This edition of G. E. Moore's notes taken at Wittgenstein's seminal Cambridge lectures in the early 1930s provides, for the first time, an almost verbatim record of those classes. The presentation of the notes is both accessible and faithful to their original manuscripts, and a comprehensive introduction and synoptic table of contents provide the reader with essential contextual information and summaries of the topics in each lecture. The lectures form an excellent introduction to Wittgenstein's middle-period thought, covering a broad range (...) of philosophical topics, ranging from core questions in the philosophy of language, mind, logic, and mathematics, to illuminating discussions of subjects on which Wittgenstein says very little elsewhere, including ethics, religion, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. The volume also includes a 1932 essay by Moore critiquing Wittgenstein's conception of grammar, together with Wittgenstein's response. A companion website offers access to images of the entire set of source manuscripts. (shrink)

We explore three questions about Earth system modeling that are of both scientific and philosophical interest: What kind of understanding can be gained via complex Earth system models? How can the limits of understanding be bypassed or managed? How should the task of evaluating Earth system models be conceptualized?

We present a logic to model the behaviour of an agent trusting or not trusting messages sent by another agent. The logic formalises trust as a consistency checking function with respect to currentl...

Open peer commentary on the target article “How and Why the Brain Lays the Foundations for a Conscious Self” by Martin V. Butz. Excerpt: In this commentary to Martin V. Butz’s target article I am especially concerned with his remarks about language (§33, §§71–79, §91) and modularity (§32, §41, §48, §81, §§94–98). In that context, I would like to bring into discussion my own work on computational models of self-monitoring (cf. Neumann 1998, 2004). In this work I explore the idea (...) of an anticipatory drive as a substantial control device for modelling high-level complex language processes such as selfmonitoring and adaptive language use. My work is grounded in computational linguistics and, as such, uses a mathematical and computational methodology. Nevertheless, it might provide some interesting aspects and perspectives for constructivism in general, and the model proposed in Butz’s article, in particular. (shrink)

A theological examination and modern restatement of a Christian understanding of God, Father, Son and Spirit.

Njik ka Amaka: Further Discussions on the Philosophy of Integrative Humanism (A Contribution to African and Intercultural Philosophies) presents philosophy from the view point of African thought system and logic. It presents African philosophy not as a reactionary to another brand of philosophy as is popularly the case among writers of African philosophy but as an unspoken, unstated rival of the positions of other philosophical traditions, with great emphasis on the importance of intercultural philosophizing. Somehow, the work manages to be (...) eclectic in welding orientations in the spirit of intercultural philosophy and it makes no pretense that it was written primarily for the contemporary lover of wisdom. The focal point which remains unwavering throughout was the further development of integrative humanism as a theory in African philosophy. The language style of this work was carefully knitted in simplistic and in some places bombastic forms. Simplistic to appeal to all class of readers and bombastic to demonstrate the emerging orientation that one way to hit back at the domineering colonial languages would be to speak them in deconstructive manner. The Englishness or the Frenchness of those colonial languages are in this book broken; traditional meanings of words are in some places altered to reflect the African senses; some other words are reshaped in various forms to reflect what the African has in mind and what he means; idioms are reinterpreted to reflect the unabashed and highest degree of indomitable Africanness; this is because a language that would bear forth African truths if it yet remains foreign can only emerge from the ruins of the one that bore Western truths. The benchmark of the theory of integrative humanism as a vanguard for intercultural philosophy is a passage from bivalent to trivalent mode of logical interpretation wherein the intermediate position is hoisted as the necessary missing link of reality. (shrink)

Outlines a method of solving mathematical problems for teachers and students based upon the four steps of understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan, and checking the results.

Book Information Well-Being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin. Edited by Roger Crisp and Brad Hooker. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 2000. Pp. xii + 316. Hardback, £35.

Reviewer gives a survey of the new phylogenetic theory of language recently published by Prof. Dr. G. Révész, founder and director of the Laboratory for experimental psychology of the University of Amsterdam ). The starting-point of the theory is the conception of "contact", defined by the author as the innate trend to be together or to co-operate, common to all socially living beings. This "theory of contact" is developed by the author in different directions and gives rise to the distinction (...) 1. of three degrees of communication: cry , call and word , 2. of three periods in the development of language: a pre-phase , a primevalphase and a final phase and 3. of three main functions of language: impelling , indication and interrogation , and leads to the conclusion that most probably the oldest form of human intercourse was restricted to the function of impelling . Prof. R. lays great stress on the in his opinion unsurmountable barrier between human and animal forms of communication. (shrink)

Aldo Antonelli offers a novel view on abstraction principles in order to solve a traditional tension between different requirements: that the claims of science be taken at face value, even when involving putative reference to mathematical entities; and that referents of mathematical terms are identified and their possible relations to other objects specified. In his view, abstraction principles provide representatives for equivalence classes of second-order entities that are available provided the first- and second-order domains are in the equilibrium dictated by (...) the abstraction principles, and whose choice is otherwise unconstrained.entities are the referents of abstraction terms: such referents are to an extent indeterminate, but we can still quantify over them, predicate identity or non-identity, etc. Our knowledge of them is limited, but still substantial: we know whatever has to be true no matter how the representatives are chosen, i.e., what is true in all models of the corresponding abstraction principles. This view is backed up by an “austere” conception of universals, according to which these are first-order objects, i.e., ways of collecting first-order objects. Antonelli thus claims that second-order logic does not import any novel ontological commitment beyond ontology of first-order, naturalistically acceptable, objects. Moreover, in the case of arithmetic, even if Hume’s Principle is construed as described above, Frege’s Theorem goes through unaffected, since there is nothing in its proof that depends on an account of the “true nature” of numbers. A viable construal of logicism is then given by the combination of semantic nominalism and a naturalistic conception of abstraction. [Editors note]. (shrink)