In this article I have tried to rebut certain types of arguments which purport to show not merely that God does not exist but that the notion of necessary existence is itself either self-contradictory or senseless. In showing that it is not self-contradictory I have allowed myself the luxury of a negative and a positive approach. Negatively, I have had to show that when the accusation of self-contradiction is made, it is often accompanied, not by an argument but by a (...) sheer assertion. On the rare occasions when an argument is forthcoming, the arguments, I have tried to show, have been invalid, not even, inconclusive. And to the extent that Kant may be said to have argued not simply the impossibility of a genuine proof of the existence of God, but indeed the impossibility of the concept of necessary existence, I have argued out the weakness of Kant's arguments, the most notable of which I have discussed in some detail. Finally, to establish the genuineness of the concept of necessary existence, positively, I have paradoxically made use of a notion from Russell's logic. (shrink)

The following is the transcript of a lecture taken in shorthand by Hans-Georg Backhaus. The transcript was originally published as an appendix in Hans-Georg Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform. Untersuchungen zur marxschen Ökonomiekritik, a complete translation of which is forthcoming in the Historical Materialism book series.

At the beginning of his book, Principles of Christian Theology, John Macquarrie says that theology ‘implicitly claims to have its place in the total intellectual endeavour of mankind’. The question I want to discuss is this: in what terms, if any, can that claim be justified?

The passage is thought to refer to the efforts of the Macedonians to honour the memory of their dead king. Who are meant by reges is not at all clear, and summa nituntur opum ui, as we may infer from other passages where the same or a similar expression is used, can hardly refer to anything but the labour of the hands. Probably we ought to read regis, i.e. Philippi. The lines will then refer to the work of the people.

It is a truism to say that the study of ornithology has made great advances in the last fifty years, and that important problems affecting the classification of certain species and their distribution have been brought much closer to solution. Classical scholars, however, still tend to rely on the identifications of ancient Greek bird-names made by a few standard works such as D'Arcy Thompson's A Glossary of Greek Birds2 or O. Keller's Die antike Tierwelt , apparently unaware that much of (...) the ornithological information given there is now badly out of date, if not sheerly inaccurate. This brief paper aims protreptically to take four bird-names out of the Peripatetic corpus on natural history: and and to produce more precise identifications in the light of modern ornithological studies. (shrink)

Sixty years have now passed since Lefebvre first published the Cairo papyrus of Menander , and Körte's still authoritative third Teubner edition appeared almost exactly halfway between then and now. It laid the coping-stone on the labours of many scholars, of whom four rose head and shoulders above the crowd.

From these words of Athenaeus, the majority of scholars have come to the Dnclusion that the Asotodidaskalos was not, despite what Sotion says, composed by Alexis, but is a forgery; and some even go so far as to attribute the forgery to Sotion himself. Yet nowhere do they support their views with sufficient rguments; nowhere has the question, in the light of all the evidence, both sternal and internal, been fully considered. Meineke has indeed given clear reasons for his belief (...) that the play as not written by Alexis, in objecting to three usages in the cited fragment as unattic ; but these objections are not all justifiable, as Kock has lown in the case of , or together inclusive enough to make us reject the fragment out of hand. (shrink)

Professor Martin West's paper, titled ‘The Parodos of the Agamemnon’’, argues with characteristic learning and insight that Archilochus’’ fable of the fox and the eagle was a major source for Aeschylus’’ description of the portent of the eagles and the pregnant hare in the parodos of the Agamemnon . The portent is vividly described by the chorus: two eagles, one black and one white behind feed upon a pregnant hare. Poetry is not real life, and Aeschylus’’ picture is not a (...) naturalist's field-report. At the same time, an image's power increases in proportion to its precision, and I have no doubt that at some stage behind Aeschylus’’ description there was a personal sighting of a parallel incident by Aeschylus himself perhaps, or by Archilochus, or by an unknown figure who passed on his report. Fraenkel's commentary avers that ‘precise zoological identification of the species of eagle named by Aeschylus must not be attempted.’’ This is a fair warning, but not for the reason advanced by Fraenkel here: the plumage variation among different birds of the same species, which makes the identification of large raptors in the wilds of Greece today a problem for even the most expert ornithologists. There are two better reasons. One will emerge in the course of this note. The other is that no ancient writer using the Greek language came at all near to the modern classification of eagle species native to Greece. (shrink)

Computational functionalism [5] fails to understand the embodied and situated nature of behaviour by taking steady state functions as theoretical primitives, and by interpreting cognitive behaviour from a language-like, observer dependant framework without a naturalized normativity. Evolutionary functionalism [28, 27], on the other hand, by grounding functional normativity on historical processes fails to give an account of normative functionality based on the present causal mechanism producing behaviour. We propose an alternative autonomous dynamical framework where functionality is defined as contribution to (...) self-maintenance [15, 10, 35] and normativity as satisfaction of closure criteria. We develop this framework by a set of formal definitions in the framework of dynamical system theory and propose the hypothesis of an homeostatic-plasticity [31, 40] based general purpose value system as an internalized normative mechanism that selects between internal state trajectories to produce adaptive functionality under different environmental conditions. To test the hypothesis we develop a simulation model where lower level specifications of a control arquitecture (an homeostatic plastic DRNN) give rise (through a simulated evolutionary process) to adaptive behaviour in a foraging task where food sources can be poisonous or profitable. Analysis of the evolved agent show that plastic changes occur when the agent produces salient adaptive interactions, those plastic changes determining the adaptive strategy. The embodied and interactive adaptive functionality is dynamically analysed, illustrating the autonomous dynamical framework. (shrink)

Nad barjem je veter in moker je zrak, uši imam v tuniki, v nosu prehlad. Z neba štropotajo nalivi dežja, vojak sem na zidu, ne vem sploh, zakaj. Po sivem kaménju se plazi megla, dekle imam v Tungriji, jaz pa spim sam.

Applying Snyder and Feldman's 1984 consolidation‐transition model to moral judgement development has enabled further understanding of how moral judgement translates to moral functioning. In this study, 178 college students were identified as being in consolidated versus transitional phases of moral judgement development using Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT). Participant moral functioning was inferred through an honest decision‐making index along with Attitudes Towards Human Rights Inventory (ATHRI) and Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI) scores. Multivariate Analyses of Variance revealed that the consolidated group (...) was significantly more honest than the transitional group. No differences attributable to moral judgement phase were seen for ATHRI and VFI scores. Findings support the claim that consolidated phases improve the explanatory power of moral judgement for certain moral functional outcomes—particularly those involving ambiguity and minimal time for decision‐making. (shrink)

We all think that science is special. Its products—its technological spin-off—dominate our lives which are thereby sometimes enriched and sometimes impoverished but always affected. Even the most outlandish critics of science such as Feyerabend implicitly recognize its success. Feyerabend told us that science was a congame. Scientists had so successfully hood-winked us into adopting its ideology that other equally legitimate forms of activity—alchemy, witchcraft and magic—lost out. He conjured up a vision of much enriched lives if only we could free (...) ourselves from the domination of the ‘one true ideology’ of science just as our ancestors freed us from the domination of the Church. But he told us these things in Switzerland and in California happily commuting between them in that most ubiquitous product of science—the aeroplane. (shrink)

The idea of organism, which of recent years has bulked so largely in scientific, and especially in biological, theory has been developed mainly in reference to living organisms, and has been extended to cover such systems as human societies, crystals, molecules and atoms—and indeed the whole universe has been interpreted as an organism. This use of the term, however, includes different ways in which parts may be together in a system. The belief that the principle of organism has been wrongly (...) extended to explain certain co-ordinations of vital processes which require a different type of explanation is the reason for this addition to the immense literature on the subject of organism. (shrink)

Las reflexiones en torno al concepto de abducción de Peirce no han estado exentas de controversias, debido a la dificultad para determinar con claridad la naturaleza y la función epistémica de esta inferencia. Se examinan tres formas de acceso a la comprensión del concepto de abducción que el propio..