The contributions to the Special Issue on Multiple Belief Change, Iterated Belief Change and Preference Aggregation are divided into three parts. Four contributions are grouped under the heading "multiple belief change" (Part I, with authors M. Falappa, E. Fermé, G. Kern-Isberner, P. Peppas, M. Reis, and G. Simari), five contributions under the heading "iterated belief change" (Part II, with authors G. Bonanno, S.O. Hansson, A. Nayak, M. Orgun, R. Ramachandran, H. Rott, and E. Weydert). These papers do not only (...) pick up the particular questions raised, but also extend and modify the framework of Alchourrón, Gärdenfors and Makinson. Part III deals with preference aggregation and consists of one contribution (by F. Herzberg and D. Eckert). (shrink)

The development of transplantation technology increasingly places before society a multitude of diverse, complex ethical and legal problems. The subject is the more complex because of the various divergent interests involved. There are the interests of the donor of organs, who has a right to protection of his legal position, and those of the patient in need of an often lifesaving organ. There are also the interests of the donor’s relatives, after his death, and those of the transplantation surgeons. The (...) international dimension of transplantation technology makes the picture even more complicated. Though this article is devoted to the European situation, the problems are similar all over the world. (shrink)

Dans ce volume considérable, on été réunies les contributions d'un Congrès international tenu à Louvain en 1998 pour marquer l'achèvement de la première édition de la Théologie Platonicienne de Proclus. Ces contributions, toutes rigoureusement centrées sur la Théol. Plat. concernent (1) les principes et les sources de la Théol. plat. (2) Les méthodes théologiques de Proclus (3) La postérité de la Théol. plat. dans le monde grec, païen comme chrétien, et dans le monde islamique. Des indices très détaillés permettent de (...) retrouver tous les passages cités et commentés dans ce volume. (shrink)

Originally published in 1936, this book presents the ancient Greek text of the paraphrases and quotations of Zeno's philosophical arguments, together with a facing-page English translation and editorial commentary. Detailed notes are incorporated throughout and a bibliography is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Zeno and ancient philosophy.

If I were asked to put forward an ethical principle which I considered to be especially certain, it would be that no one can be responsible, in the properly ethical sense, for the conduct of another. Responsibility belongs essentially to the individual. The implications of this principle are much more far-reaching than is evident at first, and reflection upon them may lead many to withdraw the assent which they might otherwise be very ready to accord to this view of responsibility. (...) But if the difficulties do appear to be insurmountable, and that, very certainly, does not seem to me to be the case, then the proper procedure will be, not to revert to the barbarous notion of collective or group responsibility, but to give up altogether the view that we are accountable in any distinctively moral sense. (shrink)

It is demonstrated that neither the arguments leading to inconsistencies in the description of quantum-mechanical measurement nor those “explaining” the process of measurement by means of thermodynamical statistics are valid. Instead, it is argued that the probability interpretation is compatible with an objective interpretation of the wave function.

The problem which I propose to consider is not whether the distinctions past, present, future, characterize the form of time in such a way that whatever may be true concerning the reality of one of these characteristics must be equally true of the others, but the more particular question of the kind of existence which belongs to the content of the past, or its constituents as events.

First published in 1969, The Elusive Mind argues that the mental processes are of a quite different nature from physical ones and belong to an entity which is elusive in the sense that it can only be known, in the first instance, by each person in his own case in the course of having any kind of experience. This 'elusive' self is much involved with the body in any conditions we know, but it could also survive the dissolution of the (...) body. The views of thinkers like Ryle, Hampshire, Malcolm, Feigl, and Ayer are subjected to an exceptionally close and critical scrutiny. In presenting these views, the author offers us the substance of the first series of Gifford Lectures he delivered in the University of Edinburgh; and, in what he says on such topics as dreaming; mysticism; and the 'I-Thou' relation and on Christian Theology. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of philosophy, philosophy of mind, ethics, and religion. (shrink)

Rosamond Kent Sprague’s translations of the _Laches and Charmides_ are highly regarded, and relied on, for their lucidity and philosophical acuity. This edition includes notes by Sprague and an updated bibliography.

H. D. Lewis; I—Mind and Body—Some Observations on Mr. Strawson's Views: The Presidential Address, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 63, Issue 1, 1.

The program of a physical concept of information is outlined in the framework of quantum theory. A proposal is made for how to avoid the intuitive introduction of observables. The conventional and the Everett interpretations in principle may lead to different dynamical consequences. An ensemble description occurs without the introduction of an abstract concept of information.

The object of this paper is to show the predominance of the influence of geometrical ideas in Aristotle's account of first principles in the Posterior Analytics— to show that his analysis of first principles is in its essentials an analysis of the first principles of geometry as he conceived them. My proof of this falls into two parts. I. A consideration of the parallel between Aristotle's and Euclid's account of first principles. II. A comparison between the general movement of thought (...) in the Aristotelian παγωγ and πδειξις and in the δινοια and νησις of the Platonic dialectic. (shrink)

The relation between quantum measurement and thermodynamically irreversible processes is investigated. The reduction of the state vector is fundamentally asymmetric in time and shows an observer-relatedness which may explain the double interpretation of the state vector as a representation of physical states as well as ofinformation about physical states. The concept of relevance being used in all statistical theories of irreversible thermodynamics is demonstrated to be based on the same observer-relatedness. Quantum theories of irreversible processes implicitly use an objectivized process (...) of state vector reduction. The conditions for the reduction are discussed, and it is concluded that the final (subjective) observer system may be carried by a space point. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 135-149 [Access article in PDF] Ghostly Comparisons: Anderson's Telescope H. D. Harootunian While the formation of area studies in the universities and colleges of the United States was initially inaugurated as a response to the Cold War "necessity" to win the hearts and minds of the unaligned, many of whom were new refugees of decolonization, one of its unintended consequences was to foster the development of (...) comparative perspectives of study across disciplines and different cultural regions. But this secondary goal was often diverted by the principal purpose of area studies programs to supply authoritative information on regions outside of Euro-America (the second and third worlds) considered crucial to the national security and to private businesses thrown increasingly into an expanding global market seeking new regions capable of providing buyers, workers, and materials. In time, the vocation of comparison became part of the unconscious of area studies, as the unit of the nation-state took precedence over all other considerations. Instead of envisaging genuinely interdisciplinary agendas that were able to integrate different disciplines, area studies have too often settled for simple multidisciplinarism, substituting coverage for comparison, language acquisition for method, the nation-state for the totality of the cultural region. Benedict Anderson's recent Spectre of Comparisons reminds us of the role played by area studies programs in the American academic profession during the nervous days of the Cold War and the wartime exigencies that led to their postwar organization and installation in a number of universities. But it also recalls for us the comparative promise associated with area studies and how it was either redirected to a multidisciplinary approach poorly disguised as interdisciplinarism or simply incorporated into large developmental narratives like modernization theory. It is instructive to see how Anderson's own work, rather than Southeast Asian area studies, has been able to achieve the remote goal of integration and comparison in a number of stunning examples that have eluded the collective efforts of many institutional programs. This singular success magisterially discloses how he was trained to envisage the region as a "unified" area studies program, even though little more than a geographical term named this unity, and what he needed to do to actually realize the dim prospect of achieving some sort of larger, integrated understanding, which was eventually inscribed in his seminal book, Imagined Communities. At the most basic level, Anderson was able to secure this effect first by roaming around the area (turning his banishment from Indonesia in 1972 to good use by shifting his attention to Thailand and then the Philippines). Yet, as his essays show, there were other, more intellectually and epistemologically compelling reasons which, if amplified, might provide such diversity with a sense of commonality that only geography and the putatively integrative approach of an area studies program seemed willing to promise even as they failed to deliver.Anderson situates his own intellectual trajectory within the institutional circumstances of the region as an area studies which he and his contemporary fellow students "helped give a certain reality" [Spectre 19]. In fact, "Southeast Asia" has always been [End Page 135] the common frame that structured the particular relationship between Europe of the colonizers and its Asian colonized and thus became the location that best exemplified for him the peculiar nature of the "haunting," as he puts it, as both the place of comparison and the necessity of comparability. In other words, Southeast Asia was the locus that best afforded a sighting of the spectacle of specters that recalled authorizing sister images in Europe and provided a perspective that was necessarily comparative. In Anderson's reckoning, comparison first referred to the circulation of images between metropole and colony and secondly between the various colonial sites that constituted Southeast Asia. As a result, Southeast Asia, and by extension all colonies, became the overdetermined place of haunting.Beyond the agency of the war, of course, was the experience of colonialism and those first modern interpreters of Asia who, as administrators, spent long years in the field serving imperial bureaucracies and who were in the incomparable position of examining such sites... (shrink)

This paper compares clinical intuition and phenomenological intuition. I begin with a brief analysis of Husserl’s conception of intuition. Second, I review the attitude toward clinical intuition by physicians and philosophers. Third, I discuss the Aristotelian conception of intellectual intuition or nous and its relation to phronesis. Phronesis provides a philosophical ground for clinical intuition by linking medicine as both a techné and praxis. Considering medicine as a techné, Pellegrino and Thomasma exclude clinical intuitions from their philosophy of medicine. However, (...) in modeling clinical reasoning on phronesis, they link Aristotelian nous with clinical reasoning. While supporting the application of phronesis to clinical reasoning, I consider Pellegrino and Thomasma’s model deficient for eliminating intuition as an inalienable element of clinical reasoning. Rather, clinical intuitions are necessary in linking medicine as both art and practice. This becomes more obvious through the phenomenological analysis of clinical intuitions. Clinical reasoning and phenomenological intuitions are similar in joining the perceptual and intellectual aspects of human judgment. Furthermore, clinical intuitions can be extended to become phenomenological intuitions through phenomenological reflection. Clinical intuitions may be examined phenomenologically for their originary foundations. In this way, medicine acts as a phenomenological clue. Phenomenology provides a method to restore the Hippocratic synthesis of empirical observation and wholism associated with clinical intuitions. (shrink)

Two minuscule codices carrying collections of grammatical and rhetorical treatises and extracts from such treatises, one written at Monte Cassino between A.D. 779 and 796 ), the other at Benevento towards the middle of the following century, contain among their uncial tituli the three words INCIPIT THVESTES VARII. There follows in both codices a twenty-four-word sentence stating the full name of Varius, the literary character of the Thyestes, an aesthetic judgement on the work, the date of a public performance in (...) a Roman theatre, and the price paid: Lucius Varius cognomento Rufus Thyesten tragoediam magna cura absolutam post Actiacam uictoriam Augusti ludis eius in scaena edidit pro qua fabula sestertium deciens accepit. (shrink)

Wolfson, using literary analysis, produced an excellent study of the mystical views of Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson, the last Lubavich Rebbe. This work should serve as paradigmatic for the study of Jewish mystical thought.

The essays of this book let trace the renascent movement unfolding the many horizons in every field of national life.

The interpretations of measurements in Bohm's and Everett's quantum theories are compared. Since both theories are based on the assumption of a universally valid Schrödinger equation, they face the common problem of how to explain that arrow of time, which in conventional quantum theory is represented by the collapse of the wave function. Its solution requires, in a statistical sense, a very improbable initial condition for thetotal wave function of the universe. The historical importance of Bohm's quantum theory is pointed (...) out. (shrink)