Stephen Yablo has attempted recently to revive the notion of contingent identity, identifying this with a relation of L coincidence between objects that are "distinct by nature but the same in the circumstances" (296). Yablo argues convincingly for the need of essentialist metaphysics to recognize some relation of this sort, a relation of "intimate identity-like connections between things" (296) if it is to acknowledge properly the intuitive difference between (i) the nonidentity of a bust B and a hunk of wax (...) H of which it is composed, and (ii) the nonidentity of the hunk H and the Treaty of Versailles. (i) and (ii) are clearly not on the same level. Even though B, like the Treaty of Versailles, fails to be strictly identical to H, it is very closely, and quite specially, related to it. What this relation is is certainly worth a general inquiry. (shrink)

H.B.G. Casimir's life, interests and works are intertwined with the important developments that have taken place in physics during this century. This book was compiled by his friends and admirers in honour of his 80th birthday and concentrates mainly on Casimir's achievements in the field of physics, though without ignoring the peripheral areas of the history and philosophy of physics in which he was greatly interested. The book is divided into four parts. Part I describes Casimir's teachers, Ehrenfest, Bohr and (...) Pauli, and will be of general interest due to the key role which these physicists played in modern developments. The articles do give new facts and provide new insights into the history of modern physics. Part II consists of essays on recent developments in various areas of physics in which Casimir has taken an active interest, such as the modern concept of time, statistical foundations of electrodynamic theory and field theory. The subjects covered in Part III have been selected because of Casimir's efforts in the industrial research area of physics. They cover past, present and future expectations in research. (shrink)

An outline of the life of Heraclides and his fragmentary writings (on the theory of matter, astronomy, ethical and religious topics) is followed by an attempt to reconstruct his thought. He emerges as not so much a profound thinker as a many-sided writer of considerable literary gifts and occasional flashes of brilliance.

There are a number of fragments attributed to Theophrastus, as well as titles in Diogenes Laertius' catalogue of his writings , of which it is uncertain whether they should be placed among his logical or rhetorical works. In this note I want to give my reasons for excluding one of them from my forthcoming edition of his logical fragments. It is not my intention here to discuss all the questions it raises; I hope to come back to them in a (...) later volume of my commentary. (shrink)

By a “world-outlook” I mean a systematic account of the nature of the world which claims, by showing the place of man in the scheme of things, to indicate the point and purpose of his life. The theory of the world is often called a metaphysical theory and the theory of conduct an ethical or moral theory. In my opinion the clarification and criticism of world-outlooks is a fundamental part of philosophy. Indeed, I hardly think that philosophy would have existed (...) as something distinct from science or poetry but for the tendency to attempt some explanation of the world as the scene of human endeavour. When Kant referred to “the inevitable problems of pure reason” about “God, freedom, and immortality,” he was referring in a summary way to the fundamental philosophical task of analysing and criticizing world-outlooks, a task that may be undertaken even by those philosophers who do not believe that any world-outlook is or could be adequate. It is clear, of course, that the civilized religions, since they seek to show how human conduct fits in with some Divine Plan or Cosmic Conflict, have world-outlooks. It is, however, misleading to look upon religions and world-outlooks as the same thing, as some people do. For in ordinary usage religion involves belief in supernatural beings and conduct regulated in the light of this belief, but according to some world-outlooks there are no supernatural beings, while according to others beings may exist deserving that description but human conduct need take no account of them. (shrink)

The Peanese convention for the use of dots as brackets has the disadvantage that it gives only an awkward method for representing chains of indefinite length, such as the compound implicationSuch chains occur frequently in logical investigations of a metatheoretic nature, and it is convenient to have a systematic method of abbreviating them. The most obvious method of doing this would be to leave the parentheses out entirely, and to understand that in such cases the implication sign or other operation (...) appearing on the extreme left is the most inclusive; but this method, which has been followed by Quine, is at variance with our ordinary algebraic usage, in which we write a − b + c − d for ((a − b) + c) − d, and consequently leads to confusion. It is desirable to have a modification of the Peanese convention which gives a simple method of representing such chain implications, and at the same time avoids this difficulty.Such a modification is easily obtained by generalizing somewhat a procedure of Church. The latter author uses only a single dot, which he writes on the right of an operator to signify a bracket extending from that point to the end of the formula (or parenthesized expression). If dots are used only on the right of operations this is all that can be desired. But the essential idea of this device can be extended to the case where dots are used also on the left, as follows: let us suppose that a group of dots on the right of an operation or prefix denotes the beginning of a bracket which extends to the right until it meets a group with an equal or larger number of dots on the left of an operation; and that the scope of a group of dots on the left of an operation shall extend to the left until it reaches a larger group of dots on the right of some operation. (shrink)

Gary Kemp defends Realist approaches to the paradox of analysis. Other, prima facie equally viable approaches to this problem are the Nominalist one of Langford and Camap and the Conceptualist one of Prior and Stalnaker. In the context of a fuller survey focus is set on the realist attempt. This puts one in a better position to arbitrate between these approaches and give a more final assessment of the realist one, including an assessment of Kemp's defence of it. The Conceptualist (...) one, as it turns out, triumphs over the others, and is the basis for a Wittgensteinian vie w of the a priori which is analyzed in the second part of the paper. (shrink)