What role have experiments played, and should they play, in physics? How does one come to believe rationally in experimental results? The Neglect of Experiment attempts to provide answers to both of these questions. Professor Franklin's approach combines the detailed study of four episodes in the history of twentieth century physics with an examination of some of the philosophical issues involved. The episodes are the discovery of parity nonconservation in the 1950s; the nondiscovery of parity nonconservation in the 1930s, (...) when the results of experiments indicated, at least in retrospect, the symmetry violation, but the significance of those results was not realized; the discovery and acceptance of CP symmetry; and Millikan's oil-drop experiment. Franklin examines the various roles that experiment plays, including its role in deciding between competing theories, confirming theories, and calling fo new theories. The author argues that one can provide a philosophical justification for these roles. He contends that if experiment plays such important roles, then one must have good reason to believe in experimental results. He then deals with deveral problems concerning such reslults, including the epistemology of experiment, how one comes to believe rationally in experimental results, the question of the influence of theoretical presuppositions on results, and the problem of scientific fruad. This original and important contribution to the study of the philosophy of experimental science is an outgrowth of many years of research. Franklin brings to this work more than a decade of experience as an experimental high-energy physicist, along with his significant contributions to the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

In Experiment, Right or Wrong, Allan Franklin continues his investigation of the history and philosophy of experiment presented in his previous book, The Neglect of Experiment. Using a combination of case studies and philosophical readings of those studies, Franklin again addresses two important questions: (1) What role does and should experiment play in the choice between competing theories and in the confirmation or refutation of theories and hypotheses? (2) How do we come to believe reasonably in experimental results? (...) Experiment, Right or Wrong makes a significant contribution to an important area in contemporary history and philosophy of science. Philosophers and historians of science, physicists, and advanced students in these areas will find much of interest in this engaging study. (shrink)

Kierkegaard famously declared that life is lived forwards but understood backwards. The retrospective look at one's career necessarily takes the form of a narrative reconstruction. Our lives are messier than the stories we tell about them.I first took up serious study of philosophy as a sophomore at Columbia College in 1967. The extensive core curriculum at Columbia exposes all students to a sampling of classic texts in philosophy. Some inkling of a more than passing interest in philosophy, which I can't (...) now recall, must have induced me take an elective course devoted to that subject. It was taught in the old-fashioned way of detailed examination of classic texts—the way that I believe it is best to learn about... (shrink)

The “learning health care system” is being heralded as offering great potential for improving the quality and cost-worthiness of medical care by closely integrating the care of patients with the accumulation of aggregate data that can guide evidence-based medicine. By using electronic medical records, routine patient care and administrative data will be available for systematic observational studies. With the aid of these electronic medical records, quality-improvement studies of institutional practices and pragmatic, comparative effectiveness randomized trials of individual treatments could become (...) standard features of the medical care environment in the LHS. In this.. (shrink)

Interpretations of recollection in the "Phaedo" are divided between ordinary interpretations, on which recollection explains a kind of learning accomplished by all, and sophisticated interpretations, which restrict recollection to philosophers. A sophisticated interpretation is supported by the prominence of philosophical understanding and reflection in the argument. Recollection is supposed to explain the advanced understanding displayed by Socrates and Simmias (74b2-4). Furthermore, it seems to be a necessary condition on recollection that one who recollects also perform a comparison of sensible particulars (...) to Forms (74a5-7). I provide a new ordinary interpretation which explains these features of the argument. First, we must clearly distinguish the philosophical reflection which constitutes the argument for the Theory of Recollection from the ordinary learning which is its subject. The comparison of sensibles to Forms is the reasoning by which we see, as philosophers, that we must recollect. At the same time, we must also appreciate the continuity of ordinary and philosophical learning. Plato wants to explain the capacity for ordinary discourse, but with an eye to its role as the origin of philosophical reflection and learning. In the "Phaedo", recollection has ordinary learning as its immediate explanandum, and philosophical learning as its ultimate explanandum. (shrink)

This book contains 22 essays on the ethics of research involving human subjects written over a 15-year period. Topics addressed include the ethics of clinical trials, controversial study designs, and informed consent.

Lest we take Zhu Xi merely as a grand synthesizer who, in the words of Wing-tsit Chan, made "Neo-Confucianism truly Confucian" by countering and assimilating Buddhist and Daoist influences, this volume urges us to regard him as a profound philosopher who brought metaphysical and cosmological insights to bear on ethical cultivation and social praxis. The twelve essays assembled in Returning to Zhu Xi: Emerging Patterns within the Supreme Polarity, edited by David Jones and Jinli He, examine the manifold aspects of (...) Zhu's philosophy, including its contemporary resonance. The anthology functions on the whole as a general but thoroughly scholarly reference to the wide-ranging thought of Zhu Xi. What distinguishes the... (shrink)

The purpose of Parts and Places, say Casati and Varzi in their introduction, is to construct “a theory of our spatial competence,” a theory that will lay bare how we conceive of space and the things that lie within it. Its purpose, then, is psychological, not metaphysical. Its object of study is not space. It is not the things that lie within it. Rather its object of study is us. In this regard, Parts and Places is at best a mixed (...) success. (shrink)

In his ‘Could Extended Objects Be Made Out of Simple Parts?: An Argument for “Atomless Gunk’’, Dean Zimmerman defends the claim that no physical object has a complete decomposition into simples but instead has among its parts a piece of ‘atomless gunk’ His argument for this claim rests in part upon a theory of the impenetrability of physical objects. In that theory, Zimmerman distinguishes ‘[t]he sort of impenetrability that is a part of the concept of’ a physical object from ‘a (...) power to resist the pressure of other objects’. He says that impenetrability is but ‘an essential inability’ of two physical objects to occupy one and the same region of space, an essential inability that is not a power of one physical object to exert repulsive forces on others in its vicinity. I argue that this theory of impenetrability is false and that Zimmerman's argument for the existence of ‘atomless gunk’ fails. (shrink)

We study the Turing degrees which contain a real of effective packing dimension one. Downey and Greenberg showed that a c.e. degree has effective packing dimension one if and only if it is not c.e. traceable. In this paper, we show that this characterization fails in general. We construct a real $A\leq_T\emptyset''$ which is hyperimmune-free and not c.e. traceable such that every real $\alpha\leq_T A$ has effective packing dimension 0. We construct a real $B\leq_T\emptyset'$ which is not c.e. traceable such (...) that every real $\alpha\leq_T B$ has effective packing dimension 0. (shrink)

현대철학의 핵심문제로 제시되어온 주체의 개념을 유 럽철학사의 맥락으로 논한 저서.