Dōgen's views of time are descriptively compared to the modern western philosophical view called "B-theory" and found to contain elements of each of the four main tenets of the B-theory. Furthermore, a fundamental incongruency is discovered. Even accounting for traditional Buddhist approaches to apparent contradictions, Dōgen's problems in this regard call into question the assumption of consistency that has characterized modern interpretations of his views on time.

B- theorists frequently argue that the A- theoretic views are incompatible with the Special Theory of Relativity (STR) and that this is a problem for the A- theoretic views. however, the B- theory needs to be revised in light of implications of STR. in particular, it follows from STR that some events stand in genuine temporal relations to each other while others do not. Consequently, there isn’t a single temporal order of all events. instead, there are multiple B- series. (...) Some B- theorists defend a view of the passage of time according to which passage is simply temporal succession. This paper argues that, in Minkowski spacetime, time passes in each of the multiple B- series, but there is no passage spanning across all events because some events stand in no genuine temporal relations to each other. (shrink)

A heuristic proof is given that the divergent QCD perturbation series is, asymptotic. By treating it as an asymptotic expansion we show that it makes sense to keep only the first few terms. The example of e+e− annihilation is considered. It is shown that by keeping only the first few terms one can get within a per cent (or smaller) of the complete sum of the series even at very low momenta where the coupling is large. More generally, (...) this affords an explanation of the phenomena of precocious scaling and why keeping only leading order corrections generally works so well. (shrink)

In the World Library of Psychologists series, international experts themselves present career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, and their major theoretical and practical contributions. Jonathan St B T Evans is amongst the foremost cognitive psychologists of his generation, having been influential in spearheading developments in the psychological study of reasoning from its very beginnings in the 1970s up to the present day. This volume of self-selected (...) papers recognises Professor Evan's major contribution to the psychological study of thinking and reasoning by bringing together his most influential and important works. Early selections in the book focus upon experimental studies of reasoning - matching bias in the Wason selection task, belief bias in syllogistic reasoning, and also seminal work on the understanding of conditional statements. The later selections include Evans' work on more general forms of dual process and dual system theory, and his recent account of two minds in one brain. The volume also contains chapters which highlight Evans' contribution to the topic of human rationality, and also his influence on the development of the "new paradigm" in the psychology of reasoning. The key developments in the psychology of reasoning are paralleled by those in Evans's own intellectual history, and the book will therefore make essential reading for all researchers in the psychology of reasoning, and a wider audience of graduate and upper-level undergraduate students with an interest in reasoning and/or dual process theory. (shrink)

In 2004 Orlando Florida was hit with an almost unprecedented series of storms and hurricanes. Within two months, Hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Jeanne hit, and Hurricane Ivan made a near miss. Billions of dollars of damage resulted from these disasters, and several dozen lives were lost. It is tempting, in the case of extreme events, to either regard them as having no need of interpretation (that is, as simply given, material events shared by everyone), or as a kind of (...) rare window on the workings of a community.1 In this paper I want to examine the public construction of the meaning of the hurricane in Orlando, particularly as represented in reports at the time in the major newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. I am especially interested in placemaking, that is, the ways in which places gain or fail to gain meaning in times of stress. I will suggest that opportunities for place-making were lost in Orlando because of the frame the events around Hurricane Charley were given. Hurricane Frances, though, was treated differently in the Orlando press, and the discourse around the hurricanes of 2004 provides a contrast to the kind of rhetorical response that circulated during the disastrous hurricane season of 2005. In the case of some disasters, community is reinforced, and the skills of place-making are exercised. The reaction to Hurricane Charley in Orlando, on the other hand, tended not to reinforce community, and tended not to contribute to place-making. While it is extremely difficult to measure sense of place or sense of community quantitatively, it is possible to make sense out of the interpretive tools people have at their disposal in a disaster. What comes out of all this, I think, is something I want to call “place-making imagination”. This is analogous to the 1 concept of “moral imagination” in ethics (Johnson). Our moral options extend as far as our imagination will allow. A person might boil the moral universe down to polarized options – fight or flight, kill or be killed, choose A or B – when in fact a more cultivated and aware imagination may have afforded other options, perhaps better ones than either polarized one.. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Based on an experiential dream series this consciousness study shapes a theory that the fragmentary nature of dreams seeks wholeness deriving from the Collective Unconscious. As dreams evolve from a microscopic-personal worldview to a macroscopic-transpersonal dimension, concern for survival of self is augmented with concern for survival of the species. Entangled dream imagery provides cues to quantum functions actualized through the tutelage of departed scientific luminaries. The intentionality, specificity, and information (...) input experienced in the communications imply that the collective unconscious and quantum cognition are an integrated structure revealing an underlying methodology. (shrink)

'The problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of the color-line.' Originally published in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk is a classic study of race, culture, and education at the turn of the twentieth century. With its singular combination of essays, memoir, and fiction, this book vaulted W. E. B. Du Bois to the forefront of American political commentary and civil rights activism. The Souls of Black Folk is an impassioned, at times searing account of the situation of African (...) Americans in the United States. Du Bois makes a forceful case for the access of African Americans to higher education, memorably extols the achievements of black culture (above all the spirituals or 'sorrow songs'), and advances the provocative and influential argument that due to the inequalities and pressures of the 'race problem', African American identity is characterized by 'double consciousness'. This edition includes a valuable appendix of other writing by Du Bois, which sheds light on his attitudes and intentions. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

When interpreters orient Kant in relation to contemporary philosophy of time, they claim that the B series is dependent on the A series. However, I claim that the opposite direction of dependence is also supported, due to Kant’s position that change is both intelligible and involves incompatibility. This paper extends the contemporary description of Kant’s philosophy of time to show that Kant endorses the interdependence of A series and B series views on time.

I have become more convinced, over the years, by the truth of Wittgenstein’s characterisation of philosophy as arising through misconceptions of grammar. Such a misconception of grammar characterises a very popular approach to indexicality which has been current since the 1970s, stemming from the work of Casteñeda, and Kaplan. Gareth Evans was inclined to allow, for instance, that one could say ‘“To the left (I am hot)” is true, as uttered by x at t iff there is someone moderately near (...) to the left of x such that, if he were to utter the sentence “I am hot” at t, what he would thereby say is true’ (Evans 1985: 358). But not only does this disturb the proper relation between direct and indirect speech, it continues a Fregean tradition which these very cases show to be quite mistaken about the logic of intensions. In this paper, however, I want primarily to point out how this misconception of grammar has distorted our view of people. For some of the above thinkers have tried to make out that human motivation is related to the possession of a certain category of indexical belief, by Lewis called ‘de se beliefs’. I shall look here at how the matter arises in Hugh Mellor’s work on Time. In connection with Time, indexicality arises in McTaggart’s ‘A-series’, and Mellor treats this indexicality in parallel with Evans’ language. First, therefore, I aim to show how Mellor’s discussion of Time grammatically misconceives the situation, and leads to a misrepresentation of the motivation of human action. But a larger conclusion about Fregean intensions is also then immediately available. (shrink)

The Conference on Artificial General Intelligence is the only major conference series devoted wholly and specifically to the creation of AI systems possessing general intelligence at the human level and ultimately beyond. Its second installation, AGI-09, in Arlington, Virginia, March 6-9, 2009, attracted 67 paper submissions, which is a substantial increase from the previous year. Of these submissions, 33 (i.e., 49%) were accepted as full papers for presentation at the conference. Additional 13 papers were included as position papers. The (...) program also included a keynote address by Juergen Schmidhuber on 'The New AI', a post-conference workshop on 'The Future of AI', and a number of pre-conference tutorials on various topics related to AGI. (shrink)

First authoritative and comprehensive study in the field of Inkblot Personality Test, this book describes the historical roots of the three major projective inkblot measures: the Rorschach, the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) and the Somatic Inkblot Series (SIS). It presents the extensive psychometric background work accompanying the normative data and diagnostic indicators along with indices for selecting executives in a business organization. The book begins with a detailed history of Hermann Rorschach and his early experiments with inkblots in the (...) diagnosis of mentally ill patients. Special attention is given to the administration and scoring of the Rorschach, with the sections detailing the systems developed by Klopfer and Exner. The HIT and SIS are also reviewed in detail, emphasizing their psychometric qualities. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of person‐centred care (PCC) in nursing, there is no general agreement on the assumptions and the meaning of PCC. We sympathize with the work of others who rethink PCC towards relational, embedded, and temporal selfhood rather than individual personhood. Our perspective addresses criticism of humanist assumptions in PCC using critical posthumanism as a diffraction from dominant values We highlight the problematic realities that might be produced in healthcare, leading to some people being more likely to be disenfranchised (...) from healthcare than others. We point to the colonial, homo‐ and transphobic, racist, ableist, and ageist consequences of humanist traditions that have influenced the development of PCC. We describe the deep rooted conditions that structurally uphold inequality and undermine nursing practice that PCC reproduces. We advocate for the self‐determination of patients and emphasize that we support the fundamental mechanisms of PCC enabling patients' choice; however, without critical introspection, these are limited to a portion of humans. Last, we present limitations of our perspective based on our white*‐cisheteropatriarchy** positionality. We point to the fact that any reimagining of models such as PCC should be carefully done by listening, following, and ceding power to people with diversity dimensions*** and the lived experience or expertise that exists from diverse perspectives. We point towards Black, queer feminism, and critical disabilities studies to contextualize our point of critique with humanism and PCC to amplify equity for all people and communities. Theory and philosophy are useful to understand restrictive factors in healthcare delivery and to inform systematic strategies to improve the quality of care so as not to perpetuate the oppression of groups of people with diversity dimensions. *We purposely capitalize Black and use lower case for white to decentre whiteness and as an intentional act of antiracism (see White Homework a podcast series by Tori W. Douglas). **Cisheteropatriarchy describes people with intersecting identities of dominant social groups; cisgender is the gender identity that aligns with the gender you were assigned at birth, hetero means heterosexual, and patriarchy refers to structural systems of power based on maleness where women are often excluded and hold less power. ***With diversity dimensions, we refer to subjective lived experience and material realities of people that exist outside the ‘dominant minorities' of white‐cisheteropatriarchy, meaning groups of people in society who historically and currently hold more power and through this, structurally dominate the norms and possibilities of living for other people. (shrink)

In a series of illuminating papers Frankena called attention to a basic philosophical disagreement about what features distinguish moral from non-moral principles, rules, ideals, etc., and about “what a morality is,” when, for example, one speaks of the “morality” of a person or a group. After reviewing a number of writings, he emphasized an important contrast between two “families” of moralists and moral philosophers. On the one side are those who think that certain “formal” conditions are sufficient to distinguish (...) moral “action-guides” from nonmoral ones. On the other side are those who insist that a certain “material” and “social” condition must be added; as they see it, an action-guide is moral only if it pronounces “actions and agents to be right, wrong, good, bad, etc., simply because of the effect they have on the feelings, interests, ideals, etc., of other persons or centers of sentient experience, actual or hypothetical.” The issue, in brief, is whether any set of principles or other articles counts as a morality simply because a person or a group of persons takes that set as the supreme, or as a rational and universalizable guide to what is right and wrong, or whether such a set must be “social” in the sense that acts are prescribed as right or wrong in virtue of the acts’ effects on others as well as on oneself. In the former group, Frankena includes existentialists, many religious thinkers, Hare, Ladd, Falk, etc.; in the latter, Toulmin, Baier, Singer, Strawson, Kemp, etc. (shrink)

Context: Although there are rich descriptive accounts of skill acquisition in the literature, there are no satisfactory explanatory models of the cognitive processes involved. Problem: The aim of the paper is to explain some key phenomena frequently observed in the acquisition of motor skills: the loss of conscious access to knowledge of the structure of a skill and the awareness that an error has been made prior to the receipt of knowledge of results. Method: In the 1970s, the first author (...) implemented a computer program model of the cognitive processes involved in learning and skill acquisition, based on a series of empirical investigations. Recently, with assistance from the second author, the model has been reviewed, updated and re-implemented. Result: The model provides a constructivist account of skill acquisition and associated phenomena. Implications: The model adds to the understanding of motor skill acquisition and will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in physical therapy and sports science. It is also provides a constructivist cognitive architecture that can be fruitfully contrasted with non-constructivist cognitive architectures well-known in cognitive science. (shrink)

The present account, based on introspective comments, deals with motivation and hedonic tone as subjective factors which affect continuous work at high speeds. Actual introspective reports are given. The earlier papers in the series described the experimental procedure and presented objective data.

Making a first sketch of philosophical issues arising from European Community law I want to present a series of more or less obvious, and more or less interrelated dilemmas, or even ‘double binds’. (i) Deepening the community becomes incompatible with widening membership. (ii) National states seem both necessary for and obstructive in articulating transnational problems. (iii) The more democracy is needed as a warrant for the public exercise of political power in Europe, the more the very concept of democracy (...) on a European scale evades understanding. (iv) European unity presupposes a unifying rule of law, while member states have radically different conceptions of this principle. (v) Even the very core of European integration, the common market, is subject to two conflicting and, indeed, incompatible doctrines of competition. In explaining the nature of each dilemma I will try to take my cue from the Maastricht Treaty wherever this seems suitable. Then I will elaborate on the jurisprudential problems involved in it. Finally, each section will be closed by an attempt to state the nature of these problems in philosophical terms. (shrink)

In a series of exquisite examples that could only have been gathered by a professional philosopher with an extraordinary respect for young minds, Gareth...

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most elusive thinkers in the philosophical tradition. His highly unusual style and insistence on what remains hidden or unsaid in his writing make pinning him to a particular position tricky. Nonetheless, certain readings of his work have become standard and influential. In this major new interpretation of Nietzsche’s work, Robert B. Pippin challenges various traditional views of Nietzsche, taking him at his word when he says that his writing can best be understood as a (...) kind of psychology. Pippin traces this idea of Nietzsche as a psychologist to his admiration for the French moralists: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Stendhal, and especially Montaigne. In distinction from philosophers, Pippin shows, these writers avoided grand metaphysical theories in favor of reflections on life as lived and experienced. Aligning himself with this project, Nietzsche sought to make psychology “the queen of the sciences” and the “path to the fundamental problems.” Pippin contends that Nietzsche’s singular prose was an essential part of this goal, and so he organizes the book around four of Nietzsche’s most important images and metaphors: that truth could be a woman, that a science could be gay, that God could have died, and that an agent is as much one with his act as lightning is with its flash. Expanded from a series of lectures Pippin delivered at the Collège de France, _Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy_ offers a brilliant, novel, and accessible reading of this seminal thinker. (shrink)

In 1978, as the protests against the Shah of Iran reached their zenith, philosopher Michel Foucault was working as a special correspondent for _Corriere della Sera_ and _le Nouvel Observateur_. During his little-known stint as a journalist, Foucault traveled to Iran, met with leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini, and wrote a series of articles on the revolution. _Foucault and the Iranian Revolution _is the first book-length analysis of these essays on Iran, the majority of which have never before appeared in (...) English. Accompanying the analysis are annotated translations of the Iran writings in their entirety and the at times blistering responses from such contemporaneous critics as Middle East scholar Maxime Rodinson as well as comments on the revolution by feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. In this important and controversial account, Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson illuminate Foucault's support of the Islamist movement. They also show how Foucault's experiences in Iran contributed to a turning point in his thought, influencing his ideas on the Enlightenment, homosexuality, and his search for political spirituality. _Foucault and the Iranian Revolution_ informs current discussion on the divisions that have reemerged among Western intellectuals over the response to radical Islamism after September 11. Foucault's provocative writings are thus essential for understanding the history and the future of the West's relationship with Iran and, more generally, to political Islam. In their examination of these journalistic pieces, Afary and Anderson offer a surprising glimpse into the mind of a celebrated thinker. (shrink)

'Philosophy arises through misconceptions of grammar', said Wittgenstein. Few people have believed him, and probably none, therefore, working in the area of the philosophy of mathematics. Yet his assertion is most evidently the case in the philosophy of Set Theory, as this paper demonstrates (see also Rodych 2000). The motivation for twentieth century Set Theory has rested on the belief that everything in Mathematics can be defined in terms of sets [Maddy 1994: 4]. But not only are there notable items (...) which cannot be so defined, including numbers and mereological sums, the very notion of a set, as formalized within this tradition, is based on a series of grammatical confusions. (shrink)

It has been argued that patrilineal joint family systems tend to bias family planning decisions in favour of sons. A simple model suggests that in such societies, any given son will be more highly valued by his parents (1) the fewer his brothers and (2) the earlier his birth is in the brother series. A daughter's value will be greater (1) the fewer brothers she has and (2) the earlier her birth is relative to other sisters. This study first (...) addresses the extent of son preference as inferred from family composition data for 772 Taiwanese first-graders born in the mid-1970s in two socioeconomically distinct communities in Taipei, Taiwan. It then uses linear regression to consider whether the model criteria help account for statural variation among children in each study area when controlling for differences in measurement age, parental education and housing. With respect to family composition and gender preference, available evidence was consistent with previous surveys. While better-educated parents in the more affluent study area had significantly fewer children (p<0·0005) and were more willing to stop without a son, girls there, as in the less affluent area, were still significantly more likely than boys to belong to large sibships (p[less-than-or-equal]0·005). Evidence from mean height of males and females partially accords with hypothetical predictions. In the less affluent area, the interaction effect of male birth order and the presence of younger siblings was significantly associated with mean stature (p=0·002). Males without brothers were 2·0 cm taller than males with either an older or a younger brother (116·3 ± 0·5 cm vs 114·3 ± 0·4 cm). Males who had both younger and older brothers, but often no sisters, were about as tall, however, as those without brothers. A similar, but less pronounced, pattern was found amoung males in the more affluent area, but only among those who had sisters. These boys were also consistently shorter than boys without sisters (115·6 ± 0·6 cm vs 117·7 ± 0·6 cm; p=0·001). Patterns of mean female stature did not clearly support the hypothesis. Girls in the more affluent area were relatively tall and did not show significant variation. Results among less affluent girls showed significant contrasts, but not necessarily in the predicted direction. (shrink)

Rhetoric is widely regarded by both its detractors and advocates as a kind of antithesis to reason. In this book Thomas B. Farrell restores rhetoric as an art of practical reason and enlightened civic participation, grounding it in its classical tradition—particularly in the rhetoric of Aristotle. And, because prevailing modernist world views bear principal responsibility for the disparagement of rhetorical tradition, Farrell also offers a critique of the dominant currents of modern humanist thought. Farrell argues that rhetoric is not antithetical (...) to reason but is a manner of posing and answering questions that is distinct from the approaches of analytic and dialectical reason. He develops this position in a number of ways: through a series of bold reinterpretations of Aristotle's _Rhetoric_; through a detailed appraisal of traditional rhetorical concepts as seen in modern texts from the Army-McCarthy hearings to Edward Kennedy's memorial for his brother, Mario Cuomo's address on abortion, Betty Friedan's _Feminine Mystique_, and Vaclav Havel's inaugural address; and through a fresh appraisal of theories on the character of language and discourse found in contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, anthropology, deconstructionism, Marxism, and especially in Habermas's critical theory of communicative action. (shrink)

These are three welcome works on medieval logic. The Summa Logica of William of Ockham has long been a classic, and scholars have been waiting for this critical edition, begun almost a quarter of a century ago by Philotheus Boehner and finally brought to completion by the combined efforts of Stephen Brown and especially Gedeon Gal, now the general editor of the Opera Philosophica et Theologica being prepared at the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University. The editors date this work (...) after the Commentary on the Sentences, two volumes of which have already appeared in the above mentioned series. It also postdates Ockham’s commentaries on Porphyry, the Praedicamenta, Perihermenias, and Sophisticis Elenchis, as well as the first four books of Aristotle’s Physics. As a terminus ante quem the editors take the fifth book of this same Physics and see it as certainly prior to the Tractatus de praedestinatione, and to the De corpore Christi and De Sacramento Altaris. Parts of the Quodlibetal questions, however, precede it, and others follow. Loux’s translation, unfortunately, antedated this splendid edition of the Summa Logicae, being based on only the partial, earlier edition of Boehner. Nevertheless, it is a useful instrument providing a good and relatively complete introduction to the basic themes of Ockham’s philosophy of language as well as his ontology. A spot check reveals some misprints, e.g., on pp. 56, 192 and on page 38, lines 68-83 of the Latin edition he used have not been translated. The work is introduced by two essays: "The Ontology of William Ockham" and "Ockham on Generality"—the latter dealing with his theory of supposition. Nuchelmans’ interesting work, though it deals mostly with the medieval history of propositions as bearers of truth and falsity, contains some six chapters which trace the history of the term as early as Plato’s treatment in the Sophist, through Aristotle and the important Stoic lekton and axioma. He also concludes with a useful chapter on the significance of a true propositio, both as a mode of being of a thing and as the mental conception.—A.B.W. (shrink)

William of Malmesbury's Regesta Regum Anglorum is one of the great histories of England, and one of the most important historical works of the European Middle Ages. Although its focus is national, its scope encompasses most of Western Europe and beyond, providing a full-scale account of the First Crusade. Apart from its formidable learning, it is characterized by narrative skill and entertainment value - with topics including unpowered flight and Henry I's zoo. This edition in the Oxford Medieval Texts (...) class='Hi'>series is the first modern translation and edition. A full historical introduction is supplied in Volume II. (shrink)

We investigated how people interpret conditionals and how stable their interpretation is over a long series of trials. Participants were shown the colored patterns on each side of a six-sided die, and were asked how sure they were that a conditional holds of the side landing upwards when the die is randomly thrown. Participants were presented with 71 trials consisting of all combinations of binary dimensions of shape (e.g., circles and squares) and color (e.g., blue and red) painted onto (...) the sides of each die. In two experiments (N1 = 66, N2 = 65), the conditional event was the dominant interpretation, followed by conjunction, and material conditional responses were negligible. In both experiments, the percentage of participants giving a conditional event response increased from around 40% at the beginning of the task to nearly 80% at the end, with most participants shifting from a conjunction interpretation. The shift was moderated by the order of shape and color in each conditional’s antecedent and consequent: participants were more likely to shift if the antecedent referred to a color. In Experiment 2 we collected response times: conditional event interpretations took longer to process than conjunction interpretations (mean difference 500 ms). We discuss implications of our results for mental models theory and probabilistic theories of reasoning. (shrink)