This volume presents new texts of Cicero's dialogues on political philosophy, De Re Publica and De Legibus, together with corrected versions of the editor's previously published editions of Cato Maior de Senectute and Laelius de Amicitia. The texts are based on a full reconsideration of the manuscript evidence and are presented in a clear and readable form.

To judge people's true character, pay careful attention to what they do, not to what they say; to develop human resources successfully, first develop your own skills and resources; be exacting without being needlessly demanding; and don't dwell on the present but always look to future goals. These are just a few of the insights revealed in this basic course on how to recognize, organize, and develop human resources. Drawing on essential sources - such as Confucius, Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu, (...) and the I Ching - Thomas Cleary shows what today's business executives, personnel managers, and political leaders can learn from these ancient Asian traditions about the inner dynamics of human interaction. Among the selections are passages from an important but less well-known work, The Thirty-six Strategies, which summarizes the powerful techniques of the Asian "art of advantage". Also provided are short, accessible introductions to Confucianism, Taoism, The Art of War, and the I Ching, along with lists of resources for further reading. (shrink)

Existing research suggests that people's judgments of actual causation can be influenced by the degree to which they regard certain events as normal. We develop an explanation for this phenomenon that draws on standard tools from the literature on graphical causal models and, in particular, on the idea of probabilistic sampling. Using these tools, we propose a new measure of actual causal strength. This measure accurately captures three effects of normality on causal judgment that have been observed in existing studies. (...) More importantly, the measure predicts a new effect ("abnormal deflation"). Two studies show that people's judgments do, in fact, show this new effect. Taken together, the patterns of people's causal judgments thereby provide support for the proposed explanation. (shrink)

The Pleadings Game is a normative formalization and computational model of civil pleading, founded in Roberty Alexy''s discourse theory of legal argumentation. The consequences of arguments and counterarguments are modelled using Geffner and Pearl''s nonmonotonic logic,conditional entailment. Discourse in focussed using the concepts of issue and relevance. Conflicts between arguments can be resolved by arguing about the validity and priority of rules, at any level. The computational model is fully implemented and has been tested using examples from Article Nine of (...) the Uniform Commercial Code. (shrink)

In this letter, we argue against a recurring idea that early word learning in infants is related to the low-level capacity for backward associations—a notion that suggests a cognitive gap with other animal species. Because backward associations entail the formation of bidirectional associations between sequentially perceived stimulus pairs, they seemingly mirror the label-referent bidirectional mental relations underlying the lexicon of natural language. This appealing but spurious resemblance has led to various speculations on language acquisition, in particular regarding early word learning, (...) which we deconstruct here. (shrink)

Abstract:Historicist criticism makes more sense as an aesthetic stance than as a discipline for producing knowledge. I examine Galen Strawson's essay "Against Narrativity" and Ian McEwan's novel Saturday to account for historicism's distinct aesthetic. Strawson distinguishes between Diachronic and Episodic orientations toward time, and both writers work to validate the Episodic perspective against the claim that Diachronicity is psychologically and ethically normative. Because historicist criticism privileges singular epiphanic encounters with the past that would transcend or preclude narrativization, historicists appear as (...) unhappy Diachronics, seeking an Episodic fulfillment that their prior commitment to totalizing narratives of power renders elusive. (shrink)

We present a formal, mathematical model of argument structure and evaluation, taking seriously the procedural and dialogical aspects of argumentation. The model applies proof standards to determine the acceptability of statements on an issue-by-issue basis. The model uses different types of premises (ordinary premises, assumptions and exceptions) and information about the dialectical status of statements (stated, questioned, accepted or rejected) to allow the burden of proof to be allocated to the proponent or the respondent, as appropriate, for each premise separately. (...) Our approach allows the burden of proof for a premise to be assigned to a different party than the one who has the burden of proving the conclusion of the argument, and also to change the burden of proof or applicable proof standard as the dialogue progresses from stage to stage. Useful for modeling legal dialogues, the burden of production and burden of persuasion can be handled separately, with a different responsible party and applicable proof standard for each. Carneades enables critical questions of argumentation schemes to be modeled as additional premises, using premise types to capture the varying effect on the burden of proof of different kinds of questions. (shrink)

The self allows us to reflect on our own behavior and to imagine what others think of us. Clinical experience suggests that these abilities may be impaired in people with personality disorders. They do not recognize the impact that their behavior has on others, and they have difficulty understanding how they are seen by others. We collected information regarding pathological personality traits—using both self and peer report measures—from groups of people who knew each other well . In previous papers, we (...) have reported that agreement between self-report and peer-report is only modest. In this paper, we address the question: Do people know that others disagree with their own perceptions of themselves? We found that expected peer scores predicted variability in peer report over and above self-report for all 10 diagnostic traits. People do have some incremental knowledge of how they are viewed by others, but they do not tell you about it unless you ask them to do so; the knowledge is not reflected in ordinary self-report data. Among participants who expect their peers to describe them as narcissistic, those who agree with this assessment are viewed as being less narcissistic by their peers than those who deny being narcissistic. It therefore appears that insight into how one is viewed by others can moderate negative impressions fostered by PD traits. (shrink)

Understanding the development and practice of power based on an in-depth observation of human psychology has been a part of traditional Chinese thought for thousands of years and is considered a prerequisite for mastering the arts of strategy and leadership. "Thunder in the Sky" presents two secret classics of this ancient Chinese tradition. The commentary by Thomas Cleary the renowned translator of dozens of Asian classics highlights the contemporary application of these teachings.

Examines how Stieglitz's work influenced Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane and Sherwood Anderson and discusses how photography reshaped literary aesthetics.

When a posteriori science came into view during the 16th century and had experienced classical developments during the 17th century, this modern science was referred to as dogmatic science. This is because an inductive discovery method that is directed by inquiry took the place of deducting from abstract principles, and because this science enabled various improvements in the real knowledge of the universe. The notion of acquiring ‘dogmatic’ thought was brought about by the differentiation given by the Greeks between the (...) ‘sceptics’ who asked several academic questions and the ‘dogmatics’ who seek to find positive results to these questions. As such, dogmatic science was utilized in analysing the new physics that encompassed a particular field of reality. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Varieties of Divine Action God as Agent of Intentional Actions Divine Action and Created Causes Works cited.

In developing our actual knowledge, we do not utilize authentic knowledge in looking into epistemology and on the ground of theory. It is also unlikely that we will be able to identify measures for answering the question ‘How can we know God?’ and use the answers in further investigation and explanation of what we know. As such, we may be able to develop an epistemology of God when we have considered our actual knowledge of God since form cannot be separated (...) from method nor from content. God enables us to know Him through how he is able to present Himself to us as an object of knowing and through how we are able to form relationships with Him. This chapter attempts to look into the formal and non-formal aspects of knowledge so that we may arrive at the epistemology of the Spirit. (shrink)