This volume provides the readers with a broad but detailed consideration of a wide array of transmutationist thinkers who published before Darwin. Highlighting some of those whom Darwin later acknowledged as well as number he chose not to, readers are shown that the notion that none of these earlier thinkers offered a well-developed or workable theory of evolution is untenable once we read their own words.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is well known as a pre-Darwinian proponent of evolution. But much of what has been written on Lamarck, on his ‘Lamarckian’ belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and on his conception of the role of the will in biological development mischaracterizes his views. Indeed, surprisingly little in-depth analysis has been published regarding his views on human physiology and development. Further, although since Robert M. Young’s signal 1969 essay on Malthus and the evolutionists, Darwin scholars have sought to (...) place Darwin’s work in its social and political context, this has yet to be done adequately for Lamarck. Here I address this gap. I argue that the will was of particular importance to Lamarck’s social commentary and his hopes for the transformation of the French people and nation. Further, I argue that if we are to really grasp Lamarck’s ideas and intentions we need to contextualize his works in relation to prevailing debates in France about the physiology of mind and morals and the future of the nation. (shrink)

Perché quella faccia triste, lettore? Non sapere ti rende infelice. Non sai nulla di quello che ti circonda: non sai come fa a volare l'aereo che ti porterà a Londra, non sai quante zampe ha una Pseudoiulia cambriensis, come funziona il wi-fi, quanta acqua c'è nell'Oceano Atlantico. Sai cosa vuol dire entelechìa? Quanti capelli abbiamo in testa? Hai mai provato a contare tutte le stelle? No, ma l'ha già fatto l'astronomo Ipparco, e le notizie non sono buone: non potremo (...) saperlo mai. Più cerchi di trovare risposte più si formulano ulteriori domande. Ogni informazione è superata nel momento in cui la ricevi, ogni novità è storia vecchia. Grazie a Internet puoi sapere dove sono i tuoi amici in questo momento, con chi sono, cosa fanno. Ma ti interessa davvero? Se digiti parole a caso su Google (“kefYDl9”) qualche risultato verrà fuori di sicuro. Ma saperlo potrà farti vivere meglio? Hai uno sguardo sconsolato, lettore. Non sai che potresti vivere anche senza tutte queste conoscenze. Tu sei Prometeo, prigioniero del fuoco. Sei il fratello spirituale di Friedrich Nietzsche. Se fossi un personaggio di Game of Thrones saresti il Guardiano della Notte Jon Snow, il paladino che lotta trafitto dal dolore di non conoscere né il suo passato né il suo destino. Non lo conosci, ma forse non hai mai voluto saperlo. Anche sapere ti rende infelice: sai benissimo che più cose riuscirai a conoscere più diventerai ignorante. È il paradosso dell'ignoranza: non sapremo mai cosa esattamente sappiamo, e sappiamo solamente ciò che pensiamo di sapere. (shrink)

In the Roman Republic, in the case of the death of both consuls or a situation which made it impossible to proceed with the election of their successors, the Senate would decide to establish an interregnum. For that the senators chose several persons of patrician dignity from among their midst, and awarded them the auspices and the signs of magisterial power. The interreges had the task of preparing for the elections of new consuls and hold the electoral assembly. Although the (...) interreges had been chosen by the Senate, rather than elected by the People, and were in power for a short period, they resembled extraordinary magistrates. The interrex was appointed by the senator with auspices; likewise, the magistrate was elected in accordance with the will of the gods. As well as the auspices and the attributes of magisterial power, the interreges were provided with anius agendi cum patribus et cum populoand could summon the People to the centuriate assembly. In an epistle to C. Trebatius Testa, written in January 53, Cicero ironically said that, with such a large number of interreges, an experienced lawyer could use them to prepare a defence in civil suits by asking each interrex for two adjournments to obtain legal assistance. Interreges, albeit as part of a jest, were seen here as holders of some civil jurisdiction. Referring to Asconius' clarification that a certain M. Lepidus was appointed interrex because he had been elected as a curule magistrate, Theodor Mommsen concluded that every interrex was regarded as magistrate. In fact, Asconius means here that Lepidus held a curule magistracy in addition to his being interrex. Nevertheless, the notion of extraordinary magistrate has been frequently applied to the interrex by modern scholars. When interreges periodically appeared at the head of the Republic as holders of auspices and of the signs of the highest power for five days, the Romans became accustomed to thinking that the interreges received supremacy for that period. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 57-59.

This paper evaluates several recent efforts to interpret the work of Nāgārjuna through the lens of modern symbolic logic. An attempt is made to uncover the premises that justify the use of symbolic logic for this purpose. This is accomplished through a discussion of (1) the historical origins of those premises in the Indian and Tibetan traditions, and (2) how such assumptions prejudice our understanding of Nāgā rjuna’s insistence that he has no “proposition” (pratijñā). Finally, the paper sets forth an (...) alternative interpretation that takes into account the literary dimensions of Nāgārjuna’s writing. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a logical formalization of the emotion triggering process and of its relationship with mental attitudes, as described in Ortony, Clore, and Collins’s theory. We argue that modal logics are particularly adapted to represent agents’ mental attitudes and to reason about them, and use a specific modal logic that we call Logic of Emotions in order to provide logical definitions of all but two of their 22 emotions. While these definitions may be subject to debate, we (...) show that they allow to reason about emotions and to draw interesting conclusions from the theory. (shrink)

C A Wringe; Reply to Antony Flew, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 149–158, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1979.t.

There is the world of ideas and the world of practice; the French are often for sup pressing the one and the English the other; but neither is to be suppressed. -Matthew Arnold The Function of Criticism at the Present Time From its inception, bioethics has confronted the need to reconcile theory and practice. At first the confrontation was purely intellectual, as writers on ethical theory (within phi losophy, theology, or other humanistic disciplines) turned their attention to topics from the (...) world of medical practice. Recently the confrontation has grown more intense. The ap pointment of clinical ethicists in hospitals and other health care settings is an accelerating trend in North America. Concomitantly, those institutions involved in training peo ple in clinical ethics have added organized exposure to the world of practice, in the form of placement requirements, to the normal academic course load. In common with other dis ciplines, bioethics has begun to see clinical training as a con dition of didactic theory and apprenticeship. (shrink)

Cultural education for the soldiers of People army of Vietnam.

Three famous sophists are referred to together in the Apology of Sokrates as still practising their enviably lucrative itinerant profession in 399 B.C. (not, by implication, in Athens): Gorgias of Leontinoi, Prodikos of Keos and Hippias of Elis. The last of these was the least well known to the Athenian demos, having practised mainly in Dorian cities. There is no extant reference to him in Old Comedy, but we can assume that he was sufficiently famous - especially for his fees (...) (possibly the highest charged by any sophist) - to justify his inclusion as the third of this 'triad'; cf. the triad Protagoras - Hippias - Prodikos in the Protagoras, considered further below. Gorgias was by now a grand old man of about ninety (with more than a decade of active life still ahead of him), the last survivor of the first generation of fee-taking educators, associated first and foremost in the popular mind with the suspect arts of political and forensic persuasion. Prodikos and Hippias were probably in their sixties. (shrink)

Wer bin ich, wenn nicht mein Gehirn? Das menschliche Gehirn ist eine besonders eindrucksvolle Blüte am Baum der biologischen Vielfalt. Dieser Stammbaum hat seine Äste in der Welt entwickelt und ist mit seinen Wurzeln tief in der Natur verankert. Wer aber erkennt die Gesetze der Natur und beobachtet die wundersame Entwicklung des Lebendigen, wenn nicht das Gehirn selbst? Bei dieser Spiegelung des Gehirns in der Welt und der Welt im Gehirn schließt sich ein Kreis, in dem Geist und Stoff nicht (...) mehr als unvereinbare Elemente erscheinen. Im Mittelpunkt der philosophisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Gedanken von Valentin Braitenberg steht der Begriff der Information, der in der Form der Lebewesen als ein Wissen über die Welt aufscheint. Ein geistreicher Fundus für alle, die Lust haben, unsere Existenz in dieser Welt zu verstehen, wie Forscher, Mediziner, Philosophen... Die italienische Ausgabe dieses Buches, "L'immagine del mondo nella testa", wurde mit dem renommierten italienischen Medienpreis "Premio Galileo 2000"L'immagine del mondo nella testa", wurde mit dem renommierten italienischen Medienpreis "Premio Galileo 2000" für das Jahr 2009 ausgezeichnet. Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Valentin Braitenberg, Hirnforscher, war u.a. Direktor am Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik in Tübingen und Honorarprofessor an den Universitäten Tübingen und Freiburg. Braitenberg bringt das Kunststück fertig, kurzweilig viele Fragen auf amüsante und ebenso intelligente Weise anzureißen und damit den Leser selbst zu befähigen, darüber zu meditieren, wie das Bild der Welt in dessen eigenen Kopf kommt. Gerade in einer Zeit, in der Meditation gerne als gedankenloses Singen von Mantras missverstanden wird, gereichen die cartesianischen Meditationen à la Braitenberg jedem denkenden Menschen zu einem ganz privaten Vergnügen der besonderen Art. (shrink)

Монографія "Функціональність релігії: український контекст".

The Hutchinsonian movement exercised considerable influence on thought about various topics of importance in England's Enlightenment/Counter-Enlightenment debates. Its epistemological stance, derived from a group of Irish writers of the early eighteenth century, places the movement at the centre of these debates and does much to explain its attraction to contemporaries. The article emphasises the persistence of Hutchinsonian thought and the continuing importance of its epistemological underpinnings into the early nineteenth century, drawing attention particularly to the writings of Bishop William Van (...) Mildert. (shrink)

Designed as a companion to the study of apologetics and philosophy of religion, this pocket dictionary by C. Stephen Evans offers 300 entries covering terms, apologists, philosophers, movements, apologetic arguments and theologies.

Upshot: The three commentaries focus on the c-book as “object,” on locating the learner in the design process and on the challenge to develop more fine-grained theory for constructionist collaborative design of educational resources. I respond to this delightfully critical discussion in three ways, addressing the c-book as a potentially new kind of mediation, thinking of constructionist collaborative designs as creativity enhancers and considering constructionism as one of the key frameworks for understanding collective designs.

What political, economic, religious, and emotional factors are involved in a person's decision to kill civilians and military personnel through the sacrifice of his or her own life? Data for this research were secondary analyses of interviews with Islamic martyrs, as well as their leaders’ speeches. This investigation into the cultural-psychological explanations for Islamic martyrdom leads to a model explaining a person's decision to carry out the mission as resulting from a combination of four factors: the historical-cultural context, group processes, (...) immediate and anticipated rewards, and mechanisms to eradicate possible doubts and guilt regarding this decision. Compared to existing models, this model is more integrative and focused on the psychological processes involved. (shrink)

In his essay, Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting with Human Subjects, Hans Jonas contends that except in cases of widespread medical emergencies, people do not have a moral or social obligation to volunteer to be subjects in medical experiments. He further argues that any appeal for volunteer subjects in medical experiments should whenever possible give priority to those who can identify with the project and offer a strong sense of commitment to its goals. The first of these claims is given support (...) against some recent criticisms, but argument is offered to show that the second claim not only does little to enhance the stature of the standard requirement of free and informed consent but may even weaken the moral validity of the consent. (shrink)