The relationship between John Locke and Isaac Newton, his co-founder of, in the apt phrase of one recent writer, ‘the Moderate Enlightenment’ of the eighteenth century, has many dimensions. There is their friendship, which began only after each had written his major work, and which had its stormy interlude. There is the difficult question of their mutual impact. In what ways did each draw intellectually on the other? That there was some debt of each to the other is almost certain, (...) but its exact extent is problematic. Questions may be asked over a whole range of intellectual issues, but not always answered. Thus their theology, which was in many respects close, and which forms the bulk of their surviving correspondence, may yet reveal mutual influence. There is the question of their political views, where both were firmly Whig. But it is upon their philosophy, and certain aspects of their philosophy in particular, that this paper will concentrate. My main theme is the nature of their empiricism, and my main contention is that between them they produced a powerful and comprehensive philosophy. (shrink)

In searching for an appropriate utility function in the expected utility framework, we formulate four properties that we want the utility function to satisfy. We conduct a search for such a function, and we identify Pareto utility as a function satisfying all four desired properties. Pareto utility is a flexible yet simple and parsimonious two-parameter family. It exhibits decreasing absolute risk aversion and increasing but bounded relative risk aversion. It is applicable irrespective of the probability distribution relevant to the prospect (...) to be evaluated. Pareto utility is therefore particularly suited for catastrophic risk analysis. A new and related class of generalized exponential (gexpo) utility functions is also studied. This class is particularly relevant in situations where absolute risk tolerance is thought to be concave rather than linear. (shrink)

Philosophers and natural scientists have often drawn a distinction between two kinds of properties that physical objects may have. It is particularly associated with atomistic accounts of matter, and is as old as the ancient Greek theories of Democritus and Epicurus. According to the atomists, matter consists of tiny particles ‐ atoms ‐ having no other properties than those such as shape, weight, solidity, and size. Other putative properties ‐ for example, those of color, taste, and smell ‐ were regarded (...) as the names of experiences caused by the impact of particles on an observer, and had no independent existence as qualities in the object. Since the seventeenth century it has been normal to characterize the division between these two supposedly different kinds of properties as the primary‐secondary quality distinction. (shrink)

Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset, on 29 August 1632. After the Civil War he was sent to Westminster School, and in 1652 to Christ Church, Oxford. A feature of the university in Locke's early years was growing interest in the natural sciences, fostered by, amongst others, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Robert Hooke. After graduating, Locke was much attracted to the work of these men, and soon he was engaged in medical research with Robert Boyle. He remained in Oxford (...) until 1667, when a chance meeting with Anthony Ashley Cooper, later Lord Shaftesbury, led to his joining Shaftesbury's London household, which from then on became Locke's usual residence, and where he acted as Shaftesbury's personal physician, conducted research with Thomas Sydenham. and became a Fellow of the Royal Society. (shrink)

It is common to assume that if Locke is to be regarded as a consistent epistemologist he must be read as holding that either ideas are the objects of perception or that (physical) objects are. He must either be a direct realist or a representationalist. But perhaps, paradoxical as it at first sounds, there is no reason to suppose that he could not hold both to be true. We see physical objects and when we do so we have ideas. We (...) see or hear birds and bells but we also have visual and auditory ideas of birds and bells. This suggestion is explored through examination of what Locke says about perception in his Elements of Natural Philosophy and the accounts offered both by Locke in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and by some of Locke's successors. (shrink)

Corruption can impede commerce and economic development, yet it seems to be tolerated in many countries. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a model that integrates socioeconomic factors related to corruption. The analysis revealed that a negative relationship between economic adversity and wealth was mediated by corruption. Economic adversity was positively related to corruption, and corruption was inversely related to wealth. Uncertainty avoidance moderated the relationship between economic adversity and corruption, whereas power distance and uncertainty avoidance (...) were positively associated with corruption. The implications of these results for enhancing the effectiveness of international agreements are discussed. (shrink)

Medicine seeks to overcome one of the most fundamental fragilities of being human, the fragility of good health. No matter how robust our current state of health, we are inevitably susceptible to future illness and disease, while current disease serves to remind us of various frailties inherent in the human condition. This article examines the relationship between fragility and uncertainty with regard to health, and argues that there are reasons to accept rather than deny at least some forms of uncertainty. (...) In situations of current ill health, both patients and doctors seek to manage this fragility through diagnoses that explain suffering and provide some certainty about prognosis as well as treatment. However, both diagnosis and prognosis are inevitably uncertain to some degree, leading to questions about how much uncertainty health professionals should disclose, and how to manage when diagnosis is elusive, leaving patients in uncertainty. We argue that patients can benefit when they are able to acknowledge, and appropriately accept, some uncertainty. Healthy people may seek to protect the fragility of their good health by undertaking preventative measures including various tests and screenings. However, these attempts to secure oneself against the onset of biological fragility can cause harm by creating rather than eliminating uncertainty. Finally, we argue that there are good reasons for accepting the fragility of health, along with the associated uncertainties. (shrink)

Title: Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century BritainPublisher: University of Minnesota PressISBN: 0816660581Author: John W. YoltonTitle: Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to ReidPublisher: University of Minnesota PressISBN: 0816611629Author: John W. Yolton.