Many contemporary philosophers favor coherence theories of knowledge (Bender 1989, BonJour 1985, Davidson 1986, Harman 1986, Lehrer 1990). But the nature of coherence is usually left vague, with no method provided for determining whether a belief should be accepted or rejected on the basis of its coherence or incoherence with other beliefs. Haack's (1993) explication of coherence relies largely on an analogy between epistemic justification and crossword puzzles. We show in this paper how epistemic coherence can be understood in (...) terms of maximization of constraint satisfaction, in keeping with computational models that have had a substantial impact in cognitive science. A coherence problem can be defined in terms of a set of elements and sets of positive and negative constraints between pairs of those elements. Algorithms are available for computing coherence by determining how to accept and reject elements in a way that satisfies the most constraints. Knowledge involves at least five different kinds of coherence - explanatory, analogical, deductive, perceptual, and conceptual - each requiring different sorts of elements and constraints. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Oxford Handbook of AestheticsDerek MatraversThe Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, edited by Jerrold Levinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 821pp., $99.00 Hardback.The aesthetics community has much for which to thank Jerrold Levinson. His papers are required reading on a number of topics in aesthetics, and he is renowned as a generous commentator and critic. The considerable labor he must have expended in editing this book is yet another (...) reason to be grateful for his industry. As well as a useful Preface, which lays out the editor's rationale for the content, the book contains two survey articles and thenforty-six individual articles that, according to the Preface, cover "virtually all the major issues in philosophical aesthetics that are active topics of discussion and research" (p. v). I shall begin this review with a brief overview of the book. I shall then comment on the extent to which it fulfils it stated purpose, on its usefulness in teaching, and what it might show us about the current state of our discipline. Finally, I shall compare it with similar books that are currently available.The first of four parts consists of the two overview articles: the first covering debates on contemporary aesthetics, and the second an account of recent work in the history of aesthetics. The first, by Levinson himself, usefully demarcates the subject before organizing the discussion into three foci of aesthetics (art, the aesthetic property, and the aesthetic experience) and then five problems (the concept of the aesthetic, the definition of art, the ontology of art, representation in art, and expression in art). The piece is skillfully organized, and Levinson's grasp of the details of the various topics is unsurpassed. It is very much a teaser, however, as thebrevity means that only the bare outlines of the various problems get discussed. The second article, by Paul Guyer (once again, it is difficult to think of anyone more suitable to the task) does not attempt to give an overview of the history of aesthetics, but rather an overview of the recent work in the history of modern aesthetics. Although descriptive, this is informed by Guyer's view that the Anglo-American tradition has been unduly restricted in both the history it has studied and in the range of its current concerns. The article aims to be comprehensive: the bibliography takes up eight of its thirty-five pages.The second part, which is the most extensive, consists of twenty-five essays of general issues in aesthetics. It begins with two essays on aesthetic realism. The first, by Nick Zangwill, advocating the position and the second, by John Bender, opposing it. This is the only instance of such a debate: the other twenty-three essays cover all the general issues currently being discussed (at least, this reviewer could not see any obvious gaps). The third part covers aesthetic issues of specific artforms including, it is nice to see, Architecture, Sculpture, Dance, Theatre,Poetry, Photography, and Film as well as Music, Painting, and Literature. [End Page 104] The final part certainly has the most intriguing heading: "Further Directions in Aesthetics." This pushes out the boundaries, including articles that relate aesthetics to evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, the everyday, postmodernism, cultural studies, and the avant-garde.One function of a handbook (or companion) is to offer readers a one-stop place from which to learn what the main issues are in a particular area, what is the orthodox mainstream view, and what are the main points for and against. It is an intriguing matter that fifteen years ago there were few introductions to philosophical aesthetics, and ever fewer handbooks or companions such as this one. I imagine that there are many people who, like me, make use of such books (I look on my shelves and see, as well as the book I am reviewing, six introductions to aesthetics and two Companions) yet who feel that the notion of a philosophical textbook is problematic. It is difficult to be precise about this feeling of unease although, were I to do so, I would point to two issues. The first worry is that presenting a synoptic view of an area... (shrink)

The counterintuitive, radical message of Vedanta, the ancient science of self-inquiry, is that reality is non-dual consciousness. What this means and how it benefits people in their quest for freedom from limitation is the subject of this inspirational book. In an accessible style, James Swartz's new book develops teachings introduced in his popular first one, How to Attain Enlightenment, covering topics such as values and the enlightened person, dharma and the essence of enlightenment, and the relationship between consciousness, the individual, (...) and the total. Demystifying enlightenment, Swartz makes Vedanta understandable to all. (shrink)

Beginning in the nineteenth century, social statistics inspired a vision of society as a population characterized by a certain distribution of risks. The introduction of the risk paradigm has deep implications for central concepts in Christian social ethics like distributive justice, with this vision leading to a new concept of distributive justice as the equal distribution of risk. This essay describes tensions that arise due to the risk paradigm in relation to distributive justice: risks can always be further reduced, risk (...) mitigation creates other risks, and there is no inherent rule of justice for balancing risks. While recognition of shared risk can create social cohesion, it also leads to interest groups struggling over which risks to confront. The essay illustrates these problems with two examples from health care: preventive health programs that manage disease risk through medication, and debates over school closures in respond to the Covid pandemic. Christian bioethics, as it wrestles with issues of justice, must address the problems created by the risk paradigm. (shrink)

This essay places contemporary efforts to understand and respond to the crisis of physician burnout in historical perspective, proposing that the origins of such efforts lie in nineteenth century concerns over “nervous exhaustion,” well before the term “physician burnout” was coined by social scientists in the early 1970s. Only very recently, however, have physician-scholars started to bring more sophisticated tools to bear in conceptualizing the problem, moving from a “systems approach” to the most recent efforts to frame the issue as (...) a problem of corporate culture. The essay proposes that these different approaches to physician burnout illustrate the changing self-images of the medical profession over the last century and a half. Because such self-images are embedded in normative assumptions, contextualizing physician burnout in these terms reveals the crisis to be as much social and political as professional. (shrink)

Paul, Meg Review(s) of: The testimony, by Halina Wagowska, Hardie Grant 2012 $24.95.

We generalize Hrushovski’s group configuration theorem to the case where the type of the configuration is generically stable, without assuming tameness of the ambient theory. The properties of generically stable types, which we recall in the second section, enable us to adapt the proof known in the stable context.

The text is accompanied by some 300 drawings and sketches by Engelmann and Wittgenstein, virtually all preserved perspectives and plans, and drawings and watercolors of the villa's interior and original furnishing.

Extreme rates of premature death prior to the advent of modern medicine, very low rates of premature death in First World nations with low rates of prayer, and the least flawed of a large series of clinical trials indicate that remote prayer is not efficacious in treating illness. Mass contamination of sample cohorts renders such clinical studies inherently ineffectual. The required supernatural and paranormal mechanisms render them implausible. The possibility that the latter are not benign, and the potentially adverse psychological (...) impact of certain protocols, renders these medical trials unethical. Resources should no longer be wasted on medical efforts to detect the supernatural and paranormal. (shrink)

Presents a philosophy of creativity and self-fulfilment, and demonstrates that happiness is possible to achieve.

This article develops the idea of ‘ecological freedom’ from Aldo Leopold’s account of ecological relations in terms of the dual notions of the “freedom from want and fear” and the “freedom to make mistakes.” Through an analysis of Leopold’s thought on technology and civilization, I develop and argue for the claim that direct experience of ecological relations, or ecological freedom, is vital to meaningful human life. The absence of ecological freedom constitutes a form of ecological alienation, which is paired with (...) social alienation. Ecological freedom is then used as a way to understand environmental injustice and critique contemporary environmentalism. (shrink)

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

In 1983, Dr. J. Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshall reported finding a new kind of bacteria in the stomachs of people with gastritis. Warren and Marshall were soon led to the hypothesis that peptic ulcers are generally caused, not by excess acidity or stress, but by a bacterial infection. Initially, this hypothesis was viewed as preposterous, and it is still somewhat controversial. In 1994, however, a U. S. National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Panel concluded that infection appears to (...) play an important contributory role in the pathogenesis of peptic ulcers, and recommended that antibiotics be used in their treatment. Peptic ulcers are common, affecting up to 10% of the population, and evidence has mounted that many ulcers can be cured by eradicating the bacteria.. (shrink)

This line has long been a crux in the interpretation of Pindar, and there is still no consensus on its syntax or meaning. The conclusions reached by Stefan Radt , 148–74) and Richard Stoneman , 65–70) in the most recent studies of the problem are in all respects at variance. The cardinal difficulty of0 the line is the sense of , which must be elucidated before one can attempt to disentangle the syntax. I believe that previous commentators have overlooked or (...) misapplied crucial parallel passages because of their preconceptions about the nature of the metaphor here. (shrink)

The paper seeks to identify criteria that digital communication would have to satisfy in order to serve the functions for which theater is necessary in human cultures.

Biomedical research on advanced cryopreservation has spillover effects on innovation in the food and agricultural sector. Advanced biopreservation technology has three key domains of impact in the food system: (1) improving efficiencies in storage and utilization of gametes and organoids for plant and animal breeding; (2) isochoric methods for preservation of fresh food products; and (3) in biorepositories for storage of genetic resources for agriculturally significant plants and livestock species.

This article brings Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Martin Heidegger, and Hans Jonas into conversation about man’s relationship to nature on the basis of their references to the “Ode to Man” from Sophocles’ Antigone. Hegel’s reference to the ode in his Naturphilosophie highlights the violence of man’s practical relation to nature even as it also points beyond all opposition to a philosophic relation that discerns man’s underlying unity with nature. By stressing that the ode’s evocation of man’s violence against nature is (...) undergirded by the overwhelming violence that nature perpetrates upon man, Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics raises the possibility that Hegel’s “higher” relation to nature is an outgrowth of Western history’s oblivion of man’s essentially violent exposedness to being. Jonas concurs with a version of Heidegger’s concern in his Imperative of Responsibility and asserts that man’s violent mastery of nature has reached an uncanny excess that renders the ode almost quaint, but he insists above all that man must now assume the degree of responsibility that accords with his vast powers. Insofar as his exhortation to responsibility drives Jonas to a partial renewal of metaphysics, his position could be considered a retrieval of the Hegelian standpoint. (shrink)