John Rogers (G.A.J. Rogers) died on 26th November 2022 at the age of 84. Professor Emeritus at the University of Keele and a specialist in the history of seventeenth-century philosophy, John was on...

John Cottingham In the anglophone philosophical world, there has, for some time, been a curious relationship between the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophical - quiry. Many philosophers working today virtually ignore the history of their s- ject, apparently regarding it as an antiquarian pursuit with little relevance to their “cutting-edge” research. Conversely, there are historians of philosophy who seldom if ever concern themselves with the intricate technical debates that ll the journals devoted to modern analytic philosophy. Both sides (...) are surely the poorer for this strange bifurcation. For philosophy, like all parts of our intellectual culture, did not come into existence out of nowhere, but was shaped and nurtured by a long tradition; in uncovering the roots of that tradition we begin see current philoso- ical problems in a broader context and thereby enrich our understanding of their signi cance. This is surely part of the justi cation for the practice, in almost every university, of including elements from the history of philosophy as a basic part of the undergraduate curriculum. But understanding is enriched by looking forwards as well as backwards, which is why a good historian of philosophy will not just be c- cerned with uncovering ancient ideas, but will be constantly alert to how those ideas pre gure and anticipate later developments. (shrink)

Talks collected from lectures given by Bennett with Gurdjieff's approval, to help people understand All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. Bennett regarded Gurdjieff's All and Everything as a work of superhuman genius.

This book is an exploration of the relationship between philosophy and political inquiry. John G. Gunnell is seeking to explain certain dimensions of how philosophy has influenced political science and political theory but also how these latter fields have understood and deployed philosophy. When social scientists and social theorists turn to the work of philosophers for intellectual authority what they extract is often selective and in the service of some prior agenda. The philosophers whose work he discusses have all (...) in various degrees been objects of the conversation of political theory, but close acquaintance with that work is often limited and derivative. Gunnell's goal is to initiate a more genuine "conversation" with certain philosophers and political theorists. (shrink)

We wish to give a precise formulation of the intuitive concept: The degree to which the known facts support a given hypothesis.

The present paper examines the arguments and data presented by Nisbett and Wilson relevant to their thesis that subjects do not have access to their own cognitive processes. It is concluded that their review of previous research is selective and incomplete and that the data they present in behalf of their thesis does not withstand a demand characteristics analysis. Furthermore, their use of observer-subject similarity as evidence of subjects' inability to access cognitive processes makes tests of their hypothesis confounded and, (...) at the same time, reveals limitations in the application of the pre-inquiry quasi-control to research on social behavior. Problems with postexperiment questionnaires, such as the demand characteristics of the inquiry procedure are also considered. Although there are difficulties in assessing subjects' cognitive processes, many of these may be overcome through the application of novel techniques and research conducted on more traditional methods. In contrast to the view that subjects have limited access to cognitive processes and that their verbal reports are not valid, it is concluded that subjects' verbalizations are a rich source of psychological data which must be pursued if we are to tap their cognitive processes and are to gain an adequate understanding of human behavior. (shrink)

Includes chapters on scientific language, mathematics, probability, credibility and induction, scientific explanations, life, and science and values.

What is the place of vulnerability in our lives? The current debate about the ethics of enhancement technologies provides a context in which to think about this question. In my view, the current debate is likely to be fruitless, largely because we bring the wrong ethical resources to bear on its questions. In this article, I recall an important, but currently neglected, role that moral concepts play in our thinking, a role they should especially play in relation to the introduction (...) of new technologies. I call this the ‘contemplative role of moral concepts’. I then contrast two approaches to the contemplative role of moral concepts which are found in the current literature, and show why it is important to keep in mind both of these approaches when thinking about human vulnerability. (shrink)

The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics is summarized and various points concerning the transactional interpretation and its relation to the Copenhagen interpretation are considered. Questions concerning mapping the transactional interpretation onto the Copenhagen interpretation, of advanced waves as solutions to proper wave equations, of collapse and the quantum formalism, and of the relation of quantum mechanical interpretations to experimental tests and results are discussed.

In 1948 Hempel and Oppenheim proposed an explicatum for the concept of systematic power 1, pp. 164–167. Since that time some shortcomings have been found in this first attempt. It is the purpose of this paper to show that one can keep the basic approach of the ‘48 paper, and overcome the known disadvantages by means of changes in the details of the definition. In this improvement certain tools will be used that were not available in 1948.

MIT Press, 1999 Review by Paul Bohan Broderick, Ph.D. on May 26th 2002 Volume: 6, Number: 21.

Reading of this complex subject-matter is considerably simplified by a variety of devices: Brief summaries at the beginning of chapters and sections; theorems, definitions, etc. are clearly marked for easy cross-reference, the most important ones being specially marked by "+" signs. For a brief survey, the reader can read the summaries and the marked theorems and definitions.

The appearance of Priestley's electrical work as a brief and irrelevant prelude to his more substantial chemical enquiries may explain why it has been strangely overlooked by historians of science. It was only fairly recently that Sir Philip Hartog sought to rectify this situation with the affirmation that ‘Priestley's electrical work offers the key to Priestley's scientific mind’. Attacking traditional chemical historiography for tracing Priestley's opposition to Lavoisier's theory to a deficiency in his scientific sensibilities, Hartog insisted that Priestley's natural (...) philosophy can properly be understood only in relation to his ‘profound convictions on scientific method’ as fully expressed in the History of electricity. Only thus would Priestley's scientific thought be related correctly to his ‘work as a whole’. (shrink)

Albert Einstein taught us that c, the speed of light in vacuum, is nature's ultimate speed limit, the highest speed at which matter, energy, and information can travel through space-time. In several AV columns I've discussed ways for getting around this annoying natural law, the law that SF writers and fans most wish to violate. Two AV columns discussed the possibility of getting around the lightspeed limit by popping through a trans-spatial wormhole shortcut. See [ Analog-6-89, "Wormholes and Time Machines"] (...) and [Analog-5-90, "Wormholes II: Getting There in No Time"]. Two others discussed the possible use the faster-than-light nonlocal handshaking implicit in quantum mechanics for FTL messages and travel. See [Analog-11-86, "The Quantum Handshake"] and [Analog-9-88, "Paradoxes and FTL Communication"]. Both of those methods, however, are beyond our present technology, and the latter is probably impossible. (shrink)

The purpose of this AV Column is to describe a physical paradox involving what seems to be an loophole in a well established physical law, the famous Second Law of Thermodynamics. The 2nd Law states that the amount of disorder (entropy) always either increases or remains constant for any isolated system of particles, whether they are gas molecules or light photons. An yet, as we will see, laser physicists seem to have provided us with a way of making the 2nd (...) Law work backwards for a system of photons, so that the disorder decreases. (shrink)

Nanocon 1: The First Northwest Conference on Nanotechnology was held at the University Plaza Hotel in Seattle, Washington, on February 17-19, 1989. The conference was sponsored by the Seattle Nanotechnology Study Group and the University of Washington Student Nanotechnology Study Group. This AV column is a report on the conference.

Light speed, c = 3 × 108 meters per second, is the ultimate speed limit of the universe. The welltested physics orthodoxy of special relativity tells us that nothing can go faster than c. When any massive object with rest mass M (taken to be in energy units) has velocity v=c (or relativistic velocity ß = v/c = 1), the object's mass-energy becomes infinite. This is because the relativistic..

Researchers have recently begun to question the specificity and reliability of conflict adaptation effects, also known as sequential congruency effects, a highly cited effect in cognitive psychology. Some have even used the lack of reliability across tasks to argue against models of cognitive control that have dominated the field for decades. The present study tested the possibility that domain-general processes across tasks might appear on more sensitive mouse-tracking metrics rather than overall reaction times. The relationship between SCE effects on the (...) Stroop and Flanker tasks were examined for the first time using a mouse-tracking paradigm. Three main findings emerged: Robust SCEs were observed for both the Stroop and Flanker tasks at the group level, Within-task split-half reliabilities for the SCE across dependent variables were weak at best and non-existent in many cases, and SCEs for the Flanker and Stroop tasks did not correlate with each other for overall reaction times, but did show significant correlations between tasks on more dynamic measures that captured processes before response execution. These findings contribute to the literature by highlighting how mouse-tracking may be a fruitful avenue by which future studies can examine the specificity and reliability of conflict adaptation and tease apart different theoretical models producing the effects. (shrink)

He tells us the inside stories behind dozens of famous pictures like these, which are reproduced in this book, and provides intimate and revealing portraits of the men and women who shot them, including Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, ...

All organizations have gray areas where the border between right and wrong behavior is blurred, but where a major part of organizational decision-making takes place. While gray areas can be sources of problems for organizations, they also have benefits. The author proposes that gray areas are functional in organizations. Gray areas become problematic when the process for dealing with them is flawed, when gatekeeper managers see themselves as more ethical than their peers, and when leaders, by their own inattention, inaction, (...) and poor modeling, minimize the importance of building a moral community by delegating gray area issues to second-tier administrators. Gray areas provide wiggle room in coping with ethical dilemmas in organizations. (shrink)

I'm an experimental physicist. The basic physics research I do is funded primarily by the U. S. Government. As I write this, it is less than two weeks before the 1993 Presidential Inauguration. The new Clinton Administration is still of an unknown quantity. A new Presidential Science Advisor with excellent qualifications, Dr. John H. Gibbons, has just been appointed, but little is know about the science policies of the new administration.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, the author recalls his connection to that memorable event. The origin and development of the plan that led to the continuing publication of volumes in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell is sketched, and the author’s role in giving Ronald W. Clark access to the Archives to write the first major biography of Russell is disclosed.