The approach to critical realism, by D. Drake.--Pragmatism versus the pragmatist, by A. O. Lovejoy.--Critical realism and the possibility of knowledge, by J. B. Pratt.--The problem of error, by A. K. Rogers.--Three proofs of realism, by G. Santayana.--Knowledge and its categories, by R. W. Sellars.--On the nature of the datum, by C. A. Strong.

Stone, J. Thoughts on supposed "Death of law".--Krishna Iyer, V. R. Jurisprudence and jurisconscience.--Sharma, G. S. Law and social change in India.--Sharma, S. D. The concept of justice in Manu.--Chand, H. Legal values for a developing country.--Ramarao, T. S. The new international law relating to the rights and duties of States.--Sinha, B. S. Custom and customary law in Indian jurisprudence.--Mazumdar, D. L. Techno-economic structure of our industrial society.--Subrahamanian, N. Law and social change.

This volume brings together flux essays by an eminent scholar on the origins, development, and import of Kant's philosophy, chiefly in its metaphysical aspects. Four of these were separately published between 1924 and 1926, but until now have been difficult to obtain, despite great demand. Their appearance here will be welcomed. The thesis emerging from these studies is that the critical philosophy originates in metaphysical probings concerning the nature and presuppositions of being, and issues in doctrines which, despite psychological, epistemological, (...) and ethical presentation, are intended to have definite ontological import. --L. K. B. (shrink)

There is a great deal of interest in the relation between the status of women and fertility—by humanists, academics and policy-makers concerned with bringing about fertility declines. The three aspects of women's status most frequently linked to fertility are their education, employment and type of husband-wife interaction. Research to date has not given us a clear and consistent explanation of these relationships and has not confirmed causality. The effects of these three factors on fertility vary considerably across national boundaries and (...) even within different sectors of the same society. Some of the assumptions held by both researchers and policymakers must be re-thought in the interests of more useful future research and of sounder policy. (shrink)

The wounds inflicted by Homer's warriors fascinate readers, since they are vividly described and often curious or even grotesque. Commentators have struggled to explain some of them since commentaries began: some of the explanations are more curious than the wounds. Not surprisingly, the commentaries have not usually been graced by a high standard of anatomical or, especially, physiological background knowledge, and are often misleading in these respects. When such knowledge is applied, some wounds which have appeared problematic become realistic, but (...) some which have been accepted as straightforward become problematic. (shrink)

A time-symmetric formulation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics is developed by applying two consecutive boundary conditions onto solutions of a time- symmetrized wave equation. From known probabilities in ordinary quantum mechanics, a time-symmetric parameter P0 is then derived that properly weights the likelihood of any complete sequence of measurement outcomes on a quantum system. The results appear to match standard quantum mechanics, but do so without requiring a time-asymmetric collapse of the wavefunction upon measurement, thereby realigning quantum mechanics with an important (...) fundamental symmetry. (shrink)

The covariant Klein-Gordon equation requires twice the boundary conditions of the Schrödinger equation and does not have an accepted single-particle interpretation. Instead of interpreting its solution as a probability wave determined by an initial boundary condition, this paper considers the possibility that the solutions are determined by both an initial and a final boundary condition. By constructing an invariant joint probability distribution from the size of the solution space, it is shown that the usual measurement probabilities can nearly be recovered (...) in the non-relativistic limit, provided that neither boundary constrains the energy to a precision near ℏ/t 0 (where t 0 is the time duration between the boundary conditions). Otherwise, deviations from standard quantum mechanics are predicted. (shrink)

Provider claims to conscientious objection have generated a great deal of heated debate in recent years. However, the conflicts that arise when providers make claims to the "conscience" are only a subset of the more fundamental challenges that arise in health care practice when patients and providers come into conflict. In this piece, the author provides an account of patient-provider conflict from within the moral tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. He argues that the practice of health care providers should be (...) understood as a form of practical reasoning and that this practical reasoning must necessarily incorporate both "moral" and "professional" commitments. In order to understand how the practical reasoning of provider should account for the needs and commitments of the patient and vice versa, he explores the account of dependence provided by Alasdair MacIntyre in his book Dependent Rational Animals. MacIntyre argues that St. Thomas’ account of practical reasoning should be extended and adapted to account for the embodied vulnerability of all humans. In light of this insight, providers must view patients not only as the subjects of their moral reflection but also as fellow humans upon whom the provider depends for feedback on the effectiveness and relevance of her practical reasoning. The author argues that this account precludes responsive providers from adopting either moral or professional conclusions on the appropriateness of interventions outside the individual circumstances that arise in particular situations. The adoption of this orientation toward patients will neither eradicate provider-patient conflict nor compel providers to perform interventions to which they object. But this account does require that providers attend meaningfully to the suffering of patients and seek feedback on whether their intervention has effectively addressed that suffering. (shrink)

Mind uploading speculation and debate often concludes that a procedure described as gradual in-place replacement preserves personal identity while a procedure described as destructive scan-and-copy produces some other identity in the target substrate such that personal identity is lost along with the biological brain. This paper demonstrates a chain of reasoning that establishes metaphysical equivalence between these two methods in terms of preserving personal identity.

Three short essays on the personality and thought of the Spanish American philologist and humanist, brought together on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death.--L. K. B.

A metaphysical scheme which is both a philosophy and a personal religion, presented confessionally in four terse and lyrical essays. The basic concepts are authenticity, solitude, heroism, act, life and death. God is conceived as finite and multiple, engendered through history, "the fundamental meaning toward which converge the most intense fibres of the heroism which forms our history." --L. K. B.

This book professes to give a semantic analysis of the main concepts of classical and quantum physics. The author holds that the task of philosophy of science is to explicate the meanings of scientific theories, laws, and hypotheses by formal reconstruction; semantic rules are a necessary part of such a reconstruction. Beginning with an extremely, indeed fatally, simplified treatment of the required concepts of logical syntax and semantics, he proceeds to discuss in non-technical language the concepts of the chief physical (...) theories, and concludes with a description of the methodology of theory construction and confirmation. His only unusual thesis is that, contrary to what physicists tell us, models still essentially underlie all physical theories and constitute the link between theory and experiment on which must be based the semantic rules needed to supplement attempts at formal reconstruction. The strength of the book lies not in its semantic emphasis but in its stress on the hypothetico-deductive character of modern exact science, as opposed to the inductive accounts imputed to empiricists. --L. K. B. (shrink)

A "biblico-theological" study of certain aspects of the scripturally revealed will of God for man's conduct, aiming "to show the basic unity and continuity of the biblical ethic." --L. K. B.

A disciple's exposition of the semi-mystical system of Msgr. Mario Sturzo, drawing solely on the latter's La Filosofia dell' Avvenire. Supposedly a critical re-thinking of the system, the author proposes with an air of daring to alter some of Sturzo's verbal formulas. --L. K. B.

A mathematically valuable but technical contribution to the algebraic study of the semantics of formalized languages.--L. K. B.

A systematic presentation of Buddhist philosophy from the Madhyamika standpoint, combining careful documentation and technical precision with effective explications in terms of Western concepts. Often misunderstood as nihilism, the Madhyamika system is here presented as an absolutism which employs a negative dialectic to expose the incompetency of reason to grasp ultimate reality, yet affirms a supra-rational intuitional union with it. Conceptual construction is the source of bondage and pain; freedom is made possible by the critical renunciation of conceptualization but is (...) realized only in the positive, immediate intellectual intuition of the Absolute. This system is presented sympathetically yet not uncritically as a live philosophical alternative by no means incommensurable with our major systems.--L. K. B. (shrink)

A timely and competently argued case for a broadened conception of rationality, this book attacks the currently orthodox dogma that rational justification must proceed according to the model either of logico-mathematical deduction or "piecemeal inductive engineering," and tries positively to clarify the concept of such justification in important cases where these models are inadequate. The use of reason is considered first in the context of political theory, then in ethics, finally in terms of generalized philosophical methodology. The traditional modes of (...) rational justification are found at best adequate only for propositions, whereas an adequate world view must involve non-propositional modes of understanding, "decisions in action," which infect not just ethics but every sphere of theoretical activity, and which require their own appropriate modes of justification. -- L. K. B. (shrink)

The report of a special commission engaged by the National Book Committee, Inc. to make an inquiry into the theory of censorship and the freedom to read. It presents 1. a philosophical, sociological, and legal analysis of the grounds and implications of censorship, 2. recommendations concerning the needed systematic empirical investigation into the effects of books, the formation of reading taste, etc., and 3. suggestions as to immediate action.--L. K. B.

An etymological proof of the title; presented in a "spirit of fun" and to be taken in the same spirit.--L. K. B.

A reprint of Freud's lectures of 1910. In his philosophically critical preface, Allers briefly but effectively points up logical and scientific weaknesses in Freud's theories, attributes their peculiar success to the appealing ambiguity of approach as between the scientific and the historical, then finds their chief merit in furthering the recognition of man's "historicity."--L. K. B.

A rewritten version, following the same plan and theme, of the author's earlier work of the same title. New chapters are added on Unamuno's ideas of fiction and of reality. The bibliographical appendix, with brief comments, is brought up-to-date. The unifying stress is on the "incessant fluctuation" between opposites, such as reason and the irrational, as the source of Unamuno's originality. Sympathetically expository rather than critical, this brief sketch deliberately sacrifices precision and analysis for the sake of "interiorizacion"--probably the most (...) profitable introductory approach to such a thinker.--L. K. B. (shrink)

A brief study, through certain dialogues of Alfonso de Valdes, of the form taken by Erasmianism in the peculiar cultural milieu of 16th-century Spain.--L. K. B.

A collection of six unrelated articles by as many authors. First come three scholarly studies, dealing with causality in Aristotle, St. Augustine's metaphysics of created being, and St. Thomas as a commentator on Aristotle. The fourth is an exposition of Hegel's views on scepticism. Next comes a reconstruction, within the scholastic spirit, of "classical formal logic." The concluding and most interesting article is a bibliographical survey of recent works in the history of ancient philosophies. --L. K. B.

A collection of essays on various aspects of philosophy of science, written around the turn of the century by a perceptive historian of science and methodologist who, under the influence of Peirce, Mach and Peano, anticipated many basic doctrines of the later semantically oriented analytic philosophy. The short introduction discusses Vailati's viewpoint in connection with his chief contemporaries; a brief biography and bibliography are provided. --L. K. B.

Five previously published articles dealing with various topics in philosophy of history. They center on the problem of a metaphysics adequate to a radical emphasis on history over against nature and to a conception of values as emergent through history.--L. K. B.

Although it deals with the important problem of the metaphysical implications of linguistic structure and the basis for selection of a cognitive language, and contains some interesting theses, this book is made almost useless by its imprecise and unclear argumentation and awkward style.--L. K. B.

This presentation of scientific methodology tries to avoid metaphysical issues without being unphilosophical. Drawing from a wide range of material, the book describes clearly but rather generally what empirical scientists are concerned with, how they proceed, what they accomplish. The five parts deal with the roles in science of definitions, physical laws and theories, induction, and the interplay of reason and immediate experience. Despite the slant indicated by the many quotations from St. Thomas and Aristotle--peculiarly but pleasantly combined with passages (...) from Einstein, Schrödinger, de Broglie, Eddington, etc.--a rather objective presentation is achieved.--L. K. B. (shrink)

A meticulous examination of the logical and axiological principles of analogical inference in legal reasoning. The first part presents an elementary but useful survey of traditional and modern logical analyses of analogy and analogical inference. In the second part, these concepts are examined in their juridical applications. Much is made of the conclusion that analogical inference cannot be rendered "binding" by logical considerations alone; to make up for this in legal reasoning, axiological principles must be employed.--L. K. B.

A dry record, without argument, of conclusions reached on a wide variety of topics through fifty years of scholastic philosophizing.--L. K. B.

An over-compact but vivid metaphysical scheme woven out of categories such as process, endurance, self-realization, etc., and stressing a contrast between "cosmic" reality, a perpetual activity whose unity lies in the urge for endurance of which it is the self-realization, and "anthropocosmic" reality, a perishing complex of realized finite purposes. The vocabulary and style are obscure, and originality is more is evidence than fruitfulness.--L. K. B.

A sympathetic exposition, carefully documented, of the meaning and function of aesthetic concepts in the Enneads. The Plotinian dialectic is compared to the artistic process. Aesthetic experience is found analogous to the mystical, and artistic intuition similar to ecstasy.--L.K.B.

An attempt to clarify and establish systematically foundations for a "formal" science of axiology, relating it to the social sciences and humanities as mathematics is related to the natural sciences.--L. K. B.

Begins with a critique of traditional metaphysics and of modern natural science, disclosing a common root in the more basic fact of creative symbolic expression, which is held to be the key to a radical and rectifying refounding of metaphysics. Expression and symbolization, are held to be essentially constitutive of human existence, of knowledge and of the known, and to be historical communal and creative. The merit of the work is in facing the question of the import for metaphysics of (...) the recent insights into the nature and importance of symbolization. The claims are sometimes too strong, but the discussions, though repetitious, are generally built on sound insights and wide learning, and are often illuminating. --L. K. B. (shrink)

A concise study in Thomistic theory of knowledge and philosophy of science, aiming primarily to mediate the controversy, within the Thomist camp, between Maritain and his opponents over "the Science-Philosophy problem": is science a field of knowledge distinct from philosophy, and if so wherein? Against both Maritain and his opponents the author argues for a more basic distinction between metaphysics and philosophy of nature; but in favor of Maritain he supports the separation of certain empiriological sciences, along with mathematics, from (...) philosophy of nature. -- L. K. B. (shrink)

A comparative study of Zumel's and other scholastic theories concerning the influence of the understanding or reason upon the will.--L. K. B.

A remarkably condensed statement of the main features of Ortega's philosophy, organized "biographically" around three stages of his intellectual development, termed "objectivism," "perspectivism," and "ratio-vitalism," with chief attention given to the last. The presentation is marked by a soberness unusual in writers on Ortega. As a result, a certain fairness and balance are achieved, yet not at the cost of any adequacy to the vitality of Ortega's own thought.--L. K. B.