Advocates of cladistic parsimony methods have invoked the philosophy of Karl Popper in an attempt to argue for the superiority of those methods over phylogenetic methods based on Ronald Fisher's statistical principle of likelihood. We argue that the concept of likelihood in general, and its application to problems of phylogenetic inference in particular, are highly compatible with Popper's philosophy. Examination of Popper's writings reveals that his concept of corroboration is, in fact, based on likelihood. Moreover, because probabilistic assumptions are necessary (...) for calculating the probabilities that define Popper's corroboration, likelihood methods of phylogenetic inference—with their explicit probabilistic basis—are easily reconciled with his concept. In contrast, cladistic parsimony methods, at least as described by certain advocates of those methods, are less easily reconciled with Popper's concept of corroboration. If those methods are interpreted as lacking probabilistic assumptions, then they are incompatible with corroboration. Conversely, if parsimony methods are to be considered compatible with corroboration, then they must be interpreted as carrying implicit probabilistic assumptions. Thus, the non-probabilistic interpretation of cladistic parsimony favored by some advocates of those methods is contradicted by an attempt by the same authors to justify parsimony methods in terms of Popper's concept of corroboration. In addition to being compatible with Popperian corroboration, the likelihood approach to phylogenetic inference permits researchers to test the assumptions of their analytical methods (models) in a way that is consistent with Popper's ideas about the provisional nature of background knowledge. (shrink)

Cognitive science is transforming our understanding of the mind. New discoveries are changing how we comprehend not just language, but thought itself. Yet, surprisingly little of the new learning has penetrated discussions and analysis of the most important social institution affecting our lives-the law. Drawing on work in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and literary theory, Steven L. Winter has created nothing less than a tour de force of interdisciplinary analysis. A Clearing in the Forest rests on the simple notion (...) that the better we understand the workings of the mind, the better we will understand all its products-especially law. Legal studies today focus on analytic skills and grand normative theories. But, to understand how real-world, legal actors reason and decide, we need a different set of tools. Cognitive science provides those tools, opening a window on the imaginative, yet orderly mental processes that animate thinking and decisionmaking among lawyers, judges, and lay persons alike. Recent findings about how humans actually categorize and reason make it possible to explain legal reasoning in new, more cogent, more productive ways. A Clearing in the Forest is a compelling meditation on both how the law works and what it all means. In uncovering the irrepressibly imaginative, creative quality of human reason, Winter shows how what we are learning about the mind changes not only our understanding of law, but ultimately of ourselves. He charts a unique course to understanding the world we inhabit, showing us the way to the clearing in the forest. (shrink)

Thomas and Suarez understand God’s creation and conservation in a similar way: as God’s continually giving being to all creatures. The two philosophers also try to explain the way in which creaturely, secondary causality is guaranteed, but they do so in radically different ways. Suarez’s doctrine of concurrence is not a progressive development of Thomas’s doctrine of secondary, instrumental causality, with which this Suarezian innovation is incompatible. I try to show how different concurrentism is from Thomas’s doctrine of secondary causality (...) and to offer some criticism of the former by the latter. (shrink)

I assess Anselm’s claim that the debt of sin is "infinite" by examining the thought-experiment used to illustrate it. The claim crashes due to a conflict with Anselm’s implied (and plausible) view of God’s obligations and due to interesting errors in his thought-experiment. Nevertheless, I defend his "Union-of-Obligation-and-Ability (UOA) strategy and his "Provision-of-Satisfaction" mechanism for explaining atonement, which relied functionally on sin’s infinite demerit, by changing them a bit. I also defend Anselm’s UOA and "Disorder-Avoidance" strategies from objections from Duns (...) Scotus. (shrink)

A Catholic philosophy requires an account of God as the first cause of all being. Descartes provides this, but he does so at a high price, for his Creator of ontologically and causally independent moments of creaturely existence precludes all secondary causes. Descartes’s philosophy thus results in occasionalism, which I try to show is the unhappy result of errors in natural philosophy concerning material forms and duration. Suarez provides a contrasting scholastic account of creation, showing how novel, and problematic, Descartes’s (...) position is. (shrink)

The task of producing a comprehensive, single‐volume treatment of Buddhist philosophy presents certain editorial challenges, not the least of which is the problem of how to do justice to the sheer breadth and diversity of a tradition that spans some two and a half millennia. This introductory chapter of A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy sheds some light on the considerations that shaped the structure and content of the book.

The Philadelphia Association is always linked with the name of R. D. Laing, one of its founders, but very little is known about its unorthodox contribution to the development of psychoanalysis. Founded in 1965, it took as its aim the relief of mental illnesss of all desciptions, in particular schizophrenia. At its inception it was a focus for people, with a diversity of backgrounds and interests, concerned with 'mental illness' and how society defines it. Its members - who included psychoanalysis, (...) psychiatrists and artists - developed a philosophical critique of psychoanalysis grounded in phenomenology, and an 'anti-psychiatry' critique of the institutional treatment of the mentally ill. They favoured the setting up of therapeutic community households of which the best known was Kingsley Hall. The PA was then very much part of the counter culture - it staged, for example, the famous Dialectics of Liberation Congress at London's Roundhouse in 1967. The psychotherapists who currently belong to the Philadelphia Association continue to work with community households and to offer a psychotherapy training. Here the authors share their innovative and distinctive approach on a number of interrelated themes: the herapeutic community and differend ways it can be understood; work with deeply regresed patients; the concept of identity in a social context; the debate between Lacan and Derrida on Poe's 'The Purloined Letter'; the phenomenology of knowledge and transference and authority. Together, they offer a cogent critique of many psychiatric and psychonalaytic assumptions. The contributors are Robin Cooper, Joseph friedman, Steven Gans, John Heaton, Chris Oakley, Haya Oakley and Paul Zeal. They are all psychotherapists and members of the Philadelphia Association. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We must, Isaiah Berlin argues, make tragic tradeoffs as we navigate the clash of incommensurable and irreconcilable values and ends of modernity. To deny this is to succumb to a politics of immaturity, and to the totalitarian temptation. The twentieth century taught that to resist final-solution fantasies, we must resist the allure, if not reject the value, of positive liberty, the liberty of self-mastery and self-rule. Two decades in, has the twenty-first century taught a different lesson? Have we learned (...) that negative liberty, liberty from rule, with its antipaternalistic ethic of ultra-individualism, harbors its own politics of immaturity, and a demagogic temptation? I argue that this is the more frequent, if less fatal, threat to human dignity and decency today, and that we therefore ought to rebalance the scales in the tragic tradeoff of positive for negative liberty. (shrink)

Truth is an ethical relation. Facts, whether descriptions of the physical world or of historical events, are necessarily mediated by our frames of reference. This contingency opens a space for disagreement that cannot be adjudicated by an absolute standard of truth. For those seeking power or profit, the temptation to exploit this state of undecidability is strong. When many question the institutions that broker meaning – science, the professions, the media – rumors, misinformation, deliberate distortions and falsehoods all proliferate. In (...) the digital age, the ‘made’ is swiftly supplanted by the made-up. The remedy for this predicament is not technological or factual, but ethical and social. The normative resources for this project lie in our everyday ethic of communication and in the ideal of democracy as shared authority. Whether we can address this predicament effectively is uncertain. But the nature of the problem is clear: It is not that we live in a ‘post-truth’ age, but rather that we are facing a crisis of democratic society as such. It is not so much that we lost sight of truth, as that we have lost sight of one another. (shrink)

This study explores the prevalence and predictors of three sexual contact and conduct risks through mobile phone use among adolescents : the exchange of sexually explicit content, the sharing of one's mobile phone number with a stranger from the opposite sex, and participation in anonymous chat rooms on TV. One in three adolescents admits having exchanged sexual content, one in five reports having shared their number with a stranger, and one in ten has participated in TV chat rooms. Contextual predictors (...) were gender, age, having a partner, self-esteem, popularity, susceptibility to peer pressure, parent attachment and attitude towards school. Strong mobile phone use predictors were the frequency of text messaging, problematic phone use and using one's phone to avoid face-to-face interactions. However, different patterns emerged for the different mobile phone practices and for girls and boys, indicating the need for further research. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard's writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard's thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard's contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, (...) literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines. (shrink)

Product differentiation has emerged as a central dynamic in contemporary agrofood systems. Departure from the mode of standardization emblematic of agrofood modernization raises questions about future technical trajectories and the ways in which learning will be sustained. This article examines two innovation trajectories: the rapid coupling of biotechnologies and information technologies to yield products differentiated by constituent components—a model based on a cognitive logic of decomposition/ recomposition—and the proliferation of product networks that mobilize distinctive, localized resources to create complete identities—a (...) model based on a cognitive logic of identity. The article analyzes the information structures—institutional mechanisms that support information exchange and learning—in each of these opposed development paradigms. We find that knowledge creation under each of the logics occurs through mechanisms not recognized within the respective paradigms. On this basis, we derive institutional hybridity as a fundamental resource in systems of innovation. (shrink)

Past research has found that skin colouration, particularly facial redness, influences the perceived health and emotional state of target individuals. In the current work, we explore several extensions of this past research. In Experiment 1, we manipulated facial redness incrementally on neutral and angry faces and had participants rate each face for anger and health. Different red effects emerged, as perceived anger increased in a linear manner as facial redness increased. Health ratings instead showed a curvilinear trend, as both extreme (...) paleness and redness were rated as less healthy than moderate levels of red. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings by manipulating the masculinity of both angry and neutral faces that varied in redness. The results found the effect of red on perceived anger and health was moderated by masculine face structure. Collectively, these results show that facial redness has context dependent effects that vary based on facial expression, appearance, and differentially impact ratings of emotional states and health. (shrink)

The claim that we have free will is so important to Kant that many of his commentators suggest that the entire structure and machinery of his Critique of Pure Reason is constructed solely for the purpose of sheltering free will from the devastating effects it suffers from empiricism. Indeed, Kant himself, in a famous line in the preface, tells us, “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith” [Bxxx]. The question of whether (...) people are free willed or determined in their actions is the central issue of the Third Antinomy, and perhaps arguably, the main issue of the whole Critique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dante’s Poetics Of The Sacred WordSteven BotterillI hope to make a case that, until recently, would probably have seemed self-evident, or at least uncontroversial: namely, that a positive valuation of the power of human language to express and to represent informs the textual practice of Dante’s Commedia—or, to put it more bluntly, that Dante believes in words.1The language of poetry was, for Dante, the supremely demanding and supremely rewarding (...) form of human eloquence. This much is made clear in his significantly titled treatise De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular), which, having set out—and failed—to identify a truly noble form of the Italian vernacular, takes it as axiomatic that if (or rather when) such a language is brought into being, it will primarily be used by poets in the composition of their poetry. Despite the many subsequent developments in his thought, and despite, above all, the drastic and often underestimated effects of his shift after 1300 from lyric to narrative-dramatic forms and techniques, nothing in Dante’s later works gives us any reason to think that he ever modified this view.Within the narrative of the Commedia, the overriding importance of eloquence is amply demonstrated by the fact that, without it, Dante-character’s journey would never have taken place. It is to poetic eloquence that Dante owes both his visionary experience and his eventual salvation. Confirmation of this initially startling proposition occurs in canto II of Inferno, where Virgil describes his commission from Beatrice to come to the aid of her errant admirer, and explains that he is charged to do so through the use of his “parola ornata” (“ornamented [End Page 154] word”: Inf., II. 67)—not merely a word plucked from the dictionary, however potently charged with salvific meaning, but a word (or, by synecdoche, a language) that is perceptibly embellished with the technical and rhetorical devices recognized by its hearers as constituting eloquence. Virgil, then, is not just to speak the saving word but to pay attention, as both his historical identity and his creator’s agenda require, to the aesthetic and intellectual implications of its usage; and the efficacy of his speech is manifestly dependent on the elegance and persuasiveness of its formulation.Dante-character’s initial recognition of his mysterious interlocutor in Inferno I as “quella fonte / che spandi di parlar sì largo fiume” (“that spring / that pours forth so rich a stream of speech”: Inf., I. 79–80) is thus retrospectively justified: this is the immediately relevant aspect of Virgil’s historical personality, the one that best equips him to become Dante-character’s guide and mentor in Hell and (most of) Purgatory. Likewise, it is under the auspices of another renowned possessor of eloquence, Bernard of Clairvaux, that Dante’s journey reaches its appointed end. The narrative movement through the Commedia is, among much else, a movement from one “parola ornata” to another, from Virgil’s eloquence to Bernard’s, from the pagan word that offers worldly renown to the Christian word that both transfigures the believer in this life and promises bliss in the life to come. The former, however, grounds the process that leads to the latter; and at both ends of the journey the functional significance of the word and its usage remains paramount.We need, however, to be careful at this point, lest we begin too quickly to entertain the notion that the centrality of eloquence in Dante’s thought immediately justifies the conclusion that he accepted the intrinsic validity of poetic language, or, more controversial still, its supremacy over other forms of eloquent discourse. Firstly, Virgil’s is not the only word in the poem distinguished as “ornata.” The epithet recurs in the bolgia of the seducers, as part of the tale of Jason, who “con segni e con parole ornate” (“with signs and with ornamented words”: Inf., XVIII. 91) led Hypsipyle astray and earned himself damnation. Clearly, Jason’s “parole ornate” are morally quite different from Virgil’s: instead of saving they betray, instead of embodying the truth they act as a vehicle of deceit. Their ornamental quality is specious, employed to conceal their... (shrink)

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