This essay, part of a special issue on the Warburg Institute and Library, offers personal recollections of scholars whom the author encountered there as a student in the early 1970s, including E. H. Gombrich, Otto Kurz, Michael Baxandall, Frances Yates, D. P. Walker, A. I. Sabra, Michael Podro, Michael Screech, Arnaldo Momigliano, and Nikolaus Pevsner. The author's focus is on differences between the milieu of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, as it had been in Hamburg, and the ethos of the Warburg (...) Institute in London. The key document for establishing this contrast is an anonymous review — by Edgar Wind — attacking Gombrich's biography of Aby Warburg, which was published in 1970. Wind found the new Warburg circle “Lilliputian” in comparison with the old Hamburg circle, to which he had belonged. This essay disputes Wind's finding, based on its author's own experience, as well as on his sympathy with the reasoned empirical approach of Gombrich, Baxandall, and others at the London Warburg to issues that Aby Warburg had raised when the Library was in Germany. (shrink)

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is extremely heterogeneous clinically and genetically. There is a pressing need for a better understanding of the heterogeneity of ASD based on scientifically rigorous approaches centered on systematic evaluation of the clinical and research utility of both phenotype and genotype markers. This paper presents a holistic PheWAS-inspired method to identify meaningful associations between ASD phenotypes and genotypes. We generate two types of phenotype-phenotype (p-p) graphs: a direct graph that utilizes only phenotype data, and an indirect graph (...) that incorporates genotype as well as phenotype data. We introduce a novel methodology for fusing the direct and indirect p-p networks in which the genotype data is incorporated into the phenotype data in varying degrees. The hypothesis is that the heterogeneity of ASD can be distinguished by clustering the p-p graph. The obtained graphs are clustered using network-oriented clustering techniques, and results are evaluated. The most promising clusterings are subsequently analyzed for biological and domain-based relevance. Clusters obtained delineated different aspects of ASD, including differentiating ASD-specific symptoms, cognitive, adaptive, language and communication functions, and behavioral problems. Some of the important genes associated with the clusters have previous known associations to ASD. We found that clusters based on integrated genetic and phenotype data were more effective at identifying relevant genes than clusters constructed from phenotype information alone. These genes included five with suggestive evidence of ASD association and one known to be a strong candidate. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers of modern physics came to the conclusion that the problem of how objectivity is constituted (rather than merely given) can no longer be avoided, and therefore that a transcendental approach in the spirit of Kant is now philosophically relevant. The usual excuse for skipping this task is that the historical form given by Kant to transcendental epistemology has been challenged by Relativity and Quantum Physics. However, the true challenge is not to force modern physics into (...) a rigidly construed static version of Kant's philosophy, but to provide Kant's method with flexibility and generality. In this book, the top specialists of the field pin down the methodological core of transcendental epistemology that must be used in order to throw light on the foundations of modern physics. First, the basic tools Kant used for his transcendental reading of Newtonian Mechanics are examined, and then early transcendental approaches of Relativistic and Quantum Physics are revisited. Transcendental procedures are also applied to contemporary physics, and this renewed transcendental interpretation is finally compared with structural realism and constructive empiricism. The book will be of interest to scientists, historians and philosophers who are involved in the foundational problems of modern physics. (shrink)

Central to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society was the description and justification of the method adopted and advocated by the Fellows of the Society, for it was thought that it was their method which distinguished them from ancients, dogmatists, sceptics, and contemporary natural philosophers such as Descartes. The Fellows saw themselves as furthering primarily a novel method, rather than a system, of philosophy, and the History gave expression to this corporate self-perception. However, the History's description of their method (...) was not necessarily accurate. Rather, as will be argued below, by a combination of subtle misrepresentation and selective exposition, Sprat portrayed a method which would further the aims of social and ecclesiastical stability and material prosperity, essential for the Royal Society since its continued existence depended upon the creation of a social basis for the institutionalized pursuit of natural philosophy. Some link had to be forged between the activities of the Society and the intellectual and social aspirations of the Restoration. To understand the intent and meaning of Sprat's History and the method there portrayed, we must therefore look to the institutional needs which it fulfilled. (shrink)

Three recent empirical studies on the use of placebos and two papers arguing for the deliberate use of placebos in clinical practice are analysed. Empirical studies demonstrate that placebos are commonly used. The concept of the placebo is currently understood in different ways, many of which do not refer to inert substances or treatments. The papers arguing for the use of placebos are shown to fail to make their case.

If the agent responsible for an action is to be given praise or blame by the moral community for that action, then accurate responsibility ascriptions must be made. Since the moral community may have to evaluate the actions of corporate agents, care must be taken to insure that the assumption of Methodological Individualism (MI) does not infect that process. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that accurate responsibility ascriptions will be made in cases connected with corporate action as long as corporate (...) scapegoating may occur. Because corporate scapegoating is a behavior pattern that attempts to falsify correct responsibility ascriptions it will be of interest to the moral theorist. Once I have considered three objections to the idea of corporate scapegoating I shall offer a fictional description of it found in Ayn Rand''s work,Atlas Shrugged. Finally, I shall raise a question about its present day use by corporations in our society. (shrink)

Justice Stephen J. Field was the champion of a form of liberalism often said to be especially friendly to capitalism, the approach to the Constitution traditionally identified with “Lochnerism,” i.e., a laissez-faire oriented judicial activism. More recently a form of judicial revisionism has arisen, challenging the accepted descriptions of “Lochnerism” and of Field's jurisprudence. This article is an attempt to extend the revisionist approach by arriving at a more satisfactory understanding of the grounding of Field's jurisprudence in the natural rights (...) philosophy. Field, it turns out, orienting around natural rights, was not so unambiguously friendly to capitalism as previous generations of scholars maintained, but his approach is surely friendlier than the constitutional theories that have replaced natural rights since Field's day. (shrink)

In their introduction to this volume, Ram and Leake usefully distinguish between task goals and learning goals. Task goals are desired results or states in an external world, while learning goals are desired mental states that a learner seeks to acquire as part of the accomplishment of task goals. We agree with the fundamental claim that learning is an active and strategic process that takes place in the context of tasks and goals (see also Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett, and Thagard, 1986). (...) But there are important questions about the nature of goals that have rarely been addressed. First, how can a cognitive system deal with incompatible task goals? Someone may want both to get lots of research done and to relax and have fun with his or her friends. Learning how to accomplish both these tasks will take place in the context of goals that cannot be fully realized together. Second, how are goals chosen in the first place and why are some goals judged to be more important than others? People do not simply come equipped with goals and priorities: we sometimes have to learn what is important to us by adjusting the importance of goals in the context of other compatible and incompatible goals. This paper presents a theory and a computational model of how goals can be adopted or rejected in the context of decision making. In contrast to classical decision theory, it views decision making as a process not only of choosing actions but also of evaluating goals. Our theory can therefore be construed as concerned with the goal-directed learning of goals. (shrink)

A new realist interpretation of quantum mechanics is introduced. Quantum systems are shown to have two kinds of properties: the usual ones described by values of quantum observables, which are called extrinsic, and those that can be attributed to individual quantum systems without violating standard quantum mechanics, which are called intrinsic. The intrinsic properties are classified into structural and conditional. A systematic and self-consistent account is given. Much more statements become meaningful than any version of Copenhagen interpretation would allow. A (...) new approach to classical properties and measurement problem is suggested. A quantum definition of classical states is proposed. (shrink)

Recently, Alper, Bridger, Earman and Norton have all proposed examples of dynamic systems that, in their view, are incompatible with classical (Newtonian) mechanics. In the first section of the present paper I shall show that their arguments are all undermined by the same fallacy. The second section proves that their conclusions of incompatibility are indeed false, and that what we are really looking at are new forms of indeterminist evolution of the same kind as that found recently in the literature (...) on supertasks. In the third section of the paper, I argue that one of these new forms of evolution is particularly interesting, and that analysis of it leads to a new vision of the relation between interaction by contact and impenetrability. 1. Introduction2. The fallacy3. Understanding some physical supertasks4. A philosophically interesting implication: contact and impenetrability. (shrink)

The author clarifies the existential philosophy that is implicit in Kurt Goldstein's philosophy of organism (Goldstein, 1963; 1995). Situated in response to the growing trend that psychological phenomena are reducible to the nervous system, the author argues for the reverse: that the significance of nervous system activity can only be understood by viewing it as background to foreground performances. Like the organization of perception into meaningful figure-- ground Gestalts, the existential modes of embodiment, sociality, temporality, spatiality, and attunement are organized (...) together to accomplish foreground performances. It is only within this context that the activity of the nervous system may be understood as significant or insignificant. Speech is given as an example. The article concludes with a commentary on how the trend of reducing psychological phenomena to neurological phenomena has impaired our understanding of brain disorders and psychological disorders. (shrink)

Problem: There is currently a great deal of mysticism, uncritical hype, and blind adulation of imaginary mathematical and physical entities in popular culture. We seek to explore what a radical constructivist perspective on mathematical entities might entail, and to draw out the implications of this perspective for how we think about the nature of mathematical entities. Method: Conceptual analysis. Results: If we want to avoid the introduction of entities that are ill-defined and inaccessible to verification, then formal systems need to (...) avoid introduction of potential and actual infinities. If decidability and consistency are desired, keep formal systems finite. Infinity is a useful heuristic concept, but has no place in proof theory. Implications: We attempt to debunk many of the mysticisms and uncritical adulations of Gödelian arguments and to ground mathematical foundations in intersubjectively verifiable operations of limited observers. We hope that these insights will be useful to anyone trying to make sense of claims about the nature of formal systems. If we return to the notion of formal systems as concrete, finite systems, then we can be clear about the nature of computations that can be physically realized. In practical terms, the answer is not to proscribe notions of the infinite, but to recognize that these concepts have a different status with respect to their verifiability. We need to demarcate clearly the realm of free creation and imagination, where platonic entities are useful heuristic devices, and the realm of verification, testing, and proof, where infinities introduce ill-defined entities that create ambiguities and undecidable, ill-posed sets of propositions. Constructivist content: The paper attempts to extend the scope of radical constructivist perspective to mathematical systems, and to discuss the relationships between radical constructivism and other allied, yet distinct perspectives in the debate over the foundations of mathematics, such as psychological constructivism and mathematical constructivism. (shrink)

This paper explores the consequences of the oft ignored fact that public health insurance must actually be supplied by the state. Depending how the state is modeled, different health insurance outcomes are expected. The benevolent model of the state does not account for many actual features of public health insurance systems. One alternative is to use a standard public choice model, where state action is determined by interaction between self-interested actors. Another alternative—related to a strand in public choice theory—is to (...) model the state as Leviathan. Interestingly, some proponents of public health insurance use an implicit Leviathan model, but not consistently. The Leviathan model of the state explains many features of public health insurance: its uncontrolled growth, its tendency toward monopoly, its capacity to buy trust and loyalty from the common people, its surveillance ability, its controlling nature, and even the persistence of its inefficiencies and waiting lines. (shrink)

Phenomenology and experimental psychology have been largely interested in the same thing when it comes to attention. By building on the work of Aron Gurwitsch, especially his ideas of attention and restructuration, this paper attempts to articulate common ground in psychology and phenomenology of attention through discussion of a new way to think about multistability in some phenomena. What psychology views as an attentionality-intentionality phenomenon, phenomenology views as an intentionality-attentionality phenomenon. The proposal is that an awareness of this restructuring of (...) attentionality and intentionality can benefit both approaches to attention. After reviewing Husserl’s position on attentionality and intentionality, this paper examines multistable phenomena, redefines the attentional transformation called restructuring, discusses disciplinary perspectives on attention and gives an example using common ground. (shrink)