A re-examination of the anonymous Commentary on the Theaetetus, henceforth abbreviated K, is overdue. It may yet prove to be the most important document we possess for plotting the course of pre-Plotinian Platonism, and is by far the largest surviving portion of a pre-Plotinian commentary on a complete work of Plato. It offers us insights into the issues of the first century B.C. which are unparalleled in other extant Middle Platonist works, either because of the subject of the work and (...) its consequent tendency to bring to mind the epistemological debates between Philo of Larissa, Antiochus of Ascalon, and Aenesidemus, or because the author, whom we may call A, is writing at a time comparatively close to those debates. (shrink)

Marx's critique of political economy as a problem-posing framework Political economy and its critique Writing in the late, Friedrich Engels drew attention ...

This essay provides evidence to support a promising conceptual and potentially practical set of ideas at once both principled and effective found in the work of Max Weber and Alfred Schutz addressed to the issue of ‘adequacy’ as a goal in social research. Efforts to achieve adequacy beyond the epistemological conditions required by Weber’s demand that evidence meet both causal adequacy and adequacy on the level of meaning were significantly refocused by Schutz’s later concern, responding specifically to Weber, that the (...) social sciences also address themselves to his postulate of adequacy. It states that “Each term used in a scientific system referring to human action must be so constructed that a human act performed within the life-world by an individual actor in the way indicated by the typical construction would be reasonable and understandable for the actor himself, as well as for his fellow men”. A serious attempt to implement a more expansive notion of adequacy by practically activating this postulate in the ways suggested can be beneficial not only for the social research situation but in everyday life as well. (shrink)

Popper’s view of scientific activity appears to take its social and communitarian features largely for granted. Rather than making this inter-subjectivity the basic problematic in his work, he wanted to move beyond language without, however, foreclosing the possibility that communication may often be a source of confusion in research and related scientific activity. Popper feared that the study of science, no less than scientific activity itself, may be led astray by an overly reflexive approach and focus. There are aspects of (...) his views on this matter which bear a considerable resemblance to Bacon, even though Popper is clearly a Cartesian deductivist rather than a Baconian inductivist, for reasons that become apparent in The Logic of Scientific Discovery. According to Popper, no such practice or method of discovery exists, either in science or anywhere else. (shrink)

Excerpt from Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus Called by the indulgence of this meeting to a chair, which I could have wished to have seen more worthily filled, upon so interesting an occasion as the first general meeting of a Society instituted for the important purpose of the advancement of knowledge in relation to Asia, I shall, with your permission, detain you a little from the special business of the day, while I draw your more particular (...) attention to the objects of the Institution, for the furtherance of which we are now assembled. To those countries of Asia, in which civilization may be justly considered to have had its origin, or to have attained its earliest growth, the rest of the civilized world owes a large debt of gratitude, which it cannot but be solicitous to repay; and England, as most advanced in refinement, is, for that very cause, the most beholden; and, by acquisition of dominion in the East, is bound by a yet closer tie. As Englishmen, we participate in the earnest wish, that this duty may be fulfilled, and that obligation requited; and we share in the anxious desire of contributing to such a happy result, by promoting an interchange of benefits, and returning in an improved state that which was received in a ruder form. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This book addresses, and at the same time reflects, the impact of Max Weber on both the social sciences and on critical theory's critique of the social sciences ...

A unifying theory of general anesthetic-induced unconsciousness must explain the common mechanism through which various anesthetic agents produce unconsciousness. Functional-brain-imaging data obtained from 11 volunteers during general anesthesia showed specific suppression of regional thalamic and midbrain reticular formation activity across two different commonly used volatile agents. These findings are discussed in relation to findings from sleep neurophysiology and the implications of this work for consciousness research. It is hypothesized that the essential common neurophysiologic mechanism underlying anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is, as with (...) sleep-induced unconsciousness, a hyperpolarization block of thalamocortical neurons. A model of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is introduced to explain how the plethora of effects anesthetics have on cellular functioning ultimately all converge on a single neuroanatomic/neurophysiologic system, thus providing for a unitary physiologic theory of narcosis related to consciousness. (shrink)