Naturalistic experiments of color perception are critically evaluated. The review concludes that they fail to confirm a natural determination of color perception. Rather than demonstrating universal sensitivity to focal colors, the experiments actually yielded enormous cultural variation in response. This variation is interpreted as supporting a sociohistorical psychological explanation of color perception.

Extracted from Volumes 10, 11, 13, and 18. Includes Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower, Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead and The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, Foreword to Suzuki's Introduction to Zen Buddhism, and Foreword to the I Ching.

_Aion_ is one of a number of major works that Jung wrote during his seventies that were concerned with the relations between psychology, alchemy and religion. He is particularly concerned in this volume with the rise of Christianity and with the figure of Christ. He explores how Christianity came about when it did, the importance of the figure of Christ and the identification of the figure of Christ with the archetype of the Self. A matter of special importance to Jung (...) in his seventies - the problem of opposites, particularly good and evil - is further discussed and the importance of the symbolism of the fish, which recurs as a symbol of both Christ and the devil, is examined. As a study of the archetype of the self, _Aion_ complements _The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious_, which is also published in paperback. (shrink)

The first issue concerns what can be meant by the "newness" or "originality" which Koestler attributes to the products of creative acts. One of the purposes of this paper will be to discriminate several distinct but incompatible meanings which Koestler associates with the newness in created objects. The second issue concerns whether Koestler's thesis commits him to a form of determinism or indeterminism with respect to human creative activity. The third issue raises the question whether his thesis is intended as (...) an explanatory hypothesis or as an elaborate description of common features in creative activities. This question, of course, relates directly to the initial query about the standards of understanding which are appropriate to creative acts. And it points to the last issue which concerns the metaphysical implications of the thesis. It will be my aim to argue that a development of the metaphysics implicit in the thesis would provide a more comprehensive theory that could meet at least some of the difficulties the theory raises. (shrink)

Biomedical research, especially pharmaceutical research, has been criticised for engaging in practices that lead to over-estimations of the effectiveness of medical treatments. A central issue concerns the reporting of absolute and relative measures of medical effectiveness. In this paper we critically examine proposals made by Jacob Stegenga to (a) give priority to the reporting of absolute measures over relative measures, and (b) downgrade the measures of effectiveness (effect sizes) of the treatments tested in clinical trials (Stegenga, 2015a). After exposing significant (...) flaws in a central case study used by Stegenga to bolster his first proposal (a), we go on to argue that neither of these proposals is defensible (a or b). We defend the practice, in line with the New England Journal of Medicine, of reporting both absolute and relative measures whenever feasible. (shrink)

Inter-level mechanistic explanations in the sciences have long been a focus of philosophical interest, but attention has recently turned to the compositional character of these explanations which work by explaining higher level entities, whether processes, individuals or properties, using the lower level entities they take to compose them. However, we still have no theoretical account of the constitution or parthood relations between individuals deployed in such explanations, nor any accounts of multiple constitution. My primary focus in this paper is to (...) outline a positive account of the constitution/part-whole relations between individuals posited in inter-level mechanistic explanations that takes constituents in the sciences to be ‘working parts’. Using this account, I then go on to illuminate the nature, and varieties, of multiple constitution that we find in the sciences and provide a starting theoretical framework for multiple constitution as well. (shrink)