[Graeme Forbes] In I, I summarize the semantics for the relational/notional distinction for intensional transitives developed in Forbes (2000b). In II-V I pursue issues about logical consequence which were either unsatisfactorily dealt with in that paper or, more often, not raised at all. I argue that weakening inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks a gorgon', are valid, but that disjunction inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon or (...) an immortal gorgon', are invalid. Since 'a gorgon' and 'a mortal gorgon or an immortal gorgon' are extensionally and intensionally the same quantifier, it is not completely trivial to arrange the semantics of intensional transitives so that this classification of the inferences is obtained. (This paper is an abridged version of Forbes (2001a); the latter will be incorporated into a forthcoming monograph, Attitude Problems.) /// [Jennifer Saul] This paper discusses the question of which verbs are intensional transitives. In particular, I ask which verbs Forbes should take to be intensional transitives. I argue that it is very difficult to arrive at a clear and plausible understanding of what an intensional transitive is-making it difficult to answer these questions. I end by briefly raising some questions about the usefulness of the category of intensional transitives. (shrink)

The phenomenon of the New Genetics raises complex social problems, particularly those of privacy. This book offers ethical and legal perspectives on the questions of a right to know and not to know genetic information from the standpoint of individuals, their relatives, employers, insurers and the state. Graeme Laurie provides a unique definition of privacy, including a concept of property rights in the person, and argues for stronger legal protection of privacy in the shadow of developments in human genetics. (...) He challenges the role and the limits of established principles in medical law and ethics, including respect for patient autonomy and confidentiality. This book will interest lawyers, philosophers and doctors concerned both with genetic information and issues of privacy; it will also interest genetic counsellors, researchers, and policy makers worldwide for its practical stance on dilemmas in modern genetic medicine. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy has recently demonstrated a revived interest in metaphysical problems about possibility and necessity. Graeme Forbes here provides a careful description of the logical background of recent work in this area for those who may be unfamiliar with it, moving on to d discuss the distinction between modality de re and modality de dicto and the ontological commitments of possible worlds semantics. In addition, Forbes offers a unified theory of the essential properties of sets, organisms, artefacts, substances, and (...) events, based on the doctrine that identity facts must be intrinsically grounded, and analyzes and rejects apparent counterexamples to this doctrine. (shrink)

In this particularly well written volume Graeme Hirst presents a theoretically motivated foundation for semantic interpretation (conceptual analysis) by computer, and shows how this framework facilitates the resolution of both lexical and syntactic ambiguities.

Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man is framed as a response to the “end of ideology” thesis of political equilibrium and a criticism of mainstream theoretical construction in advanced industrial countries. Such formulations obscured new forms of self-alienation in totally administered society, and replaced any conceived potential subjectivity with objective laws that govern social relations. One-Dimensional Man is also framed as a response to the “crisis of Marxism” by underscoring the importance of popular ideology in shaping subjective action, which at present, precludes (...) proletarian revolution. (shrink)

From Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, the man best known as Malcolm X restlessly redefined himself throughout a controversial life. His transformations have appeared repeatedly in books, photographs, paintings, and films, while his murder set in motion a series of tugs-of-war among journalists, biographers, artists, and his ideological champions over the interpretation of his cultural meaning. This book marks the first systematic examination of the images generated by this iconic cultural figure--images readily found on everything from T-shirts and hip-hop (...) album covers to coffee mugs. Graeme Abernethy captures both the multiplicity and global import of a person who has been framed as both villain and hero, cast by mainstream media during his lifetime as "the most feared man in American history," and elevated at his death as a heroic emblem of African American identity. As Abernethy shows, the resulting iconography of Malcolm X has shifted as profoundly as the American racial landscape itself. Abernethy explores Malcolm's visual prominence in the eras of civil rights, Black Power, and hip-hop. He analyzes this enigmatic figure's representation across a variety of media from 1960s magazines to urban murals, tracking the evolution of Malcolm's iconography from his autobiography and its radical milieu through the appearance of Spike Lee's 1992 biopic and beyond. Its remarkable gallery of illustrations includes reproductions of iconic photographs by Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and John Launois. Abernethy reveals that Malcolm X himself was keenly aware of the power of imagery to redefine identity and worked tirelessly to shape how he was represented to the public. His theoretical grasp of what he termed "the science of imagery" enabled him both to analyze the role of representation in ideological control as well as to exploit his own image in the interests of black empowerment. This provocative work marks a startling shift from the biographical focus that has dominated Malcolm X studies, providing an up-to-date--and comprehensively illustrated--account of Malcolm's cultural afterlife, and addressing his iconography in relation to images of other major African American figures, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Kanye West, and Barack Obama. Analyzing the competing interpretations behind so many images, Abernethy reveals what our lasting obsession with Malcolm X says about American culture over the last five decades. (shrink)

The programme of work -- Towards a theory of jokes -- The process of joke comprehension -- Text comprehension -- Processing and prediction -- Logic in jokes -- Incongruity and resolution -- Surprise -- The role of language -- Impropriety -- Superiority and aggression -- What's in a joke? -- Applying the framework -- The way forward.

This article will explore the musicianship of Bishop Charles Henry Davis, osb, coadjutor to Australia's first Catholic Archbishop, John Bede Polding, osb. It will focus on his musical contribution to the early Australian Catholic Church-his ability to improvise, compose, conduct and perform during his short time as bishop at St Mary's, Sydney.

In this article I will examine the purchase and opening of Lyndhurst College in 1852 and its contribution to early Catholic education in Sydney. In a previous article, I discussed the establishment of St Mary's Seminary by Archbishop John Bede Polding in 1836. Lyndhurst College was another Benedictine school set up by Polding in Sydney that gave students of wealthier Catholics the opportunity to prepare for the church, university and the civil service.

The Growing-Block view of time has some problems with the past. It is committed to the existence of the past, but needs to say something about the difference between the past and present. I argue that we should resist Correia and Rosenkranz’ response to Braddon-Mitchell’s argument that the Growing-Block leads to scepticism about whether we are present. I consider an approach, similar to Peter Forrest, and show it is not so counter-intuitive as Braddon-Mitchell suggests and further show that it requires (...) no ‘semantic and metaphysical gymnastics’, as Chris Heathwood has suggested. In doing these things I make the problem of the past on the Growing-Block view a problem in its history, not its present. (shrink)

"Graeme Nicholson addresses the fundamental topic of ontology, perhaps the fundamental topic posed to philosophy and the human mind: what is being?, i.e., what is it to exist or to be? He initially shows that we humans must be understood to be "existers" and "disclosers"--terms that render Heidegger's concept Dasein. Heidegger's philosophy provides the basic viewpoint, but Professor Nicholson offers an interpretation of Heidegger that seeks to set deconstructionist and pragmatist readings to one side. Since, according to Heidegger, being (...) is fundamentally a union of presence and absence, this study shows that metaphysical theories have always offered positive illustrations or interpretations of being." "Illustrations of Being then goes on to scrutinize the four most fundamental determinations of being that Western thought has adumbrated: being as substance, especially in Greek ontology; being as reality, especially in the period from Descartes to Kant, and therefore in nineteenth- and twentieth-century science; the logic of being, in which Nicholson undertakes an ontological critique of mathematical logic; and being as the transformation of form--the key idea that runs from Christian patristics, through Hegel and Marx, to modern dialectics." "Graeme Nicholson's new study is marked by its receptiveness to metaphysics in the traditional sense, and contains a critique of the deconstructionist effort to pass beyond metaphysics. It will be of interest to professional philosophers and to theologians, as well as to graduate students and to members of the general public interested in philosophical arguments about the nature of being."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

In this provocative work, noted social and economic theorist Graeme D. Snooks exposes fatal flaws in the foundations of the Darwinian theory of evolution. Further, he develops a remarkable replacement theory of evolution. The new 'dynamic-strategy' theory views life as a strategic pursuit in which organisms adopt dynamic strategies to survive and prosper. This theory reveals the organism as empowered, rather than as the plaything of gods, genes, or blind chance. And it provides a powerful new basis for humanism.

Working memory limits are best defined in terms of the complexity of the relations that can be processed in parallel. Complexity is defined as the number of related dimensions or sources of variation. A unary relation has one argument and one source of variation; its argument can be instantiated in only one way at a time. A binary relation has two arguments, two sources of variation, and two instantiations, and so on. Dimensionality is related to the number of chunks, because (...) both attributes on dimensions and chunks are independent units of information of arbitrary size. Studies of working memory limits suggest that there is a soft limit corresponding to the parallel processing of one quaternary relation. More complex concepts are processed by or In segmentation, tasks are broken into components that do not exceed processing capacity and can be processed serially. In conceptual chunking, representations are to reduce their dimensionality and hence their processing load, but at the cost of making some relational information inaccessible. Neural net models of relational representations show that relations with more arguments have a higher computational cost that coincides with experimental findings on higher processing loads in humans. Relational complexity is related to processing load in reasoning and sentence comprehension and can distinguish between the capacities of higher species. The complexity of relations processed by children increases with age. Implications for neural net models and theories of cognition and cognitive development are discussed. (shrink)

The core issue of our target article concerns how relational complexity should be assessed. We propose that assessments must be based on actual cognitive processes used in performing each step of a task. Complexity comparisons are important for the orderly interpretation of research findings. The links between relational complexity theory and several other formulations, as well as its implications for neural functioning, connectionist models, the roles of knowledge, and individual and developmental differences, are considered.

A number of passages in ancient texts suggest that for much of the archaic and classical periods Eleia was considered a sacred and inviolable land, immune from invasion. While contemporary scholars, referring to the work of Georg Busolt and Eduard Meyer, reject the testimony of Polybios, Strabo, Diodoros and Phlegon in regard to the Eleian asylia, a careful examination of Busolt’S arguments reveals that they are highly speculative. MEYER offers little in addition. Instances of Eleian warfare in the ancient sources, (...) furthermore, are not the conclusive evidence against the asylia that they appear at first glance. (shrink)

Computer graphic modeling forms an increasing part of archaeological practice, implicated in modes of recording objects and spaces, interpretation of types, management of three-dimensional information, creation of artificial experiences of place for interpretation, and representation of archaeological ideas to a broader public. In all spheres of life computer graphics are increasingly influential—by some estimates computed visions constitute the "dominant medium of thought" (Gooding 2008, p. 1). Archaeological computer graphics build on a long tradition of physical model building for the development (...) of understanding, and representation of conclusions. Such physical models are now finding a renewed significance as .. (shrink)

Between 1993 and 1998 I served as magazine editor and then publications officer for the Christian Socialist Movement. The article reflects on this experience and in particular the attempt to relate theological ideas to political activity. It is argued that theological ideas were less important than political allegiances. This said, theological ideas did help motivate people to become involved in politics and offer general ideological direction especially through the notion of an eschatological vision. This type of theological reflection tended to (...) support those who were critical of the New Labour project. What seemed to be lacking was a theology of governance and so in the final section some consideration is given to the issues for this type of theology. (shrink)

The Analytical Marxian paradigm is motivated by a desire to make Marx's theory "clear." Its criteria for success in this venture are drawn from one tendency within contemporary analytical philosophy. The works of G.A. Cohen and Jon Elster on Marx are best understood in the light of this philosophical background. The ultimately fatal limitations of the analytical paradigm as a whole, and of its interpretation of Marx's theory of history in particular, are derived from a contradiction at this philosophical level: (...) Analytical Marxism attempts to make Marx's thought clear with a methodology which is fundamentally corrosive to the practical-active meaning of that thought. (shrink)

In Essay Six of his Commentary on Plato's Republic, the Platonist Proclus offers a defence of the poetry of Homer and attempts to harmonize the Homeric epics, as inspired texts, with the philosophy of Plato as he interprets it. The tendency of late antique Platonists to turn to allegorical reading is well known, but in this instance Proclus interprets Achilles by other means. In particular, he is careful to place Achilles’ actions relative to what he sees as the correct position (...) in the scale of virtues (at the level of the political virtues). In some further remarkable passages Proclus sees Achilles’ ritual activities as a kind of prefiguration of the theurgic practices embraced by the Platonic school of Proclus’ era. (shrink)

Academic freedom is thus a complex ideal, and I have argued that in many respects it has a more limited application than some of its protagonists seem to believe. Many of the arguments for it, moreover, are not peculiar to academics and universities. We would therefore be well advised to take seriously Eric James' injunction “to think less of universities as having rights to additional and peculiar liberties, and to regard them more as places where the essential liberties of a (...) civilised state find strongest champions, champions, moreover, who by reason of the intellectual strength which they possess, and the intellectual integrity which they defend, have a particular responsibility”.36 But it is beyond rational doubt that the continuation of civilised states as civilised depends on the maintenance of, among other things, academic freedom, and particularly of what I have called scholarly freedom. (shrink)

This paper examines the legal conception of political parties. It does so by unearthing the history and ontology of the common law relating to political parties in international perspective. The flexibility of the unincorporated association, in which parties are understood through the private law of contract as networks of internal rules or agreements, rather than as legal entities, has proven to be a mask. In the common laws imagination, the ideal party is a ground-up organization animated by its membership. But (...) the law mandates no such thing, and in its statutory and constitutional conception intra-party democracy may be sublimated as parties need be no more than an electoral persona or brand. (shrink)

Approximately 1 in 30 people develop cancer due to an underlying familial predisposition. Genetic counselling and testing for people with (and at risk of) familial cancer are becoming more widely available, but service providers need to address challenging issues in relation to privacy and property. As in any counselling situation, a genetic counsellor seeks to ensure that the principles of autonomy, confidentiality, beneficence, and equity operate in favour of the client. But in dealing with a familial disorder, the application of (...) these principles to the individual must be balanced with the potential for these principles to apply to other family members. This paper summarises the recent experience of a familial cancer service in seeking to avoid situations in which these principles, operating for both individual clients and their relatives, can come into conflict. (shrink)

The talk is called ‘The QUANTUM COMPLEXITY behind Quantum Reality’. It is divided into 3 parts: an outline of the essentials of quantum theory, a discussion of some glaring problems of interpretation, and my shocking philosophical conclusions.