This paper addresses the extent to which both Julian Barbour‘s Machian formulation of general relativity and his interpretation of canonical quantum gravity can be called timeless. We differentiate two types of timelessness in Barbour‘s (1994a, 1994b and 1999c). We argue that Barbour‘s metaphysical contention that ours is a timeless world is crucially lacking an account of the essential features of time—an account of what features our world would need to have if it were to count as being one in which (...) there is time. We attempt to provide such an account through considerations of both the representation of time in physical theory and in orthodox metaphysical analyses. We subsequently argue that Barbour‘s claim of timelessness is dubious with respect to his Machian formulation of general relativity but warranted with respect to his interpretation of canonical quantum gravity. We conclude by discussing the extent to which we should be concerned by the implications of Barbour‘s view. (shrink)

In the U.S.A., advocates of academic freedom—the ability to pursue research unencumbered by government controls—have long found sparring partners in government officials who regulate technology trade. From concern over classified research in the 1950s, to the expansion of export controls to cover trade in information in the 1970s, to current debates over emerging technologies and global innovation, the academic community and the government have each sought opportunities to demarcate the sphere of their respective authority and autonomy and assert themselves in (...) that sphere. In this paper, we explore these opportunities, showing how the Social Contract for Science set the terms for the debate, and how the controversy turned to the proper interpretation of this compact. In particular, we analyze how the 1985 presidential directive excluding fundamental research from export controls created a boundary object that successfully demarcated science and the state, but only for a Cold War world that would soon come to an end. Significant changes have occurred since then in the governance structures of science and in the technical and political environment within which both universities and the state sit. Even though there have been significant and persistent calls for reassessing the Cold War demarcation, a new institutionalization of how to balance the concerns of national security and academic freedom is still only in its nascent stages. We explore the value of moving from a boundary object to a boundary organization, as represented in a proposed new governance body, the Science and Security Commission. (shrink)

ISSUES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE edited by Alfred M. MacKay and Daniel D. Merrill. (Oberlin Colloquium, 1972.) Yale U.P., 1976. xiv+161 pp. £7.50.TRUTH AND MEANING: Essays in Semantics, edited by Gareth Evans and John McDowell. Clarendon Press: O.U.P., 1976. xxiii+420 pp. £11.50.

In their reply to my recent paper on Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, Professor Southall and Dr. Samuels concede that some things may be learned from my observations. They do not attend to the main argument of the paper, however, that the proportion of research interest in their use of covert video surveillance merits consideration of the research protocol by an independent research ethics committee. It will not do simply to assert that the use of this technology for the purposes outlined (...) in their accounts is not research. I formulated arguments based on facts divulged in those published accounts for regarding their work as containing a considerable proportion of research activity. Unfortunately their reply did not address these arguments. Until such points are adequately answered the protection of patients calls for satisfactory judgments to be made on certain important issues which any research ethics committee would be obliged to consider in an evaluation of their activities. I suggest that some of these features will create more difficulties for approval of such a protocol than others. (shrink)

This volume, a lightly-edited version of Professor Samuel Scolnicov’s 1974 Ph.D. thesis, is a fitting tribute to his impressive career. It will perhaps be most useful for those interested in better understanding Scolnicov’s work and his views on Plato as a whole, not least for the comprehensive list of his publications that requires a full twelve pages of print. Scholars with an interest in Plato’s method of hypothesis will also find some useful remarks on key passages in the Meno, (...) Phaedo, and Republic as well as on Greek mathematical analysis.Illuminating other aspects of Scolnicov’s work is clearly part of the intention behind enabling broader access to this study. As Harold Tarrant notes in his introduction... (shrink)

The central role played by Darwin's analogy between selection under domestication and that under nature has been adequately appreciated, but I have indicated how important the domesticated organisms also were to other elements of Darwin's theory of evolution-his recognition of “the constant principle of change,” for instance, of the imperfection of adaptation, and of the extent of variation in nature. The further development of his theory and its presentation to the public likewise hinged on frequent reference to domesticates.We have seen (...) that Darwin's reliance on the analogy between domesticated varieties and wild species was a bold and original step, in light of contemporary views on the nature of domesticates. However, as Darwin undoubtedly foresaw, his reliance on the analogy created difficulties as well as solving problems, and these began with his Malthusian codiscoverer of the principle of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace's paper “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” presented to the Linnean Scoiety along with the first public unveiling of Darwin's theory, states: We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature.62Much has been made of the similarity of views of Darwin and Wallace, but this quotation surely reveals how utterly different their views were on what to Darwin was an important matter. Several critics of the Origin saw Darwin's reliance on the domesticates as his Achilles heel. As Young has pointed out, Samuel Wilberforce included the following passage in his attack on the Origin: Nor must we pass over unnoticed the transference of the argument from the domesticated to the untamed animals. Assuming that man as the selector can do much in a limited time, Mr. Darwin argues that Nature, a more powerful, a more continuous power, working over vastly extended ranges of time, can do more. But why should Nature, so uniform and persistent in all her operations, tend in this instance to change? Why should she become a selector of varieties?63Another critic, Fleeming Jenkin, found the analogy a weakness in Darwin's theory because of the limited extent of variation in any one direction in domestic animals and plants.64 We have already seen that Darwin had confided a similar view to his notebook thirty years earlier, but changed his mind as a result of his profound study of domesticates. De Beer's reference to “an English country gentleman's knowledge of domestic plants and animals and their breeding”65 fails totally to recognize the originality and depth of Darwin's knowledge of domesticates.Why did Darwin, against the currents of his time, rely so heavily on mankind's experience with domesticated organisms to shape his theory about species in nature? On reason is that only with domesticates was an approach that came close to experimental verification possible. Darwin fully realized the inadequacies of the experiment, as is emphasized by his repeated contrasting of selection under nature and selection by man. Yet the extensive experience and data of plant and animal breeders offered the only reliable base against which Darwin could continually challenge his views. As he wrote in the introduction to Variation, with domestication, “man ... may be said to have been trying an experiment on a gigantic scale.”66 Given Darwin's high opinion of the quantitative work of Malthus and Quetelet (as emphasized by Schweber),67 and his unremitting efforts to secure data by which to test his theories, it was inevitable that he should attach high significance to domesticated varieties. John Tyndall, in his Belfast address of 1874, said: “The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists, not in experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought.”68 Darwin would have agreed with the latter thought, but I think he would have challenged the preceding one on the grounds that long experience with domesticated varieties did provide an element of experimental demonstration. It gave him confidence in his theory, and he used his vast knowledge of artificial selection boldly and creatively. (shrink)

I argue that an icon in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the “circle of candles” represents an alternative to Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilization” thesis. But I also put forward a public policy that initially may seem to contradict this alternative: group or cultural rights, beyond, and even sometimes conflicting with, individual rights. Such rights at first blush appear to ensconce the same sort of walled-in, homogeneous and exclusionary cultural entities that Huntington’s thesis (...) implies I begin by stating Huntington’s thesis and the opposition to it that Amartya Sen has voiced in a recent book. I then provide a way of understanding the circle of candles that reinforces but also goes beyond the multi-identity type of multiculturalism that Sen places in opposition to Huntington’s warring monocultures. This understanding of the circle of candles, I will argue, shows how group or cultural rights, properly construed, can be incorporated into the type of hybrid society–what I call a “multivoiced body”– that constitutes a compelling alternative to the exclusionist responses to 9/11. My argument is reinforced by consideration of the current Zapatistas movement and their demands for group rights. (shrink)

A number of histories of circumcision have recently been written and in them the case of A. E. Housman, along with a number of others, has acquired a certain prominence. This paper will reconsider the existing evidence regarding Housman’s circumcision and the various interpretations of it in the secondary literature before going on to examine a number of overlooked sources. While this writing around Housman’s circumcision is not without positive results, it will be suggested via a consideration of Jacques Derrida’s (...) testimony regarding his own circumcision that the historian of sexuality needs also to contend with an inherent negativity and loss. The testimony provided by a recently uncovered poem on circumcision will prompt the suggestion that we should be wary of overemphasizing the individual example. In conclusion, the paper will argue that the problematic of Housman’s particular case has pertinence because in regard to individual experience we can only ever write around the history of circumcision. (shrink)

This article responds to Samuel Knafo and Benno Teschke’s recent critique of Political Marxism and their proposal for an alternative, ‘radical agency-centred’ historicism. While sympathetic to the critiques raised by the authors, I am less convinced by the conclusions they reach. Rather than abandon Political Marxism altogether, I argue that there remains much of value in the tradition. Through an analysis of the differential path of capitalist development in settler-colonial Canada, I suggest that bringing the methodological insights of Uneven (...) and Combined Development to bear on the theoretical material of Political Marxism can alleviate the problems identified by the authors. (shrink)

Though we are in broad agreement with much of Elqayam & Evans' (E&E's) position, we criticize two aspects of their argument. First, rejecting normativism is unlikely to yield the benefits that E&E seek. Second, their conception of rational norms is overly restrictive and, as a consequence, their arguments at most challenge a relatively restrictive version of normativism.

This paper attempts to answer a central question in unsupervised learning: what does it mean to “make sense” of a sensory sequence? In our formalization, making sense involves constructing a symbolic causal theory that both explains the sensory sequence and also satisfies a set of unity conditions. The unity conditions insist that the constituents of the causal theory – objects, properties, and laws – must be integrated into a coherent whole. On our account, making sense of sensory input is a (...) type of program synthesis, but it is unsupervised program synthesis. Our second contribution is a computer implementation, the Apperception Engine, that was designed to satisfy the above requirements. Our system is able to produce interpretable human-readable causal theories from very small amounts of data, because of the strong inductive bias provided by the unity conditions. A causal theory produced by our system is able to predict future sensor readings, as well as retrodict earlier readings, and impute (fill in the blanks of) missing sensory readings, in any combination. In fact, it is able to do all three tasks simultaneously. We tested the engine in a diverse variety of domains, including cellular automata, rhythms and simple nursery tunes, multi-modal binding problems, occlusion tasks, and sequence induction intelligence tests. In each domain, we test our engine's ability to predict future sensor values, retrodict earlier sensor values, and impute missing sensory data. The Apperception Engine performs well in all these domains, significantly out-performing neural net baselines. We note in particular that in the sequence induction intelligence tests, our system achieved human-level performance. This is notable because our system is not a bespoke system designed specifically to solve intelligence tests, but a general-purpose system that was designed to make sense of any sensory sequence. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractDeep learning, data management, automated processing, virtualisation, clustering and cloud computing should be part of the lexicon of biomedical researchers. In article number 1900004, Germán González and Conor L. Evans show that these techniques can be used to turn large amounts of data into actionable insights. The authors apply them to generate an automated image analysis pipeline that performs cell detection, cell analysis, offers a quality control interface and fi nally aggregates the data to draw conclusions, Biomedical Image (...) Processing with Containers and Deep Learning: An Automated Analysis Pipeline DOI: 10.1002/bies.201900004. (shrink)

We argue that counterfactuals and indicative conditionals are not so different. Certain notorious differences previously observed between pairs of indicative and counterfactual sentences are actually due to the presence of an anti-abductive modal auxiliary (would) in the consequent of the counterfactual. But such auxiliaries, of which will is another example, span the counterfactual-indicative divide.

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

To find more information on Rowman & Littlefield titles, please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

The millions of farm workers in the Global South are an important resource for smallholder producers. However, research on their labour organisation is limited. This article focuses on smallholder farm workers in Ghana’s cocoa sector, drawing on insights from qualitative interviews and the concept of bargaining power. We review the labour relations and working conditions of two historical and informally identified labour supply setups (LSSs) in Ghana’s cocoa sector, namely, hired labour and Abusa, a form of landowner–caretaker relations, and identify (...) an imbalance of horizontal power. Further, we analyse the labour relations and working conditions of an emerging and formal LSS in Ghana’s cocoa sector: private labour providers (PLPs). We argue that PLPs are likely to address the imbalance of horizontal power between farm workers and smallholders and bring about significant improvements in the working conditions of farm workers. We also assess the sustainability potential and limitations of PLPs and argue that tensions exist. We contribute to the growing horizontal power perspective by providing avenues for research and policy related to promoting sustained labour rights for farm workers in smallholder agriculture in the Global South. (shrink)

The present article seeks to reconstruct the Christological meaning of the verbs “creating” and “begetting” in the Synodical letter of Ancyra (358). In order to assess the teaching of this document, the first part of the article provides an overview of the Christological use of “creating” and “begetting” from the beginning of the Arian crisis up to the eve of the synod of Ancyra. The second part studies the verbs “creating” and “begetting” in the Letter of Ancyra. The synodical document (...) makes an original and significant theological effort, purifying and complementing both the notion of “creation” (Prv 8:22) and “generation” (Prv 8:25), in order to grasp the perfect notion of the eternal birth of the Son. This understanding is confirmed by Hilary of Poitiers. (shrink)

Support for gender equality has increased globally, and studies of this trend usually examine individual- and/or country-level factors. However, this overlooks subnational variation. City-dwellers are more likely to support gender equality in education, employment, leadership, and leisure. This article investigates the causes of rural–urban differences through comparative, qualitative research in Cambodia. The emergence of rural garment factories presents a quasi-natural experiment to test the theory that female employment enhances support for gender equality. Rural female employment may diminish rural–urban differences in (...) gender inequalities or there may be other important aspects of city-living that amplify support for gender equality. Drawing on Cambodian fieldwork, I suggest that cities raise the opportunity costs of the male breadwinner model, increase exposure to women in socially valued roles, and provide more associational avenues to collectively contest established practices. Interests, exposure, and association reinforce a snowballing process of social change. By investigating the causes of subnational variation, I advance a new theory of growing support for gender equality. (shrink)

This work is comprised of personal essays by some of the most noted Holocaust educators working in or with Holocaust museums, resource centers, or educational organizations across the globe.

Given what we know about the nature of knowledge and scientific work it no longer makes sense to think of scientific knowledge as demarcated from “ordinary” knowledge through its methods or the characteristics of the scientific community. As the social studies of science have shown, boundaries become ambiguous when viewed close up so that science merges with ordinary knowledge. But does this mean that distinctions between knowledge claims rest on nothing more than social conventions, powerful as these might be? The (...) articles in this special issue address this question from a variety of perspectives, while this introduction sets out this broader framework and highlights the themes that unite the individual articles. Our central argument is that although boundary work is difficult, complex, and contingent, it is too important to be left to chance or tradition. We need to rescue expertise from the antiessentialist consensus that there is nothing but attribution. (shrink)

Identifies, analyzes and critiques the philosophy's conceptual structure and theoretical groundwork.

The Semantic Descent account is extended to realistically complex examples, both in terms of syntactic complexity and vividness. A detailed treatment of a wide range of examples is followed by discussions of phenomena such as dead metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, mixed and extended metaphor, as well as observations about the relationship between synaesthesia and metaphor, the robustness of metaphor as a theoretical kind, the so-called ‘cognitive’ account of metaphor and visual metaphor.