Die vorliegende Arbeit besteht, von Beigaben wie Indizes und Bibliographie abgesehen, aus einer 124 Seiten umfassenden Einleitung und einer 328 Seiten umfassenden vollständigen Werkausgabe des bisher wenig bekannten Antipalamiten Theodoros Dexios. Seine Schriften, eine von POLEMIS (P.) als „Appellatio“ bezeichnete Beschwerde über die Voreingenommenheit des Ioannes Kantakuzenos auf dem Konzil von 1351, zwei Briefe und ein von P. so genannter „Tractatus brevis de Christo ipso splendente in Transfiguratione“ sind anonym überliefert, zudem auch ohne Überschriften. Zu Beginn der Einleitung wird (...) G. MERCATIs Annahme, daß die Schriften von Dexios verfaßt wurden, gegen J. MEYENDORFF, der sie dem Arsenios von Tyros zuwies, überzeugend verteidigt. Der Autor des 1. Briefes vertrat die merkwürdige Meinung, daß das Thaborlicht mit dem menschlichen Körper Christi identisch gewesen sei (XVI). Diese Ansicht kritisierte Isaak Argyros in seinem Brief an Gedeon unter Namensnennung des Dexios, wie Mercati bereits feststellte (XXIII f.). Daß die genannten Schriften, die teils in Vat. Gr. 1111, teils in Vat. Gr. 1823 überliefert sind (XIII), auf denselben Autor zurückgehen, ist daraus zu erschließen, daß der Schreiber von Vat. Gr. 1823 in Vat. Gr. 1111 Autorenkorrekturen vornahm (XV f.). Ein wichtiger Punkt der Widerlegung Meyendorffs besteht auch darin, daß dieser die Worte des Dexios, die sich auf den Schluß des vom „seligen Gregoras“ inspirierten Glaubensbekenntnisses der Antipalamiten im Jahr 1351 beziehen, nämlich „an letzter Stelle war in ihm (dem Bekenntnis) folgendes zu lesen: ‚Hinsichtlich des Kalabrers Barlaam und des Akindynos sagen wir, daß wir damit einverstanden sind, was die heilige Kirche Gottes entschieden und festgelegt hat‘ (220), indem wir auf unseren Patriarchen verwiesen“, auf Ignatios von Antiochien, den Vorgesetzten des Arsenios, bezog, dieser schmähliche, wenn auch wohl postume Verrat an Akindynos (so unsere Meinung) aber laut P. eine Anerkennung des Tomos von 1341 bedeutet, mit dem Patriarchen demnach Kalekas gemeint ist (XX f.). P. weist nach, daß der Brief des Dexios, auf den sich Argyros in seinem Brief an Gedeon bezieht, trotz gleicher Thematik nicht mit dem von ihm herausgegeben Brief I identisch ist, sondern etwas früher (XXVI versehentlich „later“) geschrieben wurde (XXVI–XXVIII). Die Datierung der „Appellatio“ auf die Zeit zwischen 1351 und 1354 (Sturz des Kantakuzenos) ist sicherlich richtig. Da Gregoras in seinen zweiten „Antirrhetikoi“ wie Dexios von der Nichtveröffentlichung des Tomos von 1351, der Unvollständigkeit der erworbenen Abschrift wie auch von der Gefahr spricht, durch den Herrscher ermordet zu werden (s. JÖB 36, 1986, 263 f. 276), ist laut meiner Datierung (s. JÖB 27, 1978, 146, Nr. 70) 1353 als wahrscheinliches Datum der Abfassung anzusehen. P. verfaßte eine bemerkenswerte Anmerkung zu Georgios von Pelagonia (XXXI f., A. 65). Die Identifizierung des Georgios Gabrielopulos mit Georgios, dem Philosophen, geht auf R.-J. LOENERTZ und F. TINNEFELD zurück, die mögliche Identifizierung des Georgios von Pelagonia mit Gabrielopulos auf mich (s. PLP II, Nr. 3433 und Talbot in ODB II 838 f., die PLP ausschreibt). Inzwischen bin ich zu dem Schluß gekommen, daß Georgios von Pelagonia, der an Akindynos Kritik übt, auf Grund seiner guten Informiertheit kein anderer sein kann als Akindynos, der wegen seiner Voreingenommenheit gegen Barlaam im Jahr 1341 Selbstkritik übt. Akindynos stammte aus der Region von Pelagonia. Möglicherweise ist er nach seiner Flucht aus Konstantinopel 1347 mit Hilfe Stefan Dušans sogar Bischof von Pelagonia geworden. (shrink)

This article discusses Xenophanes' “cloud astro-physics”. It analyses and explains all heavenly and meteorological phenomena in terms of clouds. It provides a view of this newer Xenophanes, who is now being recognized as an important philosopher-scientist in his own right and a crucial figure in the development of critical thought about human knowledge and its objects in the next generation of Presocratic thinkers. Xenophanes' account has been preserved in Aëtius, the doxographic compendium reconstructed by Hermann Diels late in the nineteenth (...) century mainly from two sources that show extensive parallelism: pseudo-Plutarch Placita Philosophorum or Epitome of Physical Opinions ; and Ioannes Stobaeus' Eclogae Physicae or Physical Extracts. In the Stobaeus version, which is also the one printed in the standard edition of the Pre-socratics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:New Light from Arabic Sources on Galen and the Fourth Figure of the Syllogism NICHOLAS RESCHER The Problem of the Origin of the Fourth Figure FLYING IN THE FACE of the long-standing tradition--going back in Europe to Renaissance times--which credits Galen of Pergamon with the origination of the fourth syllogistic figure, recent authorities have almost to a man evinced doubt about Galen's claim to this innovation. Heinrieh Scholz speaks (...) of "the Galenian syllogistic figure which has been attributed to him, probably wrongly." i j. W. Stakelum concludes his careful discussion of the matter with the categorical assertion that "Galen did not teach the fourth figure." ~ I. M. Bochenski--following Lukasiewicz (see below)--says that the fourth figure "was only ascribed to Galen by a misunderstanding." : William Kneale (also following Lukasiewicz) writes that "it is easy to see how misunderstanding.., by some Arabian philosopher... could have given rise to the tradition that Galen added a fourth figure to Aristotle's syllogistic theory." 4 The currently received account of the matter is that of Jan Lukasiewicz who, in his book on Aristotle's Syllogistic (1951; 2d ed., 1957), presents the known reports about Galen and the fourth figure as follows (I list them in the order in which they came to light) : 1) Several passages in Averroes' (d. 1198) Middle Commentary on Prior Analytics credit Galen with introducing a fourth figure (ad Anal. Pr. I, 5; I, 8; I, 23). These passages, known in Europe through a Renaissance Latin translation of a Hebrew version, provided the basis upon which Zabarella in his work, De Quarta Syllogismorum Figura (in his Opera [Leiden: 1587], pp. 41-53), popularized the "Galenian figure" in European logic. 2) In 1844 Minoides Mynas published in the Preface to his edition of Galen's EisagSg~ dialektik~ an anonymous Greek fragment (late, perhaps 6th century) which states that certain "later scholars" transformed the indirect moods of the first figure added by Theophrastus and Eudeffms into a new fourth figure, citing Galen as the originator of this doctrine.~ 1Abriss der Geschichte der Logik (Miinster: 1931), trans, into English by K. F. Leidecker, ConciseHistory of Logic (NewYork: 1961);p. 38ofthe Englishversion. "Why 'Galenian' Figure?" The New Scholasticism, XVI (1942),289-296. s Formale Logik (Miinchen-Freiburg:1956; 2nd. ed., 1962), trans, into English by Ivo Thomas, A History of Formal Logic (Notre Dame: 1961);p. 142of the Englishversion. Williamand Martha Kneale, The Developmentof Logic (Oxford: 1962),p. 184. Alsoprinted in Karl Kalbfieisch, ~ber Galen s Einleitung in die Logik, 2~. Supplementband der Jahrbi~cherfi~r klassische Philologie (Leipzig:1897), p. 707. This datum casts some 28 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3) A Greek fragment was found around 1858 by Karl Prantl in a logical work of the Byzantine scholar Ioannes Italus (llth century) which says that Galen taught the existence of a fourth figure, adding sarcastically that he (Galen) thought thus to appear cleverer than the older logical commentators (presumably Theophrastus and Eudemus are intended), but fell far short.6 4) In 1899 Maximilian Wallies published7 an anonymous Greek scholium (of perhaps the 6th or the 7th century) on Ammonins' commentary on Prior Analytics which states that Galen "says in his Apodictic that there are four figures, because he looks at the compound syllogisms consisting of four terms (i.e., with three premisses )" rather than the simple (three-term, two-premiss) syllogisms of Aristotle. (The scholiast goes on to explain at some length how such compound syllogisms can be sorted into four groups.) It is readily seen that, given these data, two possibilities stand before us: a) Galen did actually invent the traditional fourth figure. Reports (1)-(3) are correct, and the anonymous scholiast of (4) was put on the wrong track by the fact that Galen also said that compound syllogisms of four terms can be classed into four groups. b) Galen did not invent the traditional fourth figure. Only after his time when once the indirect moods of the first figure had--somehow--become systematized into a separate "figure," was this credited to Galen by a mistake along the lines described by the anonymous scholiast. Thus (4) alone is right, and (1)-(3) are mistaken. Which of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.4 (2006) 675-696 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]History of Religion Becomes Ethnology: Some Evidence from Peiresc's AfricaPeter N. Miller Bard Graduate CenterAbstractThe relationship between history of religion and ethnology on the one hand, and antiquarianism and them both, on the other, lie at the core of this essay. These lines of inquiry come together in the work of Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637), (...) the intellectually adventurous Provençal late humanist. Peiresc's correspondence with a renegade in Tunis, an adventurer in Ethiopia, and a missionary once based in Guinea provided him with remarkably direct information about the customs and practices—the moeurs—of contemporary sub-Saharan Africans. The content of these letters has not found its place in histories of anthropology or histories of antiquarianism.I.Bound up amidst Peiresc's copies of his letters to the Paduan antiquary Lorenzo Pignoria from the winter of 1615–16 is a text of four sides entitled, in large letters, "Delli Popoli della China" and continuing, in smaller ones, "written by P. Ioannes Pietro Maffei History of the Indies, Fr. Antonio di Saint Roman, in the History of the East Indies, Fr. Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza Augustino, in the books on China, and others." 1 The reading notes [End Page 675] that follow are interesting for one reason: though labelled "Delli Popoli della China" they are almost entirely about religion in China. At this stage of Peiresc's thinking at least, history of religion seems interchangeable with ethnography.In his letter to Pignoria of 4 January 1616, Peiresc acknowledges having time to page through ("di transcorrere un poco") Maffei, Gonzales, and Saint Roman where he found some information about figures they had discussed, and also about artificial grottoes used for domestic refrigeration, "which I did not note when I read it the first time." He asked if Pignoria wouldn't mind inquiring as to whether there was a more precise impression of a particular Chinese plaque or medallion—Pignoria had sent him one but Peiresc pronounced it "not as exact as I would like." 2Peiresc begins with the gods that were worshipped (these included deceased parents and friends, as well as the occasional living person) and auguries. This then leads to mention of the clothing and hair styles of those priests making offerings to the gods. Some of this information was derived from that octagonal medallion. Peiresc also noted down the presence of a vase, as if for libation, and other instruments for offerings.These authors, he continued, observed that the Chinese revered the God of Heaven above all the others. Peiresc recorded that Gonzalez mentioned that he was indicated by use of the first letter of the alphabet, that this character looked a bit like "AF," that it was called "Guant," that he was honored with a solemn festival every near year, at the new moon in March, with vocal and instrumental music during which his priests applied themselves for an entire day to a board groaning with meat, poultry, fish, and fruits (no wonder the earlier reference to the gluttony of the priests). For the greater veneration of the King he was called the "Son of Heaven."Mention of the King led to discussion of the monthly festivals in the provinces when priests bore a portrait of the King, on gold, through the streets with great reverence. But then, citing from Maffei, Peiresc proceeded to jot down observations made about Chinese seaside towns and the domestic interior. This, in turn, led to some observations about dining—and, therefore, feasting—practices.Finally, Peiresc returned to the aforementioned medallion, whose details now seemed to him to represent just such an honorific feast. But he was especially interested in the practice of indicating the name of God with a single Chinese character, or cipher. This reminded him, he wrote, that the [End Page 676] Basilidian gnostics, as recorded in Epiphanius, represented the god of heaven with the seven Greek vowels AEHIOUY. He... (shrink)

In the "Doxographi Graeci" the preferred short heading of Aët. 2.31 (Greek text below, p. 28) is 'On Distances', though ps.Plutarch has a long heading. This chapter is about the distances of the sun and moon from each other and from the earth (lemmas 1 to 3, in both ps.Plutarch and Stobaeus), and of the real or apparent shape of the heaven relative to its distance from the earth (lemmas 4 and 5, Stobaeus only). Parallels from Ioann. Lydus and Theodoret (...) for what is in ps.Plutarch are given by Diels in apparatu. To the best of my knowledge it has not been noticed that a version of ps.Plutarch's text is preserved in a scholium on the "Almagest", which constitutes our earliest evidence for the text. The correctness of Diels' reconstruction is questionable. Though certainty, naturally, is beyond our reach it is quite possible that these two sets of lemmas represent two distinct Aëtian (or proto-Aëtian) chapters. These may have been coalesced by Stobaeus (or Aëtius), while ps.Plutarch abridged the second (or the two final lemmas) away. These considerations necessitate an inquiry into the parallels that are available, including material from an introduction to Aratus. The vexing question of short versus long(er) chapter headings is also relevant in this context. Furthermore, the contrasting views regarding cosmic distances are not only a feature of the Placita literature with a distant origin in Aristotle, but also, apparently, of the commentary literature on Plato's "Timaeus". Arguably in a passage in Plutarch's "De facie" these two traditions intersect. Finally, a case can be made out for Eudemus not Theophrastus as an intermediary source of Presocratic astronomical data in the Placita. (shrink)

The assumption that we largely lack reasons for accepting testimony has dominated its epistemology. Given the further assumption that whatever reasons we do have are insufficient to justify our testimonial beliefs, many conclude that any account of testimonial knowledge must allow credulity to be justified. In this paper I argue that both of these assumptions are false. Our responses to testimony are guided by our background beliefs as to the testimony as a type, the testimonial situation, the testifier's character and (...) the truth of the proposition testified to. These beliefs provide reasons for our responses. Thus, we usually do have reasons, in the sense of propositions believed, for accepting testimony and these reasons can provide evidence for the testimonial beliefs we form. (shrink)

There have been many claims that quantum mechanics plays a key role in the origin and/or operation of biological organisms, beyond merely providing the basis for the shapes and sizes of biological molecules and their chemical affinities. These range from Schr¨odinger’s suggestion that quantum fluctuations produce mutations, to Hameroff and Penrose’s conjecture that quantum coherence in microtubules is linked to consciousness. I review some of these claims in this paper, and discuss the serious problem of decoherence. I advance some further (...) conjectures about quantum information processing in bio-systems. Some possible experiments are suggested. © 2004 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The present volume is, we believe, the first-ever edited volume devoted to the emotion of disgust. In this chapter we address the following issues: 1. Why was disgust almost completely ignored until about 1990, 2. Why has there been a great increase in attention to disgust since about 1990?, 3. The outline of an integrative, body-to-soul preadaptation theory of disgust, 4. Some specific features of disgust that make it particularly susceptible to laboratory research and particularly appropriate to address some fundamental (...) issues in psychology. In the final section, we outline some new questions that arise from the recent increased interest in disgust in the areas of brain mechanisms, psychopathology, the psychometric approach to the structure of disgust, and disgust and morality. We then indicate some important aspects of disgust that have yet to receive systematic investigation. (shrink)

Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK 3fS. received 28th August 1970, in final revised form 1st July 1971..

In late 2014, the jazz combo Mostly Other People Do the Killing released Blue—an album that is a note-for-note remake of Miles Davis's 1959 landmark album Kind of Blue. This is a thought experiment made concrete, raising metaphysical puzzles familiar from discussion of indiscernible counterparts. It is an actual album, rather than merely a concept, and so poses the aesthetic puzzle of why one would ever actually listen to it.

Recent advances in string theory and inflationary cosmology have led to a surge of interest in the possible existence of an ensemble of cosmic regions, or “universes”, among the members of which key physical parameters, such as the masses of elementary particles and the coupling constants, might assume different values. The observed values in our cosmic region are then attributed to an observer selection effect (the so-called anthropic principle). The assemblage of universes has been dubbed “the multiverse”. In this paper (...) we review the multiverse concept and the criticisms that have been advanced against it on both scientific and philosophical grounds. (shrink)

The Unruh-Wald scenario for mining quantum black holes is applied to de Sitter space. The following questions are addressed: Will the generalized second law of thermodynamics be maintained for de Sitter horizons? Does the mining process allow the recovery of unlimited energy from the cosmological gravitational field? The evaporation of a black hole in de Sitter space is also investigated in the context of the second law.

We study the response of a uniformly accelerated model particle detector in a spacetime with compact spatial sections. The basic thermal character of the response re-emerges, in spite of the fact that the spacetime does not possess event horizons. Our model also permits a study of detector response to twisted field states.

I argue that classical counterfactual semantics in the style of Stalnaker, Lewis, and Kratzer validates an inference pattern that is disconfirmed in natural language. The solution is to alter the algorithm we use to handle inconsistency in premise sets: rather than checking all maximally consistent fragments of a premise sets, as in Krazter’s semantics, we selectively remove some of the premises. The proposed implementation starts from standard premise semantics and involves a new ‘filtering’ operation that achieves just this removal. The (...) resulting semantics is interestingly related to the semantics for counterfactuals emerging from Judea Pearl’s causal models framework in computer science: in particular, filtering is a possible worlds semantics counterpart of Pearl’s interventions. (shrink)

The hypothesis that life’s rapid appearance on Earth justifies the belief that life is widespread in the universe has been investigated mathematically by Lineweaver and Davis (Astrobiol- ogy 2002;2:293–304). However, a rapid appearance could also be interpreted as evidence for a nonterrestrial origin. I attempt to quantify the relative probabilities for a non-indigenous ver- sus indigenous origin, on the assumption that biogenesis involves one or more highly im- probable steps, using a generalization of Carter’s well-known observer-selection argument. The analysis is (...) specifically applied to a Martian origin of life, with subsequent transfer to Earth within impact ejecta. My main result is that the relatively greater probability of a Mar- tian origin rises sharply as a function of the number of difficult steps involved in biogene- sis. The actual numerical factor depends on what is assumed about conditions on early Mars, but for a wide range of assumptions a Martian origin of life is decisively favored. By con- trast, an extrasolar origin seems unlikely using the same analysis. These results complement those of Lineweaver and Davis. Key Words: Origin of life—Mars—Probability theory— Carter—Transpermia. Astrobiology 3, 673–679. (shrink)

L’identité juive de Jésus est un fait avéré. Dans le christianisme cependant, l’ignorance de la variété des courants d’idée dans le judaïsme au début de notre ère a conduit certains à placer l’enseignement de Jésus entièrement en marge ou même en dehors du judaïsme et à tirer argument de l’originalité de son message contre son origine juive. De même, certains courants de type monophysite ont sous-estimé, voire nié l’enracinement humain de Jésus et sa « racination » juive . Au sein (...) de milieux « post-chrétiens », à l’antisémitisme latent ou affiché, l’identité juive de Jésus fait scandale. Dans le judaïsme, parler de Jésus reste difficile, et tout messianisme fait peur. Depuis la deuxième moitié du XIXe s., toutefois, des savants juifs ont beaucoup fait pour réintroduire Jésus dans l’histoire du judaïsme. Les autorités de l’Église catholique et d’autres Églises ont rappelé sans détour la judéité de Jésus. L’humanité de Jésus et son enracinement historique ont retrouvé leur place dans la théologie, sans préjudice pour l’intégrité de la foi chrétienne. Il faut mentionner également les recherches sur les origines juives du christianisme. L’affirmation de l’identité juive de Jésus par les chrétiens et par les juifs est l’une des pierres de touche de la vérité des relations et du dialogue entre eux aujourd’hui. (shrink)