In this book Professor Baldry describes this development from Homer to Cicero when, although the traditional divisions and prejudices still remained string, the ...

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

It is traditionally believed that cerebral activation (the presence of low voltage fast electrical activity in the neocortex and rhythmical slow activity in the hippocampus) is correlated with arousal, while deactivation (the presence of large amplitude irregular slow waves or spindles in both the neocortex and the hippocampus) is correlated with sleep or coma. However, since there are many exceptions, these generalizations have only limited validity. Activated patterns occur in normal sleep (active or paradoxical sleep) and during states of anesthesia (...) and coma. Deactivated patterns occur, at times, during normal waking, or during behavior in awake animals treated with atropinic drugs. Also, the fact that patterns characteristic of sleep, arousal, and waking behavior continue in decorticate animals indicates that reticulo-cortical mechanisms are not essential for these aspects of behavior. (shrink)

In describing the account of the εδη in the Phaedo, Burnet says, ‘they are explained in a peculiar vocabulary which is represented as that of a school. The technical terms are introduced by such formulas as “we say”’. Similarly Taylor has written of the ‘characteristic technical nomenclature’ used in the dialogues, of the ‘technicalities’ of the theory of εδη, of ‘the technical phrases of the Phaedo’ The validity of such language has been taken for granted by both these and many (...) other Platonic scholars. But the assumption which it represents—that Plato employed certain words in a significance peculiar to his use of them—carries such wide implications for the history and interpretation of his philosophy that it can hardly be accepted without further investigation. In this article I shall examine the evidence in fifth- and early fourth-century literature about these words which Plato or Socrates is alleged to have transformed into ‘technicalities’: first, εδος and δσ, which I shall assume to be more or less synonymous; second, the various terms used to describe the relation between εδη and particulars—,μετέχειν, κοινωνεν,παρεναι, νεναι,μιμησις,μοιωαις, and so on. (shrink)

The extent of the dependence of early Greek cosmogony on mythical conceptions has long been a prolific source of controversy. Views on the subject have varied from Professor Cornford's claim that ‘there is a real continuity between the earliest rational speculation and the religious representation that lay behind it’ to Professor Burnet's extreme statement, ‘it is quite wrong to look for the origins of Ionian science in mythological ideas of any kind.’ The solution of the problem that I wish to (...) suggest is one which should satisfy those who insist on ‘the scientific character of the early Greek cosmology,’ while retaining a direct connection with pre-scientific beliefs—namely, that some, at least, of the earliest philosophers founded their doctrines of the beginning of the universe on a deliberate rationalization of earlier and contemporary mythical ideas. The appearance of notions like the ‘world-egg’ in a number of passages, too well known for quotation, shows that primitive cosmogony assumed an analogy between the generation of the world and the generation of animate creatures. I believe it can be proved that, so far from the ‘renunciation of sexual imagery’ which even Professor Cornford has recently attributed to Anaximander, he and other philosophers retained the habit of regarding cosmogony and anthropogony as parallel phenomena, only substituting for the mythical ‘world-egg’ a more scientific view of the embryo and its development. They looked at the world through the same spectacles as their predecessors, but after wiping from them the rose tint of mythological fancy. (shrink)

There is an argument, well known in the history of philosophy, which makes all knowledge ultimately depend on some kind of intuitive or sensory immediacy. According to this argument, either the proposition itself is self–evident; 2 or else it can be shown to follow, with the help of a chain of intermediate links, from other propositions which are self–evident. Moreover, it is this self–evidence of immediate knowledge and only this which, again speaking traditionally, sufficiently guarantees the truth of the affirmations (...) of a science as opposed to those of various and fluctuating opinions. (shrink)