We show that all QE rings of prime power characteristic are constructed in a straightforward way out of three components: a filtered Boolean power of a finite field, a nilpotent Jacobson radical, and the ring Z p n or the Witt ring W 2 (F 4 ) (which is the characteristic four analogue of the Galois field with four elements).

This essay responds to the argument that Jonathan Riley offers in the February 2013 issue of Political Theory for rendering Isaiah Berlin’s theory of pluralism consistent with his commitment to negative liberty. I show that the “standard of humanity” that Riley attributes to Berlin fails to take account of Berlin’s distinction between “political” liberty (which has nothing to do with our humanity as such) and what Berlin calls “basic” liberty (which does). Consequently, Riley ends up conflating the conditions for living (...) in a decent society (one which respects a minimal core set of human rights) with being a human being. And this leads him to make the further, mistaken assumption that humans need to “exercise” their generic human capacities in order to remain human and not become, in Riley’s words, “robots or moral idiots.” While Riley’s essay is a valuable contribution to our understanding of what we might call Berlin’s ethic of human rights, it ultimately fails in its effort to show that the domain of human rights constitutes Berlin’s standard of humanity (as opposed to decency), and therefore it fails to show that normal human beings must assign overriding moral priority to a modicum of political liberty in order to secure their humanity. (shrink)

Background: Engaging in end-of-life care considerations is beneficial when the time is right. The purpose of this study is to provide a valid instrument to assess peoples readiness for end-of-life conversations before they are initiated.Materials and Methods: A community sample was recruited in study one for exploratory factor analysis of a 13-item questionnaire. In study two, psychometric properties were analyzed with structural equation modeling in a population affected by cancer. Convergent and discriminant validity were assessed with questionnaires measuring distress, depression, (...) anxiety, fear of progression, and distress of death and dying.Results: In study one exploratory factor analysis resulted in three subscales readiness, communication, and values with a possible common factor for a community sample. In study two the three-factor solution with 13 items was not supported for cancer patients. Factor structure was adapted to 12 items with one common factor readiness. Model fit was good: χ2 = 59.18, p>0.05, with χ2/df = 1.184, rRMSEA = 0.053, and rSRMR = 0.072. Convergent validity was supported by moderate correlations to trait gratitude, ratings of readiness to provide a living will or talk with family about the end of life. Divergent validity was supported by no or small correlation with distress, depression, general and death anxiety and fear of progression, respectively.Conclusions: Results support usage of the REOLC Scale in different settings with adapted factor structure. The questionnaire is interpreted as valid and reliable instrument to assess objective readiness for end-of-life conversations. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin, 1909-1997 John Edward Christopher Hill, 1912-2003 Rodney Howard Hilton, 1916-2002 Morris Keith Hopkins, 1934-2004 Thomas Peter Ruffell Laslett, 1915-2001 Geoffrey Marshall, 1929-2003 John Smith Roskell, 1913-1998 Isaac Schapera, 1905-2003 Judah Benzion Segal, 1912-2003 John Cyril Smith, 1922-2003 Richard Arthur Wollheim, 1923-2003.

The author exemplifies the congruency of essential foundations between the critical realism of the Berlin School of Gestalt Psychology (Gestalt theory) and Nicolai Hartmann`s Critical Ontology. For instance, this congruency manifests in the importance given to critical-realistic epistemology - purified from idealistic prejudices, not least prejudices such as production-theoretical ones - connected with an unconditional phenomenology. Altogether, it results in a shared critical distance from scholars of Brentano, such as Husserl and Meinong, as well as from Neo-Kantianism.

Summary The author exemplifies the congruency of essential foundations between the critical realism of the Berlin School of Gestalt Psychology (Gestalt theory) and Nicolai Hartmann’s Critical Ontology. For instance, this congruency manifests in the importance given to critical-realistic epistemology – purified from idealistic prejudices, not least prejudices such as production-theoretical ones – connected with an unconditional phenomenology. Altogether, it results in a shared critical distance from scholars of Brentano, such as Husserl and Meinong, as well as from Neo-Kantianism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Paul Oskar Kristeller 1905–1999Edward P. MahoneyPaul Oskar Kristeller was without doubt one of the most productive and accomplished scholars of this century. He received an excellent education in the classics at the Mommsen-Gymnasium in his native Berlin before going to the University of Heidelberg in 1923. There he pursued studies in a wide range of subjects, including medieval history, German literature, physics, and art history. The philosophy professors who (...) much influenced him both at Heidelberg and at Freiburg and Marburg were Ernst Hoffman, Karl Jaspers, Richard Kroner, and Martin Heidegger. In 1929 he received his doctorate from Heidelberg for his dissertation Der Begriff der Seele in der Ethik des Plotin, which was directed by Hoffman and published at Tübingen the same year. He then went to Berlin, where he engaged in formal studies in classical philology before going to Freiburg to do postgraduate work in philosophy with Heidegger during the years 1931 to 1933. Heidegger approved a study of Marsilio Ficino as Kristeller’s Habili-tationschrift and helped him to secure a fellowship enabling him to do research on Ficino and to begin writing. After visiting Italy during this period and taking into account the changed political scene in Germany, Kristeller decided in 1934 to move to Italy permanently. He taught in Florence in a high school for German Jewish students until he secured in 1935, with the help of Giovanni Gentile, a lectureship in German at the Scuola Superiore and the University of Pisa. He maintained throughout his academic career a personal and warm attachment to the Scuola Superiore. Moreover, he enjoyed throughout his subsequent career a warm and personal friendship with various Italian scholars that was first developed during his Italian stay in the thirties.While still in Italy, Kristeller completed his book on Ficino in 1937; he prepared an Italian version the next year. However, both the German and Italian versions would be published only years later. During this period he also engaged in manuscript studies in the major Italian cities, searching in particular for Ficino manuscripts. The result of these labors was his two-volume work, Supplementum Ficinianum: Marsilii Ficini Philosophi Platonici Opuscula Inedita et Dispersa, which was published by the Scuola Normale in 1937. He considered his “teachers” in manuscript studies to be Giovanni Cardinal Mercati, Monsignor Auguste Pelzer, and Ludwig Bertalot. Giovanni Gentile aided the publication of Kristeller’s Supplementum Ficinianum and subsequently helped him to emigrate to the United States. Kristeller always maintained a loyalty to Gentile and felt gratitude to him for extending him such help.In 1938 Kristeller lost his position at Pisa because of the Fascist anti-Semitic laws, but he was permitted to go to Rome where he assisted Bertalot in manuscript research at the Vatican library. Through the intervention of Roland H. Bainton, Dean P. Lockwood, Dom Anselm Strittmater, O.S.B., and other American [End Page 758] friends Kristeller was able to leave for the United States. He arrived at New York in February 1939 and spent the Spring term at Yale University. He was given an adjunct position at Columbia University for the fall term, holding the rank of Associate until 1948, when he was made an Associate Professor of Philosophy. By that time he had established himself as a major force in the development of Renaissance studies in the United States. His book on Ficino was translated into English as The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino and published in 1943 by the Columbia University Press. The Italian version was published at Florence in 1953; a revised edition, containing a new bibliography that had been brought up to date, appeared in 1988.Kristeller published a large number of articles on a wide range of topics, establishing himself as a major interpreter of the significance of Renaissance humanism as well as a leading authority not only on Ficino and Renaissance Platonism but also on Pietro Pomponazzi and Renaissance Aristotelianism. He developed at Columbia bonds of friendship with Ernest A. Moody and John Herman Randall, Jr., both of whom had strong interests in late-medieval Aristotelianism. With Randall and Ernst Cassirer he prepared what would become a bestseller, the Renaissance Philosophy of Man: Selections... (shrink)

Generals always prepare for the last war.—Winston ChurchillYet in the 18th century, European thinkers noticed that social transformations had been accelerating for several thousand years; subsequent historical knowledge has made this observation more graphic and global. How long can the acceleration regime continue? In 1958, John von Neumann used the mathematical ‘singularity’ concept apropos of this subject, and the sonorous term was soon accepted in the humanities.The conceptual intrigue has become still more fascinating since a series of independent calculations demonstrated (...) that the acceleration period was not limited by human history and prehistory but embraced 4.5 billion years of biosphere evolution in tune with a simple logarithmic law. This is one of the epoch-making and surprising discoveries in the early 21st century. Continents have been drifting on Earth over billions of years, climate changing repeatedly, meteorites falling down and volcanoes blowing up—yet, the phase tra .. (shrink)

Caster Semenya, a South African 18-year-old, won the 800-metre track running title at the Berlin World Athletics Championships in 2009. Only 3 h later, her gender was being harshly contested. The investigation of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) was neither discreet nor respectful of her privacy. Caster's case has implications for the ethics of sports and debates about gender and enhancement, and for the philosophical debate about the nature of categories and the classification of people. The IAAF has (...) not disclosed the results of their tests on Caster, and the South African Ministry of Sport has decreed that in any case she can continue running with women in her own country. But could a scientific or medical test offer uncontroversial answers regarding Caster's gender? The concept of ‘gender’ is partly a social construction. The authors argue that ethics may guide science and medicine at addressing such questions. (shrink)

In two chapters of Enn. II.9 [33], Plotinus discusses the Gnostic idea that the creation of the world is due to the ‘decline’ of a principle that he variously calls Soul or Sophia. The identity of Plotinus' Gnostics is notoriously difficult to establish with any degree of precision; I can only note here that the idea of Sophia's ‘decline’ features in a number of extant Gnostic texts, such as those from Nag Hammadi and the Berlin Codex, as a recent survey (...) of the evidence by Poirier has demonstrated. (shrink)

It can be argued that the notion of the \'axiological polytheism\' is a key concept which characterizes liberal society (democracy) in late modernity. We can observe its significant presence in I. Berlin\'s concept of two liberties, and in J. Rawls\'s concept of the social contract under the veil of ignorance, to recall some crucial examples where state neutrality is developed and defended. I have earlier proposed that in spite of the acceptance of the \'value polytheism\' premise, it can be still (...) claimed that on the ground of the \'autopoiesis\' mechanism a political community as a body can legitimately prefer a comprehensive model of citizenship in order to keep the system on track. This is supported by the \'social distribution of knowledge\' argument. In my paper I try to develop this argument and to examine some obstacles it can face when possible implementation in the fabric of social and political institutions is concerned. In particular I consider some problems which are posed by the uncontrolled professional activity of some types of experts which in consequence (may) influence decisions of those who are equipped with discretionary power (like civil servants and the state apparatus); and by that token they actually may lead to shift of the whole system with regard to the above mentioned premise which seems to be constitutive of the liberal democracy. In other words, do experts qua experts possess the privileged position among other fellow-citizens as far an access to the government procedures are concerned and do they change the power system by their backstage influence and through turning the democratic system into grotesque show and manipulative facade. (shrink)

A detailed analysis of Leopold Ranke’s blending of universal values with factual data in the writing of scientific history, especially helpful in explaining Ranke’s intellectual development, and showing that Ranke’s famous claim to portray what actually happened was much more than an unqualified commitment to factual history. The author suggests that, despite the formidable reputation of Ranke in giving to his discipline a new direction and a new role for history in culture, his was not any startling discovery of the (...) new, as much as an unprecedented way of combining notions and contexts. Ranke is seen as a complex character, committed to factuality, objectivity, the uniqueness of historical forms, the analysis of states as "ideas of God" representing collective destinies, but even more concerned with the connectedness of history in its universality and individuality. Ranke, though involved in epistemological questions, was wary of philosophy. He saw in the term "philosophy of history" a devious invention of philosophers for the enslavement of history. He was certainly wrong in his early appraisal of philosophy as "always negating." Yet for the general, abstract, and universal, Ranke developed a progressive sympathy in the important process of historical understanding, and in his later years he saw philosophy as more than the Fichtean romanticism which seemed so far removed from objectivity. He sided with his friends Schelling and Schleiermacher against Hegel at the University of Berlin. (shrink)

David Lewis is widely credited with the first formulation of common knowledge and the first rigorous analysis of convention. However, common knowledge and convention entered mainstream game theory only when they were formulated, later and independently, by other theorists. As a result, some of the most distinctive and valuable features of Lewis' game theory have been overlooked. We re-examine this theory by reconstructing key parts in a more formal way, extending it, and showing how it differs from more recent game (...) theory. In contrast to current theories of common knowledge, Lewis' theory is based on an explicit analysis of the modes of reasoning that are accessible to rational individuals and so can be used to analyse the genesis of common knowledge. Lewis' analysis of convention emphasises the role of inductive reasoning and of salience in the maintenance of conventions over time. Footnotes Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 13th Amsterdam Colloquium at the University of Amsterdam, at a workshop on social norms at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and at seminars at Tilburg University and the University of Bristol. We are grateful for comments from participants at those meetings, from two anonymous referees, and from Michael Bacharach, Nick Bardsley, Cristina Bicchieri, Luc Bovens, Simon Grant, David McCarthy, Shepley Orr, Brian Skyrms, Peter Vanderschraaf, Peter Wakker and Jörgen Weibull. Robert Sugden's work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust. (shrink)