The main conclusion drawn in this text is that Piaget's accounts of the construction of necessary knowledge continue to have an intelligible and respectable bases.

This is a study of the attributes problem in the metaphysics of Spinoza, using the recent literature ascribing an absolute idealism to Spinoza as a point of departure.

Calibration, the use of a surrogate signal to standardize an instrument, is an important strategy for the establishment of the validity of an experimental result. In this paper, I present several examples, typical of physics experiments, that illustrate the adequacy of the surrogate. In addition, I discuss several episodes in which the question of calibration is both difficult to answer and of paramount importance. These episodes include early attempts to detect gravity waves, the question of the existence of a 17–keV (...) neutrino, and the question of the existence of a Fifth Force in gravity. I argue that in these more complex cases, the adequacy of calibration, in an extended sense, was both considered and established. (shrink)

This paper approaches dreaming consciousness through an examination of the self-organizing properties of the sleeping brain. This view offers a step toward reconciliation between brain-based and content-based attempts to understand the nature of dreaming. Here it is argued that the brain can be understood as a complex self-organizing system that in dreaming responds to subtle influences such as residual feelings and memories. The hyper-responsiveness of the brain during dreaming is viewed in terms of the tendency of complex chaotic-like systems to (...) respond to small variations in initial conditions and to the amplification of subtle emotional and cognitive signals through the mechanism of stochastic resonance, all in combination with psychophysiological changes in the brain during both slow wave sleep and REM sleep dreaming. Such changes include the active inhibition of extroceptive stimulation and, especially in REM sleep, alterations in the brain's dominant neuromodulatory systems, bombardment of the visual cortex with bursts of PGO activity, increases in limbic system activity, and a reduction of activity in the prefrontal regions. (shrink)

The missing piece of the puzzle: the discovery of the Higgs boson On July 4, 2012 the CMS and ATLAS collaborations at the large hadron collider jointly announced the discovery of a new elementary particle, which resembled the Higgs boson, the last remaining undiscovered piece of the standard model of elementary particles. Both groups claimed to have observed a five-standard-deviation effect above background, the gold standard for discovery in high-energy physics. In this essay I will briefly discuss the how the (...) CMS collaboration performed the experiment and analyzed the data. I will also show the experimental results. (shrink)

The first major publication in English on the bamboo slips excavated from a late fourth century B.C. Chu-state tomb at Guodian, Hubei, in 1993. The slip texts include both Daoist and Confucian works, many previously unknown. Thie monograph is a full account of the international conference held on these texts, at which leading scholars from China, the United States, Europe, and Japan analyzed the Laozi materials and a previously unknown cosmological text. In addition, the contents include nine essays on topics (...) such as the archaeological background of the discovery, conservation of the slip-texts, and the relation of the Guodian Laozi materials to the received Laozi text. An annotated edition of the Guodian Laozi materials and the cosmological text are included, as well as a critical bibliography with summary of Chinese scholarship on the Guodian texts in the year following the conference. (shrink)

Chantal Mouffe har altid sat spørgsmålet om sociale bevægelser i relation til spørgsmålet om demokratisering. Hendes ideer om agonistisk og radikalt demokrati har fået gennemslag i den europæiske samfundsmæssige debat, men i den sammenhæng glemmer man måske, at hun først og fremmest er engageret i en radikalisering af det liberale demokrati. I hendes nuancerede debatstil kan de mange begreber, nogle af hvilke hun selv er ophavet til, godt få læseren til at fokusere på enkelte træer, som for eksempel netop agonistisk (...) og radikalt demokrati. Dermed kan selve skoven, det liberale demokrati og dets udvikling, forsvinde ud af fokus. Det gør det imidlertid ikke i dette interview, der fandt sted i hendes hjem i Hampstead, Nordlondon, primo 2012, omtrent samtidig med, at hendes seneste bog Agonistics blev afsluttet. (shrink)

_Psychopathology at School_ provides a timely response to concerns about the rising numbers of children whose behaviour is recognised and understood as a medicalised condition, rather than simply as poor behaviour caused by other factors. It is the first scholarly analysis of psychopathology which draws on the philosophers Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari and Arendt to examine the processes whereby children’s behaviour is pathologised. The heightened attention to mental disorders is contrasted with education practices in the early and mid-to-late twentieth century, and (...) the emergence of a new conceptualization of childhood is explored. Taking education as a central component to the contemporary experience of growing up, the book charts the ways in which mental disorders have become commonplace in childhood and youth, from birth through to college and university, but also offers examples of where professionals have refused to pathologise children’s behaviour. The book examines the extent of the influence of psychopathology on the lives of children and young people, as well as the practices that infiltrate education and the possibilities for alternative educational responses that negate the diagnosis of mental disorder. Psychopathology at School is a must read for anyone concerned about the growing influence of psychopathology in education and will be of particular interest to educated readers and to scholars, students and professionals in education, psychiatry, psychology, child studies, youth studies, nursing, social work and sociology. (shrink)

Incarcerated persons have suffered a disproportionate burden of SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to the general population, with heightened risk for adverse...

Rodion Raskolnikov, the central figure in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, is one of the best-known characters in the world of the novel but one who continues to pose major interpretive problems. Why exactly does he murder the old pawnbroker and her sister? Why, throughout the novel, does he continue to believe that he has committed no crime? And why, despite this belief, does he suffer a form of psychological breakdown and eventually give himself up to the police? This article, which (...) traces Raskolnikov’s literary ancestry to Les Liaisons dangereuses and Le Père Goriot, argues that Raskolnikov, a prototype of the modern “virtuous assassin” described by Albert Camus in L’Homme révolté, commits murder to implement a “magnificent” idea that will establish his worth as a human being. His ultimate collapse results not, as sometimes suggested, from guilt or remorse, or a belief that he has deluded himself about his motives, but from the state of irremediable solitude into which his act plunges him. -/- _PLEASE NOTE:_ This journal is moving from Oxford to Johns Hopkins. The move is still under way (4/2/25) so my Crime and Punishment article may not be accessible at the moment at either. In the meantime I've uploaded a copy to "archive" on this site. Derek Allan. (shrink)

Although he does not have an explicit theory of supposition as is found in the works of Latin medieval philosophers, Avicenna has two doctrines giving something equivalent: the threefold distinction of quiddity, corresponding to a division of simple, personal and material supposition, and his analyses of truth conditions for categorical propositions, where sentential context determines in part the reference of their terms. While he does address which individuals are being referred to by the universal terms used there, Avicenna concentrates more (...) on the varied temporal durations of the predications being made. In Western terms, he has incorporated ampliation and restriction into the theory of supposition itself. (shrink)

Some psychologists working in the psychology and law field feel that the profession does not provide them with adequate ethical guidance even though the field is arguably one of the oldest and best established applied fields of psychology. The uncertainty psychologists experience most likely stems from working with colleagues whose professional ethics differs from their own while providing services to demanding people and the many moral questions associated with the administration of law. I believe psychology’s ethics does, however, provide adequate (...) moral guidance. It has a sound historical basis, has face validity and emphasizes those social moral principles that allow psychologists to best serve individuals and society. Psychologists may nevertheless be confronted with conflicting demands because there are other norm systems that also regulate their behavior as researchers and practitioners, and they, like all people, are influenced by their conscience. Ultimately, psychologists working in the psycholegal field will be best served if they have good knowledge of, and have internalized, the ethical principles of psychology. (shrink)

Experiments often disagree. How then can scientific knowledge be based on experimental evidence? In this paper I will examine four episodes from the history of recent physics: the suggestion of a Fifth Force, a modification of Newton’s law of gravitation; early attempts to detect gravitational radiation ; the claim that a 17-keV neutrino exists; and experiments on atomic-parity violation and on the scattering of polarized electrons and their relation to the Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak interactions. In each of these (...) episodes discordant results were reported, and a consensus was later reached that one result—or set of results—was incorrect. I will examine the process of reaching that consensus. I will show that the decision was reached by reasoned discussion based on epistemological and methodological criteria. It then follows that we may use experimental evidence as the basis of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

The conventional view is that Enlightenment thinkers all believed that the fruits of Reason would always be beneficial. Is this accurate? Laclos's celebrated novel "Les Liaisons dangereueses", published in 1782, provides a perspective on the world of Reason that certainly does not square with that view. Working at the level of individual psychology, Reason in Laclos's novel divides the world into the strong and the weak – more specifically, the astute and the naïve. It defines human worth in terms of (...) a capacity to deceive and control others, a capacity that can only be fully expressed by the complete defeat and humiliation of one’s adversary. (shrink)

The question of whether or not art is essentially a representation of reality has long been a bone of contention among philosophers of art – especially in the major branch of that discipline called the analytic philosophy of art, or analytic aesthetics. This paper argues that art - visual art, literature or music - is never essentially representation. The argument is based on the thinking of André Malraux in "The Voices of Silence".

In this paper I argue, using two case studies of episodes from recent physics against the contingency view advocated by social constructionists. In this view, physics, or science in general, is, in Ian Hacking’s words, not determined by anything. Much of the previous discussion has centered on examples of scientific success. In this paper I argue that experimental evidence and reasoned and critical discussion played the crucial role in the refutation of a previously strongly believed hypothesis, and in the decision (...) that a proposed new elementary particle did not exist, leaving no reasonable doubt. I suggest that the argument against contingency does not require the absence of all possible doubt, but rather the absence of reasonable doubt.Keywords: Contingency; Refutation; 17-keV neutrino; Parity nonconservation. (shrink)

It’s common knowledge that those objects we regard as great works of art have a capacity to survive across time. But that observation is only a half-truth: it tells us nothing about the nature of this power of survival – about how art endures. -/- This question was once at the heart of Western thinking about art. The Renaissance solved it by claiming that great art is “timeless”, “eternal” – impervious to time, a belief that exerted a powerful influence on (...) Enlightenment philosophers and, later, on modern aesthetics. -/- The notion that art is timeless was contradicted by nineteenth century thinkers such as Hegel, Marx, and Taine who stressed the historical embeddedness of art. The conflict of these two ideas, together with other major factors discussed in this paper, has left us today without a viable account of the nature of art’s capacity to transcend time. -/- This paper proposes an alternative solution: the proposition that art survives by a process of metamorphosis. But the principal emphasis of the paper is on the question itself: how does art transcend time? (a question that has nothing to do with the so-called “test of time”). If modern aesthetics is to remain relevant to our modern world of art, in which the art of the past – stretching back to Lascaux and beyond – is as important as Picasso and contemporary art, it urgently needs to address this neglected question. (shrink)

One might naturally suppose that philosophers of art would take a strong interest in the idea of creation in the context of art. In fact, this has often not been the case. In analytic aesthetics, the issue tends to dwell on the sidelines and in continental aesthetics a shadow has sometimes been cast over the topic by the notion of the “death of the author” and by the claim, as Roland Barthes put it, that the author is only ever able (...) to “imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original”. This paper explains the understanding of artistic creation developed by the French art theorist André Malraux in his well-known book The Voices of Silence. Malraux argues that the true artist is involved in a creative act in the full sense of the term – creation ex nihilo – despite the debt he or she often owes to other artists. The paper also comments briefly on possible reasons why traditional post-Enlightenment aesthetics has said so little about the topic in question. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 142 - 169 I offer an explanation of why the fallacy of “accident” is so called. By ‘accident’ here, Aristotle does not mean accidental predication but being _per accidens_. Understood in this way, the fallacy of accident can be analyzed in terms of the rules that Aristotle gives for being _per accidens_. The fallacy of accident lost the original justification for its name in the late Greek period. It became associated with accidental predication (...) and not with being _per accidens_. The fallacy was then solved by construing it syllogistically so that the paralogisms became invalid through not having a universal major premise. This medieval analysis became the dominant approach in the medieval period but has led to confusion over the fallacy of accident in millennia of logic books. I end by considering how to formulate the fallacy of accident more fruitfully in modern terms via Aristotle’s original approach. (shrink)

Can novels, plays and poetry tell us something important and true about who we are, about others, and about life generally? The question seems to be of interest not only to writers on literary theory and aesthetics, but to people generally. This paper considers the issues involved.