This chapter talks about “Super Best Friends,” where the kids are seduced by illusionist David Blaine and his growing cult, and Jesus and the Super Best Friends must come to the rescue. It reviews important philosophical questions the episode raises, including miracles and the difference between the natural and supernatural. More generally, the chapter also talks about the nature of religious pluralism—the co‐existence of many different claims to religious authority—and how faith relates to reason (...) in a world of diverse beliefs. (shrink)

Lewis’s original Best Systems Account of laws was not motivated much by pragmatics. But recent commentary on his general approach to laws has taken a ‘pragmatic turn’. This was initiated by Hall’s defence against the charge of ‘ratbag idealism’ which maintained that best systems accounts should be admired rather than criticised for the inherent pragmatism behind their choice of desiderata for what counts as ‘best’. Emboldened by Hall’s pragmatic turn, recent commentators have proposed the addition of pragmatically (...) motivated desiderata to complement or replace the canonical desiderata of strength and simplicity. This, they hope, will allow their revisionary BSAs to respond better to various counterexamples against the original account. While the pragmatic turn itself is well taken, here I problematise these revisionary approaches. First, there are reasonable responses to the counterexamples from within the canonical BSA. Second, while actual laws may satisfy the newly proposed desiderata, there are reasons to think these desiderata cannot be constitutive of laws. By comparison, the canonical desiderata appear to be relevant to explaining why and when the revisionary desiderata will reflect pragmatic features of the laws and better reflect the motives behind practitioners of fundamental physics. (shrink)

We often speak of our own “best friends” and those of other people. But what does it mean for someone to be a best friend? While there is a large empirical literature studying the antecedents and consequences of best friendships and a small body of philosophical research on this topic, this question has not been addressed in detail. In this article, my aim is to fill this lacuna by distinguishing three different conceptions of best (...) class='Hi'>friends based on the semantic properties of the term and the ways in which it is used in both academic discourse and ordinary parlance. They include those of a (i) comparatively best friend; (ii) comparatively best close/good friend; and (iii) institutional best friend. I conclude by drawing out the implications of this typology for empirical and philosophical work on best friendship and by identifying several avenues for future research. (shrink)

Many Humeans are persuaded by an argument (separately) from Roberts, Lange and Woodward that strength ought not to be sacrificed in the competition for best system because scientific practice does not exhibit such a sacrifice. I here show that Humeans should not be so persuaded. The argument from Roberts, Lange and Woodward misses the fact that scientists can only systematise their experience, whereas the best system must systematise the entire world. However, while my demonstration shows that the argument (...) against sacrificing strength should not have been persuasive in the way it has been, it does raise new and difficult questions for the Humean. (shrink)

An important theme in the philosophy of education community in recent years has been the way in which philosophy can be brought to illuminate and evaluate research findings from the landscape of policy and practice. Undoubtedly, some of these practices can be based on spurious evidence, yet have mostly been left unchallenged in both philosophical and educational circles. One of the newer practices creeping into schools is that of ‘No best friend’ policies. In some schools, this is interpreted as (...) suggesting that children should not have just one best friend but a group of good friends. In others, it is interpreted as suggesting that children should forgo having best friends altogether and be friends with everyone. What is common to both is that friendship is seen as somehow ‘dangerous’. This article offers a preliminary examination of what has been referred to as this ‘dark side’ of friendship. Whilst philosophers such as Patricia White have previously alluded to its existence, there has been little philosophical scrutiny in any broad terms elsewhere. I examine three common arguments commonly used to justify ‘No best friends’ practices: that children can be friends with everyone; that young children are developmentally incapable of ‘real’ friendship hence best friendship should be avoided until later age; that only good people can be good friends. I indicate why this unreflective adoption of practices matters so much and why we should be prepared to challenge these cases. I identify practices that we have good evidence to support as making a positive difference in this area. (shrink)

In almost 40 per cent of households in North America, dogs are kept as companion animals. Dogs may be man's best friends, but what are humans to dogs? If these animals' loyalty and unconditional love have won our hearts, why do we so often view closely related wild canids, such as foxes, wolves, and coyotes, as pests, predatory killers, and demons? Re-examining the complexity and contradictions of human attitudes towards these animals, Dog's Best Friend? looks at how (...) our relationships with canids have shaped and also been transformed by different political and economic contexts. Journeying from ancient Greek and Roman societies to Japan's Edo period to eighteenth-century England, essays explore how dogs are welcomed as family, consumed in Asian food markets, and used in Western laboratories. Contributors provide glimpses of the lives of street dogs and humans in Bali, India, Taiwan, and Turkey and illuminate historical and current interactions in Western societies. The book delves into the fantasies and fears that play out in stereotypes of coyotes and wolves, while also acknowledging that events such as the Wolf Howl in Canada's Algonquin Park indicate the emergence of new popular perspectives on canids. Questioning where canids belong, how they should be treated, and what rights they should have, Dog's Best Friend? reconsiders the concept of justice and whether it can be extended beyond the limit of the human species. (shrink)

Engagement with fiction often inspires emotional responses. We may pity Sethe while feeling ambivalent about her actions (in Beloved), fear for Ellen Ripley as she battles monstrous creatures (in Alien), get angry at Okonkwo for killing Ikemefuna (in Things Fall Apart), and hope that Kiyoaki and Satoko find love (in Spring Snow). Familiar as they are, these reactions are puzzling. Why do I respond emotionally if I do not believe that these individuals exist or that the events occurred? If I (...) merely imagine that my best friend has betrayed me, I do not become angry with him; if I did, I would be considered irrational. Yet although beliefs seem to be necessary for emotions in other contexts, we respond to fiction without the relevant beliefs. These observations prompt two questions about our emotional responses to fiction (henceforth: fictional emotions). The first is descriptive: Should fictional emotions be classified as the same kind of emotions we experience in other contexts? The second is normative: Are fictional emotions irrational or otherwise inappropriate? I take each of these debates in turn. (shrink)

Can the desire for efficiently systematised theories in science be explained from within a powers metaphysics? It is plausible that the traditional ‘Powers Theory of Laws’, endorsed by many friends of powers, does not alone provide such an explanation. This has led a number of recent authors to argue that a ‘Powers Best System Account’ of laws would be a preferable alternative. This account borrows a method for determining laws from the Humean and applies it to a reality (...) of powers. Here I claim, to the contrary, that this account is both internally unworkable and, anyway, completely undermotivated when compared with the traditional view. Apart from some brief suggestions for alternative accounts, I’ll conclude that the powers theorist still has their work cut out to explain systematising in science. (shrink)

In the first part of this essay I sum up the theoretical genesis and foundations of Márkus’s theory of culture as a theory of modernity. Central to the high culture of modernity, defined in terms of the future-oriented creation of the new, is the structure of authorship, work, and reception that pertains across the sciences, philosophy, the humanities, and the arts. In the second part I question the scope of the concept in relation to the arts and philosophy in the (...) present and point to the inconsistency internal to Márkus’s conception that manifests itself in his neglect of the Romantic tradition in philosophy from Schelling to Heidegger, despite the integral role that the opposition between Enlightenment and Romanticism plays in his theory of cultural modernity. (shrink)

If one has Humean inclinations, what account should one provide for idealization laws? I introduce the currently most popular Humean approach to laws of nature, the best systems account, along with some basic requirements for how to be Humean. I then show why idealization laws are unlikely to be accommodated within this account of laws. Finally, I offer an alternative approach that takes idealization laws to be meta-laws, placing requirements on the theorems of the best system.

Megarian Actualism is the denial of unmanifesting powers. Aristotle called such a view ‘buffoonery’ and dispositionalists have provided compelling reasons for the contrary platitude that powers need not manifest. Even so, drawing on extant treatments of quantitative powers I’ll suggest that many of the powers which feature in quantitative lawlike equations are plausibly interpreted as Megarian. This is because the powers described by such equations are best understood as being directed towards all the values of exhaustive manifestation variables. I’ll (...) discuss the prospects for generalising these Megarian characteristics to powers not typically represented in strict quantitative terms. The result will be a strong basis for a scientifically informed and plausible dispositionalist account: Megarian Variable Actualism. (shrink)

The prevailing economic paradigm, in which a closed circular flow of production and consumption can be described in terms of 'natural laws ' of the equilibrium of market forces, is being challenged by our growing knowledge of complex systems, particularly ecosystems. It is increasingly apparent that neo-classical economics does not reflect social, economic and environmental realities in a world of limited resources. The best way to understand the problems implicit in the concept of 'sustainable development ' is provided by (...) Ecological Economics – a new synthesis in which the traditional virtue of thrift is justified using modern ideas from systems theory and thermodynamics. (shrink)

I describe three extant attempts to identify global external symmetries within a Humean framework with theorems of some or other deductive systematization of the world: the best system, a best meta-system, and a maximally simple system. Each has merits, but also serious flaws. Instead, I propose a view of global external symmetries as consequences of the structure of Humean-consistent world-making relations.

Book synopsis: The most debated issue in aesthetics today Written by an international team of leading experts Addresses growing methodological concerns in the field Includes an extensive introduction which illuminates key issues Through much of the twentieth century, philosophical thinking about works of art, design, and other aesthetic products has emphasized intuitive and reflective methods, often tied to the idea that philosophy's business is primarily to analyze concepts. This 'philosophy from the armchair' approach contrasts with methods used by psychologists, sociologists, (...) evolutionary thinkers, and others who study the making and reception of the arts empirically. How far should philosophers be sensitive to the results of these studies? Is their own largely a priori method basically flawed? Are their views on aesthetic value, interpretation, imagination, and the emotions of art to be rethought in the light of best science? The essays in this volume seek answers to these questions, many through detailed studies of problems traditionally regarded as philosophical but where empirical inquiry seems to be shedding interesting light. No common view is looked for or found in this volume: a number of authors argue that the current enthusiasm for scientific approaches to aesthetics is based on a misunderstanding of the philosophical enterprise and sometimes on misinterpretation of the science; others suggest various ways that philosophy can and should accommodate and sometimes yield to the empirical approach. The editors provide a substantial introduction which sets the scene historically and conceptually before summarizing the claims and arguments of the essays. (shrink)

Many philosophers have drawn parallels between scientific models and fictions. In this paper I will be concerned with a recent version of the analogy, which compares models to the imagined characters of fictional literature. Though versions of the position differ, the shared idea is that modeling essentially involves imagining concrete systems analogously to the way that we imagine characters and events in response to works of fiction. Advocates of this view argue that imagining concrete systems plays an ineliminable role in (...) the practice of modeling that cannot be captured by other accounts. The approach thus leaves open what we should say about the ontological status of model-systems, and here advocates differ among themselves, defending a variety of realist or anti-realist positions. I argue that this debate over the ontological status of model-systems is misguided. If model-systems are the kinds of objects fictional realists posit, they can play no role in explaining the epistemology of modeling for an advocate of this approach. So they are at best superfluous. Defenders of the approach should focus on developing an account of the epistemological role of imagining model-systems. (shrink)

Trust is morally basic. It makes cooperation between persons, to whatever degree, possible. In Chapter One, I define trust as being the relation between people bound by genuine goodwill, competency and vulnerability to each other. ;In Chapter Two, I criticize Thomas Hobbes's understanding of society as founded upon a social contract which exclusively self-interested persons have reason to make in order to escape from the state of nature. I argue that on Hobbes's assumptions about the nature of persons, such a (...) contract cannot be viable. Without the assumption that, prior to the contract, persons have some reason to trust one another, no contract can be expected to be made or survive. ;David Gauthier, who presents a contemporary version of Hobbesian social contract theory in his Morals by Agreement, is vulnerable to a similar argument. In Chapter Three, I argue that given Gauthier's description of persons there does not exist the trust necessary to construct, even hypothetically, the social contract. ;Chapter Four examines the very basic role which trust plays in both personal and civic friendship. I argue that trust is what distinguishes "end friendship" from the instrumental friendships in which we are "used" or taken advantage of by others. I discuss civic friendship and argue that the trust which is basic to it, namely social trust, is a form of trust which can exist between people who are otherwise strangers to one another. ;In Chapter Five I go on to prescribe trust. I argue first, that we should never be untrustworthy, as this implies treating people instrumentally, and hence violates Kant's Categorical Imperative. I argue, however, that we should not always trust, maintaining that trust, for normative purposes, is best understood as an Aristotelian mean, and can be described by the extremes of naivete and cynicism and that we should trust in a way which avoids both these extremes. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper1 is to rationalise why and how philosophy can help today’s managers in their daily practices. I will first explain why today’s managers particularly should engage themselves in profound and enduring dialogue with philosophers. To this end, I will present the close links between the major managerial activities and the major philosophical domains. In the second section, I will sketch out how such a dialogue can be facilitated. To this end, I will present some of the (...) methods and conditions used to ensure the success of the practice of philosophy in organisations. (shrink)

When asked about humanity’s future relationship with computers, Marvin Minsky famously replied “If we’re lucky, they might decide to keep us as pets”. A number of eminent authorities continue to argue that there is a real danger that “super-intelligent” machines will enslave—perhaps even destroy—humanity. One might think that it would swiftly follow that we should abandon the pursuit of AI. Instead, most of those who purport to be concerned about the existential threat posed by AI default to worrying about (...) what they call the “Friendly AI problem”. Roughly speaking this is the question of how we might ensure that the AI that will develop from the first AI that we create will remain sympathetic to humanity and continue to serve, or at least take account of, our interests. In this paper I draw on the “neo-republican” philosophy of Philip Pettit to argue that solving the Friendly AI problem would not change the fact that the advent of super-intelligent AI would be disastrous for humanity by virtue of rendering us the slaves of machines. A key insight of the republican tradition is that freedom requires equality of a certain sort, which is clearly lacking between pets and their owners. Benevolence is not enough. As long as AI has the power to interfere in humanity’s choices, and the capacity to do so without reference to our interests, then it will dominate us and thereby render us unfree. The pets of kind owners are still pets, which is not a status which humanity should embrace. If we really think that there is a risk that research on AI will lead to the emergence of a superintelligence, then we need to think again about the wisdom of researching AI at all. (shrink)

C.S. Lewis and Austin Farrer were friends and fellow academics for more than 20 years, sharing both their Anglican faith and similar concerns about their modern world. Lewis, as Christian apologist and popular novelist, and Farrer, as philosophical theologian and college priest, sought to defend a metaphysically thick universe in contrast to the increasingly secular culture all about them. The Shared Witness of C.S. Lewis and Austin Farrer explores a number of areas that demonstrate the ways in which Lewis (...) and Farrer both intersected and influenced each other's thought. Both insisted that myth prepared the heart for a sense of divine glory and even had a place in the Christian scriptures. Farrer and Lewis prized virtue ethics as a key to human character and ethical problem solving, and they explored the relationship of nature and grace. In regard to the problem of evil, the two men shared much but also disagreed how best to account for an all-powerful loving God and a world full of suffering, and both writers were engaged with apocalyptic thinking--not only in Farrer's commentaries and Lewis's fiction but also in essays and sermons that addressed the eternal end and purpose of humanity. Finally, as Philip Irving Mitchell shows, the worldview espoused and explored by Lewis and Farrer still speaks to our contemporary world, a post-secular society in which the super-natural may again be taken seriously. (shrink)

The knowability paradox is an instance of a remarkable reasoning pattern (actually, a pair of such patterns), in the course of which an occurrence of the possibility operator, the diamond, disappears. In the present paper, it is pointed out how the unwanted disappearance of the diamond may be escaped. The emphasis is not laid on a discussion of the contentious premise of the knowability paradox, namely that all truths are possibly known, but on how from this assumption the conclusion is (...) derived that all truths are, in fact, known. Nevertheless, the solution offered is in the spirit of the constructivist attitude usually maintained by defenders of the anti-realist premise. In order to avoid the paradoxical reasoning, a paraconsistent constructive relevant modal epistemic logic with strong negation is defined semantically. The system is axiomatized and shown to be complete. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Transformation:Power in Persistence and PerspectiveTyler BendrickWe've got another meth napper," my resident stated. With an introduction like that, it is hard not to be immediately labeled as a "difficult patient." Being the only Spanish-speaking person on the team, I, a third-year medical student, became the primary point of contact for this severely injured patient. He was an only-Spanish-speaking, 36-year-old male admitted [End Page 7] to our trauma service (...) after he was hit by a truck while riding his bicycle. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the 14 days I spent caring for this man would become one of the most pivotal learning experiences of my medical school career. It changed not only how I understand and approach "difficult patients" but expanded my knowledge of the complexities and challenges of the current healthcare system and how we, as physicians and healthcare providers, can deliver the best care to patients with low health literacy and limited resources.So, what is a "meth napper?" I questioned. "Well, meth is a super stimulant," my resident explained. "When people are frequent meth users, they get used to functioning normally with high levels of stimulants in their body, reducing the normal regulation of wakefulness. When the amphetamine is removed (such as upon admission to the hospital), the body is left to fend for itself, and thus patients oftentimes sleep for 23 hours a day for about 3 to 5 days while their body works to detox and normalize hormones."As predicted, my new friend, "Joe," was napping when I first went to see him. Thinking back, the word "napping" does not accurately describe his level of somnolence. He was virtually unarousable, and I took to a sternal rub to wake him up at 5 a.m. after his traumatic exploratory laparotomy the night before. Once aroused, he was furious. "Estoy bien. Tengo dolor y tengo hambre," he grunted at me. (I am fine, and I am in pain and hungry!). "Ok, Joe," I replied in Spanish, "I am just going to do a quick exam and you can go back to sleep. We will give you medications for your pain. You had a big surgery on your intestines, so you cannot eat or drink right now. If everything goes well in the next couple of days and you start walking around, we can advance your diet." He begrudgingly let me examine him, never opening his eyes, and I left and went about my day.We continued this routine for five days. I would periodically check on him and usually found him sleeping. When awake, he refused to work with physical therapists, get up and walk or go to the bathroom, shower, use his spirometer, or converse with the nursing staff. He seemed completely disinterested in recovery. About day three, we slowly advanced his diet to clear liquids so he could quench his thirst. Sometimes his wife was there, and she would ask for updates, to which I could only reply, "We have to wait until he is more awake or willing to work with us." I was getting frustrated, as it seemed that his noncompliance was becoming his barrier to discharge.But on day six, everything changed. I went to check on Joe, and he was wide awake, vomiting, and irate. He shouted that he was in incredible pain, and his incision was wet. He was also complaining that he had not eaten in five days, and was insisting that we were starving him. Again, I calmly explained (as I had multiple times a day for the past five days) that his major abdominal surgery prevented us from feeding him until his intestines healed. We were giving him fluids and nutrition through his IV lines, so he was not starving to death. I rushed to get my resident to examine his oozing wound, and after a CT scan and an x-ray, we discovered what we feared: His wound had opened down to the fascia, "dehiscence," as it is called. On top of this, he now had a bowel obstruction, causing his vomiting. His lack of mobility for the past five days had slowed his... (shrink)

One response to the existential threat posed by a super-intelligent AI is to design it to be friendly to us. Some have argued that even if this were possible, the resulting AI would treat us as we do our pets. Sparrow (AI & Soc. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01698-x, 2023) argues that this would be a bad outcome, for such an AI would dominate us—resulting in our freedom being diminished (Pettit in Just freedom: A moral compass for a complex world. WW Norton & (...) Company, 2014). In this paper, I consider whether this would be such a bad outcome. (shrink)

This article examines the question of whether the atheist and the believer can understand each other, to the point of being friends intellectually. The answer is no. The atheist and the believer can be best enemies, but their epistemic disagreement is definitely radical. For it is not a disagreement on religious belief itself, but about what allows the believer to believe. The article examines some aspects of John Greco’s concept of ”friendly theism’, the discussion of conciliationism and anti-conciliatonism, (...) and the epistemic role of the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

Edward Hemmerde and Francis Neilson were both Liberal MPs at the outbreak of the First World War, bound together by a common commitment to the principle of land taxation. A shortage of money, at a time when MPs had only just started to receive salaries, led them into extra-parliamentary co-operation in the joint authorship of plays. But the two men fell out over the profits from their literary endeavours. One or other was clearly not telling the truth. Although he gave (...) up his parliamentary career in opposition to British involvement in the war, Neilson later prospered greatly as a writer in the United States. Meanwhile, Hemmerde turned to his career as Recorder of Liverpool, but the wealth that he craved eluded him. This article reminds us that financial impropriety among MPs is no new phenomenon, while highlighting the difficulty of establishing certain historical truth in the face of conflicting documentary evidence. (shrink)

The American and some other constitutions entrench property rights by requiring super majoritarian voting as a condition for amending or revoking their own provisions. Following Buchanan and Tullock [The Calculus of Consent, Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor), 1962], this paper analyzes individuals' interests behind a veil of ignorance, and shows that under some standard assumptions, a (simple) majoritarian rule should be adopted. This result changes if one assumes that preferences are consistent with the (...) behavioral phenomenon known as the endowment effect. It then follows that (at least some) property rights are best defended by super majoritarian protection. The paper then shows that its theoretical results are consistent with a number of doctrines underlying American Constitutional Law. (shrink)

Super-Humeanism is an even more parsimonious ontology than Lewisian standard Humean metaphysics in that it rejects intrinsic properties. There are point objects, but all there is to them are their relative positions and the change of them. Everything else supervenes on the Humean mosaic thus conceived. Hence, dynamical parameters come in on a par with the laws through their position in the best system. The paper sets out how Super-Humeanism has the conceptual means to reject van Inwagen’s (...) consequence argument not by taking the laws to depend on us, but by taking the initial values of the dynamical parameters that enter into the laws to be dependent on the motions that actually occur in the universe, including the motions of human bodies. The paper spells out the advantages of this proposal. (shrink)

Humeanism started life as a metaphysical program that could turn out to be false if our best physical theories were to postulate ontological features at odds with Humean ones. However, even if this has arguably already happened, Humeanism is still considered one of the strongest and most appealing metaphysical theories for describing the physical world. What is even more surprising is that a radical Humean thesis—Super-Humeanism—which posits an extremely parsimonious ontology including nothing more than propertyless matter points and (...) their distance relations, is said by its proponents to follow from an attentive reading of our best physical theories. Given its close relationship with physics, Super-Humeans argue that their doctrine conforms to Scientific Realism, offers the ontology that best explains physics’ empirical evidence, and is a naturalistic theory. This paper investigates the strategies that Super-Humeans have adopted to defend these three claims and, more generally, its alleged closeness to physics. I will show that, contrary to what advocates of Super-Humeanism claim, some of its commitments have inevitably created a gap between itself and physics that is difficult to overcome. While it is laudable that Super-Humeans have adopted various strategies to close this gap, no strategy has yet fully succeeded. (shrink)

According to the survivalist interpretation of mediumship, the existence of discarnate persons provides the best explanation for the data associated with physical and mental mediumship. Others—advocates of what is often called the “super-psi hypothesis”—maintain that the data of mediumship may be at least equally explained in terms of living agent psi (ESP and psychokinesis). Many defenders of the survivalist interpretation of mediumship attempt to defl ate the alleged explanatory virtues of the super-psi hypothesis by arguing that the (...) hypothesis is unfalsifi able and lacks independent evidential support. My central contention in this paper is that these frequently encountered survivalist criticisms of the super-psi hypothesis are ultimately self-defeating to the case for survival from mediumship. To show this I first argue in some detail that the survivalist interpretation of mediumship is committed to a kind or degree of psi that is indistinguishable from what is required by the super-psi hypothesis. From this vantage point it can be shown that any attempt to impugn the explanatory virtues of the super-psi hypothesis on account of the kind or degree of psi it requires undercuts the argument for survival itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Between Friends All is Common”:The Erasmian Adage and TraditionKathy EdenIn 1508 eager readers received the Aldine edition of Erasmus’s Adages, the Adagiorum chiliades. Replacing the much smaller Paris Collectanea of 1500, the Italian edition included among its many accretions and alterations both a new introduction and a different opening adage. In place of the prefatory letter to William Blount, Lord Mountjoy (Ep. 126, CWE, 1, 255–66), Erasmus substituted (...) a fuller prolegomena or introduction (Ep. 211) that reworked portions of the earlier praefatio.1 Then, following the new introduction, he displayed much more prominently, in first position, the ninety-fourth adage of the Paris edition, which reads in Greek, τὰ τῶν ϕίλων κoινὰ; in Latin, amicorum communia omnia, often translated into English as “friends hold all things in common” or “between friends all is common” (LB, II, 13F–14F; CWE, 31, 29–30). By his own account, moreover, Erasmus begins this vast compilation of ancient sayings in this way so that this particular proverb about friendship may serve as a favorable omen for the work as a whole (LB, II, 13F–14A; CWE, 31, 29).While Margaret Mann Phillips and others have appreciated the marked relocation of this adage to initial position as evidence of Erasmus’s deep commitment to amicitia—a well-documented feature of his lived experience, a constant [End Page 405] topic throughout his literary works, and the focus of more than a few other adages2 —I will argue that this relocation commits Erasmus to something more than friendship, crucial as that is to his sense of community as the foundation in turn of the best societies. Read in conjunction with the prolegomena, the first adage announces a special alignment between friendship as a social practice and the proverb as a discursive practice. In forging this alliance, I suggest, Erasmus advances his own literary agenda by pursuing three related aims: in the first place, he transfers to this peculiar literary form the esteem that regularly attaches to friendship in the ancient tradition handed down by the Adages; secondly, building on this transfer of esteem, he theorizes proverbial statement as the quintessential instrument of this tradition in particular and of traditionality more generally; and finally, as an almost inevitable consequence of this theory, he invites his readers to understand tradition itself, mutatis mutandis, as a complex, associative relation patterned after the ancient notion of friendship. Whereas in earlier works such as the Antibarbari he follows Augustine and Jerome in figuring the traditionary relationship in terms of one culture despoiling another—the so-called spoiliatum Aegyptorum—here he substitutes the association of friends for the appropriation of enemies.3Not only moved between 1500 and 1508 but also substantially expanded, the first adage in the Aldine and subsequent Basel editions mentions several ancient authorities, among them Euripides, Terence, and Cicero. More important for my purposes, however, the revised adage features Plato and, even more so, Pythagoras. The Italian philosopher deserves special mention as the father not only of the adage but also of the way of life it engenders. As Erasmus writes at the end of the 1515 version of the adage,Not only was Pythagoras the author of this saying, but he also instituted a kind of sharing of life and property in this way, the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians. For all those who were admitted [End Page 406] by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instruction would give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed.4If Pythagoras is worthy of mention for instituting a society founded on common property, Plato too deserves citation as the most passionate spokesman for such a society. Taking its cue from the Pythagoreans in imagining a community innocent of the words “mine” and “not mine,” Plato’s philosophy of common ownership, says Erasmus, most nearly approximates Christ’s own thinking on this issue.5 [End Page 407]By placing this particular proverb at the head of more than 4000 proverbs and then by identifying it more specifically with Pythagoras and Plato, Erasmus signals the protreptic aim of the entire collection. Issuing a call for communitas in the radical... (shrink)

_Technology is a woman's best friend. Gadgets, appliances and contraception make life easy for the present day working woman. Men barely realize the importance of these even if they appear to agree to their use._.

In recent years, social networks have made significant progress and the number of people who use them to communicate is increasing day by day. The vast amount of information available on social networks has led to the importance of using friend recommender systems to discover knowledge about future communications. It is challenging to choose the best machine learning approach to address the recommender system issue since there are several strategies with various benefits and drawbacks. In light of this, a (...) solution based on the stacking approach was put out in this study to provide a buddy recommendation system in social networks. Additionally, a decrease in system performance was caused by the large amount of information that was accessible and the inefficiency of some functions. To solve this problem, a particle swarm optimization algorithm to select the most efficient features was used in our proposed method. To learn the model in the objective function of the particle swarm algorithm, a hybrid system based on stacking is proposed. In this method, two random forests and Extreme Gradient Boosting had been used as the base classifiers. The results obtained from these base classifiers were used in the logistic regression algorithm, which has been applied sequentially. The suggested approach was able to effectively address this issue by combining the advantages of the applied strategies. The results of implementation and evaluation of the proposed system show the appropriate efficiency of this method compared with other studied techniques. (shrink)

Studies show that rejection increases negative affect and aggression and decreases helping behavior toward the excluder. Less is known about emotions and behavior after rejection by a friend for someone else. In two experimental studies (N = 101 and N = 169), we tested the predictions that rejection would feel worse in a close relationship but would result in less aggression and more reconnecting behavior, especially when the reasons for rejection were unknown. The results of study 1 showed that, as (...) expected, among acquaintances, more aggression was noted only after comparative rejection, but among strangers, aggression was also observed after rejection with no stated reason. Negative feelings toward a new acquaintance were only marginally stronger than those toward a stranger in study 1, but study 2 confirmed that rejection by a best friend, and especially comparative rejection by a friend, felt worse than other conditions. Study 2 also showed that reconnecting behavior was more likely to dominate over aggressive behavior between people in close relationships than between strangers. The results are discussed mostly in light of the multimotive model of rejection. (shrink)

Must the best friends necessarily be good people? On the one hand, as Aristotle puts it, ‘people think that the same people are good and also friends’. But on the other hand, friendship sometimes seems to require that one behave badly. For example, a normally honest person might lie to corroborate a friend's story. What I will call closeness, which I take to include sensitivity to friends' subjective values and concerns as well as an inclination to (...) take their subjective interests as reasons for action, is characteristic of friendship. But this seems to require that good friends should be morally flexible, more so than is compatible with a virtuous character. This would imply tension between ideals of friendship and ideals of character. But there is an important connection between virtue and friendship which arises precisely from friends' closeness, when concern for wellbeing, another important feature of friendship, is also taken into account. This helps mitigate the tension and shows how friendship and virtue are interconnected. The connection in turn provides friendship-based reason to think the best friends must be good people, even though concerns of friendship may occasionally clash with other moral concerns. (shrink)