© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

According to one prominent view of exercising abilities, a subject, S, counts as exercising an ability to ϕ if and only if S successfully ϕs. Such an ‘exercise-success’ thesis looks initially very plausible for abilities, perhaps even obviously or analytically true. In this paper, however, I will be defending the position that one can in fact exercise an ability to do one thing by doing some entirely distinct thing, and in doing so I’ll highlight various reasons that favor the alternative (...) approach I develop over views that hold that the exercise of an ability is a success notion in the sense Millar maintains. (shrink)

John Millar's The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks is best known for its first chapter in which Adam Smith's favorite student traces the social status of women as it changed at various historical stages. Millar's concern is strictly with description and explanation. In the less discussed final chapter he examines the authority of a master over his servants. His treatment of slavery differs from the account of the rank of women in several notable ways, most significantly, (...) perhaps, by including normative judgments on the immorality of slavery. This article begins with Millar's examination of the master-servant/slave relation, and then turns to his arguments against slavery. These arguments go substantially beyond those of his mentor Smith, and there are several particular points regarding slavery on which they disagreed. The paper concludes with a discussion of these contrasts. (shrink)

John Millar's Origin of the Distinction of Ranks contains one of the first extensive and systematic discussions of the status of women in different societies. In this paper I attempt to show first that a combi nation of circumstances associated with the teaching of moral philos ophy at Glasgow and with the reform of Scots law undertaken by Lord Kames made the status of women a critical problem for Millar. Second, I attempt to demonstrate that Millar drew (...) heavily upon the resources of associationist psychology to explain how female status changed from hunting to pastoral to agricultural to commercial societies and that in doing so he diverged substantially from the perspectives developed by his mentor, Adam Smith. Finally, in view of Millar's extraordinarily positive reputation throughout Europe prior to the French Revolution and in view of the potential relevance of his analysis to early feminism and to mid-19th-century anthropological discussions of early matri archy, I seek to account for why his work was virtually ignored from around 1802 to 1960. (shrink)

This collection of essays provides a comprehensive view of the economic thought of the Scottish Enlightenment. Organized as a chronological account of the rise and progress of political economy in eighteenth century Scotland, each chapter discusses the way in which the moral and economic improvement of the Scottish nation became a common concern. Contributors not only explore the economic discourses of David Hume, James Steuart and Adam Smith but also consider the neglected economic writings of Andrew Fletcher, Robert Wallace, (...) Francis Hutcheson, William Robertson, John Millar and Dugald Stewart. This book addresses the question of how these economic writings interacted with the moral, political and historical arguments of the time and shows how contemporary issues related to the union with England, natural jurisprudence, classical republicanism and manners and civilization all contained an economic dimension. Key chapters include: The ancient modern controversy in the Scottish Enlightenment The 'Scottish Triangle' in the shaping of political economy: David Hume, Sir James Steuart and Adam Smith Civilization and history in Lord Kames and William Robertson Adam Smith in Japan This view of the origin of economic science in Britain is markedly different from traditional accounts and will be of interest to economic, political and social historians. (shrink)

David Hume, Adam Smith, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, Lord Kames, John Millar, James Dunbar and Gilbert Stuart were at the heart of Scottish Enlightenment thought. This introductory survey offers the student a clear, accessible interpretation and synthesis of the social thought of these historically significant thinkers. Organised thematically, it takes the student through their accounts of social institutions, their critique of individualism, their methodology, their views of progress and of moral and cultural values. By taking human sociality (...) as their premise, the book shows how they produced important analyses of historical change, politics and morality, together with an assessment of their own commercial society. (shrink)

Cognitive abilities have been invoked to do much work in externalist epistemology. An ability condition (sometimes in conjunction with a separate, anti-luck condition) is seen to be key in satisfying direction-of-fit and modal stability intuitions which attach to the accrual of positive epistemic status to doxastic attitudes. While the notion of ability has been given some extensive treatment in the literature (especially John Greco, Alan Millar and Ernest Sosa), the implications for these abilities being particularly cognitive ones has been (...) given less attention. To rectify this oversight, I examine the debate over the nature of cognition from philosophy of cognitive science, paying particular attention to the debate between defenders of internalist theories (Fred Adams, Kenneth Aizawa and Rob Rupert) and externalist theories (so-called “extended mind” positions). Armed with substantive accounts of cognition, I argue that the epistemological externalist’s obligation to repudiate epistemological internalism forces her to adopt some sort of externalist account of cognition. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to reconsider Albert O. Hirschman’s classification of the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment in response to Montesquieu’s “doux commerce” mechanism. Why did he rank James Steuart and John Millar among the “optimistic” supporters of the political benefits of trade? And why did he rank Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson among the “pessimistic” supporters?

It is a commonplace that the writers of eighteenth century Scotland played a key role in shaping the early practice of social science. This paper examines how this ‘Scottish’ contribution to the Enlightenment generation of social science was shaped by the fascination with unintended consequences. From Adam Smith's invisible hand to Hume's analysis of convention, through Ferguson's sociology, and Millar's discussion of rank, by way of Robertson's View of Progress, the concept of unintended consequences pervades the writing of (...) the period. The paper argues that the idea of unintended order shapes the understanding of the purpose of theoretical social science that emerges from the Scottish Enlightenment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"The Fittest Man in the Kingdom":Thomas Reid and the Glasgow Chair of Moral PhilosophyPaul Wood (bio)Paul Wood Paul Wood is at the Department of History, University of Victoria, PO Box 3045, MS 7381, Victoria BC V8W 3P4 Canada. email: [email protected] August 1996Revised January 1997Notes. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at a plenary session of the 23rd International Hume Conference held at the University of Nottingham. For (...) comments and/or references, the author wishes to thank Roger Emerson, Carol Gibson-Wood, Knud Haakonssen, Ian Simpson Ross, Stephen Snobelen, M. A. Stewart, and the anonymous Hume Studies referees. For permission to cite and quote from manuscripts, he is grateful to the Keeper of the Manuscripts of Scotland as well as to the Librarians of Aberdeen University Library, Edinburgh University Library, Glasgow University Archives and Business Records Centre, Glasgow University Library (Department of Special Collections), the Mitchell Library Glasgow, and Dr. Williams' Library.1. Although little information survives regarding Law's teaching, we do know that he discussed Pufendorf in his classes; see Christine Mary King [Shepherd], "Philosophy and Science in the Arts Curriculum of the Scottish Universities in the Seventeenth Century," (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1974), 177. Carmichael's edition of Pufendorf first appeared in Glasgow in 1718, and a second edition was published in Edinburgh in 1724 while Hume was still a student there.2. The surviving correspondence between the two men from this period is to be found in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), I 32-35; 36-40; 45-48 (hereafter abbreviated as HL).3. The first detailed discussion of the 1745 election appeared in the introduction to David Hume, A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh, edited by Ernest C. Mossner and John V. Price (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967). This account has recently been challenged in Roger L. Emerson, "The 'Affair' at Edinburgh and the 'Project' at Glasgow: The Politics of Hume's Attempts to become a Professor," in Hume and Hume's Connexions, edited by M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 1-22; and M. A. Stewart, The Kirk and the Infidel (Lancaster: Lancaster University Publications Office, 1995). For historically sensitive contextual analysis of Hume's philosophical relations with Hutcheson, see inter alia James Moore, "Hume and Hutcheson," in Stewart and Wright, 23-57, and M. A. Stewart, Warmth in the Cause of Virtue (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).4. In January 1752, "Mr. Smith read an Account of some of Mr. David Hume's Essays on Commerce" to the Society, and Hume was elected a member in 1753; see Notices and Documents Illustrative of the Literary History of Glasgow, During the Greater Part of Last Century, edited by W. J. Duncan (Glasgow: T. D. Morison, 1886), 132-133. Hume's failed candidacy is discussed in Emerson, "The 'Affair' at Edinburgh," 14-16, and Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 112-113. Smith's Glasgow colleague from 1751 to 1755, William Cullen, was also sympathetic to Hume's philosophy, as was John Millar, who was elected Professor of Law in 1761. On Cullen and Hume see J.R.R. Christie, "Ether and the Science of Chemistry: 1740-1790," in Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the History of Ether Theories 1740-1900, edited by G. N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 90-96.5. David Hume to William Strahan, 26 October 1775, HL II 301.6. See, for example, The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D., edited by Sir William Hamilton, 4th ed. (Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart, 1854), 30n; James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical, from Hutcheson to Hamilton (London: Macmillan, 1875), 36; James Veitch, "Philosophy in the Scottish Universities," Mind 2 (1877): 207-234 (209).7. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (London and New York: Macmillan, 1895); William Robert Scott, Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900); idem., Adam Smith as Student and Professor (Glasgow: Jackson... (shrink)

This article undertakes a comparative study of the conjectural histories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Ferguson, focusing on the convergences in the moral and political ideals expressed and grounded in these histories. In comparison with Scots like Adam Smith and John Millar, the conjectural histories of Ferguson and Rousseau follow a similar historical trajectory as regards the development and progress of commercial, political and cultural arts. However, their assessment of the moral progress of humanity does not, or (...) in a much more limited way than in Smith and Millar, correlate with this trajectory. Rousseau and Ferguson see a candour and vigour in savage and barbarian societies that is much less easily supported by the complex socio-economic framework of modern, commercial societies. It is argued that the convergences in their conjectural histories arise from a similar fusion of these histories with Stoic and republican perspectives. While Rousseau and Ferguson do not see history as cyclical, they think that the forces that push towards moral decline are strong and can, on the political level, only be countered by firm republican policies. Furthermore, their shared Stoic ideal of the life lived according to nature informs their solutions for modern societies. (shrink)

James Adam was a Scottish classics scholar who taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A strong defender of the importance of Greek philosophy in a well-rounded education, Adam published a number of Plato's works including Protagoras and Crito. This two-volume critical edition of the Republic was another major contribution to the field. Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the (...) Greek text ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought. Volume 1 is devoted to Books 1–5, which discuss justice and the ideal society, while Volume 2 presents Books 6–10, on the place of the philosopher and questions of governance. (shrink)

This paper seeks to establish that Bernard Mandeville's ideas on courage and honour shaped the Scottish debate about ancients and moderns by formulating a perspective how eighteenth-century civil societies grew large, luxurious and feminine without losing their ability to wage war. My focus is on Mandeville's positive influence on David Hume, whose writings were a springboard for many Mandevillean ideas in Scotland. In contrast to a recent claim in scholarship, Hume aimed to discredit, instead of developing, Shaftesburyan ideas of ancient (...) courage. The concluding part of the paper will discuss Andrew Millar and Adam Ferguson in this context. (shrink)

This chapter offers a rough sketch of the history and sociology of public philosophy. For philosophy, the crucial historical period of professionalization in the US is roughly 1865–1920 and slightly earlier than that for Germany and some other European countries. The chapter discusses the pre‐disciplinary hodgepodge of philosophy and its public nature. Around the time of the founding of the American Philosophical Association in 1900, William James lamented the barriers being erected between the new disciplines of philosophy and psychology as (...) well as the growing distance between knowledge workers and lived experiences in real social contexts. The process of professionalization can become counterproductive: a dynamic often described as professional deformation. Criticisms of professionalization never entirely went away, but they were confined to the margins of the growing disciplinary matrix. The chapter considers attempts to theorize and practice new relationships between philosophy and various publics, given the institutional and social characteristics of the twenty‐first century. (shrink)

The development of each of the four Malpighian tubules of Drosophila during embryogenesis requires a special cell, the tip cell, to achieve full growth. A central question concerns how the tip cell acquires its unique properties within the tubule primordium. In a recent report(1), a sequence of key gene expression events in both the tip cell and its cellular neighbours is described. The results show that there are some significant parallels between tip cell selection and the mechanisms that help select (...) neuroblasts within the developing neuroectoderm. Beyond these similarities between neural development and tip cell selection, the later differentiation of the tip cell shows some intriguing elements of neural cell differentiation. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 98 - 115 What has come to be known as the ‘linguistic turn’ in historical theory over the past forty years or so has finished what the two World Wars began in demolishing the confidence that the historical discipline possessed at the turn of the twentieth century. This confidence was most memorably expressed by Lord Acton that one day we would possess ‘ultimate history’. Today most historians are probably more inclined to subscribe to (...) Pieter Geyl’s view that history is ‘an argument without end’. Yet the jettisoning of a teleological goal for historical accounts does not mean that we have to also part with the idea of progress; we just need a new definition of it. In this article I argue that we should adopt an evolutionary epistemology of history which sees progress as something pushed from behind, rather than aiming at an undefined point in the future; but this is not the only advantage an evolutionary epistemology can offer us. I go on to outline two further aspects of evolutionary epistemology which may benefit historical theorists. (shrink)

The Viennese-born polymath Otto Neurath died on 22 December 1945 in Oxford, a few months after the end of World War Two. A social engineer and sociologist of happiness, Neurath was not only a socially sensitive educator, advocating for any institute and organization that was concerned with the well-being of people; he was also a trained scientist and philosopher. Studying mathematics, economics, history, philosophy, and physics in Vienna and then in Berlin during the early years of the long twentieth century, (...) Neurath became involved in many of the disputes among social and natural scientists that shaped the course of the fields. This short introduction provides the context and describes the aims of the volume. Short summaries of the chapters are also included. (shrink)

Book review: Lisa Giombini, Adrián Kvokačka (eds.), Everydayness. Contemporary Aesthetic Approaches. Roma Tre-Press, 2022, 287 s.

Scottish Enlightenment political thought shows permanent tensions between commerce and liberty, passions and interests, wealth and virtue, as a now classical literature has shown. The Scottish literati share the conception that civil society is a product of history, in contrast with barbarism, while giving diverse roles and meanings to passions and virtues. On the one hand, by his criticism of modern commercial politics, Adam Ferguson stood for the classic virtue of antiquity. On the other, David Hume, Adam Smith (...) and John Millar, who conceived selfish passions as the driving forces of history and progress, emphasised politeness and sociability, considered as the new, and pacific, characteristics of commercial modernity. This article highlights their contrasting views and points out the huge debate within the Scottish. (shrink)

Life in the Flesh offers a new spiritual philosophy of the body, contrasting sources from the Christian tradition with contemporary voices in philosophy and theology. Cooper challenges the Gnostic impulse either to marginalize or else to worship the body and gives a critical perspective on perennial issues including pornography, feminism, sterility, and death.

This article explores the critical history and reception of Charles Churchill, the mid-eighteenth century satirist, looking in particular at his skepticism towards all authority as a questioning of traditional ideas of `enlightenment', and at the reasons for the meteoric but short-lived nature of his poetic success.

James Adam was a Scottish classics scholar who taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A strong defender of the importance of Greek philosophy in a well-rounded education, Adam published a number of Plato's works including Protagoras and Crito. This two-volume critical edition of the Republic was another major contribution to the field. Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the (...) Greek text ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought. Volume 1 is devoted to Books 1–5, which discuss justice and the ideal society. (shrink)

James Adam was a Scottish classics scholar who taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A strong defender of the importance of Greek philosophy in a well-rounded education, Adam published a number of Plato's works including Protagoras and Crito. This two-volume critical edition of the Republic was another major contribution to the field. Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the (...) Greek text ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought. Volume 2 examines Books 6–10, which discuss the place of the philosopher and questions of governance. (shrink)

Henry Home (1696-1782) has been called "perhaps the most complete 'Enlightenment man' among the eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers." Kinsman and friend of David Hume, mentor and patron of Adam Smith, John Millar, and Thomas Reid, he was a key figure in that circle of luminaries. He read law, was called to the bar in 1723, was raised to the Bench of the Court of Session in 1752, with the title Lord Kames (the name of his family estate), and joined (...) the High Court of the Justiciary in 1763. Publishing broadly in law, history, philosophy, and criticism, Kames made significant contributions to the Enlightenment's science of human nature. The Essays is commonly considered Kames's most important philosophical work. In the first part, he sets forth the principles and foundations of morality and justice, attacking Hume's moral skepticism and addressing the controversial issue of the freedom of human will. In the second part, Kames focuses on questions of metaphysics and epistemology to offer a natural theology in which the authority of the external senses is an important basis for belief in the Deity. The text of this volume is based on the third edition of 1779, while the appendix presents substantial variant readings in the first and second editions. (shrink)

Proponents of the dominant contemporary model of corporate governance maintain that the shareholder is the primary constituent of the firm. The responsibility for managerial decision makers in this governance system is to maximize shareholder wealth. Neoclassical economists ethically justify this objective with their interpretation of Adam Smith's notion of the Invisible Hand. Using a famous quotation from The Wealth of Nations, they interpret the Invisible Hand as Smith's (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (...) Methuen & Co., London) assertion that market participants, in pursuing their own self-interests without regard to the interests of others, will collectively provide the optimal economic benefit to society. We argue that the traditional interpretation of Smith is too narrow and potentially harmful to society. In order to fully understand Smith's notion of the influence of the Invisible Hand on human behavior, one must also consider The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In that work, Smith (The Theory of Moral Sentiments, A. Millar, London) portrays the pursuit of self-interest as only one of several potential motivations for human action. He also acknowledged the existence of a “sympathy principle,” which refers to the ability and propensity of human beings to consider the interests of others. Heilbroner (The Essential Adam Smith, W.W. Norton, New York, p. 59) suggests that Smith's sympathy principle allows one to “determine the appropriate degree of self-interest, the proper display of benevolence, the desirable strictness of justice.” In fact, Smith indicates that (1) a society whose members pursue self-interest without a sense of justice will eventually collapse; (2) a society whose members pursue self-interest checked by their sense of justice alone will survive; (3) a society whose members pursue self-interest, justice, and the interests of others will flourish. Since a more complete reading of Smith indicates that human beings, in considering their own interests, also reflexively consider the interests of others when making decisions, then the traditional corporate governance model appears to be lacking. A broader, multiple stakeholder approach to corporate governance that considers the interests of other constituencies may be more consistent with Smith's views. In particular, Smith's sympathy principle provides a theoretical foundation for a shift away from the narrow, yet dominant, shareholder-based corporate governance model and toward multiple stakeholder models of corporate governance [e.g., Business and Society: A Strategic Approach to Corporate Citizenship, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA] and internal decision-making [e.g., Sloan Management Review 38, (1997) 25–37]. (shrink)