus's theories have put medieval scholars in his debt. The present volume is a collection of thirteen essays on particular aspects of Scotus's work, preceded by an introduction. Ten of the essays have been previously published in other sources ranging from.the late 1940s to the present. But as editor Marilyn McCord Adams points out in her forward, many of these can be found only with difficulty in often inaccessible journals and books. Thus the value of this single volume. The essays are grouped under three headings: metaphysics and epistemology, action theory and ethics, and philosophical theology. As is often true with any volume spanning a number of topics and years, the quality of exposition and analysis is uneven. Obviously, in a limited space, I cannot hope to treat all subjects in a volume as comprehensive 518 BOOK REVIEWS as Wolter's. Permit me, however, to begin by making some general comments and then to narrow my remarks to one particular issue. Wolter's introduction to the volume is as clear and concise an overview of Scotus's ideas as one is likely to find anywhere in the literature. In general, the essays in the first part of the book on matters meta· physical and epistemological are quite solid. Here we find explicated many of the concepts which have become identified with Scotus: the formal distinction, univocity of being, the common nature and the hraecceity that constitutes distinct individuals. Wolter does justice to the subtlety and brilliance of Scotus's thinking and allows readers both old and new to Scotus to acknowledge him as a metaphysician for the ages. The author is particularly adept at explicating with helpful analogies some of the Subtle Doctor's most difficult concepts. I benefitted from his thought-provoking comparison between the formal distinction and a spotlight on a stage which can illuminate different and distinguishable aspects of the same reality. The next section on action rtheory and ethics draws in part on Wolter's work which culminated in the 1986 publication of Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Wolter has been in the forefront of those who urge that Scotus's description of an innate affection for justice in the will is crucial in understanding the freedom Scotus thought proper to humans. What remains unclear to me is how this strand in Scotus's writing relates to others which clearly imply a libertarian view of free• dom emphasizing the will's utter self-determination. The problem I see is this: if the will truly is self-determining, then an innate affectio justitiae seems to... (shrink)

The body of this book consists of facing English and Latin versions of Scotus' treatise prepared by Father Wolter from study of existing manuscripts. Textual variants are marked in frequent notes, but, perhaps because he doubts that one correct or personally written version ever existed, inconsistencies in the argument or apparent errors in the text are unremarked by the editor. Included as a 30 page appendix is Wolter's translation of Scotus' commentary on Peter Lombard's work, Two Questions from (...) Lectures on Book I of the Sentences. Wolter considers this to be an early version, of which the Treatise is the definitive argument. Scotus' demonstration intends to overcome two classical problems afflicting other proofs of the existence of God: the conclusion that the universe is eternal, and that either God's omnipotence or man's moral freedom is limited by His necessary inclusion in the causal order of the world. These metaphysical difficulties are avoided through Scotus' skilled use of modal logic. The book should be of great interest to students of logic and analytic philosophy on account of the display of technique in the logic of contingency and necessity, as well as to medievalists, for reasons of its substance. Wolter performs a real service in making available this workmanlike edition of a powerful and ingenious original.—M. B. M. (shrink)

One of the more intriguing figures of the first period of the Successors is Nicanor, the lieutenant and admiral of Cassander. He came into prominence when he assumed command of the Macedonian garrison at Athens, late in 319 B.c. After distinguishing himself there he took a fleet to the Bosporus, where with Antigonus' collaboration he won a decisive victory over Polyperchon's royal navy. Subsequently his aspirations became sufficiently lofty to threaten his patron's security, and Cassander took elaborate precautions to ensure (...) his arrest and condemnation. Nicanor was clearly a figure of considerable importance; yet no source even hints at his origins and family background. Can conjecture go any way to filling the gaps? (shrink)

A new theory of particles proposed in an earlier paper is now applied to explain energy. Having earlier derived the Rydberg formula for atomic spectra without using the Pauli principle, the authors now derive the photoelectric effect, deflection of light by gravitation, and Planck's law for blackbody radiation without using Planck's assumption on energy quanta or Einstein's theory of general relativity.