During the academic year 1940-1941, several giants of analytic philosophy congregated at Harvard, holding regular private meetings, with Carnap, Tarski, and Quine. Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard allows the reader to act as a fly on the wall for their conversations. Carnap took detailed notes during his year at Harvard. This book includes both a German transcription of these shorthand notes and an English translation in the appendix section. Carnap’s notes cover a wide range of topics, but surprisingly, the (...) most prominent question is: If the number of physical items in the universe is finite, what form should scientific discourse take? This question is closely connected to an abiding philosophical problem: What is the relationship between the logico-mathematical realm and the material realm? Carnap, Tarski, and Quine’s attempts to answer this question involve issues central to philosophy today.This book focuses on three such issues: nominalism, the unity of science, and analyticity. In short, the book reconstructs the lines of argument represented in these Harvard discussions, discusses their historical significance (especially Quine’s break from Carnap), and relates them when possible to contemporary treatments of these issues. (shrink)

According to recent astrophysical evidence, the present universe has been forming for the past 14 billion years. New kinds of objects have emerged even recently. The reverse side of this creativity is the observed and predicted decay of all objects. Will new structures form in the future? This is a question of hope, which is not a scientific term but originates from experience on the level of personal and religious perceptions requiring participation. Anticipating the future, science and theology of creation (...) meet, and the tension between practical knowledge and visionary hope enters a constructive dialogue. (shrink)

Zaradi svoje vsenavzočnosti v izkustvu ima estetska čutnost mnoge manifestacije, tako očitne kot prikrite. Članek preučuje nekatere večinoma skrite načine, v katerih sta okus in estetska sodba, ki se kažeta v čutnem izkustvu, prefinjeno prisvojena in izrabljena. Te postopke opisujem kot prilastitev estetske čutnosti in imajo škodljive posledice za zdravje, družbo in okolje. Omenjene prakse so oblika estetske negacije, ki izkrivlja čutno izkustvo in manipulira z njim, kot je v interesu množičnega trženja in njegovih dobičkov. Ta vzorec imenujem prilastitev čutnosti. (...) Tovrstne prakse imajo resen etičen pomen in nosijo družbene ter politične implikacije. Estetska analiza navadnega življenja ima pomen, ki sega onstran akademske vednosti in sugerira drugo vlogo estetike, in sicer kritično: estetika kot orodje družbene analize in politične kritike. (shrink)

The species category is defined as thesmallest historical individual within which there is a parental pattern of ancestry and descent. The use of historical individual in this definition is consistent with the prevailing notion that speciesper se are not involved in processes — they are effects, not effectors. Reproductive isolation distinguishes biparental historical species from their parts, and it provides a basis for understanding the nature of the evidence used to discover historical individuals.

Alexander Rosenberg recently claimed (1997) that developmental biology is currently being reduced to molecular biology. cite several concrete biological examples that are intended to impugn Rosenberg's claim. I first argue that although Laubichler and Wagner's examples would refute a very strong reductionism, a more moderate reductionism would escape their attacks. Next, taking my cue from the antireductionist's perennial stress on the importance of spatial organization, I describe one form an empirical finding that refutes this moderate reductionism would take. Finally, I (...) point out an actual example, anterior-posterior axis determination in the chick, that challenges the reductionist's belief that all developmental regularities can be explained by molecular biology. In short, I argue that Rosenberg's position can be saved from Laubichler and Wagner's criticisms and putative counter-examples, but it would not survive a different kind of counter-example. (shrink)

By exploring principles found in psychology, math, physics, and shamanism, it becomes possible to link a cosmic perspective with ordinary life. This comprehensive work ventures into that challenging junction, journeying through the universe on paths of reason and magic, math and myth, bringing together humanity's traditional wisdom and shamanism with contemporary science.

We study the preservation of selective covering properties, including classic ones introduced by Menger, Hurewicz, Rothberger, Gerlits and Nagy, and others, under products with some major families of concentrated sets of reals.Our methods include the projection method introduced by the authors in an earlier work, as well as several new methods. Some special consequences of our main results are : Every product of a concentrated space with a Hurewicz S1S1 space satisfies S1S1. On the other hand, assuming the Continuum Hypothesis, (...) for each Sierpiński set S there is a Luzin set L such that L×SL×S can be mapped onto the real line by a Borel function. Assuming Semifilter Trichotomy, every concentrated space is productively Menger and productively Rothberger. Every scale set is productively Hurewicz, productively Menger, productively Scheepers, and productively Gerlits–Nagy. Assuming d=ℵ1d=ℵ1, every productively Lindelöf space is productively Hurewicz, productively Menger, and productively Scheepers.A notorious open problem asks whether the additivity of Rothberger's property may be strictly greater than addadd, the additivity of the ideal of Lebesgue-null sets of reals. We obtain a positive answer, modulo the consistency of Semifilter Trichotomy >ℵ1.Our results improve upon and unify a number of results, established earlier by many authors. (shrink)

In the whole theory of the Latin tenses there is no more popular item than this explanation by Roby of the use of the pluperfect indicative in unreal conditional sentences. Far the most familiar instance is that in Horace , ‘me truncus illapsus cerebro sustulerat, nisi Faunus ictum dextra leuasset.’.

Series Copy Oxford's celebrated Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Each volume provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject developed in its own right and how it influenced society. (...) Whatever the area of study one deems important or appealing, whatever topic fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introduction series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable. (shrink)

Enracinée dans la prière, fondée sur la Bible seule, centrée sur le Christ, et insistant sur la lutte contre le Malin, sur l'engagement éthique et sur la proximité du Royaume de Dieu, la théologie de Martin Luther, soutenue par le courage et l'humour d'un écrivain hors du commun, rencontre maintes préoccupations théologiques actuelles ; mais elle interpelle aussi des théologies souvent embarrassées par le sola scriptura et le solus Christus, promptes à faire de l'homme une victime et limitant l'eschatologie à (...) l'avènement du Christ dans l'intériorité du croyant. De la théologie contemporaine, elle peut apprendre que toute exégèse est située, que l'assertion n'est pas le seul registre du discours théologique, que le dialogue religieux ne se réduit pas à l'anathème et que l'action de Dieu dans l'histoire n'est pas univoque. Martin Luther's theology is rooted in prayer, founded only on the Bible, and centred on Christ ; it lays stress on the struggle against the Devil, on moral commitment, and on the proximity of God's Kingdom ; it is kept up by the courage and humour of an extraordinary writer. As such, it meets with many modern theological preoccupations, but it also challenges theologies that are often embarrassed by the sola scriptura and the solus Christus, theologies that are ready to victimize man and limit eschatology to the coming of Christ into the believer's inner self. From contemporaneous theology it can learn that each exegesis has its context, that doing theology does not only consist of uttering statements, that the religious dialogue does not confine itself to the anathema, and that God's acts in history are not univocal. (shrink)

In this article I respond to James Martel’s essay ‘ Amo: Volu ut sis : Love, willing, and Arendt’s reluctant embrace of sovereignty’. Martel offers us a provocative account of how Arendt might have attenuated her most severe rejections of the concept of sovereignty in light of the necessity of some version of sovereignty in modern times. However, I argue that Martel misreads Arendt, drawing inferences from Arendt’s inner/outer distinction that do not follow from Arendt’s own logic. Instead of this (...) distinction, I claim that Arendt’s rejection of sovereignty must be understood in the context of her affirmation of natality, and that a consistent reading of Arendt reveals an unstinting rejection of sovereignty, for both good and ill. (shrink)

Die Katholische Kirche gehort zu den scharfsten Kritikern der Biowissenschaften. Sie erkennt wohl die positiven Fortschritte an, bemangelt aber Grenzuberschreitungen, die aus ihrer Sicht dem Menschen letztlich nicht dienen. Vor allem die Forschung mit humanen embryonalen Stammzellen und die vorgeburtliche Diagnostik stossen auf Ablehnung. In den biomedizinischen Wissenschaften fallen die Bewertungen, die Vielfalt ethischer Werthaltungen ist naturgemass grosser als im kirchlichen Bereich. Viele Biowissenschaftler und Mediziner befurworten die Stammzellforschung und die vorgeburtliche Diagnostik. Die Beitrager Analysieren dieses Spannungsverhaltnuis und fragen, wie (...) es gelingen kann, die Gegensatze zwischen Kirche und Biowissenschaft zu entscharfen und mehr gegenseitiges Verstandnis aufzubauen? (shrink)

Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. Vogel's media of (...) reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media -- books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television -- while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory. (shrink)