A Short History of Logic by William Ritchie Sorley, first published in 1911, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage (...) to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it. (shrink)

Prologue. It is evident from the title that this is a philosophical discussion. I shall not apologize for the philosophy, though I am well aware that most scientists, engineers, and mathematicians have little regard for it; instead, I shall give this short prologue to justify the approach.

Among the defining characteristics of moral cosmopolitanism are the convictions that personal relations, membership in social or political organizations like local communities or nation-states are insignificant for agents when determining their scope of moral concern. The moral scope is unlimited and the moral duties reach globally. Following up observations made by Onora O’Neill and others, it is argued that Singer’s model needs a complementary tool to allocate duties.That tool can be found by supplementing the agent centered perspective of the model (...) with a regard for the social and institutional circles encompassing right holders. Instead of focusing on the duty holder, I suggest that the cosmopolitan’s “ultimate unit of moral concern” – here, the claimholder is regarded central.Thus, Singer’s cosmological model is kept, but in a rights-based methodological approach for allocating duties. Methodologically, what needs to be investigated is whether the scope of legitimate moral claims expands from the agent for the same reasons that the circle of moral concern expands from Singer’s agent. (shrink)

A systematic comparison between Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's ethics. I argue that Kierkegaard supplies a proleptic and largely successful critique of Nietzsche's claims and arguments in moral philosophy.

Tracing the short film as an alternative to the more familiar feature film, Gunning moves from the shorter films of early cinema to the avant-garde films of Peter Kubelka, discussing Maya Deren’s concept of vertical time and Kubelka’s idea of ecstasy. The claim is made that time in short films can be very different from the time in narrative films, not simply briefer.

This text develops students' ability to philosophise and learn about philosophy and education. It challenges readers to use philosophy as a tool within education and as a set of theories to understand education by developing solutions to problems as they occur within practice. Assuming no pre-existing philosophical background, this book explores topics such as: the limits of a religious-based education; the desire for 'alternative facts' or 'truths'; and the struggle in the teacher-student relationship. This book will support all those on (...) Education, Childhood or Youth Studies courses in developing a critical perspective and understanding the true value of philosophy within education. (shrink)

Wnt proteins form a family of secreted signaling proteins that play a key role in various developmental events such as cell differentiation, cell migration, cell polarity and cell proliferation. It is currently thought that Wnt proteins activate at least three different signaling pathways by binding to seven transmembrane receptors of the Frizzled family and the co-receptor LRP6. Despite our growing knowledge of intracellular components that mediate a Wnt signal, the molecular events at the membrane have remained rather unclear. Now several (...) publications1-4 indicate that Frizzled receptors are G-protein coupled and kinases were identified that phosphorylate the co-receptor LRP6. These data deepen our understanding of Wnt-mediated signal transduction and provide more insight into how specificity may be achieved. BioEssays 28: 339–343, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We argue from the Church-Turing thesis (Kleene Mathematical logic. New York: Wiley 1967) that a program can be considered as equivalent to a formal language similar to predicate calculus where predicates can be taken as functions. We can relate such a calculus to Wittgenstein’s first major work, the Tractatus, and use the Tractatus and its theses as a model of the formal classical definition of a computer program. However, Wittgenstein found flaws in his initial great work and he explored these (...) flaws in a new thesis described in his second great work; the Philosophical Investigations. The question we address is “can computer science make the same leap?” We are proposing, because of the flaws identified by Wittgenstein, that computers will never have the possibility of natural communication with people unless they become active participants of human society. The essential difference between formal models used in computing and human communication is that formal models are based upon rational sets whereas people are not so restricted. We introduce irrational sets as a concept that requires the use of an abductive inference system. However, formal models are still considered central to our means of using hypotheses through deduction to make predictions about the world. These formal models are required to continually be updated in response to peoples’ changes in their way of seeing the world. We propose that one mechanism used to keep track of these changes is the Peircian abductive loop. (shrink)

Instead of impeding access to essential medicines in developing countries, the essay explores why and how patents can serve as a source of funding for the much needed access to medicine. Instead of a weakening of patents, prolonged protection periods are suggested in circumstances where there is widespread lack of access. The revenues from extended patents are seen as a source of funding for drug donations to the least developed countries.

I argue that, in analysing the structure and development of moral traditions, MacIntyre relies primarily on Kuhn's model of scientific tradition, rather than on Lakatos' model. I unpack three foci of Kuhn's conception of the sciences, namely: the ‘crisis’ conception of scientific development, what I call the ‘systematic conception’ of scientific paradigms, and the view that successive paradigms are incommensurable. I then show that these three foci are integrated into MacIntyre's account of the development of moral traditions with a surprising (...) degree of faithfulness to Kuhn. And crucially, I argue against the overall cogency of his account, given the disparities I pinpoint between scientific and moral traditions. My overall critique is, however, fundamentally friendly, since nothing I have to say invalidates the very notion of a moral tradition, and all I am calling for are less problematic construals of that notion. (shrink)

From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle. By Leunissen Mariska.

This discussion of Stanley Hauerwas’Hannah's Child examines the implications of the book for the disciplines of historical and doctrinal theology. Locating the success of theological biography and autobiography in its description of God in relation to lived human existence, the article considers certain points of contact between Hannah's Child and St Augustine's Confessions. Building from this description of the task of theological autobiography, the article makes three points for historical and doctrinal theology arising from Hannah's Child: first that historical theology (...) is primarily a theological discipline; second that it is significant and important, nevertheless, for historical theology to retain its historical accidence; third that doctrine involves teaching and learning the Christian faith and is thereby of ethical significance. (shrink)

Three Quaker elders, all scholar activists, have just published two important works for anyone studying nonviolence, works that are framed very differently but which complement each other well. One is a new work by the estimable George Lakey, who has trained nonviolent resisters around the world in many countries for decades, and whose thinking has always been structural, strategic, and careful. The other work is by Alice and Staughton Lynd, two historians whose activism education stretches far back to teaching in (...) the Freedom Summer schools of Mississippi in 1964 and even earlier. The Lynds have just published the third edition of their Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History. (shrink)

“Public health is directly shaped by war, conflict, and capitalism, yet exploring the connections between these processes remains neglected in scholarship and policymaking arenas.” This chapter five lede by social work professors Scott Harding and Kathryn Libal could serve as the epigraph to the entire volume. War and Health is edited by two prominent researchers from Brown University’s Watson Institute Costs of War Project, which seeks a meaningful aggregation of the actual cost of wars, especially those of the new millennium. (...) The volume presents significant findings from nineteen researchers at various institutions, including culturally competent anthropologists. The result is a deep exegesis of syndemics—or synergistic epidemics—that endanger the health of all combatants and civilians. (shrink)

This autobiographical sketch is being published 50 years after I started as an assistant professor at Georgetown University in 1970. In this presentation, I cannot tell the full story of these 50 years. I write only about the formative years both before and after I was hired at Georgetown, and I emphasize two subjects. The first is the importance of the individuals who were massive influences on my intellectual development and aspirations. The second is the great importance of multidisciplinary work. (...) I came from philosophy, a discipline that generally did not emphasize or particularly value multidisciplinary work, but I was transformed by individuals in other disciplines who directed me to this style of work. Almost sheer luck brought each of these influences into my life. (shrink)

The demonstration of a sequential congruency effect in sequence learning has been offered as evidence for control processes that act to inhibit automatic response tendencies via unconscious conflict monitoring. Here we propose an alternative interpretation of this effect based on the associative learning of chains of sequenced contingencies. This account is supported by simulations with a Simple Recurrent Network, an associative model of sequence learning. We argue that the control- and associative-based accounts differ in their predictions concerning the magnitude of (...) the sequential congruency effect across training. These predictions are tested by reanalysing data from a study by Shanks, Wilkinson, and Channon . The results support the associative learning account which explains the sequential congruency effect without appealing to control processes. (shrink)

Controversy surrounds the ‘intrusion’ of the discourse of rights into workplace relationships. This is explored by examining the nature of rights through the analysis of the idea of a ‘right to manage’. Purported justifications of the right to manage in terms of either property or contract are shown to be inadequate, thus illustrating the need to incorporate a degree of consequentialism in the articulation and justification of rights. The value of a rights-approach is argued to lie in the identification of (...) the morally relevant interests affected by management decisions and the correlative obligations of those involved in the workplace, rather than in the introduction of a special set of moral considerations distinctively connected with the idea of rights. (shrink)

‘Time’ has been central to Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of modernity and his subsequent account of its solid and liquid variants. The experience of time in these accounts announces the coming of new opportunities, but it also signals a corrosion of our moral sensitivity. In this article, I assess Bauman’s contribution to the sociology of time and the centrality of our temporal character for his philosophical anthropology. There is a unique chance to be moral in liquid modernity, by unshackling the outdated (...) and habitual ethics of the past. The danger, however, lays in an increasingly ‘hurried life’, where a ‘nowist’ culture demands endless answers to the most banal of choices, often before these choices have even arrived. I argue that for Bauman the historical power of culture is to raise the ‘ought’ above the ‘is’. This results from our character as temporally-aware creatures. In our liquid modern times, the haste of life and its individualizing forces shift the character of that temporal awareness, endowing us with a false set of needs crafted by the market. The project of humanity itself has become, in Bauman’s diagnosis, subservient to maintaining the goals of the market. (shrink)