Psychologists have had very little to say about things. Things are one thing, people are another. There is now, however, a growing recognition of the importance of things within human psychology. But, in cognitive theory, the meanings of things are usually radically subjectivized. ‘Their’ meanings are really ‘our’ meanings that we mentally project upon them. James Gibson’s concept of affordances was an attempt to avoid subject–object dualism by defining the meanings of things-what we can do with them-as properties of the (...) object but defined relative to the agent. Critics have rightly objected that Gibson himself, nevertheless, overly objectified or reified affordances. Yet the affordances of many objects in the human world are objective, or, better, impersonal. The present chapter, however, is concerned with such ‘canonical affordances’-the things that things are for. But, as it argues, this kind of ‘objectivity’ must itself be understood in relation to other objects and events, and other people. (shrink)

Alan R. Perreiah - Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.2 319-321 Ann Moss. Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. 306. Cloth, $74.00. Ann Moss offers an exciting and informative history of humanism from Johannes Balbus through Melanchthon, who completed the "turn" from scholastic to humanistic Latin. She marshals considerable evidence from lexicography and letters that (...) scholastics and humanists cultivated two idioms of Latin that created "two different mind-sets" , two "orders of truth-values" , and "two Latin speech communities that talked past one another" . While her main thesis that the "two linguistic universes" were "incommensurable" is questionable, it is a useful heuristic device to highlight differences between the two traditions. Moss illustrates many of her claims by controversies surrounding the legend of St. Ann, mother of Mary. Whether she is misled by the rhetoric of those heated debates on religious folklore, or whether they support her claim of "incommensurability" must be.. (shrink)

For humanists the perfect language was a revived Classical Latin. For scholastics it was a practical logic adapted to the needs of education. Though they have long been portrayed as arch rivals, Alan Perreiah here argues that humanists and scholastics were working in complementary ways toward some of the same goals: most significantly, the early modern search for the perfect language. The study advances research on language pedagogy in the Renaissance by clarifying the connections between truth and translation.

The past 25 years have seen an increasing interest in later medieval logic and in the theory of supposition. a review of literature reveals, however, wide differences of interpretation of supposition-theory. taking the theory in the widest sense as a contribution to semiotic or the theory of signs, this study shows how supposition has been variously treated as a syntactical, semantical and even pragmatical theory. the main views of p. boehner, e. moody, p. geach, d. p. henry, w. c. kneale (...) and l. m. de rijk are examined, compared and appraised with respect to overall progress in the elucidation of supposition-theory. (shrink)

Copied in 80 manuscripts and printed in 25 editions Logica Parva was the most widely read logic book in 15th century Italy. By transmitting Oxford logic to Italy it influenced the course of science, philosophy and theology in the Renaissance.

To meet a dilemma between the axiomatic theory of demonstrative science in Posterior analytics and the non-axiomatic practice of demonstrative science in the physical treatises, Jonathan Barnes has proposed that the theory of demonstration was not meant to guide scientific research but rather scientific pedagogy. The present paper argues that far from contributing directly to oral instruction, the axiomatic account of demonstrative science is a model for the written expression of science. The paper shows how this interpretation accords with related (...) theories in the Organon, including the theories of dialectic in Topics and of deduction in Prior analytics. (shrink)

For the past three decades the theory of supposition (suppositio) has been a crux of scholarship in Medieval logic. Although supposition was one of the banner doctrines of the logic modernorum, its nature and purpose have remained elusive to modern interpreters. In this paper I outline an alternative approach to supposition theory. (edited).

Richard Swinburne is one of the most distinguished philosophers of religion of our day. In this volume, many notable British and American philosophers unite to honor him and to discuss various topics to which he has contributed significantly. These include general topics in the philosophy of religion such as revelation, and faith and reason, and the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and atonement. In the spirit of the movement which Swinburne spearheaded, the essays use analytic philosophical (...) methods to examine doctrines in particular religious traditions, expanding upon traditional discussions of theism. As such, this volume represents a field-report on the interaction of philosophy and Christian thought in the English-speaking world. Swinburne has himself contributed an individual and personal Intellectual Autobiography. (shrink)

Jean Buridan was a leader among those logicians of the fourteenth century who sought to carry out the nominalist program in logic. This volume presents the first English translations of two key tracts, the Treatise on Suppositions and the Treatise on Consequences based respectively on the editions of Maria Elena Reina in "Giovanni Buridano: Tractatus de suppositionibus," Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, pp. 175-208 and pp. 323-52, and Hubert Hubien, Iohannis Buridani tractatus de consequentiis: Édition critique, in Philosophes médiévaux (...) Vol. 16, Université de Louvain, 1976. The extensive introduction and notes locate the texts within a conceptual framework which has held special interest for logicians and historians of logic over the last three decades. (shrink)

In 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature' Richard Rorty presented his provocation and influential vision of the post-philosophical culture, calling upon professional philosophers to accept that epistemology is dead, that the analytic method is a myth, and that philosophy and science are merely forms of literature.

Metaphysics and language: Quine, W. V. O. On the individuation of attributes. Körner, S. On some relations between logic and metaphysics. Marcus, R. B. Does the principle of substitutivity rest on a mistake? Van Fraassen, B. C. Platonism's pyrrhic victory. Martin, R. M. On some prepositional relations. Kearns, J. T. Sentences and propositions.--Basic and combinatorial logic: Orgass, R. J. Extended basic logic and ordinal numbers. Curry, H. B. Representation of Markov algorithms by combinators.--Implication and consistency: Anderson, A. R. Fitch on (...) consistency. Belnap, N. D., Jr. Grammatical propaedeutic. Thomason, R. H. Decidability in the logic of conditionals. Myhill, J. Levels of implication.--Deontic, epistemic, and erotetic logic: Bacon, J. Belief as relative knowledge. Wu, K. J. Believing and disbelieving. Kordig, C. R. Relativized deontic modalities. Harrah, D. A system for erotetic sentences. (shrink)

_Reconceptualizing STEM Education_ explores and maps out research and development ideas and issues around five central practice themes: Systems Thinking; Model-Based Reasoning; Quantitative Reasoning; Equity, Epistemic, and Ethical Outcomes; and STEM Communication and Outreach. These themes are aligned with the comprehensive agenda for the reform of science and engineering education set out by the 2015 PISA Framework, the US Next Generation Science Standards and the US National Research Council’s A Framework for K-12 Science Education. The new practice-focused agenda has implications (...) for the redesign of preK-12 education for alignment of curriculum-instruction-assessment; STEM teacher education and professional development; postsecondary, further, and graduate studies; and out-of-school informal education. In each section, experts set out powerful ideas followed by two eminent discussant responses that both respond to and provoke additional ideas from the lead papers. In the associated website highly distinguished, nationally recognized STEM education scholars and policymakers engage in deep conversations and considerations addressing core practices that guide STEM education. (shrink)

By exploring the strengths and weaknesses of a Marxist approach to economic development, this book presents a balanced treatment of development issues within the area of 'rational choice Marxism'.

This chapter summarises the results of the Krajina Project, which was established in 1998 to investigate the archaeological remains, material culture and continuing ethnographic legacy of this distinctive late medieval/early modern frontier society. The project has focused on an area in the north-west corner of Bosnia-Herzegovina, between Kladuŝa and Bihać, known as the Bihaćka Krajina. This was one of the last districts in the region to be conquered by the Ottoman state, not falling to the sultan's forces until the late (...) sixteenth century — a territorial high water mark. The ethnographic evidence provides significant insights into the continuing legacy of the Ottoman-Hapsburg frontier in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (shrink)