We consider conditionals of the form A ⇒ B where A depends on the future and B on the present and past. We examine models for such conditional arising in Talmudic legal cases. We call such conditionals contrary to time conditionals.Three main aspects will be investigated: Inverse causality from future to past, where a future condition can influence a legal event in the past (this is a man made causality).Comparison with similar features in modern law.New types of temporal logics arising (...) from modelling the Talmudic examples. We shall see that we need a new temporal logic,which we call Talmudic temporal logic with linear open advancing future and parallel changing past, based on two parameters for time. (shrink)

The situation that has evolved in contemporary Marxist philosophy urgently requires self-reflection—the turning of philosophical thought onto itself—and it also presupposes that some effort be expended in reconstructing the foundations of the very mode of philosophizing that is characteristic of our philosophy.

Based on a theory of primitive particles presented in two earlier papers, further applications to macro- and microphenomena are considered—for example, weather phenomena, earthquakes, photoemission, collision of particles, violation of parity, and decay modes. A broad class of leptons withSU(3) symmetry is proposed, together with a quarkless model of particles.

Based on three earlier papers which treat electromagnetic, elastogravitational, and radiant-nonradiant thermal phenomena in terms of six types of electric or nonelectric charges, the authors classify states of matter as hyperefficient, efficient, semiefficient, and hypoefficient in transmitting a particular type of charge, by means of a generalization of Ohm's law to two or three dimensions. Conventional states of matter (solid, liquid, gas, vacuum) are associated with torsional (gravitational) charges. Applications are made to electric superconductivity of crystals at elevated temperatures, and (...) to frequency shift (gravitational red shift, Lamb shift, and Zeeman and Stark effects). (shrink)

The central insight of Darwin's Origin of Species is that evolution is an ecological phenomenon, arising from the activities of organisms in the 'struggle for life'. By contrast, the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution, which rose to prominence in the twentieth century, presents evolution as a fundamentally molecular phenomenon, occurring in populations of sub-organismal entities - genes. After nearly a century of success, the Modern Synthesis theory is now being challenged by empirical advances in the study of organismal development and (...) inheritance. In this important study, D. M. Walsh shows that the principal defect of the Modern Synthesis resides in its rejection of Darwin's organismal perspective, and argues for 'situated Darwinism': an alternative, organism-centred conception of evolution that prioritises organisms as adaptive agents. His book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

D. M. Armstrong; II—Does Knowledge Entail Belief?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 21–36, https://doi.org/10.109.

Truths are determined not by what we believe, but by the way the world is. Or so realists about truth believe. Philosophers call such theories correspondence theories of truth. Truthmaking theory, which now has many adherents among contemporary philosophers, is the most recent development of a realist theory of truth, and in this book D. M. Armstrong offers the first full-length study of this theory. He examines its applications to different sorts of truth, including contingent truths, modal truths, truths about (...) the past and the future, and mathematical truths. In a clear, even-handed and non-technical discussion he makes a compelling case for truthmaking and its importance in philosophy. His book marks a significant contribution to the debate and will be of interest to a wide range of readers working in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

It is argued that it is possible that all properties are categorical, contrary to the arguments of Franklin that there must be dispositionality "all the way down". The tasks for which dispositionality is alleged to be needed can be fulfilled by laws of nature, which are categorical relations between universals.

Spanning a wide range of texts, figures, and traditions from the ancient Mediterranean world, this volume gathers far-reaching, interdisciplinary papers on Greek philosophy from an international group of scholars. The book's sixteen chapters address an array of topics and themes, extending from the formation of philosophy from its first stirrings in archaic Greek as well as Egyptian, Persian, Mesopotamian, and Indian sources, through central concepts in ancient Greek philosophy and literatures of the classical period and into the Hellenistic age. Studies (...) in Ancient Greek Philosophy offers both in-depth, rigorous, attentive investigations of canonical texts in western philosophy, such as Plato's Phaedo, Gorgias, Republic, Phaedrus, Protagoras and the Metaphysics, De Caelo, Nichomachean Ethics, Generation and Corruption of Aristotle's corpus, as well as inquiries that reach back into the rich archives of the Mediterranean Basin and forward into the traditions of classical philosophy beyond the ancient world. Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy is of interest to students and scholars working on different aspects of ancient Greek philosophy, as well as ancient philosophy more broadly. (shrink)

Breaking new ground in the debate about the relation of mind and body, David Armstrong's classic text - first published in 1968 - remains the most compelling and comprehensive statement of the view that the mind is material or physical. In the preface to this new edition, the author reflects on the book's impact and considers it in the light of subsequent developments. He also provides a bibliography of all the key writings to have appeared in the materialist debate.

The most compelling extant accounts of explanation casts all explanations as causal. Yet there are sciences, theoretical population biology in particular, that explain their phenomena by appeal to statistical, non-causal properties of ensembles. I develop a generalised account of explanation. An explanation serves two functions: metaphysical and cognitive. The metaphysical function is discharged by identifying a counterfactually robust invariance relation between explanans event and explanandum. The cognitive function is discharged by providing an appropriate description of this relation. I offer examples (...) of explanations from portfolio theory and population genetics that meet this characterisation. In each case the invariance relation holds between a statistical property of an ensemble and a change in structure of the ensemble. In neither case, however, does the statistical property cause the outcome it explains. There are genuine statistical, non-causal scientific explanations. (shrink)

Accepting James Gustafson's recent argument that right reading and valid criticism of H. R. Niebuhr's Christ and Culture must begin with an informed understanding of Niebuhr's utilization of the ideal-typical method, the author reviews characteristics of Weberian typologies and discusses the levels of criticism to which typologies are legitimately subject. Right appreciation of the text's genre exposes many criticisms of Christ and Culture to be misguided, but it also throws into relief those features of the text that cannot be accounted (...) for by that method, revealing the complexity of a text that advances both a comparative descriptive analysis and a bold theological argument. Recognition of this tension prompts the question whether the one so compromises or constrains the other that the enterprise does, indeed, fail as a whole, even though it remains intensely interesting in all its parts. (shrink)

Given an argumentation network we associate with it a modal formula representing the ‘logical content’ of the network. We show a one-to-one correspondence between all possible complete Caminada labellings of the network and all possible models of the formula.

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Given an argumentation network with initial values to the arguments, we look for algorithms which can yield extensions compatible with such initial values. We find that the best way of tackling this problem is to offer an iteration formula that takes the initial values and the attack relation and iterates a sequence of intermediate values that eventually converges leading to an extension. The properties surrounding the application of the iteration formula and its connection with other numerical and non-numerical techniques proposed (...) by others are thoroughly investigated in this paper. (shrink)

Values of some arbitrary parameters appearing in a geometrical model for elementary particles developed by MacGregor are compared with quantities associated with classical properties of blocks of charges±e interacting via Coulomb forces and hard-sphere repulsion only. If it is assumed that masses and radii of individual charged particles are related bymc 2=(2/3)(e 2/r) and thatmc 2=6.87 MeV, then the self-energiesM andM ± of 24-particle neutral blocks and 25-particle charged blocks composed of layers of three octagons and of a square sandwiched (...) by two distorted octagons satisfyM=70.1 MeV,M ±=74.2 MeV. The binding energyB nn of pairs of neutral blocks is given byB nn=4.9 MeV, and the maximum radius of the neutral block is 0.60 F. These four calculated parameter values lie within an average of 1% of the corresponding quantities for nonspinning quarks determined empirically by MacGregor. (shrink)

In this short text, a distinguished philosopher turns his attention to one of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical problems of all: How it is that we are able to sort and classify different things as being of the same natural class? Professor Armstrong carefully sets out six major theories—ancient, modern, and contemporary—and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each. Recognizing that there are no final victories or defeats in metaphysics, Armstrong nonetheless defends a traditional account of universals as the (...) most satisfactory theory we have.This study is written for advanced students, but as Armstrong goes considerably beyond his earlier work on this topic, it will interest professional scholars as well. Carefully plotted and clearly written, Universals is both a paradigm of exposition and a case study on the value of careful analysis of fundamental issues in philosophy. (shrink)