The aim of this paper is to argue against moral dualism in the understanding of the nature of evil, namely the conception of evil as an independent source of guidance, in opposition to the good, rather than a failure in pursuit of an apparent good. Focusing on moral evil as the intentional infliction of gratuitous pain and suffering by one human being on another, i.e., pain and suffering that are not required by a morally acceptable purpose, I argue against two (...) forms of such dualism. Value dualism divides moral value into antithetical normative principles, good and evil, each with its own guiding power. On this view, evil can intelligibly be pursued for its own sake, rather than a failure of some kind in acting “under the guise of the good.” Agent dualism divides human agents, based on character and disposition, into followers of good and followers of evil. On this view, the pursuit of evil can be accounted for in terms of basic character traits and dispositions, not related to more fundamental motives, reasons, or choices. In both versions humanity is divided into two moral classes. I argue that the two forms of moral dualism discussed in this paper fail to render evil perpetrators intelligible in terms of reasons for action. While suggesting, in line with accounts by Arendt (1951, 1963, 1978), Anscombe (1963) and Neiman (2002), a non-dualist account of evil-doing as a dysfunction in the pursuit of intelligible goals, I will go on to criticize dualistic views of both kinds in the work of philosophers such as Velleman (1992), Silber (2012), Bernstein (2002), Hacker (2021), and Kekes (1990). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to highlight an individualist streak in both Davidson’s conception of language and Chomsky’s. In the first part of the paper, I argue that in Davidson’s case this individualist streak is a consequence of an excessively strong conception of what the compositional nature of linguistic meaning requires, and I offer a weaker conception of that requirement that can do justice to both the publicity and the compositionality of language. In the second part of the paper, (...) I offer a comparison between Davidson’s position on the unreality of public languages, and Chomsky’s position regarding the epiphenomenal status of “externalized” languages. In Chomsky’s case, as in Davidson’s, languages are individuated in terms of the formal theories that serve to account for their systematic structure, and this assumption rests upon a similarly strong and similarly questionable understanding of what it is to employ finite means in pursuit of an infinite task. The alternative, at which I can only hint, is a view of language as a social and historical reality, i.e., a realm of social fact that cannot be exhausted by any formal theory and cannot be reduced to properties of individual speakers. (shrink)

In this work I bring a conception of language and meaning as a shared institution to bear upon rule-following scepticism, i.e., upon the sceptical problem concerning the semantic determinacy of expressions involving infinite or indefinitely large and open extensions. Such scepticism proceeds from the observation that the extensions of expressions of this kind are not uniquely determined by epistemically accessible facts, to conclude that the expressions in question are indeterminate in point of extension, and that their meaning must consist in (...) their use. ;In the first chapter of this work, I argue that rule-following considerations by themselves do not suffice to establish these conclusions, and that additional premises are needed. I consider both internalist and extensionalist schemes to supplement the sceptical argument. I find such schemes lacking in persuasive support. Chapter 2, in particular, concentrates on Kripke's well known exegesis of Wittgenstein's argument, and on the internalist requirements upon which it is based. ;In Chapter 3, I offer an externalist account of the normative aspect in rule following. On the account I give, the rule one is projecting is determined extensionally by one's position in a community in which his projections would be corrected and evaluated by other members, and from which one has acquired the rule in the first place through a chain of communication, rather than by one's own projections, taken in isolation, which constitute only a partial understanding of the rule in question. This account is not designed to refute scepticism; rather its aim is to account for the normativity of rule-following in ways which do not invoke the internalist requirement upon which rule following scepticism is based. (shrink)

We introduce a novel, linguistic-like method of genome analysis. We propose a natural approach to characterizing genomic sequences based on occurrences of fixed length words from a predefined, sufficiently large set of words (strings over the alphabet {A, C, G, T} ). A measure based on this approach is called compositional spectrum and is actually a histogram of imperfect word occurrences. Our results assert that the compositional spectrum is an overall characteristic of a long sequence i.e., a complete genome or (...) an uninterrupted part of a chromosome. This attribute is manifested in the similarity of spectra obtained on different stretches of the same genome, and simultaneously in a broad range of dissimilarities between spectral representations of different genomes. High flexibility characterizes this approach due to imperfect matching and as a result sets of relatively long words can be considered. The proposed approach may have various applications in intra- and intergenomic sequence comparisons. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke: Correspondence: Letters 849-1241 by E. S. de Beer. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

In the _World Library of Educationalists_, international experts themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces – extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume, allowing readers to follow the themes of their work and see how it contributes to the development of the field. Mary James has researched and written on a range of educational subjects which encompass (...) curriculum, pedagogy and assessment in schools, and implications for teachers´ professional development, school leadership and policy frameworks. She has written many books and journals on assessment, particularly assessment for learning and is an expert on teacher learning, curriculum, leadership for learning and educational policy. Starting with a specially written introduction in which Mary gives an overview of her career and contextualises her selection, the chapters are divided into three parts: Educational Assessment and Learning Educational Evaluation and Curriculum Development Educational Research and the Improvement of Practice Through this book, readers can follow the different strands that Mary James has researched and written about over the last three decades, and clearly see her important contribution to the field of education. (shrink)

Les débuts pathologiques de l'aventure américaine -- Prélude à l'émigration norvégienne vers l'Amérique : Kierkegaard en Norvège au XIXe siècle -- Les travaux remarquables de David Swenson -- Les choix théoriques de Walter Lowrie, ou comment Søren Kierkegaard fut métamorphosé en "S.K." -- Quelques interprétations anglophones marquantes : Collins, Thomte, Thomas, Holmer, Sponheim (James Collins, Reidar Thomte, John Heywood Thomas, Paul Holmer, Paul Sponheim--interprète de Kierkegaard) -- Le Kierkegaard de Howard Vincent Hong et Edna Hong : un Kierkegaard-phare pour les (...) recherches à venir. (shrink)

Introduction I The Use of Philosophy The kind of questions which we propose to discuss in this book and with which, it seems to us, all introductions to the ...

The unexpected and premature passing away of Professor Ebrahim H. "Abe" Mamdani on January, 22, 2010, was a big shock to the scientific community, to all his friends and colleagues around the world, and to his close relatives. Professor Mamdani was a remarkable figure in the academic world, as he contributed to so many areas of science and technology. Of great relevance are his latest thoughts and ideas on the study of language and its handling by computers. The fuzzy logic (...) community is particularly indebted to Abe Mamdani (1941-2010) who, in 1975, in his famous paper An Experiment in Linguistic Synthesis with a Fuzzy Logic Controller, jointly written with his student Sedrak Assilian, introduced the novel idea of fuzzy control. This was an elegant engineering approach to the modeling and control of complex processes for which mathematical models were unknown or too difficult to build, yet they could effectively and efficiently be controlled by human operators. This ground-breaking idea has found innumerable applications and can be considered as one of the main factors for the proliferation and adoption of fuzzy logic technology. Professor Mamdani's own life and vital experience are illustrative of his “never surrendering” attitude while facing adversaries, which is normal for a person proposing any novel solution, and represent a great example for everybody. His subtle sense of humor, his joy for life, and his will to critically help people, especially young people, were characteristics deeply appreciated by all the people who enjoyed and benefited from his friendship and advice. This book constitutes a posthumous homage to Abe Mamdani. It is a collection of original papers related in some way to his works, ideas and vision, and especially written by researchers directly acquainted with him or with his work. The underlying goal of this book will be fulfilled if, in the very spirit of Mamdani's legacy, the papers will trigger a scientific or philosophical debate on the issues covered, or contribute to a cross-fertilization of ideas in the various fields. (shrink)

The noted psychologist, Doreen Kimura, has argued that we should not expect to find equal numbers of men and women in various professions because there is a natural sexual inequality of intellect. In rebuttal I argue that each of these mutually supporting theses is insufficiently supported by the evidence to be accepted. The social and ethical dimensions of Kimura's work, and of the scientific study of the nature-nurture controversy in general, are briefly discussed.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze succinctly the concept of faith through the very penetrating gaze of the Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard. Faith is analyzed by Kierkegaard from absurdity, resignation and the paradox of faith. In the same way, his concept of faith is carved with a chisel that would complete all his philosophy, that is, to touch human reality away from any abstract thought, trying at all times that his examination be seen on a personal dimension in (...) his rigorously individual coret. (shrink)

The orthodox explanation of the syntax of lines 453–4 is that repeated by the most recent commentator, F. Bömer, p.343): ‘neque adhuc epota parte ist Abl. absol.; der Gegenstand, mit dem Ceres den Jungen überschüttet, ist mixta … polenta.‘ The ablative absoluteis in itself unexceptionable, but the proliferation of three ablatives in two verses is awkward writing. As transmitted, line 454 is the product of a copyist who, as is often the habit of copyists, was confininghis attention to the verse (...) on which he was engaged and still had ‘tosta … polenta’from line 450 echoing in his head. Unless I am much mistaken, Ovid wrote. (shrink)