Rene Descartes credited his success in philosophy, mathematics, and physics to the discovery of a universal method of inquiry, but he provided no systematic description of his method. _Descartes and Method_ carefully examines Descartes' scattered remarks on his application and puts forward a systematic account of his method with particular attention to the role it plays in the _Meditations_. Daniel E. Flage and Clarence A. Bonnen boldly and convincingly argue against the orthodox conception that Descartes had no method. Through (...) a rigorous and thorough examination, Flage and Bonnen unearth and explain the role of the method of analysis in the _ Meditations_. _Descartes and Method_ is a ground-breaking book that is sure to make a considerable impact on the philosophy community. Anyone wishing to gain a new understanding of Descartes's _Meditations_ should read this book. (shrink)

Recent evidence indicates that the presence of serine proteinase inhibitors in plant leaves can reduce predation by insects. Plants can now be transformed with proteinase inhibitor genes with strong promoters to express the inhibitor proteins in relatively high levels at specific times. Inhibitors having variable specificities against digestive proteinases of insects and pathogens can now be assessed for their possible role(s) in natural plant defense and for their potential usefulness in protecting crop plants against herbivores.

In the Third Meditation, Descartes suggests that God, and only God, is self-caused. This claim results in objections, first from Caterus and then from Arnauld, that an efficient cause must be distinct from its effect, and therefore the notion of self-causation is unintelligible. In the course of his reply to Arnauld, Descartes distinguishes between a formal cause and an efficient cause, contends that God's essence is properly the formal cause of God's existence, and attempts to find a cause midway between (...) a formal cause and an efficient cause. (shrink)

Insect and pathogen attacks activate plant defense genes within minutes in nearby cells, and within hours in leaves far distant from the sites of the predator attacks. A search for signal molecules involved in both the localized and distal signalling has resulted in the identification of an 18‐amino‐acid polypeptide, called systemin, that activates defense genes in leaves of tomato plants when supplied at levels as low as fmols/plant. Several lines of evidence support a role for systemin as a wound hormone. (...) As with animal polypeptide hormones, systemin is derived from a larger precursor protein, called prosystemin, by limited proteolysis. Systemin has been shown by autoradiography to be phloemmobile and, by antisense technology, to be an essential component of the wound‐inducible, systemic signal transduction system leading to the transcriptional activation of the defensive genes. A search for the receptor of systemin has led to the identification in plant plasma membranes of a systeminbinding protein. However, this protein has properties not of a receptor, but of a furin‐like proteinase that cleaves systemin into smaller polypeptides. Systemin and its precursor prosystemin provide prototypes for the emerging possibilities that polypeptide hormones may have broad roles in signalling environmental stress responses, and in regulating plant growth and development as well. (shrink)

The editor's introduction discusses Clarence I. Lewis's conceptual pragmatism when compared with post-empiricist epistemology and argues that several Cartesian assumptions play a major role in the work, not unlike those of Logical Positivism. The suggestion is made that the Cartesian legacy still hidden in Logical Positivism turns out to be a rather heavy ballast for Lewis’s project of restructuring epistemology in a pragmatist key. More in detail, the sore point is the nature of inter-subjectivity. For Lewis, no less than (...) for the Logical Positivists at the time of the Protocols Controversy and Husserl in the Cartesian Meditations, this is a problem without a solution. The reason is that all these philosophers are apparently unable to realize that the existence of a plurality of knowing subjects cannot be treated at once both as a speculative problem and a methodological one. Lewis, thanks to his pragmatist approach both comes closer to the right answer and offers an even more naïve unsatisfactory solution to the pseudo-problem under discussion. The fact that he has clear in mind that inter-subjectivity means not only a plurality of linguistic utterances but also a co-existence of different kinds of practical behaviour. Eventually, the very idea of mind, the key-idea in the book, suffers from the above mentioned tension. In fact, if inter-subjective communication and action is considered at a methodological level, the very idea of mind would not need an analysis, and no kind of ‘reflexive’ analysis. Methodology might be limited to a ‘naïve’ level where the existence of the world and a plurality of subjects be taken as a bedrock of uncritically accepted evidence. Philosophical reflection on ultimate evidence, instead, would take a different approach, maybe the one Wittgenstein was putting into practice in the same years when Mind and the world order was written, namely it would be bound to question the very meaning of the idea of ‘mind’ as an undue fiction – the same carried out by Descartes – when he assumed the Cogito to be at once a body of self-evident truths and a thing or substance, the familiar Platonic idea of psyche or soul. (shrink)

This volume makes a philosophical contribution to the application of neuroscience in education. It frames neuroscience research in novel ways around educational conceptualizing and practices, while also taking a critical look at conceptual problems in neuroeducation and at the economic reasons driving the mind-brain education movement. It offers alternative approaches for situating neuroscience in educational research and practice, including non-reductionist models drawing from Dewey and phenomenological philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. The volume gathers together an international bevy of (...) leading philosophers of education who are in a unique position to contribute conceptually rich and theoretically framed insight on these new developments. The essays form an emerging dialogue to be used within philosophy of education as well as neuroeducation, educational psychology, teacher education and curriculum studies. (shrink)

Theory of "conceptual pragmatism" takes into account both modern philosophical thought and modern mathematics. Stimulating discussions of metaphysics, a priori, philosophic method, much more.

We propose a new modal logic endowed with a simple deductive system to interpret Aristotle's theory of the modal syllogism. While being inspired by standard propositional modal logic, it is also a logic of terms that admits a (sound) extensional semantics involving possible states-of-affairs in a given world. Applied to the analysis of Aristotle's modal syllogistic as found in the Prior Analytics A8-22, it sheds light on various fine-grained distinctions which when made allow us to clarify some ambiguities and obtain (...) a completely consistent system and prove all of the modal syllogisms considered valid by Aristotle. This logic allows us also to make a connection with the axioms of modern propositional modal logic and to perceive to what extent these are implicit in Aristotle's reasoning. Further work will involve addressing the question of the completeness of this logic (or variants thereof) together with an extension of the logic to include a calculus of relations (for instance the relational syllogistic treated in Galen's Introduction to Logic) which Slomkowsky has argued is already found in the Topics. (shrink)

A model is developed which identifies and describes various factors which affect ethical and unethical behavior in organizations, including a decision-maker's social, government and legal, work, professional and personal environments. The effect of individual decision maker attributes on the decision process is also discussed. The model links these influences with ethical and unethical behavior via the mediating structure of the individual's decision-making process.

Le concept [the conception] d’a priori touche deux problèmes persistants en philosophie : celui du rôle joué par l’esprit lui-même dans la connaissance, et celui de la possibilité d’une « vérité nécessaire» ou d’une connaissance « indépendante de l’expérience». Or, les conceptions traditionnelles de l’a priori se sont avérées intenables. Que l’esprit appréhende le flux de l’immédiateté avec quelque prescience divine des principes qui légifèrent sur l’expérience, qu’il y ait la moindre lumière...

Clinical ethics consultation is largely outside the scope of regulation and oversight, despite its importance. For decades, the bioethics community has been unable to reach a consensus on whether there should be accountability in this work, as there is for other clinical activities that influence the care of patients. The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, the primary society of bioethicists and scholars in the medical humanities and the organizational home for individuals who perform CEC in the United States, has (...) initiated a two‐step quality attestation process as a means to assess clinical ethics consultants and help identify individuals who are qualified to perform this role. This article describes the process. (shrink)

The ninth volume of the new edition of the Opera omnia of Erasmus is the third tome of the fourth ordo 'moralia continens' and entirely devoted to the edition of the Moriae encomium by Clarence H. Miller. It was Erasmus' own wish that the Moriae encomium should be published under this 'ordo'; v. Ep. I to Botzheim, 30 January 15 2 3, p. 40, II. 9-10; and Ep. 2283 to Boece, 15 March 1530, 1. 1°4. For the editorial principles (...) of the new Erasmus edition we refer the reader to the General introduction of volume 1,1 and to the Prefaces of the other volumes published until now. To our deep regret we have to report the death of Professor S. L. Greenslade, a member ofthe 'Conseil International', and of Professor Myron P. Gilmore. The passing away of these eminent scholars and devoted friends of our new edition is a heavy loss to our project. As new members of the 'Conseil International' were elected C. Augustijn, Amsterdam, Ch. Bene, Grenoble, V. Branca, Venice, Mrs. M. Cytowska, Warsaw, F. Heinimann, Basle. The editorial board was also enlarged; the new membres are: C. L. Heesakkers, Leyden, H. J. de Jonge, Leyden, J. Trapman, The Hague Ooint-Secretary). The editorial board and the editor of the present volume thank all libraries who put books, photostats, microfilms and bibliographical material at their disposal. Referring to the copyright notice on the verso of the title page, and to the agreements made with the authors, the editorial board feels bound to repeat that no part of the volumes which have appeared or will appear under its responsibility can be published without prior permission of the copyright owner. (shrink)

This study compares the relationship between the moral reasoning modes and leadership orientation of males versus females, and managers versus engineers/scientists. A questionnaire developed by Worthley (1987) was used to measure the degree of each participant's respective independence and justice, and relationships and caring moral reasoning modes. Leadership orientation values and attitudes were measured using the Fiedler and Chemers (1984) Least Preferred Coworker Scale.The results suggest that, although males differ from female in their dominant moral reasoning modes, managers are not (...) distinguishable from the engineers/scientists they manage in terms of their moral reasoning mode or Least Preferred Coworker score. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge And whatever our concepts or meanings may be, there is a truth about them just as absolute and just as definite and certain as in the case of mathematics. In other fields we so seldom try to think in the abstract, or by pure logic, that we do not notice this. But obviously it is just as true. Wherever there is any set of interrelated concepts, there, quite apart from all questions of application (...) or the things we use them of, we have generated a whole complex array of orderly relations or patterns of meaning. And there must be a truth about these - a purely logical truth, in abstracto, and a truth which is certain apart from experience - even though this is only a part of the truth which we want to discover, and the rest of it is of a quite different sort which depends upon experience. Ordinarily we do not separate out this a'priori truth, because ordinarily we do not distinguish the purely logical significance of concepts from the application of words to sensible things. In fact it is only the mathematician who is likely to do this at all. But I should like to indicate that this separation is always possible and that it is important for the understanding of knowledge. To this end, let me use the term 'concept' for this element of purely logical meaning. We can then discriminate the conceptual element in thought as the element which two minds must have in common - not merely may have or do have but absolutely must have in common - when they understand each other. I suppose it is a frequent assumption that we are able to apprehend one another's meanings because our images and sensations are alike. But a little thought will Show that this assumption is very dubious. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)