A study of problems, all revolving around the subject of intellect in the philosophies of Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, this book starts by reviewing discussions in Greek and early Arabic philosophy which served as the background for the three Arabic thinkers. Davidson examines the cosmologies and theories of human and active intellect in the three philosophers and covers such subjects as: the emanation of the supernal realm from the First Cause; the emanation of the lower world from the transcendent active (...) intellect; stages of human intellect; illumination of the human intellect by the transcendent active intellect; conjunction of the human intellect with the transcendent active intellect; prophecy; and human immortality. Davidson shows that medieval Jewish philosophers and the Latin Scholastics had differing perceptions of Averroes because they happened to use works belonging to different periods of his philosophic career. (shrink)

We take up issues raised in the commentaries about our proposal that social robots are depictions of social agents. Among these issues are the realism of social agents, experiencing robots, communicating with robots, anthropomorphism, and attributing traits to robots. We end with comments about the future of social robots.

Legal tech is growing, and its growth provokes anxieties about the future of the legal profession as such. In this article, we examine the impact of legal tech on the central role of lawyers at law firms in crafting an imagined ‘right legal answer’ by drawing on Duncan Kennedy’s suggestion that a claim to the rightness of one’s legal propositions is a central characteristic of the legal profession. We first ask how changes in the organisation of legal services affect the (...) ability of lawyers at law firms to produce that ‘right legal answer’. While legal tech only exacerbates already ongoing processes of eradication of routine tasks, we find that it continues to mask the role of ideology in arriving at a right legal answer under a new layer of technological projection. Second, we ask how lawyers’ ability to produce ‘the right legal answer’ is affected by, first, expert systems and, second, a legal tech application named Bryter, representing a no-code system. We find that expert systems do not permit to uphold the unity of the lawyer required for Kennedy’s model of the right legal answer, but that no-code systems as Bryter do so. No-code systems can be reduced to a slogan: Have the lawyer, but evict her ideological temptations more efficiently than before! (shrink)

Human and machine discovery are gradual problem-solving processes of searching large problem spaces for incompletely defined goal objects. Research on problem solving has usually focused on search of an instance space (empirical exploration) and a hypothesis space (generation of theories). In scientific discovery, search must often extend to other spaces as well: spaces of possible problems, of new or improved scientific instruments, of new problem representations, of new concepts, and others. This paper focuses especially on the processes for finding new (...) problem representations and new concepts, which are relatively new domains for research on discovery.Scientific discovery has usually been studied as an activity of individual investigators, but these individuals are positioned in a larger social structure of science, being linked by the blackboard of open publication (as well as by direct collaboration). Even while an investigator is working alone, the process is strongly influenced by knowledge and skills stored in memory as a result of previous social interaction. In this sense, all research on discovery, including the investigations on individual processes discussed in this paper, is social psychology, or even sociology. (shrink)

“I'ai entendu parler de la bataille académique de Waterloo. Rien ne pouvoit être plus imprudent que l'attaque de Mr. Encke… On dit cependant que notre grand et illustre géomètre [Jacobi] a usé de sa grosse Artillerie, mais aussi a-t-il été attaqué imprudemment le pretmier.” (From a letter of A.v. Humboldt to Dirichlet in 1850.) The astronomer Encke reported on the quantity of papers of the mathematicians in the “Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie”, on August 1st, 1850. Encke attacked the mathematician Jacobi, (...) especially. In this paper are published extracts from his report for the first time. (shrink)

Der Autor entwickelt ein eigenständiges Konzept von Eifersucht und betrachtet sie unabhängig von anderen Emotionen, doch verwoben mit ihnen. Um die vielen Facetten der Eifersucht zu berücksichtigen, schlägt er ein psychoanalytisches Prozessmodell vor, das den je individuellen Verlauf einer Eifersuchtsentwicklung in den Blick nimmt. Anhand von Beispielen werden die lebensgeschichtlichen Eifersuchts-Dreiecke mit den Verlaufsordnungen normaler und pathologischer Eifersucht, den unterschiedlichen Reaktionen auf Eifersucht und der Psychogenese eifersüchtiger Pathologie verknüpft. Den Mechanismus der Eifersucht sieht er, bei aller Komplexität, in einer unbewussten (...) Strategie: Äußerlich inszenierte Konflikte der Erwachseneneifersucht sollen dazu dienen, Kränkung und Scham zu bewältigen und die wachgerufenen Emotionen kindlicher, teils traumatischer Beziehungserfahrungen niederzuhalten. (shrink)

To this date Roger Bacon remains one of the controversial and colorful figures in the history of empirical science. This paper is an attempt to ascertain his views regarding the nature and function of empirical science and to compare his writings on this topic with those of the more famous Francis Bacon. The ground for comparison is the fact that both men have often been cast in the same role in the history of science; i.e., they have both been acclaimed (...) as the first in the western world to emphasize and bring out the importance of experimental method in the accumulation of knowledge. In this connection Francis, of the sixteenth century, has long been acknowledged as the father of the experimental method in preference to Roger, of the thirteenth century. In effect, therefore, this paper probes the relative merits of the claims for each thinker. (shrink)

INTRODUCTORY THE MISSING FACTOR IN SCIENCE IT is now more than 300 years since Galileo originated the process in philosophy which, in its maturer form, ...