Quentin Smith offers powerful arguments against the New Theory of Reference propounded by leading thhinkers in the philosophy of language. Smith defends the tensed theory of time and argues that the simultaneity is absoltue, basing this position on the theory that all propositions exist in time. Using detailed propostitions and a theory of cognitive significance, he introduces an alternative interpretation of reference that will be relevant to metaphysicians, philosophers of science and philosophers of language and may come to be (...) recognised as the definitive statement on the tensed theory of time. (shrink)

Structural realism has been suggested as the best compromise in the debate on scientific realism. It proposes that we should be realist about the relational structure of the world, not its nature. However, it faces an important objection, first raised by Newman against Russell: if relations are not qualified, then the position is either trivial or collapses into empiricism, but if relations are too strongly qualified, then it is no longer SR. A way to overcome this difficulty is to talk (...) about modal, or nomological relations instead of purely extensional relations. I argue that this is insufficient, for then, SR collapses into modal empiricism. I suggest, however, that ME could be the best position in the debate on scientific realism. 1Introduction2Objections to Structural Realism3How to Escape Newman’s Objection4Which Modal Relations Are Retained in Theory Change?5Are Modal Relations Real?6Relativity and Fundamentality7Is Modal Empiricism Really Empiricism?8Could Modal Empiricism Be the Best of Both Worlds? (shrink)

This paper investigates the learnability by positive examples in the sense of Gold of Pregroup Grammars. In a first part, Pregroup Grammars are presented and a new parsing strategy is proposed. Then, theoretical learnability and non-learnability results for subclasses of Pregroup Grammars are proved. In the last two parts, we focus on learning Pregroup Grammars from a special kind of input called feature-tagged examples. A learning algorithm based on the parsing strategy presented in the first part is given. Its validity (...) is proved and its properties are examplified. (shrink)

The paper presents a way to transform pregroup grammars into contextfree grammars using functional composition. The same technique can also be used for the proof-nets of multiplicative cyclic linear logic and for Lambek calculus allowing empty premises.

The first of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading intellectual historians. This collection includes some of his most important philosophical and methodological statements written over the past four decades, each carefully revised for publication in this form. In a series of seminal essays Professor Skinner sets forth the intellectual principles that inform his work. Writing as a practising historian, he considers the theoretical difficulties inherent in the pursuit of knowledge and interpretation, and elucidates (...) the methodology which finds its expression in his two successive volumes. All of Professor Skinner's work is characterised by philosophical power, limpid clarity, and elegance of exposition; these essays, many of which are now recognised classics, provide a fascinating and convenient digest of the development of his thought. (shrink)

Some biologists now argue in favour of a pluralistic approach to plant activities, understandable both from the classical perspective of physiological mechanisms and that of the biology of behaviour involving choices and decisions in relation to the environment. However, some do not hesitate to go further, such as plant “neurobiologists” or philosophers who today defend an intelligence, a mind or even a plant consciousness in a renewed perspective of these terms. To what extent can we then adhere to pluralism in (...) the study of plant behaviour? How does this pluralism in the study and explanation of plant behaviour fit into, or even build itself up, in a broader history of science? Is it a revolutionary way of rethinking plant behaviour in the twenty-first century or is it an epistemological extension of an older attitude? By proposing a synthesis of the question of plant behaviour by selected elements of the history of botany, the objective is to show that the current plant biology is not unified on the question of behaviour, but that its different tendencies are in fact part of a long botanical tradition with contrasting postures. Two axes that are in fact historically linked will serve as a common thread. 1. Are there several ways of understanding or conceiving plant behaviour within plant sciences and their epistemology? 2. Can the behaviour of a plant be considered in the same way as that of an animal? The working hypothesis defended in this article consists in showing that the current opposition between growth, development and reductionist physiology on the one hand and the biology of behaviour involving sensitivity and choices in plant activity on the other hand has been built up through the history of botany. (shrink)

Given the residual homonegativity in evidence throughout our diverse communities, and given the large numbers of gay people who remain “in the closet”, it is critical that we seek to understand in greater depth the complexities of the coming-out process with a view to dispelling some of the confusion relating to sexual identity. Internalised homophobia is more widespread than generally acknowledged, and it manifests in a variety of ways, including the sociological phenomenon of gay men remaining closeted until well into (...) middle age. This article applies a hermeneutic phenomenological lens to examine the process of realisation, where an individual gradually becomes aware of his sexual orientation, and eventually acknowledges to himself that he is gay. This process can take decades. For this research project, twelve participants (gay men who have come out after the age of 40) from Aotearoa New Zealand willingly shared intensely personal accounts of their lived experiences. The findings indicate that individuals experience clarity about same-sex attraction in strikingly different ways. This study helps us to understand the difficulties faced by men who have lived the majority of their lives as “straight”, then in middle age find themselves having to negotiate the tortuous terrain between heterosexuality and a new gay identity. (shrink)

No es posible hablar del pensamiento de Hegel acerca de la inclusión sin hacer, al mismo tiempo, un balance de la alienación que pretende disolver. Ante ello, el pensamiento de la inclusión no deja de ofrecer una salida siempre demasiado apresurada, iluminada por el sectarismo y el esoterismo que lo caracterizan. En virtud de ello, la exclusión de uno —no como exclusión del otro, sino como elevación de la exclusión de sí a condición de libertad para los otros— se convierte (...) en el verdadero paradigma del entusiasmo del espíritu. La formación o Bildung de un individuo refiere esta tensión entre la operación de autoenajenación y el esfuerzo por forjar comunidad, en la base de todo el proceso. Intento aquí exponer la manera en que Hegel se interrogó acerca de la inteligibilidad universal de la ciencia como conclusión de la lucha entre estos dos polos. El sistema de posibilidad de la experiencia, que conforma la Fenomenología del espíritu, ejemplifica así una superación del sectarismo inclusivo inspirada en la enigmática promesa de una ilusión de libertad absoluta, alcanzada por medio del conocimiento. (shrink)

Alexandre Dikovsky is born in Leningrad, Russia on August 9, 1945. He died in Nantes, France in the beginning of 2014. He is well known for his significant contributions to the fields of Mathematics, Linguistics, and Informatics. In the course of his career, he published over 100 research papers, 12 book chapters, and participated in numerous national and international projects.

This article explores challenges to accessing opioid treatment programs in rural areas, and offers solutions that would ease these problems.

Many activities towards plants are directly related to environmental crisis issues. However, our actions towards plants are little theorized in philosophy and ethics. After a brief presentation of the history, state of the art, and current issues of plant ethics, I critically illustrate how the theoretical threads of current ethics should be clarified, and, more importantly, contextualised, to promote the application of concrete measures. Particular attention is paid to the ethics of plant flourishing as applied to different fields and types (...) of plants. The treatment of wild and ornamental plants is, thus, explicitly distinguished from that of improved agricultural varieties, themselves distinguishable according to modes of cultivation. I thus propose and discuss several recommendations and concrete courses of action to promote an ethics of plants, while pointing out its limitations. (shrink)

The following strong form of density of definable types is introduced for theoriesTadmitting a fibered dimension functiond: given a modelMofTand a definable setX⊆Mn, there is a definable typepinX, definable over a code forXand of the samed-dimension asX. Both o-minimal theories and the theory of closed ordered differential fields are shown to have this property. As an application, we derive a new proof of elimination of imaginaries for CODF.

Philosophe politique parmi les plus controversés du monde anglo-saxon, Michael Oakeshott est quasiment inconnu en France où son œuvre n'a pratiquement pas été traduite. Il est célèbre pour sa critique du rationalisme en politique et du danger mortel que représentent pour une société les tentatives d'uniformisation abstraite imposées par l'État. Mais sa défense de la tradition en politique est loin d'être traditionnelle contrairement à Burke, Oakeshott est avant tout un individualiste. Aussi son scepticisme vis-à-vis de la politique est-il paradoxal : (...) d'un côté il ouvre la voie à une définition de l'État minimal chère aux néo-libéraux ; de l'autre il exalte les vertus de la vie en société d'une manière qui rappelle Aristote. Ce traditionalisme réflexif permet ainsi à Oakshott de suggérer, plutôt que d'affirmer, les bases d'un droit naturel démocratique. (shrink)

The primary goal of Peter Ludlow's Semantics, Tense, and Time is to illustrate how one can study metaphysical issues from a linguistic/semantic perspective by addressing the debate between tenseless theorists and tensed theorists. Ludlow's book is noteworthy in part because of the novelty of its approach to this debate and in part because it addresses and endeavors to solve the metaphysical problems of temporal solipsism that other temporal solipsists have not addressed.

Although the principle of respect for personal autonomy has been the subject of debate for almost 40 years, the conversation has often suffered from lack of clarity regarding the philosophical traditions underlying this principle. In this article, I trace a genealogy of autonomy, first contrasting Kant’s autonomy as moral obligation and Mill’s teleological political liberty. I then show development from Mill’s concept to Beauchamp and Childress’ principle and to Julian Savulescu’s non-teleological autonomy sketch. I argue that, although the reach for (...) a new principle to guide choices in physician–patient relationships can rightfully be seen as important, the notion that is now called autonomy within bioethics has corollaries that undermine critical aspects of medical care. As such, there is need for a richer account of the interplay between the free choice of patients and the informed recommendations of doctors. (shrink)

This was to have been a confutation. My intention was to rebut and for the record’s sake to correct certain fashionable errors concerning the life of Virginia Woolf. What could be more proper, and what, it has to be said, more tedious? If the defence of truth had remained my only objet, I should have left these words unwritten, or at least should have addressed them to a very small audience. But the pursuit of truth sent me back to my (...) sources, and there I found a story, in many ways sad, but also funny and certainly instructive. It seemed worth extracting this record of a friendship from the great mass of evidence in which it is embedded. I hope that the reader will agree with me in finding it interesting in itself but, just as Prince’s Hal’s “plain tale” is made livelier by being contrasted with Falstaff’s “eleven buckram men,” so too the simple facts are made more striking by the intentions of Virginia’s recent interpreters. Let me therefore begin with a quotation from one of them.Volume I [of Virginia Woolf’s Letters] has a rarely preserved portrait of a female artist in the making, love and work intensely intertwined in her relations with women who encouraged her to write, read, and think, and gave her the nourishment of womanly love and literary criticism, which she was to seek and find in female friendship all her life. Bloomsbury fades into insignificance as an “influence” next to the radiance of Woolf’s relationships with Margaret Llewelyn Davies, head of the Cooperative Working Women’s Guild, Janet Case, her Greek teacher, violet Dickinson, Madge Vaughan, and her aunt Caroline Stephen, the Quaker whom she called “Nun.”1These words were written by Professor Jane Marcus, a person of great charm and ability, whose opinions are, I understand, accepted by a multitude of admirers. In those articles by her which I have read, she hardly disguises her contempt for me as a biographer. But, painful though it is to have incurred the disdain of so influential a personage, it much be allowed that, if the influence of Virginia Woolf’s husband, her sister, and her closest friends “fades into insignificance” when compared with that of Miss Caroline Stephen and Mrs. W. W. Vaughan, then indeed I have gone sadly astray. Quentin Bell is the author of, among other works, Virginia Woolf: A Biography, Bloomsbury, Ruskin, and On Human Finery. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “Art and the Elite” and “Bloomsbury and ‘the Vulgar Passions’ ”. (shrink)

It is argued, in this article, that Hegel’s philosophy is permeated by a tacit thesis, and that this takes the form of a non-dialectical negation, the precise nature and speculative importance of which we propose to determine. The unspoken thesis is that Hegel never directly states that his conceptual sublation of the representative form of Christianity results in the strict deletion of both the resurrection of Christ and the immortality of the soul. Yet, far from being reducible to the author’s (...) simple prudence in the face of censorship, this constraint to remain silent on a truth of such importance to his thought demonstrates from within the System itself (and its strategy for keeping tacit its perhaps most original aspect) that the contingency of history is irreducible to its dialectical treatment. For the speculative dialectic– which culminates in the truth of Christianity being fulfilled in the form of the concept– is obliterated at this point by the oppressive action of a Prussian monarchy which, by this very fact, demonstrates that it does not fulfill the objective spirit, since it stands in the way of the fully explicit saying of the absolute spirit. Thus, we can try to show how there is an internal way within Hegelianism (inherited from the identification within it of a non-dialectical negation that undermines its very foundation) to maintain that the absolute is not the Idea, but a form of contingency that overhangs it, and exceeds the hegelian version of this concept. (shrink)

This article highlights local government responses to the opioid crisis in Northern Kentucky through a series of interviews with county-level officials. The author's discussions with civic leaders reflect the challenges faced by local communities and the new approaches implemented to stem the epidemic.

The present paper delivers a reconstruction of the speculative foundation, the polemical implications and the rhetorical effects of the passage from the moral point of view to the religious point of view in the lessons Über das Wesen des Gelehrten (1805). First, it shows how the essence of the scholar and the program of an education of scholars are deduced from the original difference between being and existence, between God and his self-exposition in the world. Next, we establish that the (...) controversy with Schelling still plays an important role in the clarification of some important concepts, like the divine idea, the nature, the world, practical knowledge or religiosity. Finally, we claim that the religious point of view of the lectures of 1805 does not involve a renouncement of strong practical engagement, which was clearly expressed in the lectures of 1794 (Über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten), or even a lack of rhetorical attention, but brings a higher interpretation of human action as the work of the divine idea, as well as a new conception of the religious enthusiasm of the scholar. (shrink)

Les contributions réunies dans ce volume visent à explorer le champ des postérités généalogiques de Nietzsche. Dans cette perspective, il convient d'abord de faire une nette distinction entre la dimension programmatique de la Généalogie de la morale et les postérités effectives que le livre a eues par la suite aux XXe et XXIe siècles, pour tenter ensuite de comprendre comment le mot 'généalogie' a pu se détacher de Nietzsche et acquérir progressivement des significations multiples, bien au-delà de ce que Nietzsche (...) lui-même avait pu anticiper ou imaginer. Il s'agit ainsi de se confronter à un enjeu crucial pour l'historien des idées: celui de retracer les métamorphoses du supposé concept nietzschéen de généalogie, notamment après ses reprises décisives par Deleuze et Foucault, pour faire ressortir la créativité, l'originalité et peut-être aussi la pertinence contemporaine de ces nouveaux discours. Cheminant dans cette direction, notre volume esquisse une sorte de généalogie des 'généalogies.' Il montre comment de nombreux lecteurs de Nietzsche ont fait 'grincer' et 'crier' sa pensée en se la réappropriant sous les espèces de la généalogie"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

We propose a construct, the Trust Triangle, that highlights three primary mechanisms that provide ex post accountability for opportunistic behavior and motivate ex ante trust in economic relationships. The mechanisms are a society’s legal and regulatory framework, market-based discipline and reputational capital, and culture, including individual ethics and social norms. The Trust Triangle provides a framework to conceptualize the relationships between trust, corporate accountability, legal liability, reputation, and culture. We use the Trust Triangle to summarize recent developments in the empirical (...) finance literature that examine how trust is formed and how trust, or its absence, affects financial markets, firm performance, and the incidence of financial fraud. To date, most studies examine only one leg of the Trust Triangle in isolation. The evidence, however, indicates that all three legs of the Trust Triangle have first-order effects on a wide range of financial outcomes and that they are interrelated. Attempts to model trust and trustworthiness that do not incorporate all three aspects of the Trust Triangle will therefore miss essential aspects of the basic economic problem of how counterparties overcome the risks of moral hazard, asymmetric information, and opportunism to engage in mutually beneficial exchange and production activities. We focus especially on culture-related mechanisms, a recently developed area in empirical finance research that has potential to influence the more established research on laws and reputation. (shrink)

Niccolò Machiavelli taught that political leaders must be prepared to do evil deeds in order to ensure the general good of the state, and ever since his name has signified duplicity and immorality. But is his sinister reputation deserved? To answer this question, Quentin Skinner focuses on three of Machiavelli’s major works- The Prince , Discourses , and The History of Florence . His analyses and distillation of these texts provide an introduction of exemplary clarity to Machiavelli’s doctrines.

The main goal of Michael Tooley’s groundbreaking book is to establish a position intermediate between the tenseless theory of time and the standard tensed theory of time. Tooley argues for a novel version of the tensed theory of time, namely, that the future is unreal and the present and past real, and yet that reality consists only of tenseless facts. The question that naturally arises for the reader concerns an apparent paradox: how could the tensed theory of time be true (...) if reality consists only of tenseless facts? (shrink)

Taylor analyzes Nietzsche's thoughts on the state, culture and education.

Compte rendu de Otavio Bueno, Ruey-Lin Chen, Melinda Bonnie Fagan (eds), Individuation, process, and scientific practices.

Les poèmes de Shelley, Novalis et Hölderlin présentent tous de manières légèrement différentes des formes de révélatrices philosophiques qui échappent, par leur complexité et le caractère de ce qu’elles révèlent, à l’éventuelle qualification de muses. Le terme « muse » dans sa signification contemporaine me semble trop vaste et rassemble des formes d’inspirations variées, amoureuses, artistiques et scientifiques. Si la muse antique était une figure précise dont l’inspiration touchait une form...

Introduction Ce que nous proposons ici est un essai général, une tentative avec tout ce qu’elle comporte d’imparfait et d’incomplet, de rendre compte à travers une étape de son développement, du regard que porte la littéra­ture sur elle-même. Ce miroir littéraire nous semble en effet très bien explicité par la littérature romantique, qui choisit pour thème le regard sur soi et joue avec le lecteur sur la mise en abîme de ce regard. L’importance de ce miroir romantique repose sur l’idée (...) que sa... (shrink)

Peu d’études se sont concentrées sur la prononciation des voyelles sous accent secondaire en anglais. Dans le cadre de l’approche introduite par Guierre, cet article propose une étude empirique large de ces voyelles et se concentre sur trois catégories clés de mots : les mots non-dérivés, les constructions contenant un préfixe sémantiquement transparent et les dérivés suffixaux. Dans leur ensemble, les analyses précédentes fondées sur le rang, les domaines phonologiques et l’isomorphisme dérivationnel sont confirmées mais certains phénomènes mis à jour (...) par cette étude rendent nécessaires quelques révisions des modèles existants. Plusieurs possibilités de formalisations sont proposées pour ces révisions, dont la plus prometteuse semble être l’analyse ayant recours aux pieds car celle-ci permettrait d’élargir considérablement la couverture empirique de la théorie. (shrink)

This introductory chapter presents an overview of the different topics discussed in the subsequent chapters. These include process reliabilism, evidentialism, viral epistemology, anti-luminosity argument, and modal epistemology.