Gil R, Arroyo-Anllo EM, Ingrand P, Gil M, Neau JP, Ornon C, Bonnaud V. Self-consciousness and Alzheimer’s disease. Acta Neurol Scand 2001: 104: 296–300. # Munksgaard 2001. Objectives – To propose a neuropsychological study of the various aspects of self-consciousness (SC) in Alzheimer’s disease. Methods – Forty-five patients with probable mild or moderate AD were included in the study. Severity of their dementia was assessed by the Mini Mental State (MMS). Fourteen questions were prepared to evaluate SC. Results – (...) No significant correlations were found between SC score and educational level, age, and duration of disease. A significant correlation was found between SC score and the severity of dementia, whereas frontal disturbances were just short of the significance threshold. The various aspects of SC were not impaired to the same degree. The most disturbed ones were awareness of cognitive deficiencies, moral judgements and prospective memory. The least disturbed aspects were awareness of identity and of mental representation of the body. Items relating to anosognosia and moral judgements were significantly correlated with the MMS score, whereas affective state, body representation disorders, prospective memory, and capacities for introspection were not related to the severity of the dementia. Consciousness of identity was sound, regardless of MMS score. Conclusions – AD clearly induces an heterogeneous impairment of SC. SC requires a convergence of many neural networks. In AD, neuronal alterations involve many cortical areas and information sent to the associative frontal cortex from memory, language and visuospatial areas is lacking or disturbed. Thus, the sequential order of successive stimuli cannot be maintained by the heteromodal associative cortex (dorsal convexity of the prefrontal cortex), and the supramodal associative cortex (located rostrally in the frontal lobes) is unable to provide reliable monitoring and assessment of simultaneous neural cognitive networks carrying insufficient and inadequate input. The core deficiency in AD patients might be impaired SC equated with the disability to maintain sequential and simultaneous ‘‘attention to life’’. The Self-Consciousness Questionnaire, a clinical scale providing multidimensional measurement, indicates that different aspects of consciousness are not correlated with overall cognitive deficiency as determined by the MMSE. (shrink)

Russell claims that ordinary proper names are eccentric, i.e. that the semantic referent of a name is determined by the descriptive condition that the individual utterer of the name associates with the name. This is deeply puzzling, for the evidence that names are subject to interpersonal coordination seems irrefutable. One way of making sense of Russell’s view would be to claim that he has been systematically misinterpreted and did not, in fact, offer a semantic theory at all. Such a view (...) is put forward in Sainsbury Departing from Frege, Routledge, London, 2002). Sainsbury claims that Russellian descriptivism is not the theory that the thought in the mind of the speaker determines the semantic reference of a name, but simply a theory about the thought in the mind of the speaker using a name. I argue that the truth is subtly different, and points the way towards an intuitive explanation of Russell’s eccentricity. (shrink)

Although many recent free speech skeptics claim Millian credentials, they neglect the more pessimistic elements of Mill's account of human nature. Once we recover the darker elements of Mill's thought, American-style laissez-faire in the domain of expression looks significantly more attractive. Indeed, this paper argues that if Mill is correct about human nature, we have good reason to oppose recent proposed restrictions on expression and to embrace a legal regime that tolerates much speech that is false, obscene, demeaning, and even (...) hateful. While philosophers are right to worry about the substantial moral costs of such regimes, we ought to attempt to address these costs in ways that do not amount to rejecting the regimes themselves. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s mature political philosophy entails the provisionality thesis. The provisionality thesis asserts that in a world like ours, populated with beings sufficiently like us, acquired rights (rights to external objects of choice, including property, sovereignty and territory) are necessarily provisional. I motivate the standard view, which restricts the notion of provisional right to the state of nature and the transition from the state of nature to the civil condition. I then provide two textual arguments against it. I (...) conclude by reflecting on the normative implications of the provisionality thesis, arguing that they are more modest than has been formerly appreciated. (shrink)

A repulsive core force is derived which, assuming π mesons are the field particles, gives binding energies in good agreement with binding energies per nucleon of heavy nuclei. The physical model consists of a field of relatively short range, in which emission of a π meson by a nucleon and subsequent absorption by a neighboring nucleon is equivalent to a potential well. The binding energy at the equilibrium spacing of the nucleons is the self-energy of the π mesons, which is (...) calculated by analogy with classical electric fields. (shrink)

This paper defends traditional political philosophy against the challenges Gaus leverages against it in The Open Society and Its Complexities. Granting Gaus that consensus on the principles of political philosophy is not forthcoming and that complexity undermines many of our most ambitious reform efforts, the paper argues that much work remains for political philosophy as it has been practiced for centuries. This is for three reasons. First, Gaus's own defense of the open society requires resources from the very traditions that (...) he tends to dismiss. Secondly, the kinds of reform Gaus encourages us to focus on in light of complexity presuppose answers to philosophical questions, answers that philosophers have long attempted to provide. Thirdly, not all politically salient philosophical questions are aimed at action guidance. Despite the value in Gaus's analysis, I conclude that political philosophy's future will look, at least in part, like its storied past. (shrink)

A geometric interpretation of gravitation is given using general relativity. The law of gravitation is taken in the formR 44=0, whereR 44is the component of the contracted Riemann-Christoffel (Ricci) tensor representing the curvature of time. The remaining curvature components of the contracted Riemann-Christoffel tensor may or may not vanish. All that is required in addition toR 44=0 is that the Gaussian curvatureR be nowhere infinite. The conditionR 44=0 yields a nonlinear wave equation. One of the static degenerate solutions represents the (...) gravitational field surrounding a static gravitational point singularity. It is found that for this solution, the three famous predictions of general relativity are obtained in the weak-field approximation. In addition, it is found that there is a correction to the Kepler period of revolution for an orbit. (shrink)

A theoretical relationship for the electron rest mass is derived in terms of the electron charge, Planck's quantum of action, and the speed of light. The basis for this derivation is an assumption that the electron rest mass is entirely electrostatic in origin, combined with the realization that the maximum action density of the world is simply the speed of light. Planck's quantum of action becomes perspicuously associated with an elliptical microspace.

The law of gravitation is taken in the formR 44=0, whereR 44 is the time curvature component of the Ricci tensor. Space-time separable equations are developed in spherical coordinates for the nonlinear wave equation determined byR 44=0. One exact solution is examined in detail.

Radial motion of a small point mass in the gravitational field of a large point mass is investigated for the law of gravitationR 44 =0. When geodesic equations are expressed in terms of components of acceleration, it is found that the normally “attractive force” of gravitation gradually weakens as the large mass is approached, and becomes “repulsive” inside a critical nonsingular radius close to the origin of coordinates. A particle requires an infinite time to reach the origin, regardless of its (...) initial distance. Gravitational collapse, or at least violent collapse, is thus precluded. (shrink)

This paper responds to the recent situationist critique of practical rationality and decision-making. According to that critique, empirical evidence indicates that our choices are governed by morally irrelevant situational factors and not durable character traits, and rarely result from overt rational deliberation. This critique is taken to indicate that popular moral theories in the Western tradition are descriptively deficient, even if normatively plausible or desirable. But we believe that the situationist findings regarding the sources of, or influences over, our moral (...) agency do not reflect durable features of human nature, and claim that these findings are a byproduct of a deficient approach to moral education. Existing models of moral education, which are “positive” in nature, do a poor job of developing virtuous people. Instead, we argue that a “negative” approach to moral education, traceable to Locke, Smith, and Rousseau, would be more successful. This strategy represents something of a compromise between the strategies adopted by thinkers like Rachana Kamtekar : 458–491 2004), who argues that traditional moral categories escape largely untouched by findings in social psychology, and John Doris :504–530 1998) and Gilbert Harman : 87–94 2003), who argue that findings in psychology prove our traditional moral theories are defective. (shrink)

In disproof of the materialist principle, that common things exist unperceived, and in defence of the New Principle, Philonous here objects that it is inconceivable that a common thing should do so. Hylas replies that, on the contrary, we can and do think of, e.g., a tree standing alone as opposed to a tree being perceived by an observer. But Philonous counter-objects to this reply that it contains a contradiction, since it asserts that we can think of something which is (...) not thought of. (shrink)

PRELIMINARY NOTE1 Quae sint, quae fuerint, quae max futura trahantur. THE present work is not a history of political theories, of which a number of very ...

Quantum theory is one of science's most thrilling, challenging and even mysterious areas. Scientists such as Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger uncovered bizarre paradoxes in the early 20th century that seemed to destroy the fundamental assumptions of 'classical physics' - the basic laws we are taught in school. Notoriously difficult, quantum theory is nonetheless an amazing and inspiring intellectual adventure, explained here with patience, wit and clarity.

Any discussion of the relativity of categories necessarily opens up questions of prime interest for the theory of knowledge, and it appears to me that L. von Bertalanffy's paper points to certain implications which, though they were incidental to his particular approach to the problem, might repay further elaboration.

I argue that a theory of distributive justice is sensitive to desert if and only if it does not require an institutional scheme that prevents individuals from treating one another as they deserve, and requires a desert ethos. A desert ethos is a set of principles that, though not embodied in a society’s basic coercive structure, nevertheless governs interpersonal relations between citizens. These two necessary conditions are jointly sufficient for ‘giving desert its due’ in a theory of justice. I therefore (...) reject the received view that a desert-sensitive theory must endeavor to guarantee distributions patterned according to desert. (shrink)