In this paper we review the general framework of operational probabilistic theories, along with the six axioms from which quantum theory can be derived. We argue that the OPT framework along with a relaxed version of five of the axioms, define a general information theory. We close the paper with considerations about the role of the observer in an OPT, and the interpretation of the von Neumann postulate and the Schrödinger-cat paradox.

Now in a thoroughly revised and expanded third edition, this authoritative Handbook reviews current knowledge about all aspects of emotion and its role in human ...

The considerable attention to financial interests in clinical research has focused mostly on academic medical centers, even though the majority of clinical research is conducted in community practice settings. To fill this gap, this article maps the practices and policies in 73 community hospitals and several hundred specialized facilities around the country for reviewing clinical investigators’ financial relationships with research sponsors. Community hospitals face a substantially different mix of issues than academic medical centers do because their physician researchers are usually (...) not employees, and more of their studies are later-phase, multicenter trials. Accordingly, community physicians stand to benefit personally from per capita payments, but they tend to have less direct influence over research findings when compared with their academic peers. These and other contrasts require separate guidance for community-based organizations that takes into account their particular needs, circumstances, and institutional capacities. (shrink)

"The availability of a paperback version of Boyle's philosophical writings selected by M. A. Stewart will be a real service to teachers, students, and scholars with seventeenth-century interests. The editor has shown excellent judgment in bringing together many of the most important works and printing them, for the most part, in unabridged form. The texts have been edited responsibly with emphasis on readability.... Of special interest in connection with Locke and with the reception of Descarte's Corpuscularianism, to students of the (...) Scientific Revolution and of the history of mechanical philosophy, and to those interested in the relations among science, philosophy, and religion. In fact, given the imperfections in and unavailability of the eighteenth-century editions of Boyle’s works, this collection will benefit a wide variety of seventeenth-century scholars." --Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

What can the actions of stockbreeders, as they select the best individuals for breeding, teach us about how new species of wild animals and plants come into being? Charles Darwin raised this question in his famous, even notorious, Origin of Species (1859). Darwin's answer - his argument by analogy from artificial to natural selection - is the subject of our book. We aim to clarify what kind of argument it is, how it works, and why Darwin gave it such prominence. (...) As we explain more fully in our Introduction, we believe that the argument becomes much more intelligible when set, contextually, in a story stretching from classical Greek mathematics to modern evolutionary genetics: a long story, and a broad one too, encompassing everything from Darwin's earliest notebook theorising on the births and deaths of species, to agrarian capitalism as a distinctive form of economic life, to shifting Western reflections on art-nature relations. (shrink)

The article examines the viability of called ‘the knowledge argument’ that was designed to prove the irreducibility of the subjective, phenomenal aspect of experience to the physical. It is argued that this argument can successfully be defended against its criticism. Its critics are represented here by two physicalist approaches: the mode of presentation hypothesis (here Paul Churchland), and the ability hypothesis (here David Lewis and Laurence Nemirow). The defense of the general soundness of the knowledge argument is based on some (...) important insights on the issue in question of Frank Jackson and Howard Robinson. It is argued that the physicalist counterarguments to the knowledge argument seem inadequate. The article concludes that it appears that the knowledge argument has still kept a significant amount of its initial force. (shrink)

This article contains a critical survey of the attempts that have been made to writea comprehensive history of philosophy in the Netherlands. Three historiographical typescan be distinguished. In the early nineteenth century, after the founding of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dutch philosophers became increasingly aware of the peculiaritiesof their national tradition in philosophy — as distinct from the traditions of France, Germany or Britain. The result was what might be called a 'patriotic historiography', which tended to glorify the Dutch (...) intellectual past. In the second half of the century, however, a 'critical historiography' emerged, which tended to stress what was taken to be the lack of originality and relative unimportance of the Dutch contribution to philosophy. This negative selfimage of Dutch philosophy remained dominant until the advent of the influential historian of philosophy Ferdinand Sassen. Sassen, in 1959, managed topresent a more balanced account, based on careful and detailed research, of the historyof philosophical thought in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, his 'synthetic historiography' leaves a number of important questions unanswered. In recent years, research has tended to concentrate on bringing out the unique intermediary position of the Netherlands,which on many occasions has enabled it to play an influential role in various philosophical developments throughout Europe. Looked at from this angle, the study of Dutch Platonism, humanism, Cartesianism, Spinozism, Leibnizianism, Newtonianism, Kantianism, Hegelianism, positivism etc., can provide essential contributions to the understanding of the general development of European philosophy. It is also to be hoped that knowledge oftheir national past will help contemporary Dutch philosophers to define more adequatelytheir present and future role in philosophy, within a European community which is becoming increasingly integrated. (shrink)

This book studies the interfaces of ethics, economics, and politics. Public policy issues involve all three of these subjects. Although it may be seen as suggesting the nucleus of a joint university course, the book is accessible to and should interest all those concerned with political decisions. Any such decision needs a criterion for judging whether one action or outcome is better than another. Even a dictator must to some extent be concerned about the economic welfare of the citizens; and (...) a democratic government more so. But how is a person's economic welfare to be judged? Furthermore, any political decision affects the economic welfare of different people differently. How then is the welfare of a community to be judged? This is an ethical question. Underlying any coherent public policy there must be a relevant moral code. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to restate the problem of language dependence as first invented by D. Miller against Tichý’s approach to the problem of verisimilitude. The question is whether the verisimilitude appraisals can be dependent on language in which they are formulated in the sense that this dependence could determine their truth values. If the answer is “Yes”, one of the consequences is that one language, when compared with some other one, may lead to different verisimilitude appraisals in (...) spite of the fact that the situation to be compared is the same. So the answer has to be “No”. The author of the paper tries to explain this by analyzing Miller’s critique of Tichý’s counting method which was a part of Tichý’s theory of verisimilitude. (shrink)