La spécialisation sans l'universalisme est aveugle mais l'universalisme sans la spécialisation est inconsistant. Pour avoir su concilier l'une avec l'autre, l'ouvrage de E. R. Curtius sur "La littérature européenne et le Moyen âge latin" demeure l'une des sources fondamentales de la réflexion littéraire contemporaine. Il le doit tout d'abord à la rigueur d'une méthode dont l'intransigeante précision ne le cède en rien à celle des sciences de la nature car pour Curtius "la philologie démontre à l'aide des textes, (...) tout comme la géométrie démontre à l'aide des figures." C'est dire que dans cette œuvre l'étude des faits littéraires n'est altérée par aucun présupposé doctrinal étranger à son objet. Il le doit surtout à, l'ampleur de la perspective adoptée qui, de Virgile à Dante et de Vico à Goethe, reconstitue magistralement l'unité de la tradition culturelle latine. (shrink)

The following notes on the In Pisonem are largely based on the commentary of R. G. M. Nisbet . The references to the speech are by section and line of his text, and where my note is based on one of his I add a reference to the page of his commentary. 1. 20 voltus …, qui sermo quidam tacitus mentis est: ‘thoughts are usually revealed by the face.’ Add to Otto's, Seyffert-Muller's, and N.'s examples: Curtius 8. 6. 22 (...) ‘voltus haud sane securi animi index’, Juv. 9. 18 ff. (shrink)

The notion that cerebellar cortex geometry may play a unique role in its function is explored by Braitenberg et al. in the form of a new theory about the distribution of cortical activity. The theory makes specific predictions which are not verified by an experimental study of hindlimb movement in the cat.

Recent authors have raised objections to the counterfactual interpretation of the Aharonov-Bergmann-Lebowitz rule of time-symmetrised quantum theory. I distinguish between two different readings of the ABL rule, counterfactual and non-counterfactual, and confirm that TSQT advocate L. Vaidman is employing the counterfactual reading to which these authors object. Vaidman has responded to the objections by proposing a new kind of time-symmetrised counterfactual, which he has defined in two different ways. It is argued that neither definition succeeds in overcoming the objections, except (...) in a limited special case previously noted by Cohen and Hiley. In addition, a connection is made between TSQT and Price's concept of 'advanced action', which further supports the special case discussed. (shrink)

In this book, R.E. Allen provides a translation of the 'Parmenides' along with a structural analysis that procedes on the assumption that formal elements, logical and dramatic, are important to its interpretation and that the argument of the Parmenides is aporetic, a statement of metaphysical perplexities.

Continuous recordings of brain electrical activity were obtained from a group of 176 patients throughout surgical procedures using general anesthesia. Artifact-free data from the 19 electrodes of the International 10/20 System were subjected to quantitative analysis of the electroencephalogram (QEEG). Induction was variously accomplished with etomidate, propofol or thiopental. Anesthesia was maintained throughout the procedures by isoflurane, desflurane or sevoflurane (N = 68), total intravenous anesthesia using propofol (N = 49), or nitrous oxide plus narcotics (N = 59). A set (...) of QEEG measures were found which reversibly displayed high heterogeneity of variance between four states as follows: (1) during induction; (2) just after loss of consciousness (LOC); (3) just before return of consciousness (ROC); (4) just after ROC. Homogeneity of variance across all agents within states was found. Topographic statistical probability images were compared between states. At LOC, power increased in all frequency bands in the power spectrum with the exception of a decrease in gamma activity, and there was a marked anteriorization of power. Additionally, a significant change occurred in hemispheric relationships, with prefrontal and frontal regions of each hemisphere becoming more closely coupled, and anterior and posterior regions on each hemisphere, as well as homologous regions between the two hemispheres, uncoupling. All of these changes reversed upon ROC. Variable resolution electromagnetic tomography (VARETA) was performed to localize salient features of power anteriorization in three dimensions. A common set of neuroanatomical regions appeared to be the locus of the most probable generators of the observed EEG changes. (shrink)

This line has been thought corrupt by most editors, though there is no agreement on the remedy. The Herald is plainly asking why the people at home are despondent: picks up the Chorus's phrase . But as Wilamowitz says, ‘ de populo aut senatu Argivorum accipi non potest’: it can only mean the army at Troy, as in lines 538 and 545. The usual inference is that arparw is corrupt.

Death, violent or otherwise, is a matter of widespread concern with ongoing debates about such matters as euthanasia and the nature of brain death. Philosophers have often argued about the rationality of fear of death. This book argues that that dispute has been misconceived: fear of death is not something that follows or fails to follow from reason, but rather, it forms the basis of reasoning and helps to show why people must be cooperating beings who accept certain sorts of (...) facts as reasons for acting. Within the context of this account of reasons, the book gives a new understanding of brain death and of physician-assisted suicide. (shrink)

In [3] I argued for a particular kind of semantics for subjunctive conditionals. The arguments were based upon some linguistic considerations of the general character of what we mean when we say such and such. I urged that a semantics for subjunctive conditionals ought to provide a distinct representation of the subjunctive mood of a sentence, and should take seriously the fact that subjunctive conditionals admit distinctions of tense. The envisaged semantics took the subjunctive conditional to be about occasions, and (...) the central problem discussed was, accordingly, how to represent what must count as the same occasion in spite of whatever changes were required to make the antecedent of the conditional true. (shrink)

Library of Living Philosophers volume on Hilary Putnam with critical essays, Putnam's autobiography and his replies.

In a free society, it is common to hear the request that one â ~keep an open mind.â Just what exactly is it, however, to keep an open-mind? How does open-mindedness function? How does it square with important personal commitments? These issues are particularly acute when it comes to matters of religious belief in which open-mindedness can sound to the pious a bit too much like doubt. Certainly, in a discipline whose discourse remains rational dialogue, effort should be spent discerning (...) the contours of this virtue, especially in light of its formal role in establishing responsiveness to new inquiries in matters philosophical and religious. This book provides a collection of essays serving to promote conversation about open-mindedness, its virtue, and its role and application in problems in the philosophy of religion in particular. (shrink)

The debate about the relative epistemic weights carried in favour of a theory by predictions of new phenomena as opposed to accommodations of already known phenomena has a long history. We readdress the issue through a detailed re-examination of a particular historical case that has often been discussed in connection with it-that of Mendeleev and the prediction by his periodic law of the three 'new' elements, gallium, scandium and germanium. We find little support for the standard story that these predictive (...) successes were outstandingly important in the success of Mendeleev's scheme. Accommodations played an equal role-notably that of argon, the first of the 'noble gases' to be discovered; and the methodological situation in this chemical example turns out to be in interesting ways different from that in other cases-invariably from physics-that have been discussed in this connection. The historical episode when accurately analysed provides support for a different account of the relative weight of prediction and accommodation-one that is further articulated here. (shrink)

Within many approaches to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, especially modal interpretations, one singles out a particular decomposition of the state vector in order to fix the properties that are well-defined for the system. We present a novel proposal for this preferred decomposition. Given a distinguished factorization of the Hilbert space, it is the decomposition that minimizes the Ingarden–Urbanik entropy from among all product decompositions with respect to the distinguished factorization. We incorporate this choice of preferred decomposition into a framework (...) for modal interpretations and investigate in detail the extent to which it provides a solution to the measurement problem and the extent to which it ensures that measurements whose outcomes are predictable with probability 1 reveal pre-existing properties of the system under investigation. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion and a criticism of the account of the Philosophy of Resemblances which appears in the first chapter of Professor H. H. Price's Thinking and Experience.

The responses to the questions of why? when?, how?, where?, and in what ways? business ethics should be taught in the BusinessEthics classroom inundate the scholarly literature. Yet, to date, despite some very interesting ideas, with respect to the answers givento the above question, not only has nothing even close to consensus been reached, but this particular area of pedagogy is instagnation—authors still challenge both the very idea of teaching business ethics as well as the practical value of such courses (...) for ourstudents once they graduate to the corporate world.In this paper I will suggest that the reason for this lack of pedagogical progress is that there has been a serious oversight regarding the most important teaching question of all: Who? I will show that the pedagogical issue of whom should be teaching Business Ethics has been largely ignored, skirted or answered incorrectly. I will then boldly argue that the only necessary condition for successful courses inBusiness Ethics is that they be taught by experts in ethics, i.e., Ph.D.s in philosophy. (shrink)