There has been a long tradition of characterizing man as the animal that talks. However, the remarkable ability of using pictures also only belongs to human beings, after all we know empirically so far. Are there conceptual reasons for that coincidence? Such a question belongs to the philosophy of language just as well as to philosophical visualistics. Comparing the two abilities to use words or pictures yields several similarities as well as distinctions. A well-known conceptual disparity between pictures and words (...) appears in their relation to perception: the difference can be further determined in an act-theoretic manner by four modes of use of the sign vehicles during the corresponding sign acts. Furthermore, the figure/ground dichotomy means something different for language uses and picture uses. In both cases, however, there is a close relation to the function of context building, by which humans are able to communicate not only with respect to the present situation of behavior but with respect to arbitrary contexts as well. Although the structural comparison does clarify the conceptual relations, it cannot explain that the conceptual structure ought to be like that. Therefore, the paper concludes with the programme of a "concept-genetic" consideration of the two abilities (i.e., to use propositional language or to use pictures) that is able to give us such a foundation. (shrink)

It is shown how to define forcing semantics within metatheories not containing the power-set construction, in particular, how to construct exponents assuming only (a slightly strengthened form of) exponents in the metatheory. Some straightforward applications (consistency and independence results, and derived rules) are obtained for such systems.

Recent interest in emotion as the basis for moral development began with work involving individuals with psychopathic tendencies, and a recent paper with this population has allowed fresh insights (Glenn, Iyer, Graham, Koleva, & Haidt, 2009). Two main conclusions suggested by this paper are: (i) that systems involved in different forms of morality can be differentiated; and (ii) that systems involved in justice reasoning likely include amygdala and/or ventromedial prefrontal cortex, even if the specifics of their functional contribution to justice (...) development remain unidentified. (shrink)

It is argued that donald davidson has not succeeded in showing that we need a constructive theory of meaning--A theory for a natural language which davidson considers to have as its base a finite number of semantic primitives--In order to explain language learning and, In particular, Linguistic productivity. This linguistic productivity is the ability of a speaker who has mastered the meaning of a finite stock of words and a finite number of grammatical rules, To produce and understand sentences which (...) he has not constructed or encountered before. (shrink)

In this chapter, Hankinson considers the treatment of causation and explanation in two important strands of Ancient Greek thought: rational medicine and the sophistic movement. The Hippocratic treatises of the fifth century bc represent a movement in Greek medical practice away from traditional types of explanation of disease in favour of a naturalistic, physiological model of human pathology, which leads to the emergence of the allopathic causal principle, ‘opposites cure opposites’. The Hippocratic treatises distinguished internal, constitutional factors from external causes, (...) a distinction that helps towards explaining why some people are affected by a disease, or benefited from a cure, while others are not. Drawing upon Antiphon and Gorgias, Hankinson also discusses the sophist contribution to causation and explanation, in particular their emphasis on responsibility in the explanation of action. Finally, Hankinson highlights a tendency, evident in Herodotus’ History and also in the medical treatise Airs, Waters, Places, to explain general traits of physique and character in terms of ethnography, i.e. on the basis of environment, climate, and lifestyle. (shrink)

Although the syncretism of the preceding Platonic tradition is still evident in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Plotinus’ system of reality, Hankinson argues, is a strikingly original achievement. Plotinus conceives reality as an ordered and causally inter‐related structure, according to which everything is explained in terms of its relationship with the supreme, transcendent One; this is taken over by his successors, such as Proclus, with whom Neoplatonism reaches its most formalized incarnation. The thought of Plotinus and Proclus is quite remote from (...) the discussions of nature that had provided the context for earlier Greek theories of causation. But John Philoponus, a Christian philosopher, brings a Neoplatonic approach to physical explanation, in particular in his critique of Aristotle's physics and dynamics. Simplicius tried to combine physics and theology; as Christianity came to dominate the Graeco‐Roman world, however, scientific speculation on natural causes waned, and theology became the main concern. (shrink)

This article treats of whether scepticism, in particular Pyrrhonian scepticism, can be said to deploy a method of any kind. I begin by distinguishing various different notions of method, and their relations to the concept of expertise. I then consider Sextus’s account, in the prologue to Outlines of Pyrrhonism, of the Pyrrhonist approach, and how it supposedly differs from those of other groups, sceptical and otherwise. In particular, I consider the central claim that the Pyrrhonist is a continuing investigator, who (...) in spite of refusing to be satisfied with any answer, none the less still achieves tranquillity, and whether this can avoid being presented as a method for so doing, and hence as compromising the purity of sceptical suspension of commitment. In doing so, I relate—and contrast—the Pyrrhonists’ account of their practice to the ‘Socratic Method’, as well as to the argumentative practice of various Academics, and assess their claim in so doing to be offering a way of instruction. I conclude that there is a consistent and interesting sense in which Pyrrhonian scepticism can be absolved of the charge that it incoherently, and crypto-dogmatically, presents itself as offering a method for achieving an intrinsically desirable goal. (shrink)

NCMRD initiated the Women in Management Research Program in January 1988. One of the objectives of the program is to help managers and policy makers deal with issues arising from women's increased participation in managerial and professional jobs backing research to help arrive at solutions to the problems being encountered both by institutions and by women themselves. Significant research funds have been raised from the private sector and ten projects have been funded to date. This article describes the early development (...) of the Program and its research mandate. (shrink)

This paper attempts to explore the position that A. N. Whitehead's ultimate principle of creativity may be identified explicitly as an eternal object. Such an interpretation seems to lend greater coherence to the categoreal scheme in Process and Reality and establish Whitehead's metaphysics as more of a rationalistic enterprise than most commentators are willing to admit. It would be rationalistic to the extent that its ultimate principle illustrates one of the categories of existence. That is, creativity may be viewed as (...) an eternal object rather than a surd element which falls outside the categoreal scheme. As eternal object, creativity would serve as the very foundation of rationality in Whitehead's metaphysical system. (shrink)

This paper first identifies briefly several interpretations of the nature of the general order of eternal objects in the Primordial Nature of God (PNG). W.A. Christian describes the timeless ordering in terms of a “general scheme of relatedness,” or “matrix,” or “reservoir of potentiality.” Others, like Hartshorne, introduce the“continuum” concept. Unfortunately, none of the above terms has strict technical or categoreal meaning in Whitehead’s metaphysics. I try to remedy this defect by utilizing the Whitehead ian notions of abstractive hierarchies and (...) contrast. My interpretation supports the idea that there is one fixed and necessary order of eternal objects in PNG. (shrink)

This paper uses the case of solo doctors to explore whether working in relative isolation from one’s peers may be detrimental to ethical decision-making. Drawing upon the relevance of communication and interaction for ethical decision-making in the ethical theories of Habermas, Mead and Gadamer, it is argued that doctors benefit from ethical discussion with their peers and that solo practice may make this more difficult. The paper identifies a paucity of empirical research related to solo practice and ethics but draws (...) upon more general medical ethics research and a study that identified ethical isolation among community pharmacists to support the theoretical claims made. The paper concludes by using the literary analogy of Soderberg’s Doctor Glas to illustrate the issues raised and how ethical decision-making in relative isolation may be problematical. (shrink)

This is a section of Mr. Gray's recent paper read before The Philosophers' Academy covering "The Catholic Movement in France and the Philosophy of de Lamennais".Complete ignorance of the system of the Medieval Schoolmen seems responsible for the contempt in which he held Scholasticism, and indirectly for the vagaries of his own philosophy, and the ultimate shipwreck of his faith.

We shall be concerned to show that the argument is unsound; that is, even if the premises were true, and we shall argue that they are not, the conclusions of the various forms of the argument do not follow from them. In particular, we wish to deny that the activity of translation commits us to accepting abstract entities such as propositions. Hence we do not regard the argument as providing support for any of,, and. However, although we accept the contradictories (...) of and, and although we reject we do not wish to analyze belief in terms of sentence acceptance. For while the set of sentences to which a person is prepared to assent is evidence of what he believes, it follows from Quine’s indeterminacy thesis that a person’s pattern of belief is underdetermined by this evidence. In fact, the translation argument that we are about to discuss may itself be rejected on the basis of Quine’s indeterminacy thesis, but we are concerned here to challenge the argument by its own standards. (shrink)

We make three suggestions with regard to Mealey's work. First, her lack of a cognitive analysis of the sociopath results in underspecified mappings between sociobiology and behavior. Second, the developmental literature indicates that Mealey's implicit assumption, that moral socialisation is achieved through punishment, is invalid. Third, we advance the use of causal modelling to map the developmental relationships between biology, cognition, and behaviour.

Everywhere the 1990s have been characterized by an odd mixture of ideological triumphalism-Fukuyama's "end of history" being only the crassest example-and of ideological uncertainty-can there be, should there be, a "third way"? For all its pretensions to universality, the "New World Order" has never lost a fragility in appearance. Students of historiography can scarcely be surprised to learn that an uneasiness over the present and future has in turn frequently entailed uncertainty about the past and particularly about those parts of (...) the past which had seemed most able to give clear and significant "lessons."One evident example is the history of what in my Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima I called the "long" Second World War, that is, that crisis in confidence in the relationship between political and economic liberalism and the nation-state which, by the end of 1938, had left only Britain, France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia as in any sense preserving those "liberal" freedoms which had spread across Europe since 1789. In this article, I briefly review the most recent difficulties World War II combatant societies have had in locating a usable past in the history of those times. However, my major focus is on the specific case of Italy, very much a border state in the Cold War system, and today the political home of an "Olive Tree" and a "Liberty Pole" whose historical antecedents and whose philosophical base for the future are less than limpid. 1990s Italian historians thus give very mixed messages about the Fascist past; these are the messages I describe and decode. (shrink)