Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Muriel Wheldale, a distinguished graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge, was a member of William Bateson's school of genetics at Cambridge University from 1903. Her investigation of flower color inheritance in snapdragons (Antirrhinum), a topic of particular interest to botanists, contributed to establishing Mendelism as a powerful new tool in studying heredity. Her understanding of the genetics of pigment formation led her to do cutting-edge work in biochemistry, culminating in the publication of her landmark work, The Anthocyanin Pigments of Plants (1916). (...) In 1915, she joined Frederick Gowland Hopkin's Department of Biochemistry as assistant and in 1926 became one of the first women to be appointed university lecturer. In 1919 she married the biochemist Huia Onslow, with whom she collaborated until his death in 1922. This paper examines Wheldale's work in genetics and especially focuses on the early linkage of Mendelian methdology with new techniques in biochemistry that eventually led to the founding of biochemical genetics. It highlights significant issues in the early history of women in genetics, including the critical role of mentors, funding opportunities, and career strategies. (shrink)

A propositional system of modal logic is second-order if it contains quantifiers ∀p and ∃p, which, in the standard interpretation, are construed as ranging over sets of possible worlds (propositions). Most second-order systems of modal logic are highly intractable; for instance, when augmented with propositional quantifiers, K, B, T, K4 and S4 all become effectively equivalent to full second-order logic. An exception is S5, which, being interpretable in monadic second-order logic, is decidable.

In 1987, Roy Sorensen coined the term 'parahistory' to denote the study of genuinely anachronistic artefacts delivered by time travel.¹ 'Parahistory' would thus stand to history rather as parapsychology is claimed to stand to psychology, i.e. the parahistorian would study historical data that were obtained through channels that orthodox science does not recognise. How might one establish credentials as a time traveller? What sort of evidence could a time-traveller point to in support of claims that would presumably command a great (...) deal of scepticism? While successful predictions might be one confirmatory tool, supporting evidence needn't take the form of predictions. (Although Sorensen offers an intriguing argument that a Humean about miracle-testimony would be obliged to reject any testimony to the occurrence of time travel.) Perhaps artefacts that time travellers retrieve from other times (past or future) could usefully supplement testimonial or predictive evidence for the parahistorian. However, this paper will argue, any appeal to past-artefactual evidence for parahistorical claims faces a dilemma that threatens to undermine its value: appeals to past-artefact evidence must either collapse into appeals to predictive evidence or see their value diminished by such past artefacts' necessarily exhibiting contradictory indicators of age and period. (shrink)

Following the pioneer work of Bruno De Finetti [12], conditional probability spaces (allowing for conditioning with events of measure zero) have been studied since (at least) the 1950's. Perhaps the most salient axiomatizations are Karl Popper's in [31], and Alfred Renyi's in [33]. Nonstandard probability spaces [34] are a well know alternative to this approach. Vann McGee proposed in [30] a result relating both approaches by showing that the standard values of infinitesimal probability functions are representable as Popper functions, and (...) that every Popper function is representable in terms of the standard real values of some infinitesimal measure. Our main goal in this article is to study the constraints on (qualitative and probabilistic) change imposed by an extended version of McGee's result. We focus on an extension capable of allowing for iterated changes of view. Such extension, we argue, seems to be needed in almost all considered applications. Since most of the available axiomatizations stipulate (definitionally) important constraints on iterated change, we propose a non-questionbegging framework, Iterative Probability Systems (IPS) and we show that every Popper function can be regarded as a Bayesian IPS. A generalized version of McGee's result is then proved and several of its consequences considered. In particular we note that our proof requires the imposition of Cumulativity, i.e. the principle that a proposition that is accepted at any stage of an iterative process of acceptance will continue to be accepted at any later stage. The plausibility and range of applicability of Cumulativity is then studied. In particular we appeal to a method for defining belief from conditional probability (first proposed in [42] and then slightly modified in [6] and [3]) in order to characterize the notion of qualitative change induced by Cumulative models of probability kinematics. The resulting cumulative notion is then compared with existing axiomatizations of belief change and probabilistic supposition. We also consider applications in the probabilistic accounts of conditionals [1] and [30]. (shrink)

The philosolphy of strict finitism is a research programme containing developmental theory and mathematics as its main branches. The first branch is concerned with the ontogenetic and historicaldevelopment of various concepts of infinity. The frame work is Jean Piaget’s genetic epistemology. Based upon these develop mental studies, the mathematical branch introduces a new concept of infinity into mathematics. Cantor propagated the actual infinite, Brouwer and the constructivists the potential infinite. Still more radical is strict finitism, favoring the natural infinite, i.e. (...) the phenomena of the unsurveyable, unfeasible, unreachable. There exist by this time strict finitistic reconstructions for arithmetic, geometry, calculus, and even for infinitistic set theory. (shrink)

Mr. E. Courtney adopts Ellis's defence of repetitque, argues convincingly as a consequence that sed must be replaced by a verb, and claims: ‘That verb can hardly have been any other than stat.’ He continues : ‘This will mean that Charon's boat, having ferried across the young, does not remain tied up at the quay forgetful of the old, but goes back for them.’ The difficulty of que in the sense of sed in the line as reconstituted is defended by (...) a reference to Housman's note on Manilius, 1. 877. Still, the proposed line, non oblita tamen stat, repetitque senes, does not seem to be clear without a pause after stat, so that the reader will construe non with stat but not with repetit. This gives a very awkward rhythm indeed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Everlasting Check: Hume on Miracles by Alexander GeorgeAlasdair RichmondAlexander George. The Everlasting Check: Hume on Miracles. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. xiii + 98. Hardback ISBN 978-0-674-289246. $41.00.According to its inside front flap, Alexander George’s The Everlasting Check “provides fresh insights” into Hume’s “Of Miracles” and demonstrates “that Hume misconstrues the nature of religious belief and its relationship to evidence and confirmation.” Although often commendable, (...) this book may not achieve all those aims. The book is divided into six chapters: “1. Hume’s Miracles,” “2. Hume’s Theorem,” “3. Hume and Self-Undermining,” “4. Hume and Testimony,” “5. Objections to Hume” and “6. Too Big for A Blunder?” All the chapters make interesting reading but some reprise well-rehearsed debates and introduce odd asides. Also, while no book can possibly be comprehensive about a hardy perennial like “Of Miracles,” some omissions are surprising. In particular, more on Bayesian and other probabilistic approaches, the “independent witnesses” problem, etc., might have been helpful.1 (A bibliography might have been helpful too.)George’s Chapter 1 discusses how Hume defines a miracle. Critics often seek easy victories over Hume via idiosyncratic miracle definitions.2 Commendably, George (8) rejects suggestions that Hume stacked the deck by dismissing miracles a priori. However, Hume’s allowance that miracles (even testimonially compelling ones) could occur is well-known.3 Attempts to dismiss this allowance as insincere or merely tactical must reckon with Hume’s “eight days of darkness” example4 and indeed, all of Part II of “Of Miracles.”As George notes, Hume mainly defines miracles as violations of natural laws, but at one point invokes supernatural agency (5). (See EHU 10.12, 10.12n23.) [End Page 371] Humean natural laws, in turn, are highly well-confirmed, hitherto unbroken, observed uniformities. The law-breaking definition looms larger in “Of Miracles,” but some of George’s remarks seem better suited to the “agent” definition, i.e. the one that assumes that genuine miracles require extra-mundane agential causes. The law-breaking definition perhaps prevails in “Of Miracles,” not least because it lets us determine empirically whether or not an event breaks an established regularity (and is thus miraculous), without any (supernatural or other) cause being invoked. Invoking putative causes, especially supernatural ones, is inevitably more conjectural, especially if the alleged cause is necessarily imperceptible. The “eight days of darkness” are Hume-miraculous, because they fail to reflect a hitherto-unbroken, and very widely supported, regularity, namely that the Sun is always seen to rise in (what clocks say is) the morning. Hume explicitly allows that such failures can occur and can be “of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony” (EHU 10.36).Hume allowed that miracles can theoretically be identified, and even compellingly supported, independently of any question of what may have caused them. Presumably when Hume said there is an unbroken uniformity against the occurrence of miracles, he meant “unbroken up to now” or “unbroken apart from the specific instant testified to,” i.e., not the question-begging “unbroken for all time.” Stipulating hitherto-unbroken or otherwise-unbroken uniformities seems reasonable. Presumably those occasions when the Sun stood still at Joshua’s command or Lazarus rose from the dead were at least highly unusual, if not unprecedented, occurrences. If Sun-stoppages or resurrections occurred regularly, claims that any particular stoppage or resurrection was miraculous would be harder to sustain.Commendably, George (7) insists that when talking of a “proof” against miracles, “by ‘proof ’ Hume does not mean a demonstrative argument,” and that a Hume-proof “consists of empirical evidence of a very high order” (8).5 Unfortunately, George also glosses miracles as “events that violate a lawlike claim that our observations leave beyond doubt” (8). This last needs qualifications like “for all practical purposes.” Humean doubt is always possible but prior to experience, may not have any purchase. Likewise unfortunate is George’s: “What is analytic, if you will, is that a miracle claim confronts experiences that ‘leave no room’ to accept its truth” (8). Contrast Howson:Hume is speaking in descriptive mode, in which a law of nature... (shrink)

Around 1998, internet postings began appearing under the alias ‘ Timetravel_0 ’. This alias was later replaced by ‘John Titor’, and it's as such I'll designate the posts' author. Remarkably, Titor claimed to have time-travelled from 2036 on a mission to retrieve an IBM 5100 in 1975. Titor refrained from public appearances and any evidence for his story remains web-bound but before closing shop c. March 24 th 2001, he described various future events, e.g.: Y2K is a disaster. Many people (...) die on the highways when they freeze to death trying to get to warmer weather. Cancellation of the Olympics after 2004 due to world conflict. America will soon be engaged in civil war with itself; a civil war that we'll see the beginnings of during 2004 and 2005, escalating until it is indisputable by 2008. This equivocal civil war fizzles until global nuclear war kills three billion people in 2015. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi is known primarily among fellow academics as an exemplary historian and philosopher of science; an ardent critic and disciple of Karl Popper; a critical admirer of the work of Michael Polanyi; and a Socratic fly with the “sting of a bee” for all those who wear the intellectual fashions of the day. To most of Agassi’s students he is known primarily as an exemplary model of the Socratic teacher. The question of most urgency for educators today who care (...) about the intellectual development of students is: How do we make ready our educational institutions for more Socratic teachers? The philosophical or theoretical question is: Why do we want Socratic teachers? In outline, of the many of Agassi’s educational essays selected for this book, Agassi answers those questions: authoritarianism (or anti-democracy) blocks the democratic reform of educational institutions where Socratic teachers and students could find a safe haven; and, Socratic teaching is the main anti-dote to authoritarianism. The removal of authoritarianism from education also removes the hazard that education has become to students; to their happiness, creativity, and dignity as autonomous individuals. See Less Copyright Year: 2014 E-Book (PDF) Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-626-4 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Hardback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-624-0 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Paperback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-623-3 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Login via Institution Prices from (excl. shipping): -/- $56.00 -/- ​ Available formats Add to Cart View PDF Flyer Get Permissions. (shrink)

Joseph Morton Ransdell left a record of experimentation with the communicational process of philosophy from 1992 to his passing in 2010. This record includes the Arisbe website and the peirce-l e-forum and its archives, of which the earliest are not on the Internet, but may yet be recovered and made available. Philosophy’s communication process, and the possibility of creating and developing a telecommunity, as Ransdell called it, were among his chief theoretical and practical interests. Such interests were focused in terms (...) of the ideas of Charles S. Peirce, including fallibilism, pragmaticism, and semiotic, in particular the sign’s determination by the represented object, and iconicity in relation especially to.. (shrink)

Importance Informed consent is essential to ethical, rigorous research and is important to recruitment and retention in cancer trials.Objective To examine cancer clinical trial (CCT) participants’ perceptions of informed consent processes and variations in perceptions by cancer type.Design and Setting and Participants Cross-sectional survey from mixed-methods study at National Cancer Institute–designated Northeast comprehensive cancer center. Open-ended and forced-choice items addressed: (1) enrollment and informed consent experiences and (2) decision-making processes, including risk-benefit assessment. Eligibility: CCT participant with gastro-intestinal or genitourinary, hematologic-lymphatic (...) malignancies, lung cancer, and breast or gynecological cancer (N = 334).Main Outcome Measures Percentages satisfied with consent process and information provided; and assessing participation’s perceptions of risks/benefits. Multivariable logistic or ordinal regression examined differences by cancer type.Results Most patient-participants felt well informed by the consent process (more than 90% overall and by cancer type) and. most (87.4%) reported that the consent form provided all the information they wanted, although nearly half (44.8%) reported that they read the form somewhat carefully or less. More than half (57.9%) said that talking to research staff (i.e., the consent process) had a greater impact on participation decisions than reading the consent form (2.1%). A third (31.1%) were very sure of joining in research studies before the informed consent process (almost half of lung cancer patients did—47.1%). Most patients personally assessed the risks and benefits before consenting. However, trust in physicians played an important role in the decision to enroll in CCT.Conclusions and Relevance Cancer patients rely less on written features of the informed consent process than on information obtained from the research staff and their own physicians. Research should focus on information and communication strategies that support informed consent from referring physicians, researchers, and others to improve patient risk-benefit assessment and decision-making. (shrink)

Richmond Campbell and Thomas Vinci have recently presented a Bayesian theory of confirmation by novel evidence (Campbell and Vinci [1983]). I shall review their theory as briefly as possible and present three objections to it.

Devoy, Frank Review(s) of: The spirituality of relationships: The power of both, by John E. Ryan (Richmond, Victoria: Spectrum Publications, 2007), pp.232, $24.95.

Anderson and Welty have recently advanced an argument for the claim that the laws of logic are ontologically dependent upon a necessarily existent mind, i.e. God. In this paper I argue that a key premise of Anderson and Welty’s argument—viz., a premise which asserts that \(x\) is intrinsically intentional only if \(x\) is mind-dependent—is false, for on a broadly Fregean account of propositions, propositions are intrinsically intentional but not mind-dependent.

Recently Samuel Richmond, generalizing Nelson Goodman, has proposed a measure of the simplicity of a theory that takes into account not only the polymorphicity of its models but also their internal homogeneity. By this measure a theory is simple if small subsets of its models exhibit only a few distinct (i.e., non-isomorphic) structures. Richmond shows that his measure, unlike that given by Goodman's theory of simplicity of predicates, orders the order relations in an intuitively satisfactory manner. In this (...) note I formalize his presentation and suggest an improvement designed to overcome certain technical difficulties. (shrink)

Preliminary Material --Foreword /Samuel M. Natale --Acknowledgements /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --Introduction /William O'Neill and Samuel M. Natale --Section I /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --The Working Class Spirituality /Joseph M. McShane --Comparative Christian Perspectives on the Meaning of Work /Joseph W. Ford --Work, Spirituality, and the Moral Point of View /Kenneth E. Goodpaster --Can Christian Ethics Inform Business Practice?: A Typological Road Map (...) and Criteria of Adequacy for an Ethic of Capitalism /David A. Krueger --The American and Catholic Models of Worker Rights: A Comparison and Appraisal /Michael A. Zigarelli --Section II /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --The Work Ethic and Notions of Character in Scottish Education /W. A. Gatherer --The Multidimensionality of Values Conflicts in the Organizational Life /Michel Dion --New Organizational Structures: A Chance for Workers or a New Mode of Control? /Jacques Delcourt --Defining Forces in Work Attitudes: Cultural Values and Economic Environment /Eduardo S. Paderon and Charles F. O'Donnell --The Growing Dilemma of Loyalty to the Firm /John C. SJ. Haughey --Section III /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --Values/Work/Education: Definitions and Context /Lee J. Richmond --Six Questions for Ethical Educational Management /Michael Bottery --Values Education: A More Effective Route to Managerial Competence? /W. M. Robb --The Educative Dimensions of Workplace Democracy /W.J. Toth --Influences on the Value-Mediating Work of Educational Leaders /K.D. Walker --Personal and Social Education in Vocational Preparation /Richard Pring --Contributors /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --Index /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --VIBS /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden. (shrink)

Establishing acceptable norms of behavior and consistent standards of conduct has been part of the human enterprise since the dawn of time. Without principles of ethics and the moral rules that affect individual behavior, humankind would plunge into a state of chaotic indifference, insecurity, and unending fear. But while few question the need for moral guidance, a growing number of people believe that the only ethic worth considering must rest on a biblical foundation. Is morality dependent upon God and "revealed (...) truths" found in scripture? Must this claim be accepted without question lest we risk the torment of eternal damnation for questioning it? Without critical evaluation and careful scrutiny, there is little hope of distinguishing truth from unfounded belief. How valuable is the Bible as a source for ethical truth? Do the scriptures truly have the insight needed to guide humankind safely through the moral dilemmas of modern society? What constitutes a biblical ethic? Should the Bible be construed as the only basis for moral teaching? Is it really the final authority on moral issues, or are there secular alternatives that can serve as guides to acceptable conduct within the human community? A distinguished group of social philosophers, biblical scholars, and ethicists met at the University of Richmond, Virginia, under the aegis of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion and its Biblical Criticism Research Project, to address these and related questions. The essays in this provocative work demonstrate a diversity of perspective and breadth of insight that will shed much needed light on the nature of ethics. The contributors to this volume include: Robert S. Alley, Joe Edward Barnhart, Joseph L. Blau, Frank E. Eakin, Jr., Lewis S. Feuer, Joseph Fletcher, Theodor H. Gaster, James H. Hall, R. Joseph Hoffmann, Paul Kurtz, Gerald A. Larue, John Priest, Ellis Rivkin, Richard L. Rubenstein, and Richard Taylor. (shrink)

This book is a first attempt to cover the whole area of aesthetics from the point of view of critical rationalism. It takes up and expands upon the more narrowly focused work of E. H. Gombrich, Sheldon Richmond, and Raphael Sassower and Louis Ciccotello. The authors integrate the arts into the scientific world view and acknowledge that there is an aesthetic aspect to anything whatsoever. They pay close attention to the social situatedness of the arts. Their aesthetics treats art (...) as emerging from craft in the form of luxurious and playful challenge to the audience. In developing it they place emphasis on the number of questions and claims that can be settled by appeal to empirical facts; on the historical character of aesthetic judgements; and on the connection of aesthetic truth to true love and true friendship, i.e. fidelity and integrity, not to informative truth. (shrink)

Negli ultimi due anni sono stati pubblicati due importanti libri sul progresso morale: 'Moral Progress' di Philp Kitcher e 'A Better Ape' di Victor Kumar e Richmond Campbell. In questa nota critica, recensisco entrambi i libri e problematizzo il modo in cui cercano rispettivamente di legare tra loro il tema del progresso morale con la teoria dell'evoluzione.

Bayesian confirmation theory, as traditionally interpreted, treats the temporal relationship between the formulation of a hypothesis and the confirmation (or recognition) of evidence entailed by that hypothesis merely as a component of the psychology of discovery and acceptance of a hypothesis. The temporal order of these events is irrelevant to the logic of rational theory choice. A few years ago Richmond Campbell and Thomas Vinci offered a reinterpretation of Bayes' Theorem in defense of the view that the temporal relationship (...) between hypothesis and evidence really does matter. More specifically, they advocated the thesis that successful predictions implied by scientific hypothesis H will increase the degree of confirmation of H only if they are novel predictions in the following sense; Evidence E is heuristically novel with respect to hypothesis H if and only if H was not deliberately designed to explain E (if E has already been corroborated) or in anticipation of E (if E is regarded as likely to be corroborated at some future date). Campbell and Vinci argue that the traditional interpretation of Bayes' Theorem misconstrues the significance of predictive novelty by ignoring heuristic novelty. In this paper I review the formal component of their preferred interpretation and demonstrate that it fails to establish that heuristic novelty has any special effect on theory confirmation. That is, even on their revisionist interpretation, regardless of whether H was deliberately designed to explain known evidence E (or in anticipation of suspected E), or whether H was designed without any awareness of the entailment relationship between H and E, Bayes' Theorem will generate the same epistemic probability for hypothesis H. Cases where new evidence was not foreseen at the time a hypothesis first emerged do not carry any more epistemic weight than they would have if such evidence had been foreseen. * Research on this paper was supported by an NEH summer grant. My thanks also to Richmond Campbell and Thomas Vinci for their reply to my initial evaluation of their position (in private correspondence), which compelled me to reconsider their arguments more carefully. (shrink)