In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 1-17 [Access article in PDF] The Influence of Folk Meteorology in the Anaximander Fragment Cameron Shelley * Introduction No scholars doubt that the pre-Socratic philosophers, especially the Milesians, were concerned with meteorology. Their works abound with accounts of wind, rain, thunder, lightning, meteorites, waterspouts, whirlwinds, and so on. Through examination of the fragments of the pre-Socratics, we can trace this interest (...) in meteorology from each philosopher to his predecessors right back to Anaxi-mander. 1 Thales might at first seem to be the most obvious candidate as the man who introduced meteorology into philosophy, but Kirk et al. argue persuasively that Thales was more interested in near-eastern mythology. 2 Thus, we must take Anaximander, Thales's protégé, to be the philosopher who made meteorology a topic of philosophical interest.This situation leaves us with an obvious question: where did Anaximander come by his interest and ideas about meteorology if not from Thales? Modern scholarship unanimously points to the Greek mythological tradition of Anaxi-mander's time as recorded primarily by Homer and Hesiod. Gilbert confidently asserts that any inquiry into the origin of Greek meteorology must begin with the stories recorded by these poets, and modern scholars generally echo this opinion. 3 Kahn notes that in classical Athens the Milesian-style, non-mythological accounts of meteorology were treated as direct challenges to the Olympic religion, [End Page 1] as demonstrated by Aristophanes in The Clouds. 4 But to conclude on this basis that Anaximander himself saw his project as the construction of theories by the removal of deities from myths is to mistake the result for the cause. Kirk et al. simply point to Kahn's account and speculate that Anaximander was influenced by Greek legends about Phaethon and Deucalion. 5 None of these scholars consider alternative possible sources of Anaximander's meteorological ideas, so that support for mythology as the source derives largely from the lack of a rival. But there is an alternative, namely, folk meteorology.Folk meteorology may be described as the body of folk wisdom concerning the nature and prediction of weather patterns. It typically comes in the form of pithy statements or jingles such as "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight; red sky in morning, shepherd's warning." 6 Folk meteorology has been almost completely neglected even by folklore scholars, so it is not surprising that it has escaped the attention of philosophers and classical scholars as well. However, an examination of folk beliefs about meteorology reveals significant similarities with some of the philosophical beliefs attributed to Anaximander, most notably, and surprisingly, regarding the concept of justice (dikê) implicit in Anaximander's famous fragment.The purpose of this paper is to construct and defend a case for the influence of folk meteorology on Anaximander, particularly on the concept of justice in the Anaximander fragment. The case begins on familiar ground, with the fragment itself and arguments against attempts to trace influences on it to non-meteorological sources, and continues with some evidence of the universality of folk meteorology across cultures and the character of balance as a folk-meteorological concept, which is then applied to the Anaximander fragment as a means of explicating what Anaximander meant there by justice. The suitability of balance for this purpose is taken as evidence that Anaximander was influenced by folk meteorology. Thus, this inquiry identifies a plausible origin of one of Anaximander's central philosophical ideas, an origin which has so far remained completely unexplored by scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. The Fragment of Anaximander Anaximander is famous among Greek scholars for the central role he gave to the concept of justice (dikê) in his natural philosophy. The one fragment of his writings, quoted by Simplicius in his Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (24.18-21), records Anaximander's view on the effect of justice in the physical world: [End Page 2] The things that are perish into the things out of which they come to be, according to necessity, for they pay penalty and retribution... (shrink)

Despite growing evidence that a significant number of patients living with Parkison’s disease experience neuropsychiatric changes following Deep Brain Stimulation treatment, the phenomenon remains poorly understood and largely unexplored in the literature. To shed new light on this phenomenon, we used qualitative methods grounded in phenomenology to conduct in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 17 patients living with Parkinson’s Disease who had undergone DBS. Our study found that patients appear to experience postoperative DBS-induced changes in the form of self-estrangement. Using the insights (...) from patients’ subjective perceptions of postoperative self-change provides a potent explanation of potential DBS-induced self-estrangement. (shrink)

Optogenetics is being optimistically presented in contemporary media for its unprecedented capacity to control cell behavior through the application of light to genetically modified target cells. As such, optogenetics holds obvious potential for application in a new generation of invasive medical devices by which to potentially provide treatment for neurological and psychiatric conditions such as Parkinson's disease, addiction, schizophrenia, autism and depression. Design of a first-in-human optogenetics experimental trial has already begun for the treatment of blindness. Optogenetics trials involve a (...) combination of highly invasive genetic and electronic interventions that results in irreversible and permanent modifications of an individual's nervous system. Given its novelty, its uncertain benefit to patients, and its unique risk profile of irreversible physiological alteration, optogenetics requires a reassessment of the ethical challenges for protecting human participants in clinical trials, particularly at formative stages of clinical evaluation. This study explores the evolving ethical issues surrounding optogenetics’ potential harm to participants within trial design, especially focusing on whether Phase 1 trials should incorporate efficacy as well as safety endpoints in ways that are fair and respectful to research trial participants. (shrink)

With the 1999 film The Martix as its point of departure, this work explores the meaning of ‘reality’ outside the scope of empirical positivism. Drawing on the phenomenological epistemology of the interplay of noetic and noematic dimensions of experience postulated by Husserl, and on the works of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, this work considers how the reality of our experience derives not from some correspondence to a universal ‘objective’ point of view, but from our concernful involvement with our lived world as (...) the horizon of our lived and known projects. Finally, in light of Ricoeur’s work on imagination and productive reference, this work considers whether and on what grounds the distinction between so called ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ experiences is meaningful. (shrink)

Any acceptable account of moral epistemology must accord with the following points. (1) Different people acquire seemingly very different moralities. (2) All normal people acquire a moral sense, whether or not they are given explicit moral instruction. Language resembles morality in these ways. There is considerable evidence from linguistics for linguistic universals. This suggests that (3) despite the first point, there are moral universals. If so, it might be possible to develop a moral epistemology that is analogous to the theory (...) of universal grammar in linguistics. In what follows, I will try to sketch what might be involved in such a moral epistemology. (shrink)

The studies by Trickey and Topping, which provide empirical support that philosophy produces cognitive gains and social benefits, have been used to advocate the view that philosophy deserves a place in the curriculum. Arguably, the existing curriculum, built around well-established core subjects, already provides what philosophy is said to do, and, therefore, there is no case to be made for expanding it to include philosophy. However, if we take citizenship education seriously, then the development of active and informed citizens requires (...) an emphasis on citizen preparation, but significantly more than the existing curriculum can provide, namely, the acquisition of knowledge and skills to improve students’ social and intellectual capacities and dispositions as future citizens. To this end, I argue for a model of democratic education that emphasises philosophy functioning educationally, whereby students have an integral role to play in shaping democracy through engaging in philosophy as collaborative inquiry that integrates pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. I contend that only philosophy can promote democracy, insofar as philosophical inquiry is an exemplar of the kind of deliberative inquiry required for informed and active democratic citizenship. In this way, philosophy can make a fundamental and much needed contribution to education. (shrink)

Theories of causation may imply that your birth causes your death, which seems odd in the way that it is not odd to say that your birth precedes your death. Theories of knowledge may imply that the object of knowledge is the same as the object of belief, although we know but do not believe facts and we can know a proposition without knowing whether it is true.

Abstract In a 1967 article that is considered a classic of criminal justice scholarship, Abraham Blumberg portrayed defense attorneys for accused offenders as more responsive to the demands of the court entourage for smooth and expeditious functioning than to the needs of their clients for a stalwart representation. The article suggests that Blumberg's view, while provocative and with a considerable element of accuracy, may have reflected a somewhat jaundiced and overstated perspective when he was on the verge of leaving law (...) practice for academia. The article also speculates about the current accuracy of Blumberg's observations. (shrink)

Can someone be reasonable or justified in accepting a specific moral judgment not based on the prior acceptance of a general exceptioness moral principle, where acceptance of a general principle might be tacit or implicit and might not be expressible in language? This issue is an instance of a wider issue about direct or transductive inference. Developments in statistical learning theory show that such an inference can be more effective than alternative methods using inductive generalization and so can be reasonable. (...) This result carries over to moral transduction, although it is a difficult empirical issue whether people actually engage in any sort of transduction, including moral transduction. (shrink)

An analysis of the physical implications of abstractness reveals the reality of three interconnected modes of existence: abstract, virtual and concrete, corresponding in physics to information, energy and matter. This triple-aspect monism clarifies the ontological status of subatomic quantum particles. It also provides a non-spooky solution to the weirdness of quantum physics and a new outlook for the mind-body problem. The ontological implications are profound for both physics and philosophy.

INTRODUCTION In my view, justice is entirely conventional; indeed, all of morality consists in conventions that are the result of continual tacit bargaining and adjustment. This is not to say social arrangements are just whenever they are in accordance with the principles of justice accepted in that society. We can use our own principles of justice in judging the institutions of another society, and we can appeal to some principles we accept in order to criticize other principles we accept. To (...) use David Hume's model of the relevant sort of convention, two people rowing a boat each continually adjusts his or her rate of rowing to the other so that they come to row at the same rate, a rate that is normally somewhere between the rate at which each would prefer to row. In the same way the basic principles of justice accepted by people of different powers and resources are the result of a continually changing compromise affecting such things as the relative importance attached to helping others as compared with the importance attached to not harming others. Hume's rowers provide an example of a “convention” that is normally completely tacit. There are other models in which the bargaining can be more explicit, for example when a seller comes to set prices that are acceptable to customers, when employers reach understandings with employees concerning wages, or when political groups influence legislation. I want eventually to consider the implications for moral reasoning and argument of the thesis that principles of justice are entirely the result of implicit bargaining and convention of this sort. (shrink)

This book is concerned with the relationship between processes of accumulation and aspects of distribution. The analyses of Ricardo and Marx are reevaluated and redeveloped in the light of advances made by von Neumann, Sraffa and more contemporary theoreticians. Joint production systems are integrated into the analysis, which allows the authors to define the effect of the theorem of non-substitution, and to reconsider the problem of obsolescence and the choice of technique.

Rodden writes, “How do stories persuade us? How do they ‘move’—and move us? The short answer: by analogies.” Rodden’s claim is a natural first view, also held by others. This chapter considers the extent to which this view is true and helpful in understanding how fictional narratives, taken as wholes, may be argumentative, comparing it to the two principal (though not necessarily exclusive) alternatives that have been proposed: understanding fictional narratives as exhibiting the structure of suppositional argument, or the structure (...) of a kind of transcendental argument. Three key aspects of understanding a fictional narrative as an argument from analogy are identified. First, the argument will be relativistic or depend in an essential way upon the circumstances or intentions of the auditor or author. Second, in view of the first aspect, the argument will be loose and subjective, and accordingly less likely to yield knowledge. Third, the argument will not exhibit a distinctive structure applicable only to fictional narratives. I find that the third, and sometimes the first and second, of these same three aspects apply to understanding fictional narratives as suppositional arguments. I present considerations that point to a way of establishing that some extended fictions exhibit the structure of a kind of transcendental argument that is neither relativistic nor subjective, is knowledge-generating, and is uniquely applicable to fictional narratives. This supports literary cognitivism—the thesis that “literary fiction can be a source of knowledge in a way that depends crucially on its being fictional.”. (shrink)

In their article published in Nanoethics, “Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of Brain-Implants Using Nano-Scale Materials and Techniques”, Berger et al. suggest that there may be a prima facie moral obligation to improve neuro implants with nanotechnology given their possible therapeutic advantages for patients [Nanoethics, 2:241–249]. Although we agree with Berger et al. that developments in nanomedicine hold the potential to render brain implant technologies less invasive and to better target neural stimulation to respond to brain impairments in the near (...) future, we argue against presenting the development of nanobionic clinical devices in terms of a moral obligation to conduct this research. In the first part of the paper, we consider what a duty to pursue new technologies might mean, and in the second we explore some of the negative consequences of defending such development as a moral obligation based on potential benefit. We argue that promoting the advances available to brain implants through developments in nanotechnology and bionics could contribute to medical rhetoric that indirectly increases the risk of exposing patients to harm when participating in clinical trials. We argue that rather than there being a moral obligation to improve nanobionics implants because of their potential benefit, the pursuit of improved neuro implants must be balanced against the prima facie obligations to protect patients against harm and to promote and protect patient autonomy. (shrink)

The use of symbols in calculation and other thinking is to be distinguished from the use of symbols in communication. Grice's analysis of speaker meaning fails for certain uses of symbols in calculation. Words and concepts have uses, not sentences or whole thoughts. Concepts have uses or functional roles in perception; inference and practical reasoning are to be understood in terms of ways an organism functions in relation to a presumed normal environment.

This paper gives a full picture of the moral universe pressuring all sides in the strike by porters in Paris during January 1786. These Parisian day-labourers found their livelihood taken away by a new system of parcel delivery, part of a many-sided endeavour to rationalise the economy. They rioted and were the first rioting mob to appeal to the king at Versailles. This paper looks at the riot from the points of view of the rioters and their neighbours, the police, (...) the investors in the new parcel post scheme and the advancing American trade. This exemplifies a theort of hustoiry that focuses on the moral universes of past actors. (shrink)

The history of ideas is most prominently understood as a highly specialized group of methods for the study of abstract ideas, with both diachronic and synchronic aspects. While theorizing the field has focused on the methods of study, defining the object of study – ideas – has been neglected. But the development of the theories behind material culture studies poses a sharp challenge to these narrow approaches. It both challenges the integrity of the notion of abstract ideas and also offers (...) possibilities for enlarging the scope of the ways in which we can study ideas historically. It is proposed here to regard ideas as mental relations deeply connected to human communication by both thinking and doing. This connection of ideational thought to human production and behavior is a deep foundation for the history of ideas as an interdisciplinary historiographic means of understanding moral life. (shrink)

There is a striking difference, however, between the ways female and male modernists define and describe literal or figurative costumes. Balancing self against mask, true garment against false costume, Yeats articulates a perception of himself and his place in society that most other male modernists share, even those who experiment more radically with costume as metaphor. But female modernists like Woolf, together with their post-modernist heirs, imagine costumes of the mind with much greater irony and ambiguity, in part because women's (...) clothing is more closely connected with the pressures and oppressions of gender and in part because women have far more to gain from the identification of costume with self or gender. Because clothing powerfully defines sex roles, both overt and covert fantasies of transvestism are often associated with the intensified clothes consciousness expressed by these writers. But although such imagery is crucially important in works by Joyce, Lawrence, and Eliot on the one hand, and in works by Barnes, Woolf, and H. D. on the other, it functions very differently for male modernists from the way it operates for female modernists.Sandra M. Gilbert, professor of English at the University of California at Davis, is the author of Acts of Attention: The Poems of D.H. Lawrence and In the Fourth World; the coauthor, with Susan Gubar, of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, and its sequel, No Man's Land: The Woman Writer and the Twentieth-Century Literary Imagination. (shrink)

If this book were a film, it would be rated M-with a caution that 'some viewers may be disturbed by some scenes'. In CATCHING THE KNOWLEDGE WAVE? Jane Gilbert takes apart many long-held ideas about knowledge and education. She says that knowledge is now a verb, not a noun-something we do rather than something we have-and explores the ways our schools need to change to prepare people to participate in the knowledge-based societies of the future. The knowledge society is (...) an idea that is widely discussed, but not well understood. Knowledge is developing a new meaning, one that is quite different to the one our schools were built on. Because of this, knowledge society developments are a major challenge for our schools. We cannot address this challenge by adding more ideas to our existing structures. We need a completely new framework-one that takes account of knowledge's new meaning, but also gives everyone an equal opportunity to succeed. If this seems like a tall order, it probably is-however this book attempts to map out such a framework. This is a book to argue with, to agree or disagree with, but above all to read-the future of our public education system is at stake. (shrink)

El artículo estudia cómo la fenomenología puede contribuir al quehacer teológico. A tal fin, el prof. Gilbert comienza por identificar los inicios de la fenomenología. Seguidamente, presenta lo que él denomina fenomenología “descriptiva”, marcada por las ciencias humanas, que sirvió para reconocer las características esenciales de la religión. Pero la fenomenología puede dar un paso más, ya estrictamente filosófico, para elaborar un modo de fenomenología “especulativa”. Finalmente, el artículo indica las aportaciones de esta esta fenomenológica al desarrollo de la (...) teología, estudiando las propuestas de Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion y Emmanuel Falque. (shrink)

At its founding and during its first three decades, the Carthusian order developed a distinctive and forceful concept of communication among the members and between the members and the extramural world.2 Saint Bruno’s life, contemporary twelfth-century exegesis, and the physical situation of La Grande Chartreuse established the necessary context in which this concept evolved. A review of historical background, the relevant documentary texts, and early development demonstrate the shaping of two steps in this concept. Close reading of the principal testimonies (...) of Carthusians Bruno, Guigo I, Guigo II, and some other witnesses, as well as of some passages in Saint Augustine, argues that Carthusian scribal work was more preliminary practice for spiritual development than it was the sacralization of codices and texts. The two-step structure, composed of contrary movements of presentation and effacement, guarded what the Carthusians regarded as spiritual activity within a changing historical environment and became a fundamental part of Latin Christian mysticism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. (shrink)