In this response to Jeff Pflug’s review of my dissertation Michael Polanyi’s Integrative Philosophy, I note that Pflug focused on my discussion of possible extension of Polanyi’s epistemology; he has also taken my statements on scientific truth out of context. In addition, he ignored the four major elements of the dissertation, thereby not giving the reader a “map” to the meaning and the rationale of the work – an intellectual biography of Polanyi.

Tara Smith's book on Rand's ethics is reviewed by Stephen Hicks for *Philosophy in Review.*.

Polanyi’s philosophy of “man in thought,” by all appearances, chronologically and structurally, seems to be founded on his epistemology. Polanyi’s epistemology of tacit knowing as integration is teleological. By his “ontological equation,” he patterned comprehensive (and complex) entities as emergence on his epistemology. This forces him to make puzzling formulaic statements which land him in trouble with fellow scientists. The equation also lends itself to unwarranted problematic interpretations. The exploration leads me to suggest that Polanyi may be understood as a (...) “rational realist” who insisted on a tacit knowledge version of interactionist mode of mind-body relation. (shrink)

Human-eyelid conditioning was the principal source of information on Pavlovian conditioning, especially human, in the 1950s and 1960s, but it suffered a sharp decline in productivity, beginning in the late 1960s. The present article treats the decline as a case study with potential implications concerning the survival contingencies of research specialties. We make use of questionnaire data from eyelid-conditioning researchers and examine a variety of publication, topic-of-investigation, and institutional data to identify the major factors in the decline of human-eyelid conditioning.

Indian philosophy has ancient origin, but contemporary in significance. It is wide and varied, but holistic and integral in its approach. In terms of contemporary needs and aspirations, it has to be revisited and reinterpreted. It is imperative on the part of contemporary thinkers and scholars to properly understand from the original sources and put forth its true spirit without any bias and prejudices. Then only its real message can be disseminated to the world, and an attempt is made here (...) to provide a blueprint to undertake this exercise. (shrink)

It is suggested that the control-system theory of Domjan et al. restates in engineering vocabulary the primary thesis of law-of-effect theories: namely, that classical-conditioning arrangements may involve CR-contingent reinforcement. The research cited by Domjan et al. is relevant to the idea that classical conditioning is an adaptive process, but is irrelevant to their control-system theory.

Contemporary ideas about caring in welfare states can wreak havoc if applied to one's own life. In this essay, a mother offers a personal commentary on the debate regarding diakonia and caring. She identifies three concepts, popular in contemporary caring discourse, that threaten her ability to genuinely and effectively care for those around her, particularly her family. The first problematic concept is that the state ought to provide care on our behalf. The second is that people have rights to claim, (...) but no one in particular bears the responsibility. The third is that the Church is responsive rather than normative in the social setting. (shrink)

In 1931 the mathematical logician Kurt Godel published a revolutionary paper that challenged certain basic assumptions underpinning mathematics and logic. A colleague of Albert Einstein, his theorem proved that mathematics was partly based on propositions not provable within the mathematical system and had radical implications that have echoed throughout many fields. A gripping combination of science and accessibility, Godel’s Proof by Nagel and Newman is for both mathematicians and the idly curious, offering those with a taste for logic and philosophy (...) the chance to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. (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)

Uses epistemic logic to clarify a number of possible interpretations of the principle, 'if you know you can't be wrong' and the deceptively similar principle 'if you may be wrong you don't know.' shows that on all plausible interpretation sceptical arguments beg the question at issue.

This essay results from a common interest in the history of emotions shared by an academic with appointments in philosophy and psychiatry (Charland) and a literary historian (White). Where our interests converge is in the early modern concept of 'the passions,' as explanatory of what we now call mental illness. The task we have set ourselves is to see how this might: (a) be exemplified in a 'case study' of the dramatic revelation of Leontes's jealousy in the first half of (...) William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, and his 'cure' which takes sixteen years. Both events have troubled literary critics as implausible, lacking in realistic motivation, and clumsy as narrative devices, but can be explained in terms of theories of the passions ; and (b) open up a greater, modern understanding of irrational, pathological states, their onset and termination, by using as an explanatory model the early modern understanding of passions as revived and refined in the nineteenth century by Théodule Ribot. Janus-like, this chapter faces into the past and the future (our present) via a play written in 1610 that is still performed to receptive audiences today. We hope to show that the theory can illuminate a playtext, and that the play can revivify the theory, and to contend that historical analysis can shed light on modern clinical problems. The particular historical distinction which lies at the heart of our approach derives from early modern terminology offered by Thomas Wright in his book, The Passions of the Minde in Generall (first published in 1601; corrected, enlarged and augmented in 1604), and presented in more modern fashion in the nineteenth century by Théodule Ribot, in his La Psycholgie des sentiments * We dedicate this essay to Philippa Maddern, whose inspiration has generated so much inter-disciplinary research in the history of emotions and has brought so many like-minded scholars into fertile contact—in our cases, linking Western Ontario and Western Australia. (shrink)

A number of enigmatic manuscripts of Plato have been identified during the last few decades. Thus Mercati , 35) showed that Angelicus c.1.9 , which L. A. Post was unable to trace, is identical to Rossianus 17; N. G. Wilson , 393 n.2) proved that the long-lost Hassistenianus is no other than the Lobcovicianus in Prague University Library Here is the solution of a thirdpuzzle.