The authors explore the history of experiments in economics, provide examples of different types of experiments and show that the growing use of experimental methods is transforming economics into an empirical science.

Not only does this book reflect the clarity and acuity of thought that characterize Wolterstorff's work, it also reflects the humane sensibilities of someone who has thought and felt deeply about these matters for a long time.

This article deals with a highly debated text, namely 2 Maccabees 12, specifically the problematic verses (38–45) which contain a theology that is distinctly non-Jewish in import. Indeed, most recent scholars concerned with this passage do not seem to be unanimous apropos the best interpretation of the events that are described, resulting in a range of different opinions concerning, inter alia, the afterlife, purgatory and/or doctrinal disputes between Pharisees and Sadducees. By means of an interpretivist or constructivist epistemology, the authors (...) advocate that normally, traditional Judaism emphasises personal, individual responsibility and accountability, whereas in this text God is portrayed as requiring material, financial payment for wrongdoing and not individual תשובה [teshuvah]. This is in contradistinction to, inter alia, Exodus 30:11–16 and theologically Jewish ‘transgression’ has clearly metamorphosed into Christian ‘sin’. In addition, Judas Maccabeus seems to have retained a half-shekel methodology (employed for Jewish men of military age – soldiers) whilst emphasising the ‘atonement for your lives’ from Exodus 30:11–16 in a more literalistic, materialistic, non-Jewish sense whilst de-emphasising the real need to maintain the Temple as well as the proper, traditional rules of תשובה. (shrink)

The concept of innateness is used to make inferences between various better-understood properties, like developmental canalization, evolutionary adaptation, heritability, species-typicality, and so on (‘innateness-related properties’). This article uses a recently-developed account of the representational content carried by inheritance systems like the genome to explain why innateness-related properties cluster together, especially in non-human organisms. Although inferences between innateness-related properties are deductively invalid, and lead to false conclusions in many actual cases, where some aspect of a phenotypic trait develops in reliance on (...) a genetic representation it will tend, better than chance, to have many of the innateness-related properties. The account also shows why inferences between innateness-related properties sometimes fail and argues that such inferences are especially misleading when applied to human psychology and behaviour because human psychological development is especially reliant on non-genetic inherited representations. (shrink)

Neste artigo lanço três tradições umas contra as outras para levantar algumas questões de pesquisa futura sobre a natureza da razão e a razão da natureza. Max Horkheimer e Theodor Adorno, da Escola de Frankfurt, sustentavam que a razão tende a dominar a natureza e que a dominação é parte da essência da razão. Dirijo-me, então, para examinar Aristóteles e aristotélicos contemporâneos, mais precisamente Mary Midgley e Alasdair MacIntyre, para mostar um recurso possível na tradição da filosofia ocidental na qual (...) a razão emerge da natureza. Usando modernos estudos de animais, Midgley e MacIntyre ampliam a visão aristotélica sobre a natureza da razão como parte de nossa natureza animal. Por fim, discuto os Lakotas, Primeina Nação dos povos da América do Norte, que tem uma visão da razão que é o espelho oposto daquela encontrada na modernidade. Essa comparação sugere que dominar a natureza não é essencial à razão. (shrink)

Cost, expected benefits, and risks are paramount in grant agencies' decisions to fund scientific research. In _Cognitive Economy,_ Nicholas Rescher outlines a general theory for the cost-effective use of intellectual resources, amplifying the theories of Charles Sanders Pierce, who stressed an “economy of research.” Rescher discusses the requirements of cooperation, communication, cognitive importance, cognitive economy, as well as the economic factors bearing on induction and simplicity. He then applies his model to several case studies and to clarifying the limits (...) imposed on science by economic considerations. (shrink)

Why are we here? Who really wrote the Bible? Was Jesus actually a messenger of God? Can science and religion be reconciled? Do we have free will? Divine Wisdom and Warning introduces a new way of using the ancient system of Gematria to solve these and other timeless questions.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

The historical researches of Louis Couturat saved the logical work of Leibniz from the oblivion of neglect and forgetfulness. They revealed that Leibniz developed in succession several versions of a “logical calculus” (calculus ratiocinatororcalculus universalis). In consequence of Couturat's investigations it has become well known that Leibniz's development of these logical calculi adumbrated the notion of a logistic system; and for these foreshadowings of the logistic treatment of formal logic Leibniz is rightly regarded as the father of symbolic logic.It is (...) clear from what has been said that it is scarcely possible to overestimate the debt which the contemporary student of Leibniz's logic owes to Couturat. This gratitude must, however, be accompanied by the realization that Couturat's own theory of logic is gravely defective. Couturat was persuaded that the extensional point of view in logic is the only one which is correct, an opinion now quite antiquated, and shared by no one. This prejudice of Couturat's marred his exposition of Leibniz's logic. It led him to battle with windmills: he viewed the logic of Leibniz as rife with shortcomings stemming from an intensional approach.The task of this paper is a re-examination of Leibniz's logic. It will consider without prejudgment how Leibniz conceived of the major formal systems he developed aslogicalcalculi – that is, these systems will be studied with a view to the interpretation or interpretations which Leibniz himself intends for them. The aim is to undo some of the damage which Couturat's preconception has done to the just understanding of Leibniz's logic and to the proper evaluation of his contribution. (shrink)

No one doubts that our experience of phenomenal consciousness—the felt redness of fire, the felt sweetness of a peach, the felt pain of a bee sting—arises from the activity of our brains. Yet the problem of explaining how this can be so seems to many theorists to be staggeringly hard. How can the wine of consciousness, the weird, ineffable, immaterial qualia that give such richness to subjective experience, conceivably arise from the water of the brain? As the philosopher Colin McGinn (...) has put it, it's like trying to explain how you can get "numbers from biscuits, or ethics from rhubarb." The philosopher Jerry Fodor recently claimed, "The revisions of our concepts and theories that imagining a solution will eventually require are likely to be very deep and very unsettling.". (shrink)

_An introduction to Thomas Hobbes as a systematic and not merely political philosopher._.

The author argues that is not obvious what it means for our beliefs and assertions to be "truth-directed", and that we need to weaken our ordinary notion of a belief if we are to deal with radical scepticism without surrendering to idealism. Topics examined also include whether there could be alien conceptual schemes and what might happen to us if we abandoned genuine belief in place of mere pragmatic acceptance. A radically new "ecological" model of knowledge is defended.

This article is an exploration of whether education can be considered a beast-like being, developed by utilising Heidegger’s philosophy to consider education from an ontotheolgical perspective. Education is a hypernym for its constituent elements; this article is exploring this hypernym as a being, whilst arguing that the growing importance of education is causing it to gain a ‘monstrous anatomy’. This argument is parallel with the Heideggerean question of ontological difference: the divide of being and Being. Ideas about education’s formation as (...) a technology and its God-like status are used to further illustrate the monstrosity of education. The theory of hyperobjects is also utilised to illuminate understanding of this being. Finally, this article explores the ways we are losing control of Education, as we have become too reliant on it to shape our view of the world. (shrink)

Epistemology is more than the theory of knowledge. Its range of concern includes not only knowledge proper but also rational belief, probability, plausibility, evidentiation, and not least, erotetics, the business of raising and resolving questions. Aristotle indicated that human inquiry is grounded in wonder; when matters are so out of the ordinary we puzzle about the reason why and seek for an explanation. With increasing sophistication, the ordinary as well as the extraordinary excites the intellect, so that questions gain an (...) increasing prominence within epistemology. Inquiry Dynamics focuses on the phenomena and theory of rational inquiry, focusing on its concern for questions and their management. An introductory chapter lays the groundwork of the book's deliberations, followed by chapter 2, explaining the basic concepts involved in the abstract logic of questions and answers and sets out the generic fundamentals of the domain. Chapters 3 and 4 expound the theoretical principles that characterize the field of question epistemology in general, clarifying the fundamental themes and theses of the subject. Chapters 5 through 9 then explore the landscape of question epistemology within science. Rescher seeks to show that there are limits-restrictions of basic principle-to our ability to resolve scientific questions. The concluding chapter argues in particular that the grand goal of an ultimate theory, one resolving all explanatory questions, has to be approached with great caution. Throughout Rescher emphasizes that a question-oriented approach to the process of inquiry serves to highlight the inherent limitations of the cognitive project. Rescher's question-oriented treatment of epistemology proceeds in the tradition of Kant and stands in decided contrast to the dominant knowledge-oriented approach originating with Descartes. He demonstrates that a concern for the issue of plausible question resolution is a necessary component of the epistemological enterprise. Inquiry Dynamics will be of interest to philosophers, scientists, and social scientists. (shrink)

. Getting and spending. Cultural Values: Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 374-382.

Many scholars claim that Abbé Sieyès (1748–1836) was the first to deploy the concept of a pouvoir constituant (constituent power) as the power that establishes a constitutional order under which the ordinary powers of government are conferred. Others find the substance of the theory to have been articulated by earlier figures such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whilst conceding that the terminology of pouvoir constituant was not used until Sieyès. What no one has observed until now is that the Scottish Presbyterian divine, (...) Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661), can lay claim to being the first to explicitly use the language of constituent power and to develop a theory of the grounds of constitutional government expressly in those terms. Rutherford argues that “the constituent is above that which is constituted,” and thus draws a clear distinction between constituent and constituted power. Furthermore, he vests the former ultimately in the people while the King possesses only constituted power. Rutherford presented a theory of constituent power that had all the essential elements of the theory of pouvour constituant we find in Sieyès, albeit a theory embedded in a political and intellectual context as different from that of Sieyès as his is from our own. (shrink)

In 1995, the eyeless (ey) gene was dubbed the “master‐regulator” of eye development in Drosophila. Not only is ey required for eye development, but its misexpression can convert many other tissues into eye, including legs, wings and antennae.(1) ey is remarkable for its ability to drive coordinate differentiation of the multiple cell types that have to differentiate in a very precise pattern to construct the fly eye, and for its power to override the previous differentiation programs of many other diverse (...) tissues. Even more remarkable, the ey homolog Pax6 and homologs of other eye determination genes from Drosophila are also required for eye development in vertebrates,(2,3) prompting reassessment of the evolution of vision throughout the animal kingdom.(4,5) Now Kumar and Moses have published a study that throws a new light on ey function in Drosophila.(6) According to their work, ey becomes a master regulator of eye development much later than previously thought, and is regulated by signalling through the Notch and EGFR signaling pathways. BioEssays 23:763–766, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The object of the present discussion is to show that the analysis of indirect discourse obtained when the concept of assertion is construed as a relationship that obtains between the asserting person and the asserted proposition—along the familiar lines proposed by Church [3, 4]—is entirely adequate of itself to circumvent the semantical paradoxes in which indirect discourse is involved.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Cognitive Complications examines fundamental issues in the theory of knowledge from the perspective of philosophical pragmatism. Rescher seeks to show how a pragmatic, user-oriented approach to knowledge can elucidate key issues of the field.

Reasoning with conditionals is often thought to be non-monotonic, but there is no incompatibility with classical logic, and no need to formalise inference itself as probabilistic. When the addition of a new premise leads to abandonment of a previously compelling conclusion reached by modus ponens, for example, this is generally because it is hard to think of a model in which the conditional and the new premise are true.

Das Ziel der Systematisierung der Erkenntnis und der Darstellung alles Wissens im Rahmen einer zusammenhängenden Einheit kann zurückverfolgt werden bis in das klassische Altertum. Aber Leibniz war der erste, der sich beschrieb als jemanden, der „ein System der Philosophic“ bietet. Für Leibniz isf ein kognitives System ein strukturierter Körper von Informationen, der gemäß taxonomischer und erklärender Prinzipien organisiert ist und bestrebt ist, Systematik in die Struktur sowohl von Begriffen als auch von Prinzipien zu bringen. Eine solche Systematik der Philosophic war (...) für Leibniz gefordert durch ontologische Rationalität: Die Wirklichkeit selbst stellt ein System dar. Leibniz verstand „System“ jedoch nicht im Sinne des axiomatischen, euklidschen Modells. Unter dem Eindruck von verschiedenen am Calculus gewonnenen Einsichten verbindet Leibniz* System mit Hilfe der Mini-Max-Methode die Erfordernisse des Ökonomieprinzips mit denen des Prinzips der Mannigfaltigkeit. Die Architektonik des Systems ist für Leibniz von unendlicher Komplexität. (shrink)