A literary and historical analysis of the structure and meaning of recurrent symbols, images, and actions employed in Plato’s dialogues. In this book, Clinton DeBevoise Corcoran examines the use of place in Plato’s dialogues. Corcoran argues that spatial representations, such as walls, caves, and roads, as well as the creation of eternal patterns and chaotic images in the particular spaces, times, characterizations, and actions of the dialogues, provide clues to Plato’s philosophic project. Throughout the dialogues, the Good (...) serves as an overarching ordering principle for the construction of place and the proper limit of spaces, whether they be here in the world, deep in the underworld, or in the nonspatial ideal realm of the Forms. The Good, since it escapes the limits of space and time, equips Plato with a powerful mythopoetic tool to create settings, frames, and arguments that superimpose different dimensions of reality, allowing worlds to overlap that would otherwise be incommensurable. The Good also serves as a powerful ethical tool for evaluating the order of different spaces. Corcoran explores how Plato uses wrestling and war as metaphors for the mixing of the nonspatial, eternal forms in the world and history, and how he uses spatial images throughout the dialogues to critique Athens’s tragic overreach in the Peloponnesian War. Far from merely an incidental backdrop in the dialogues, place etches the tragic intersection of the mortal and the immortal, good and evil, and Athens’s past, present, and future. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Designing Constructionist E-Books: New Mediations for Creative Mathematical Thinking?” by Chronis Kynigos. Upshot: As a mathematics teacher educator and “digital tourist,” I focus my response to the many questions posed by Kynigos from three perspectives. First, I outline the theories he uses to frame the reporting of the research into the design of constructionist e-books. Second, I compare his theoretical tools with design-based research as an organising framework for a research project of this nature. (...) Third, I propose the possible contribution of further theory-testing to the work. (shrink)

A Mathematical Review by John Corcoran, SUNY/Buffalo -/- Macbeth, Danielle Diagrammatic reasoning in Frege's Begriffsschrift. Synthese 186 (2012), no. 1, 289–314. ABSTRACT This review begins with two quotations from the paper: its abstract and the first paragraph of the conclusion. The point of the quotations is to make clear by the “give-them-enough-rope” strategy how murky, incompetent, and badly written the paper is. I know I am asking a lot, but I have to ask you to read the quoted passages—aloud (...) if possible. Don’t miss the silly attempt to recycle Kant’s quip “Concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind”. What the paper was aiming at includes the absurdity: “Proofs without definitions are empty; definitions without proofs are, if not blind, then dumb.” But the author even bollixed this. The editor didn’t even notice. The copy-editor missed it. And the author’s proof-reading did not catch it. In order not to torment you I will quote the sentence as it appears: “In a slogan: proofs without definitions are empty, merely the aimless manipulation of signs according to rules; and definitions without proofs are, if no blind, then dumb.”[sic] The rest of my review discusses the paper’s astounding misattribution to contemporary logicians of the information-theoretic approach. This approach was cruelly trashed by Quine in his 1970 Philosophy of Logic, and thereafter ignored by every text I know of. The paper under review attributes generally to modern philosophers and logicians views that were never espoused by any of the prominent logicians—such as Hilbert, Gödel, Tarski, Church, and Quine—apparently in an attempt to distance them from Frege: the focus of the article. On page 310 we find the following paragraph. “In our logics it is assumed that inference potential is given by truth-conditions. Hence, we think, deduction can be nothing more than a matter of making explicit information that is already contained in one’s premises. If the deduction is valid then the information contained in the conclusion must be contained already in the premises; if that information is not contained already in the premises […], then the argument cannot be valid.” Although the paper is meticulous in citing supporting literature for less questionable points, no references are given for this. In fact, the view that deduction is the making explicit of information that is only implicit in premises has not been espoused by any standard symbolic logic books. It has only recently been articulated by a small number of philosophical logicians from a younger generation, for example, in the prize-winning essay by J. Sagüillo, Methodological practice and complementary concepts of logical consequence: Tarski’s model-theoretic consequence and Corcoran’s information-theoretic consequence, History and Philosophy of Logic, 30 (2009), pp. 21–48. The paper omits definitions of key terms including ‘ampliative’, ‘explicatory’, ‘inference potential’, ‘truth-condition’, and ‘information’. The definition of prime number on page 292 is as follows: “To say that a number is prime is to say that it is not divisible without remainder by another number”. This would make one be the only prime number. The paper being reviewed had the benefit of two anonymous referees who contributed “very helpful comments on an earlier draft”. Could these anonymous referees have read the paper? -/- J. Corcoran, U of Buffalo, SUNY -/- PS By the way, if anyone has a paper that has been turned down by other journals, any journal that would publish something like this might be worth trying. (shrink)

Girolamo Saccheri (1667--1733) was an Italian Jesuit priest, scholastic philosopher, and mathematician. He earned a permanent place in the history of mathematics by discovering and rigorously deducing an elaborate chain of consequences of an axiom-set for what is now known as hyperbolic (or Lobachevskian) plane geometry. Reviewer's remarks: (1) On two pages of this book Saccheri refers to his previous and equally original book Logica demonstrativa (Turin, 1697) to which 14 of the 16 pages of the editor's "Introduction" are devoted. (...) At the time of the first edition, 1920, the editor was apparently not acquainted with the secondary literature on Logica demonstrativa which continued to grow in the period preceding the second edition \ref[see D. J. Struik, in Dictionary of scientific biography, Vol. 12, 55--57, Scribner's, New York, 1975]. Of special interest in this connection is a series of three articles by A. F. Emch [Scripta Math. 3 (1935), 51--60; Zbl 10, 386; ibid. 3 (1935), 143--152; Zbl 11, 193; ibid. 3 (1935), 221--333; Zbl 12, 98]. (2) It seems curious that modern writers believe that demonstration of the "nondeducibility" of the parallel postulate vindicates Euclid whereas at first Saccheri seems to have thought that demonstration of its "deducibility" is what would vindicate Euclid. Saccheri is perfectly clear in his commitment to the ancient (and now discredited) view that it is wrong to take as an "axiom" a proposition which is not a "primal verity", which is not "known through itself". So it would seem that Saccheri should think that he was convicting Euclid of error by deducing the parallel postulate. The resolution of this confusion is that Saccheri thought that he had proved, not merely that the parallel postulate was true, but that it was a "primal verity" and, thus, that Euclid was correct in taking it as an "axiom". As implausible as this claim about Saccheri may seem, the passage on p. 237, lines 3--15, seems to admit of no other interpretation. Indeed, Emch takes it this way. (3) As has been noted by many others, Saccheri was fascinated, if not obsessed, by what may be called "reflexive indirect deductions", indirect deductions which show that a conclusion follows from given premises by a chain of reasoning beginning with the given premises augmented by the denial of the desired conclusion and ending with the conclusion itself. It is obvious, of course, that this is simply a species of ordinary indirect deduction; a conclusion follows from given premises if a contradiction is deducible from those given premises augmented by the denial of the conclusion---and it is immaterial whether the contradiction involves one of the premises, the denial of the conclusion, or even, as often happens, intermediate propositions distinct from the given premises and the denial of the conclusion. Saccheri seemed to think that a proposition proved in this way was deduced from its own denial and, thus, that its denial was self-contradictory (p. 207). Inference from this mistake to the idea that propositions proved in this way are "primal verities" would involve yet another confusion. The reviewer gratefully acknowledges extensive communication with his former doctoral students J. Gasser and M. Scanlan. ADDED 14 March 14, 2015: (1) Wikipedia reports that many of Saccheri's ideas have a precedent in the 11th Century Persian polymath Omar Khayyám's Discussion of Difficulties in Euclid, a fact ignored in most Western sources until recently. It is unclear whether Saccheri had access to this work in translation, or developed his ideas independently. (2) This book is another exemplification of the huge difference between indirect deduction and indirect reduction. Indirect deduction requires making an assumption that is inconsistent with the premises previously adopted. This means that the reasoner must perform a certain mental act of assuming a certain proposition. It case the premises are all known truths, indirect deduction—which would then be indirect proof—requires the reasoner to assume a falsehood. This fact has been noted by several prominent mathematicians including Hardy, Hilbert, and Tarski. Indirect reduction requires no new assumption. Indirect reduction is simply a transformation of an argument in one form into another argument in a different form. In an indirect reduction one proposition in the old premise set is replaced by the contradictory opposite of the old conclusion and the new conclusion becomes the contradictory opposite of the replaced premise. Roughly and schematically, P,Q/R becomes P,~R/~Q or ~R, Q/~P. Saccheri’s work involved indirect deduction not indirect reduction. (3) The distinction between indirect deduction and indirect reduction has largely slipped through the cracks, the cracks between medieval-oriented logic and modern-oriented logic. The medievalists have a heavy investment in reduction and, though they have heard of deduction, they think that deduction is a form of reduction, or vice versa, or in some cases they think that the word ‘deduction’ is the modern way of referring to reduction. The modernists have no interest in reduction, i.e. in the process of transforming one argument into another having exactly the same number of premises. Modern logicians, like Aristotle, are concerned with deducing a single proposition from a set of propositions. Some focus on deducing a single proposition from the null set—something difficult to relate to reduction. (shrink)

President Clinton, already facing formidable obstacles in reforming the health care system, denies that it will involve any rationing. This is politically understandable, but wrong. Infinite needs are rapidly overtaking finite resources. Most health providers recognize that the genius of modern medicine has outpaced our ability to pay. But the public still has unlimited expectations and a blind faith that everything can be provided to everyone by simply eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse." Rationing is inherent in any health care (...) system. As government undertakes to define what is "medically necessary or appropriate," it will unavoidably undertake a series of rationing decisions. Health care is being transformed from a private good to a public good. Government, when it reforms the health care system, must inevitably ask: How do we buy the most health for the public? Keywords: Clinton Health Plan, public good, rationing CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is to explain a type of wrong that arises when agents obscure responsibility for their actions. Call it “agency laundering.” The second is to use the concept of agency laundering to understand the underlying moral issues in a number of recent cases involving algorithmic decision systems. From the Proceedings of the 14th International Conference, iConference 2019, Washington D.C., March 31-April 3, 2019.

For Erasmus, the two fountains streaming milky juice—a new mother’s breasts—represent powerful symbols of love and authority. Erasmus describes the mother’s breasts as fountains oozing love to the sucking child. Elizabeth Clinton extends the image of Mother to represent God, reminding the nursing mother that when she looks on her sucking child, she should remember that she is God’s new born babe, sucking His instruction and His word, even as the babe sucks her breast. Dorothy Leigh extends the image (...) of the nursing mother to an image of Christ himself. Mother’s love, especially a breast-feeding or “lying in” mother’s love, is one of the most authoritatively gendered representations of love. Issues of gender and authority converge often around the image of the breast-feeding mother. Drawing on the image of the nursing mother, Dorothy Leigh and other early modern writers actively engaged in the most contentious and public debates of their day, including the authority of men, preachers and kings. (shrink)

: President Clinton's charge to the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments included the identification of ethical and legal standards for evaluating government-sponsored radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War. In this paper, we review the traditional account of the history of American research ethics, and then highlight and explain the significance of a number of the Committee's historical findings as they relate to this account. These findings include both the national defense establishment's struggles with legal and insurance issues (...) concerning human experiments, and the medical profession's perspective on human experimentation in the years following the Nuremberg Medical Trials. We conclude that the Committee's work both enriches the traditional view of the history of research ethics and opens important new areas for study. (shrink)

Cet article propose une analyse du procès Clinton en se penchant sur les différentes étapes de l’affaire, les stratégies des acteurs en jeu et les choix de l’opinion publique américaine. En nous révélant l’image d’une société américaine à la recherche d’un modèle politique s’appuyant tant sur le libéralisme interventionniste que sur le conservatisme, le procès Clinton a mis en lumière la dérive partisane dont il a été l’objet. L’auteur nous montre cependant à quel point l’opinion publique américaine a (...) su rester en dehors du débat politicien et préserver sa confiance au président. (shrink)

Le present volume s'inscrit dans la serie des actes des colloques de l'Universite de Bourgogne consacres a l'interpretation de la pensee d'Aristote. On achoisi de feflechir ici a certains aspects de l'Organon, dans l'intention de participer a la reconquete de ce secteur de la pensee aristotelicienne par des critiques de Lukasiewicz a l'endroit de Maier, ils avaient plutot tendance a s'en detourner ou a en etre ecartes par de purs logiciens. Sans negliger l'apport et l'interet des interpretations les plus formalistes (...) (Lukasiewicz, Patzig, Corcoran...), les conceptueurs de ce volume ont prefere faire ressortir les liens entre l'Organon et la philosophie proprement dite d'Aristote (dont on sait qu'il considerait la logique comme une propedeutique a celle-ci), en montrant que, pour le Stagirite, il etait possible de penser avev rigueur et exactitude, sans pour autant se complaire dans la construction d'un "systeme". Temoignent nettement de ce souci les articles de MM. Balmes, Gambra, Gourinat et Vidal-Rosset, tandis que d'autres auteurs, comme MM. Seidl et Zanatta, se sont plutot attaches aux aspects non analytiques de l'Organon, mais toujours dans leurs rapports avec la metaphysique aristotelicienne. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government a.d. 284–324T. D. BarnesSimon Corcoran. The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government a.d. 284–324. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xv 1 406 pp. Cloth, $85. (Oxford Classical Monographs)The four decades between the accession of Diocletian on 20 November 284 and the abdication of Licinius on 19 September 324 witnessed profound changes in the government and administrative structure (...) of the Roman world. These changes are naturally reflected in the legislation of the period, which survives in relative abundance—indeed, a larger proportion of the emperors’ legal decisions and enactments probably survives from these four decades than from any previous period of forty years in the history of the Roman Empire. The high rate of survival is due in part to the activity of the commissioners who compiled the Theodosian Code in the 430s and the Codex Justinianus in the sixth century: the former set out to collect general laws and edicts of the Christian Roman Empire since the conversion of Constantine, while the latter included in their compilation a large part of two Diocletianic collections of imperial rescripts, the Codex Gregorianus and the Codex Hermogenianus. But the legislation of Diocletian and his imperial colleagues and successors is also known from a wide variety of other sources—papyri, inscriptions, nonofficial collections of laws, Lactantius’ account of the decade of Christian persecution from 303 to 313 in his On the Deaths of the Persecutors, and Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. Moreover, Eusebius’ Life of Constantine quotes important documents from the last months of 324.Simon Corcoran includes all this varied and historically significant material in his purview, and he provides a reliable guide to it. His monograph is a revised version of an Oxford doctoral thesis which he began in 1987 under the supervision of Fergus Millar and completed in 1992 under that of John Matthews, and he has also taken advice from Tony Honoré. His work is technically proficient. I have not noticed any careless errors of any consequence, and Corcoran has used my work on the period of Diocletian and Constantine in the spirit in [End Page 145] which I intended it to be used: he has understood the underlying principles upon which it rests, then applied them critically, sometimes to reach conclusions which not only differ from my own but are superior to them.Corcoran begins with two introductory chapters which succinctly survey the subject and the evidence available. On interpolation in legal texts, he is cautious and sensible. He proceeds on the assumption that though “the transmitted texts are seldom identical with what the imperial chancery originally issued,” they have seldom undergone drastic alteration: “abbreviation is the most common fate of constitutions in the legal sources” (19). Yet he provides a salutary reminder and example of what can happen (16–18): whereas a rescript in the Fragmenta Vaticana denies that the temporary gift of estates subject to tax is valid (Frag. Vat. 283, si stipendariorum proprietatem dono de-disti,... donatio inrita est), the same rescript in the Codex Justinianus directly contradicts and asserts that such a gift is valid (CJ 8.54.2, si praediorum proprietatem dono dedisti,... donatio valet). On a priori grounds alone, it seems highly probable that something similar has happened to some texts which are known only through the Codex Justinianus—and where the alteration may not be at all obvious.What of the date and contents of the two Diocletianic codes? Corcoran confronts the problems of dating and attribution squarely and honestly. Most of his conclusions may not be new, but his discussion has been able to proceed from the fact that an Aurelius Hermogenianus, who can hardly be anyone other than the jurist, is now securely attested as praetorian prefect between 293 and 305 with Julius Asclepiodotus as his colleague (AE 1987, 456). Corcoran argues that Gregorius published the Codex Gregorianus in 291/2 or ca. 292, after serving as magister libellorum with Diocletian from 285 to 290: he accounts for the ascription of some later constitutions to this code by postulating a second edition compiled ca. 306, possibly at the court of Maximinus or... (shrink)

Alain Joxe entend quant à lui partir du champ stratégique (vs juridique, psychologique, politique, social, religieux), d’où sa proposition d’un examen d’« identités stratégiques » (identités préconstituées des forces en présence projetées dans un temps long d’avant le combat) pourvues elles-mêmes de « modules génétiques » de leurs représentations (par exemple Gilgamesh) et où comptent les échelles d’organisation de la protection (la fixation des échelles étant un moyen de donner un lieu aux mutations importantes qui rapprochent de la barbarisation). Il (...) s’interroge sur le fait que nous soyons ou non aujourd’hui à un moment de « rupture systémique ». Les États-Unis depuis la chute du mur constituent un nouvel empire dans la mesure où, pour la première fois, il peut apparaître comme « unique ». Sous Bill Clinton, cet empire d’abord économique n’était pas stratégiquement fondé sur l’existence de « barbares » dans un « ailleurs » quelconque et était donc dépourvu de limes, ce qui est en train de changer avec George W. Bush par la redéfinition d’un ennemi déterminé et présent. Le nouveau militarisme américain relève d’une régression vers une nouvelle territorialisation liée à la perte initiale de l’ennemi, d’où une contradiction du point de vue des échelles entre la conquête du monde par le capital et le maintien d’une présence militaire délimitée, sans pour autant que n’émerge une représentation claire de la sécurité des États-Unis ni une pensée claire de ce que peut être dans ce cas la fonction de protection de l’État. L’horizon est celui de la reconstitution d’une périphérie barbare dans un monde pourtant dépourvu de limes (cf. paradigme de la guerre de banlieue, la création d’un ennemi étant nécessaire pour réaffirmer le rôle protecteur de l’État). La logique de la nouvelle guerre asymétrique du fort au faible fait que la force des uns est tellement supérieure qu’elle les rend incapables de penser les éléments nouveaux et différents d’une situation. Voulant maîtriser toutes les échelles, l’hyperpuissance court le risque d’arriver ainsi à toutes les échelles de barbarie. (shrink)

Breaking new ground in the debate about the relation of mind and body, David Armstrong's classic text - first published in 1968 - remains the most compelling and comprehensive statement of the view that the mind is material or physical. In the preface to this new edition, the author reflects on the book's impact and considers it in the light of subsequent developments. He also provides a bibliography of all the key writings to have appeared in the materialist debate.

Everything we do relies on causation. We eat and drink because this causes us to stay alive. Courts tell us who causes crimes, criminology tell us what causes people to commit them. D.H. Mellor shows us that to understand the world and our lives we must understand causation. _The Facts of Causation_, now available in paperback, is essential reading for students and for anyone interested in reading one of the ground-breaking theories in metaphysics. We cannot understand the world and our (...) place in it without understanding causation. Yet a complete account of the nature and implications of causation does not exist. D.H Mellor's new book is that account. (shrink)

1 In un tentativo d’autodifesa che all’epoca apparve ai più come disperato. Bill Clinton ebbe a dire che l’esistenza o meno del suo affaire con Monica Lewinsky dipendeva da quale significato si sarebbe dovuto attribuire alla semplice parola «è» Che il legame tra le parole e la realtà non sia esattamente come quello immaginato (o, meglio, sperato) da Clinton dovrebbe essere evidente a tutti: sappiamo con ragionevole certezza che l’esistenza di un gran numero di cose non dipende dal (...) significato... (shrink)

Giuseppina D'Oro explores Collingwood's work in epistemology and metaphysics, uncovering his importance beyond his better known work in philosophy of history and aesthetics. This major contribution to our understanding of one of the most important figures in history of philosophy will be essential reading for scholars of Collingwood and all students of metaphysics and the history of philosophy.

Mathematics as a Science of Patterns is the definitive exposition of a system of ideas about the nature of mathematics which Michael Resnik has been elaborating for a number of years. In calling mathematics a science he implies that it has a factual subject-matter and that mathematical knowledge is on a par with other scientific knowledge; in calling it a science of patterns he expresses his commitment to a structuralist philosophy of mathematics. He links this to a defence of realism (...) about the metaphysics of mathematics--the view that mathematics is about things that really exist. Resnik's distinctive philosophy of mathematics is here presented in an accessible and systematic form: it will be of value not only to specialists in this area, but to philosophers, mathematicians, and logicians interested in the relationship between these three disciplines, or in truth, realism, and epistemology. (shrink)

I argue that recent advances in developmental biology demonstrate the inadequacy of suborganismal mechanism. The category of the organism, construed as a ’natural purpose’ should play an ineliminable role in explaining ontogenetic development and adaptive evolution. According to Kant the natural purposiveness of organisms cannot be demonstrated to be an objective principle in nature, nor can purposiveness figure in genuine explain. I attempt to argue, by appeal to recent work on self-organization, that the purposiveness of organisms is a natural phenomenon (...) and, by appeal to the apparatus of invariance explanation, that biological purposiveness provides genuine, ineliminable biological explanations. (edited). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 267-296 [Access article in PDF] Allegory and Democratic Public Culture in the Postmodern Era Robert Hariman The man lies on the hotel bed, clad only in his underwear, as he watches the TV screen just beyond his feet. His right hand holds the remote control, which he uses to scan through the cable channels. To his left sits Abraham Lincoln, clothed in long-sleeved white (...) shirt and black pants and reading a book. Lincoln's long, angular frame is just a bit stooped, and his brow is slightly furrowed, as if long accustomed to thinking on the edge of melancholy. Lincoln is mulling over a statement by Walter Benjamin: "Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things" (Benjamin 1977, 178). 1Seated to the man's right is a woman wearing the terry cloth bathrobe provided by the hotel. She leans slightly forward, legs crossed, as she reads the New York Times Magazine cover story about President Clinton. "Listen to this," she says with a bemused smile. "In the clutter around his desk in the Oval Office stands not a single bust of a favorite predecessor, but five: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman and two of F.D.R., plus a statuette of Will Rogers for good measure. If governing is choosing, this collection is a metaphor for this President's trouble with choices, and he himself allows, 'That's the story of my Presidency, that desk'" (Purdum 1996, 36).The man says nothing as he continues to watch the succession of images on the screen: a lizard flicks its tongue in the desert heat; a child in a stroller laughs as she holds a strawberry ice cream cone; a congressman in blue suit, white shirt, and red tie jabs his finger into the air as he talks earnestly; cars plastered with automotive product logos curl around a race track; Fred and Ginger swirl around the dance floor; soldiers wade ashore at Omaha Beach; the Space Shuttle lifts off; Groucho lifts his eyebrows; Regis smiles; mushrooms and peppers simmer in a pan.The succession of images could go on indefinitely. The tableau remains static. The composition is an allegory: a figural presentation that organizes multiple interpretations regarding collective experience. It also contains and comments on other forms of itself: Clinton's desk is an example [End Page 267] of the figural anecdote that has been a staple of American public address. The manifold of televisual images exemplifies the allegorical encoding that operates within postmodern art forms, including fragmentary appropriation, paratactic association, encyclopedic range, and non-linear temporality. The statement by Benjamin illuminates the nature of allegory in a specific genre and historical period, and as it is a general mode of representation, and perhaps as it is a model for all textual interpretation.The composition also evokes a set of dialectical tensions that are characteristic of both allegory in general and fundamental anxieties in the contemporary period. Past and present sit side by side, but incongruously, as if by artifice alone. So it is also with the print and visual media, which are held together by mutual competencies but otherwise in figural isolation that perhaps represents different destinies. Likewise, one might wonder about the peculiar relationship between public affairs and private life: the succession of images on the screen adhere to no hierarchy of values, no principle of loyalty or sacrifice, no basis for discerning obligations or maintaining rights, yet they are replete with the paraphernalia of these concerns, and the arrangement of figures in the room likewise is at once suggestive yet inconclusive. If this tableau contains familiar features of the mass-mediated experience that now saturates American politics, one might wonder: Is the democratic tradition in ruins?Allegories give us dynamic juxtapositions in a static frame. This principle of composition seems particularly suited to periods of cultural change. To the extent that the genre of allegory has a history, it is one of eternal recurrence at periods of loss and fragmentation produced by the expansion of a new, somewhat... (shrink)

Avec l’article « Aristotle’s natural deduction system », publié en 1974, J. Corcoran a contribué à diffuser une nouvelle perspective sur les écrits logiques d’Aristote et sur la théorie du syllogisme en particulier. Dans cet article, Corcoran affirme que, dans les premiers chapitres des Premiers Analytiques, Aristote ne propose pas un système axiomatique, qui supposerait une logique sous-jacente, ainsi que le pensait Łukasiewicz, mais plutôt un système de déduction naturelle, avec des dimensions métalogiques. Notre propos est ici basé (...) sur une courte monographie de Kurt Ebbinghaus, intitulée Ein formales Model der Syllogistik des Aristoteles (1964), où est fixé le canon de cette nouvelle perspective mentionnée plus haut et qui a été développé dans le cadre conceptuel de la « logique opérative » de Paul Lorenzen. Ebbinghaus développe une reconstruction formelle montrant que l’approche d’Aristote relève de la « théorie de la preuve », non seulement pour ce qui concerne le système d’inférence sous-jacent, mais aussi pour ce qui concerne les éléments métalogiques. C’est notamment à travers ce dernier aspect que se manifeste une différence majeure par rapport à la reconstruction de Corcoran. Alors que celui-ci pose que le système d’inférence d’Aristote est enraciné dans une sémantique de théorie des modèles (élaborée par Corcoran lui-même), Ebbinghaus comprend que la théorie du syllogisme a été développée à partir d’une approche de la signification par des règles (« rule based »), semblables aux règles d’un jeu. En fait, la reconstruction d’Ebbinghaus offre une lecture pragmatiste de la syllogistique d’Aristote, qui, tel est notre propos, paraît non seulement beaucoup plus proche du point de vue d’Aristote que ne l’est la sémantique de théorie des modèles proposée par Corcoran, mais qui, de plus, permet de saisir l’unité systématique de la théorie du syllogisme. (shrink)

This paper supports the literature which argues that derivational robustness can have epistemic import in highly idealized economic models. The defense is based on a particular example from mathematical economic theory, the dynamic Walrasian general equilibrium model. It is argued that derivational robustness first increased and later decreased the credibility of the Walrasian model. The example demonstrates that derivational robustness correctly describes the practices of a particular group of influential economic theorists and provides support for the arguments of philosophers who (...) have offered a general epistemic justification of such practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fallout from Government-Sponsored Radiation ResearchCarol Mason Spicer (bio)On December 28, 1993, Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary publicly appealed to both the executive and legislative branches of the United States Government to consider compensation for individuals who were harmed by their exposure to ionizing radiation while enrolled in government-sponsored studies conducted between 1940 and the early 1970s.1 The call for compensation was issued three weeks after Secretary O'Leary disclosed that (...) radiation experiments involving humans, sometimes without their consent, had occurred under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a forerunner of the Department of Energy (DOE). Secretary O'Leary directed her department to investigate the nature and extent of the experiments, report on their medical and ethical acceptability, and locate the research subjects or their families.Background to the Federal Advisory CommitteeDespite the fact that the existence of many government-sponsored radiation experiments was not a secret—much of the research was reported at the time in scientific journals, and in 1986, Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) conducted congressional hearings on such radiation research—Secretary O'Leary's disclosure of the AEC experiments and her call for compensation made the experiments common knowledge and sparked a swift and complex governmental response involving both the executive and legislative branches.It is curious that the "radiation experiments" have garnered so much attention now, since they were virtually ignored in the wake of the 1986 hearings. Secretary O'Leary's disclosure of the radiation studies grew out of a general reassessment of secrecy in government. In April 1993, the Clinton administration set out to review the system of government secrecy that evolved during the Cold War, and in May 1993, DOE began reviewing and declassifying files pertaining to nuclear weapons research. When Dan Reicher, a top aide to Secretary O'Leary, informed her in November of the impending publication of an Albuquerque Tribune investigative report (Welsome 1993) on an experiment conducted between 1945 and 1947 in which 18 subjects were injected with plutonium, [End Page 147] the topic of questionable research involving the exposure of human subjects to radiation was added to the DOE list of information to be disclosed. At the time, it was thought to be but one small part of a massive quantity of DOE information to be made public.As part of its effort to investigate the radiation experiments, DOE established a toll-free telephone hot line for individuals who thought they might have been the subjects of radiation exposure experiments. The hot line, originally staffed by three people to handle the anticipated few dozen calls per day, received more than 2,000 calls in the first week. By early January the hot line was flooded with 6,000 to 10,000 calls daily, and its staff had increased more than ten-fold. Although many of the calls were deemed not to be candidates for further investigation, the extent of the radiation-related experiments, sponsored not only by AEC, but also by the military and other government departments and agencies, took officials by surprise.On December 30, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration all announced that they were initiating thorough reviews of their files to determine the extent and nature of any radiation experiments conducted under their auspices.2 In January, the CIA and the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health, followed suit.The White House publicly entered the arena in late December announcing that it would hold a meeting on January 3, 1994, to help coordinate the government's investigative effort. At the same time, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) called for a mid-January congressional hearing to investigate experiments conducted between 1946 and 1956 in which mentally retarded boys at the Fernald State School in Massachusetts were fed radioactive iron supplements or milk containing radioactive calcium to enable researchers to trace the absorption of those nutrients. Senator Kennedy's hearing, conducted by the Subcommittee on Health of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, was the first of a number of congressional hearings held earlier this year to investigate the... (shrink)

In The Quantum Self, Danah Zohar argues that the insights of modem physics can illuminate our understanding of everyday life -- our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to the world at large. Guiding us through the strange and fascinating workings of the subatomic realm to create a new model of human consciousness, the author addresses enduring philosophical questions. Does the new physics provide a basis by which our consciousness might continue beyond death? How does the material world (for instance, (...) ugly inner cities) impinge upon our sense of self? Is there a subatomic wellspring from which our creativity, our empathy with others, and our feelings of unity with the inanimate world originate?Most important, Zohar shows how the vitality of the new physics combats the alienation and fragmentation of twentieth-century life, and replaces it with a model of reality in which the universe itself may possess a type of consciousness, of which human consciousness is one expression. (shrink)

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services have recently launched themselves as the UN-sanctioned instrument for conserving nature. They seek to establish themselves as the authority in this field alongside the well-known Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in climate science. Quickly following or even before recent publication of their conceptual framework in two biology journals, they were already underway building upon it. This headlong push, we believe, is ill advised. We show how the framework is unsound as a foundation (...) for further work—in a number of ways and perhaps even by its authors’ own lights. It is therefore urgent that the IPBES thoroughly and thoughtfully reconsider their framework before too much effort is wasted. (shrink)