In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Statue of Augustus from Prima Porta, the Underground Complex, and the Omen of the Gallina AlbaJane Clark ReederThe new excavations of the villa of Livia at Prima Porta have focused attention on the architecture and art of this imperial villa. The statue of Augustus from Prima Porta and the garden paintings from the underground complex have long been the most famous exemplars of their types. Recently new studies (...) have treated these works of art in relation to their setting. 1 But there is one source of information in particular which has not received the scrutiny in this regard that it might and that is the remarkable omen which gave the villa its name in antiquity, ad Gallinas. Although this omen is sometimes mentioned to explain the odd name, scholars have not examined in any detail the relationship of the omen to the art and architecture of the villa. In fact, the omen of the gallina alba is the foundation augurium of the villa-garden itself. 2In this essay I intend to examine the ancient literary sources concerning the villa; the only information given by the sources about the villa comes in fact by way of the omen. First the individual components of the omen and the surrounding body of augury and myth will be examined and illustrated where possible in the monuments. Secondly I hope to illuminate the symbolic interrelationships between this augural imagery and the iconography of three features of the art and architecture of the villa-garden: the statue of Augustus, the underground complex, and the laurel grove. This imagery and symbolism played an essential [End Page 89] role not only in the decoration of the villa, but formed an important part of Augustan ideology.The iconographical connections of the statue of Augustus and the underground complex of the villa-garden should be sought first of all in the ideology inherent in the statue itself. 3 Two attributes in particular give this message: the laurel branch in hand and the cuirass. Since one knows how important the laurel was as an age-old symbol of Apollo and as a new emblem of Augustus and since one is aware how pervasive the Apollonian propaganda became in Augustan ideology, 4 it is no wonder that H. Kähler (1959, 12–13; 28; pl. 32) found the laurel integral to the sacral character of the statue’s image and hence restored the laurel branch in the hand of Augustus on the statue from Prima Porta.Kähler is not the only scholar to attach the laurel to the Prima Porta statue of Augustus. 5 E. Simon restored a laurel branch in the left hand of Augustus rather than the right and in a recent summary of Augustan art this view was adopted. 6 There is also numismatic evidence for Augustus holding a laurel branch in connection with the triumph. While the certainty of a particular statue type behind the coin image is more problematic, 7 the coin in fact represents the historical event itself. On the reverse of a denarius from the great Actium series of coins Octavian is [End Page 90] represented as Triumphator and Imperator standing in the quadriga and holding a large laurel branch in his right hand. 8 On the obverse Victory, standing on the ship’s prow, holds a palm in her left hand and in her right the laurel crown which Octavian would have worn in the triumphal procession. Likewise Tiberius in the Augustan tradition stands in the triumphal quadriga and holds a laurel branch in his right hand on an aureus of a.d. 13/14. 9 At least one scholar (Neudecker 1988, 90) believes that the program of the statue of Augustus of Prima Porta is probably to be seen in connection with the triumphal ceremony.If Augustus indeed held a laurel branch in hand, the branch could only have come from the famous laurel grove of the villa of Livia ad Gallinas. The foundation augurium and legend of the Augustan laurel branch and indeed of the villa-garden itself as mentioned above is the omen of the gallina alba from which the villa took its name in antiquity... (shrink)

I offer a novel solution to Zeno’s paradox of The Arrow by introducing nilpotent infinitesimal lengths of time. Nilpotents are nonzero numbers that yield zero when multiplied by themselves a certain number of times. Zeno’s Arrow goes like this: during the present, a flying arrow is moving in virtue of its being in flight. However, if the present is a single point in time, then the arrow is frozen in place during that time. Therefore, the arrow is both moving and (...) at rest. In “Zeno’s Arrow, Divisible Infinitesimals, and Chrysippus,” White suggests using an infinitesimal value as the length of the present. Contra Zeno, this allows the arrow to be moving in the present, rather than frozen in place. In this paper, I follow the basic outline of White’s solution but argue that his solution suffers from arbitrariness and a related theoretical artificiality in relation to the system of infinitesimals he invokes, viz. in relation to the hyperreal infinitesimals of nonstandard analysis. After arguing that any solution to the paradox must satisfy certain theoretical requirements, I examine White’s solution alongside two nilpotent solutions. One of these solutions is inspired by F.W. Lawvere’s Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis and the other is inspired by Paolo Giordano’s ring of Fermat Reals. I argue that Giordano’s nilpotents supply the best answer to Zeno’s paradox. (shrink)

Contrary to the views of Alasdair MacIntyre and others who assert that modern Western morality is in disarray, torn by incommensurable moral views, John Reeder believes that there is much agreement about taking and saving lives. Many people might, in fact, agree on the various circumstances in which the death of a person constitutes a violation of the right to life, or that people have a right to our help, especially a right to life-saving aid. In_ Killing and Saving_, (...) Reeder analyzes five sorts of situations in which we are morally permitted or even obligated to take human life: e.g., when we repel an attacker who voluntarily "forfeits" the right to life; when we are confronted with "involuntary pursuit" or "material aggression"; when someone "yields" the right to life; when all will die if nothing is done, but some can be saved if others are killed; and when there is a "double effect" in which we take life as a foreseen but unintended consequence of attempt to achieve a greater good. Reeder argues that these categories account for many of our convictions ranging from abortion to infanticide, to starvation, to war. He also examines the concept of absolute or exceptionless right to life. Reeder draws on a number of moral views, from theological ethics to Enlightenment notions of natural rights or respect for rational creatures. He does not attempt to argue for a foundation for the right not to be killed and the right to be saved. Rather, he focuses on the content of the convictions themselves and argues that where disagreements remain, such as the case of abortion, they can be accounted for by the way the rights in question are explained and justified. (shrink)

In order to sketch an account of a moral commitment to persons as such, the essay examines empathy, sympathy, and benevolence as they arise first in special relations and then are reconstructed to include the stranger under the rubric of "extensive benevolence" or "universal love." The account, the author argues, must deal with conceptual empowerment and authorizing reasons, weakness and evil, normative conflict, and the relation of benevolence to justice.

This is a survey of the concept of continuity. Efforts to explicate continuity have produced a plurality of philosophical conceptions of continuity that have provably distinct expressions within contemporary mathematics. I claim that there is a divide between the conceptions that treat the whole continuum as prior to its parts, and those conceptions that treat the parts of the continuum as prior to the whole. Along this divide, a tension emerges between those conceptions that favor philosophical idealizations of continuity and (...) those that are more readily available for mathematico-scientific use. (shrink)

This cluster of essays by Julia E. Judish, John P. Reeder Jr., Donald K. Swearer, and Lee H. Yearley considers benevolence as a virtue construed in various ways in different traditions. The essays explore: the roots of benevolence or caring, especially towards strangers; the normative issue of the relation between universal love and concern for particular others in special relations; and the question of possessions, in particular the ideal of voluntary poverty. A theme that runs throughout the essays is (...) the relation of benevolence to religiously interpreted transformations of the self. (shrink)

In Commit to Win, Heidi Reeder, PhD, unpacks over forty years of research by psychologists and economists to show that the key to reaching any goal, whether it' to hit the gym more often or to finally quit that dead-end job, isn' motivation, willpower, or determination. It' commitment. Busting the myths most of us believe about commitment, Reeder shows that it all comes down to four variables: treasures, troubles, contributions, and choices. Together, these variables make up a formula (...) that not only measures how committed we are, but also shows which factors we can change to get our commitment level in sync with what we want to do. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the familiar non-Archimedean field of hyperreals from Abraham Robinson’s nonstandard analysis and Paolo Giordano’s ring extension of the real numbers containing nilpotents. There is an interesting nontrivial homomorphism from the limited hyperreals into the Giordano ring, whereas the only nontrivial homomorphism from the Giordano ring to the hyperreals is the standard part function, namely, the function that maps a value to its real part. We interpret this asymmetry to (...) mean that the nilpotent infinitesimal values of Giordano’s ring are “smaller” than the hyperreal infinitesimals. By viewing things from the “point of view” of the hyperreals, all nilpotents are zero, whereas by viewing things from the “point of view” of Giordano’s ring, nonnilpotent, nonzero infinitesimals register as nonzero infinitesimals. This suggests that Giordano’s infinitesimals are more fine-grained. (shrink)

Rudolph Rex Reeder's book charts the fascinating evolution of reading education. From primitive techniques to cutting-edge research, this book provides a detailed look at the methods and materials that have shaped the way we teach reading. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United (...) States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

I argue for the possibility of hypergunk: that is, it is possible that there exists an x such that every part of x has a proper part and, for any set S of parts of x, there is a set S′ of parts of...

Averill (1990) argues that not every property is a disposition. I claim here that his reasoning is faulty, suffering at one point from a logical error and at other points from an inadequate account of counterfactuals.

This unique anthology brings together for the first time the reactions that greeted the publication of Adam Smith's major philosophical work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Spanning over a hundred years of critical responses, the collection includes three different sections: the initial reply from Smith's friends David Hume, Edmund Burke and William Robertson the more considered opinions put forward by Smith's contemporaries, fellow Scots philosophers such as Lord Kames, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson or Dugald Stewart and, finally, the later (...) nineteenth-century, largely critical, views expressed by a new generation of philosophers. The book reclaims Adam Smith as a major eighteenth-century moral philosopher, giving a rare insight into the atmosphere in which his ideas emerged and evolved. --brings together a wealth of inaccessible material, from 1759 to 1881 --stresses Smith's importance not only as an innovative economist but as a major ethical thinker --includes some of Smith's replies to his critics --contributions by all the key figures of the period, including Hume, Burke, Robertson, Kames, Reid, Stewart and Ferguson. (shrink)

Electron micrographs of active ribosomal genes from many species show a similar picture in which gene regions covered with nascent transcripts alternate with apparently non‐transcribed spacers. Since the gradients of visible nascent transcripts stop near the 3′ end of the 28S sequence it has often been assumed that transcription by RNA polymerase I also terminates at that point. Recent biochemical studies have shown however, that transcription continues far beyond the 3′ end of the 28S and in some species continues across (...) the entire spacer. In this article we review the evidence for spacer transcription in Xenopus, mouse and Drosophila and discuss possible reasons for its invisibility in the electron microscope. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article I read Freud’s theory of dream condensation alongside Blanchot and Derrida’s analysis of the literary fragment. Both these thinkers describe how an imperturbable secret provides an excess that calls out for a response. I thus analyze the structure of dream interpretation as one where the latent dream thoughts respond to a call imbedded in the condensed dream-content. Through a deconstructive reading of Freud and a quote by Nietzsche, I argue that the structure of this call is (...) the condensation of the secret, which is both a mark and occurrence of forgetting. (shrink)

Three traditions--liberal individualism, neo-Aristotelianism , and an ethics of caring or love--occupy center stage in current normative ethics, emerging prominently, for example, in the liberalism versus communitarianism debate. Each of these can arguably be revised to accommodate insights from the others. Moreover, we can view moral traditions generally, or at least many traditions, as combinations of factors interpreted and related in various historical contexts. Finally, while the traditions as typologized here each attempt to identify a single source for morality, treating (...) other factors as secondary, it may be that these traditions and others are, in fact, best seen as sets of interwoven and interdependent elements. (shrink)

The “moral equivalence” objector—appealing only to certain moral considerations, e.g., wellbeing and consent—argues that no inherent moral significanceattaches to the distinction between intended means and foreseen side-effects: If an act of direct killing is wrong, then a morally comparable act of indirect killingis wrong as well; if an act of indirect killing is right, then so is a morally comparable act of direct killing. One secular version of double effect is vulnerable to the objection unless it can provide a principle (...) of justice which prohibits direct but justifies indirect killing. Both the secular version and the moral equivalence view depart (in different ways) from a theological interpretation of double effect as “delegated dominion.”. (shrink)

The second edition of The Theory and Practice of Husserl's Phenomenology is a clear and concise introduction to the theoretical background and the rigorous method of Edmund Husserl , perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century and the founder of the phenomenological movement. According to Husserl phenomenology is not a body of knowledge but a scientific practice based in a rigorous and difficult method, a method that takes long effort and practice to enter into and in which to (...) develop some significant results. Since many scholars and students do not read many of Husserl's published works, this text is meant to show the core unity of focus and method throughout decades of his phenomenological practice and refinement. The present work covers the historical origin of phenomenology and some main thematic results that appear in Husserl's works, and provides an introduction to the "how to" of producing phenomenological description. (shrink)

Focusing on a 1628 Lenten sermon, this essay explores Donne’s handling of the complex problem of how we should conceive of time antecedent to the creation. Read in the light of Donne’s remarks elsewhere, and of those by St. Augustine, this sermon shows him considering pre-time time as an argument for the importance of vocation. Contemplation of the mystery of God’s activity before the creation yields a powerful idea of one’s life and calling as the surpassingly meaningful culmination of a (...) vast process. Additionally, such contemplation helps Donne cope with the vagaries of his own life, especially his ties to Roman Catholicism, by contextualizing his own past-ness within the larger story of humanity’s sin and redemption. (shrink)

In Parts of Classes and "Mathematics is Megethology" David Lewis shows how the ideology of set membership can be dispensed with in favor of parthood and plural quantification. Lewis's theory has it that singletons are mereologically simple and leaves the relationship between a thing and its singleton unexplained. We show how, by exploiting Kit Fine's mereology, we can resolve Lewis's mysteries about the singleton relation and vindicate the claim that a thing is a part of its singleton.

El sentido como cabe o entre en el orden de lo público, en laCondición humana de Hannah Arendt, es de suyo esclarecedorde las posibilidades del lenguaje; y, de retorno, el lenguaje comofundamento para la comprensión de lo político (público); en estosdos lados se presenta como una dialéctica del fluir de la acción–que quizá por igual puede llamarse: la experiencia humana delmundo. Interesa, igualmente, ver la distinción entre el fluir –en elmodo del río heraclíteo– del sentido y la emergencia –en el (...) mododel nacimiento del agua en una fuente. Nuestra hipótesis es queen el pensamiento de Arendt tiene más el segundo que el primersentido. ¿Cómo se relacionan en este caso tiempo y sentido? Es,como telón de fondo, la pregunta que atraviesa nuestro “ensayode comprensión”1. La ponencia se desarrollo en cinco apartados;en el apartado, I La preeminencia del derecho, se mira el enlaceentre la teoría política de la autora y juicio de Eichmann; en elapartado II, La identidad narrativa, se estudia la primacía de lajustificación en mediante la cual el sujeto se construye en el relatoy, así mismo, el ir hacia o la apertura de sentido que ofrece elmismo; en el apartado III, Lo público, se estudia cómo la intersubjetividades terreno común para llegar a construir lo propio, la esfera de propiedad; en el apartado IV, El lenguaje, se mira sucarácter de entre, en medio de o cabe tanto en las relacionesintersubjetivas como en la comprensión subjetiva de mundo; finalmente,el apartado V, La persona, y a manera de conclusión sediscute la preeminencia de las tesis agustinianas sobre la persona–su carácter de hipóstasis al ser, al tiempo, entre y suidad– encuanto relación, así mismo se discuten los alcances y limitacionesde la tesis de la autora siempre que se evalúen a la luz de la perspectivafenomenológico-genética para el estudio de la políticacomo cosa misma. (shrink)

What kind of persons could engage in political torture? Not only the morally impaired who lack empathy or compassion, or even the merely obedient, but also the righteous who struggle with conscience, and the realists who set morality aside.

We apply Benacerraf’s distinction between mathematical ontology and mathematical practice to examine contrasting interpretations of infinitesimal mathematics of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, in the work of Bos, Ferraro, Laugwitz, and others. We detect Weierstrass’s ghost behind some of the received historiography on Euler’s infinitesimal mathematics, as when Ferraro proposes to understand Euler in terms of a Weierstrassian notion of limit and Fraser declares classical analysis to be a “primary point of reference for understanding the eighteenth-century theories.” Meanwhile, scholars like (...) Bos and Laugwitz seek to explore Eulerian methodology, practice, and procedures in a way more faithful to Euler’s own. Euler’s use of infinite integers and the associated infinite products are analyzed in the context of his infinite product decomposition for the sine function. Euler’s principle of cancellation is compared to the Leibnizian transcendental law of homogeneity. The Leibnizian law of continuity similarly finds echoes in Euler. We argue that Ferraro’s assumption that Euler worked with a classical notion of quantity is symptomatic of a post-Weierstrassian placement of Euler in the Archimedean track for the development of analysis, as well as a blurring of the distinction between the dual tracks noted by Bos. Interpreting Euler in an Archimedean conceptual framework obscures important aspects of Euler’s work. Such a framework is profitably replaced by a syntactically more versatile modern infinitesimal framework that provides better proxies for his inferential moves. (shrink)

One approach to the problem of differentiating a religious from a non- religious ethic would be to formulate a definition of religion that would clearly distinguish between religious and nonreligious traditions; however, a broad definition of religion would include some moral traditions, such as Marxism, commonly thought to be forms of secular humanism. A second approach would argue that some moral beliefs are independent, both in content and justification, of religious convictions; such a set of moral beliefs could be described (...) as a secular version of natural law. This approach would be rejected by those who argue that religious convictions go "all the way down." While the first can be debated by appealing to the heuristic value of various definitions of religion, the second involves familiar issues of moral epistemology. The author explores the consequences of holding a broad definition of religion and an "all the way down" epistemology. (shrink)

This volume centers on debates about how far moral judgments bind across traditions and epochs. Nowadays such debates appear especially volatile, both in popular culture and intellectual discourse: although there is increasing agreement that the moral and political criteria invoked in human rights documents possess cross-cultural force, many modern and postmodern developments erode confidence in moral appeals that go beyond a local consensus or apply outside a particular community. Often the point of departure for discussion is the Enlightenment paradigm of (...) a common morality, in which it is assumed that certain unchanging beliefs inhere in the structure of human reason. Whereas some thinkers continue to defend this paradigm, others modify it in diverse ways without abandoning entirely the attempt to address a universal audience, and still others jettison virtually all of its distinguishing features. Exhibiting a range of positions Western participants take in these debates, this volume seeks to advance the substance of the debates themselves without prejudging the outcome. Rival assessments of the Enlightenment paradigm are offered from various philosophical and theological points of view. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Robert Merrihew Adams, Annette C. Baier, Alan Donagan, Margaret A. Farley, Alan Gewirth, David Little, Richard Rorty, Jeffrey Stout, and Lee H. Yearley. (shrink)

MARXISM AND LIBERALISM edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., Jeffrey Paul and John Ahrens New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. 223 pp., $14?95 (paper) LIBERALISM by John Gray Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. 106 pp., $9.95 (paper).

ABSTRACT Four decades ago, Gerald Kramer showed that economic conditions affect electoral outcomes. Some researchers took this to mean that voters were self-interested, voting their “pocketbooks,” while others, such as Leif Lewin, took it to mean that voters were sociotropic, motivated by the public interest—and therefore altruistic. It is important, however, to avoid conflating sociotropic voters with altruistic ones. Voters might be voting in favor of politicians or parties that they think will further the public interest as an indirect route (...) to furthering their own interests, as members of the public. More research, perhaps conducted using novel methodologies, is needed in order to settle the extent to which voters are motivated by self-interest or by the public interest. (shrink)

For almost twenty years, Penelope Maddy has been one of the most consistent expositors and advocates of naturalism in philosophy, with a special focus on the philosophy of mathematics, set theory in particular. Over that period, however, the term ‘naturalism’ has come to mean many things. Although some take it to be a rejection of the possibility of a priori knowledge, there are philosophers calling themselves ‘naturalists’ who willingly embrace and practice an a priori methodology, not a whole lot different (...) from traditional conceptual analysis. Along a different line, some take naturalism to involve the rejection of abstract objects—a sort of physicalism—while other naturalists not only allow the existence of abstracta; they take this existence to be all but obvious.For present purposes, we can begin with W.V.O. Quine, who once characterized naturalism as ‘the abandonment of the goal of first philosophy’ and ‘the recognition that it is within science itself …that reality is to be identified and described’. For Quine, the ‘naturalistic philosopher begins his reasoning within the inherited world theory as a going concern …[The] inherited world theory is primarily a scientific one, the current product of the scientific enterprise’ [Quine, 1981, p. 72]. This characterizes at least the bulk of contemporary philosophers who call themselves ‘naturalists’, and it characterizes the targets of many who oppose what they call ‘naturalism’. But as Maddy notes at the start, ‘the term has come to mark little more than a vague science-friendliness’.An attempt to define naturalism more fully would surely require a characterization of science—at least so that the reader can see when someone sins against that naturalism by being unscientific. But, as Maddy notes, one ‘lesson won through decades of study in the philosophy of science [is that] there is no …. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Classic Theories of Teaching and Learning John Dewey's Theory of Learning and Teaching Contemporary Constructivist Theories of Teaching and Learning The Contributions of Analytic Philosophy of Education Contemporary Theories of Learning.

ABSTRACT Four decades ago, Gerald Kramer showed that economic conditions affect electoral outcomes. Some researchers took this to mean that voters were self-interested, voting their “pocketbooks,” while others, such as Leif Lewin, took it to mean that voters were sociotropic, motivated by the public interest—and therefore altruistic. It is important, however, to avoid conflating sociotropic voters with altruistic ones. Voters might be voting in favor of politicians or parties that they think will further the public interest as an indirect route (...) to furthering their own interests, as members of the public. More research, perhaps conducted using novel methodologies, is needed in order to settle the extent to which voters are motivated by self-interest or by the public interest. (shrink)