It is not unusual in real-life that one has to choose among finitely many alternatives when the merit of each alternative is not perfectly known. Instead of observing the actual utilities of the alternatives at hand, one typically observes more or less precise signals that are positively correlated with these utilities. In addition, the decision-maker may, at some cost or disutility of effort, choose to increase the precision of these signals, for example by way of a careful study or the (...) hiring of expertise. We here develop a model of such decision problems. We begin by showing that a version of the monotone likelihood-ratio property is sufficient, and also essentially necessary, for the optimality of the heuristic decision rule to always choose the alternative with the highest signal. Second, we show that it is not always advantageous to face alternatives with higher utilities, a non-monotonicity result that holds even if the decision-maker optimally chooses the signal precision. We finally establish an operational first-order condition for the optimal precision level in a canonical class of decision-problems, and we show that the optimal precision level may be discontinuous in the precision cost. (shrink)

The Full Bayesian Significance Test (FBST) for precise hypotheses is presented, with some applications relevant to reliability theory. The FBST is an alternative to significance tests or, equivalently, to p-ualue.s. In the FBST we compute the evidence of the precise hypothesis. This evidence is the probability of the complement of a credible set "tangent" to the sub-manifold (of the para,rreter space) that defines the null hypothesis. We use the FBST in an application requiring a quality control of used components, based (...) on remaining life statistics. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the estimation of the Weibull generalized exponential distribution parameters based on the adaptive Type-II progressive censored sample. Maximum likelihood estimation, maximum product spacing, and Bayesian estimation based on Markov chain Monte Carlo methods have been determined to find the best estimation method. The Monte Carlo simulation is used to compare the three methods of estimation based on the ATIIP-censored sample, and also, we made a bootstrap confidence interval estimation. We will analyze data related to (...) the distribution about single carbon fiber and electrical data as real data cases to show how the schemes work in practice. (shrink)

"The golden rule" (Matthew 7:12) is a formulation of natural moral law, a logical way to divide good from evil. It has been attacked by J.W. Hennessey, Jr. and Bernard Gert as a "particularist preachment." On the contrary, it remains a useful, universal guide to moral conduct and cannot be considered a self-centered, subjective guide to the moral life. We must agree with Jeffrey Wattles that there are multiple possible meanings to the "rule", some legitimate and some spurious. The legitimate (...) meanings, such as the "standard of God-like behavior," all yield the same judgment on morally doubtful actions such as forgery. The so-called "platinum" rule, "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them" has face appeal, but is fatally flawed in its logic, and does not supercede "the golden rule" because part of the treatment I wish from others is a full understanding of my true needs and wishes, even when I do not judge my own needs correctly. (shrink)

This paper introduces the new novel four-parameter Weibull distribution named as the Marshall–Olkin alpha power Weibull distribution. Some statistical properties of the distribution are examined. Based on Type-I censored and Type-II censored samples, maximum likelihood estimation, maximum product spacing, and Bayesian estimation for the MOAPW distribution parameters are discussed. Numerical analysis using real data sets and Monte Carlo simulation are accomplished to compare various estimation methods. This novel model’s supremacy upon some famous distributions is explained using two real (...) data sets and it is shown that the MOAPW model can achieve better fits than other competitive distributions. (shrink)

In An Ethic of Trust: Mutual Autonomy and the Common Will to Live, W. Royce Clark uses the work of theologians and philosophers Albert Schweitzer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Rawls to create an inclusive ethic in which both the religious and non-religious will have equal freedom and stability.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Women Poets and the Origin of the Greek Hexameter W. ROBERT CONNOR A very considerable question has arisen, as to what was the origin of poetry. —Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.57 i. a road trip with pausanias Tennyson called the dactylic hexameter “the stateliest measure / ever moulded by the lips of man,” but he did not say whose lips first did the moulding. Despite much arguing we (...) do not know for sure where it came from, or who developed it. But some ancient Greeks did, or thought they did. For them, the hexameter came with a personal history, a legendary one to be sure, but no less powerful for that. The legend, moreover, started with a woman poet. The trail that leads to this is a long and devious one, but a good guide presents himself, Pausanias, author of A Greek Guidebook (Hellados Periegesis). Although he is now valued primarily as a quarry cordoned off for topographers and archaeologists, he had a strong interest in poets, especially women ones. These include Sappho, of course, the valiant Telesilla of Argos of whom he tells two stories (2.20.8, and 2.35.2), and Praxilla of Sicyon (3.13.5). In his account of Boeotia he mentions another woman poet of the fifth century before our era, Corinna of Tanagra. She, he says (9.22.3f.), once defeated Pindar in a poetry contest, and was, he thinks, the most beautiful woman of her time, judging by a statue of her he had seen. He also speaks of Myro of Byzantium (9.5.8). Pausanias was confident that she had written epic and elegiac verse. arion 27.2 fall 2019 Pausanias chooses, moreover, to end his work with an enigmatic story about another woman poet, Anyte of Tegea. He had not mentioned her in his lengthy account of her home town in the mountains of Arcadia, but now her story seems to speak to him. It is set at a ruined shrine of Asclepius near the port town of Naupactus. The reason that Anyte had come there was a strange one: She had had, he says, a vision—not a dream, but a real vision—at the end of which she found herself holding a sealed tablet addressed to one Phalysius of Naupactus. He was, it turns out, a prosperous citizen of the town, but was going blind. Anyte made the journey, surely not an easy one, and delivered the tablet. As soon as Phalysius broke its seal, he found he could make out the letters—a wondrous improvement in his vision, which he attributed to the healing god Asclepius. That is why he built the shrine that Pausanias saw many years later. And the content of the message? Give Anyte two thousand gold staters. Phalysius did so. End of story. End of the Guidebook. So, indeed, Pausanias paid attention to women poets, and there were plenty of them to pay attention to. There is good evidence of a vibrant tradition of women’s poetry among the ancient Greeks. Pausanias is not the only writer of his time to note this. In fact, if on his journeys Pausanias had encountered the well-travelled rhetorician Tatian, the two near-contemporaries could have challenged one another to see who could name the largest number of women poets and identify the sculptors of statues honoring them. Tatian might have won, to judge from his Address to the Greeks, ch 33. But then, Tatian had an agenda. As a convert to a “barbarian” cult he wanted to show that his co-religionists had precedents for respecting women’s intellects: “My object in referring to these women is, that you may not regard as something strange what you find among us, and that, comparing the statues which are before your eyes, you may not treat the women with scorn who among us pursue philosophy.” So much for the Christian Tatian. Did Pausanias have an agenda, too? His stories of two women from Delphi, Boio 86 women poets and the origin of the greek hexameter and Phemonoe, help answer that question. ii. boio’s disruptive poetry when pausanias’s work describes Delphi, the plot thickens. In... (shrink)

This note deals with the prepositional uniformity principlep-UP: p x N A (p, x) x N p A (p, x) ( species of all propositions) in intuitionistic mathematics.p-UP is implied by WC and KS. But there are interestingp-UP-cases which require weak KS resp. WC only. UP for number species follows fromp-UP by extended bar-induction (ranging over propositions) and suitable weak continuity. As corollaries we have the disjunction property and the existential definability w.r.t. concrete objects. Other consequences are: there is no (...) non-trivial countable partition of;id is the only injective function from to; there are no many-place injective prepositional functions; card () is incomparable with the cardinality of all metric spaces containing at least three elements. (shrink)

In Theological Ethics theologian, pastor, and ethicist W. Ross Hastings gives pastors, ministry leaders, and students a guide designed to equip them to think deeply and theologically about the moral formation of persons in our communities, about ethical inquiry and action, and about the tone and content of our engagement in the public square. The book presents a biblical perspective and a gospel-centered framework for thinking about complex contemporary issues in ways are life-giving and that will lead readers into greater (...) flourishing as human persons in community. (shrink)

The central theme of the prologue is the notion of responsibility, as well it might be, given the subject, Accordingly, those first seven pages swamp the reader with the word “responsibility” to the point where they could be described as “variations on the theme.” Inundation, alas, is not elucidation, and all closer references to the notion remain impenetrability elliptic: Derrida possesses the unique art of combining extreme ellipsis with extreme verbosity. In fact these “variation” are more musical than analytic: “responsibility” (...) comes close to being a Wagnerian leitmotiv. Like a characteristic melody, the word winds through the text in a constant sequence of appearances and temporary disappearances, ever expected, always ready to reemerge. Although there is no clear-cut line of argument, there does seem to be a general direction of development. The question of de Man’s responsibility, which we might have thought to be crucial, is touched on only briefly and vaguely; we read much more about responsibility to de Man. Ours and Derrida’s: “responsibility” is associated with “responding,” which is increasingly read as Derrida’s obligation to respond for de Man. From the outset, this emphasis evokes the danger of an apologia rather than the conscientious quest for truth that is demanded in the same breath. There are further suggestions of this nature when Derrida later briefly returns to this subject and this style. “Responding for the other” is here connected with transference, allegory , and prosopopeia—that is, connected with two rhetorical categories and psychoanalytic one. To write about responsibility with so little reference to ethical categories is something of a tour de force. W. Wolfgang Holdheim, professor of comparative literature and romance studies and Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Liberal Studies at Cornell University, has published numerous articles on literature and literary theory as well as a number of books, including The Hermeneutic Mode. (shrink)

Ordinairement les manuels de biologie débutent par une exposition des caractéristiques qui distinguent la nature organique de la nature anorganique. En définissant et en limitant aussi exactement que possible son sujet, la biologie, le biologue ne fait pas autre chose que le mathématicien. La présente étude nous montre les obstacles presque insurmontables auxquels se heurtent le biologue et le mathématicien. A les bien considérer, les anciennes distinctions entre l'organisme d'une part et la matière non-organisée ou un système statique matériel, comme (...) la machine, d'autre part, se basant sur la nutrition, la respiration, les échanges vitaux et le mouvement ne tiennent plus debout. L'auteur allègue les expériences récentes de W. M. Stanley (Rockefeller Institute à Princeton) d'où il appert qu'il peut y avoir aussi génération dans les substances qui se secrètent sous la forme de cristaux (cristaux vivants), et s'en rapporte aux fameuses expériences de Driesch sur la régénération. Il y rattache les conceptions de Jordan (Utrecht) -- rapports entre les enchaînements des causes "d'après leur caractère amboceptor"; "le dessein des causes". Les vitalistes portent surtout leur attention sur "la totalité", les mécanistes sur "les parties". Le naturaliste qui se propose uniquement la recherche des causes physico-chimiques des phénomènes physico-chimiques serait parfaitement en droit de se contenter d'une conception mécaniste de la nature. Mais cette conception mécaniste ne suffirait pas à celui qui, comme l'auteur, aspire à comprendre l'organisme dans son ensemble. (shrink)

The Platonic MS. Vat. gr. 225 contains tetr. I, VI. 3, 4, II–IV, while its companion volume in the same hand Vat. gr. 226 contains V–VI. 2, VIII. 3, VII, Spp., VIII. 1, 2. Posts states that for tetr. I and VI. 3 A is close to Vind. suppl. gr. 7 and thereafter derives from the Clarkianus . I am here concerned only with the testimony of Δ in. 2 . This manuscript has been largely ignored by commentators and editors. (...) Schanz does not quote it, nor does Bekker . Alline is scornful about it. Neither Burnet nor Croiset quotes it—and indeed Burnet claims that it is merely an interpolated apograph of W. Stallbaum seems to be the only editor who quotes it for Apol. This appears to be an unwarranted neglect since A has, in fact, a good claim to be considered as a primary witness in this dialogue. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 129-135. Introduction Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Successions of words are so agreeable. It is about this. —Gertrude Stein Nachoem Wijnberg (1961) is a Dutch poet and novelist. He also a professor of cultural entrepreneurship and management at the Business School of the University of Amsterdam. Since 1989, he has published thirteen volumes of poetry and four novels, which, in my opinion mark a high point in Dutch contemporary literature. His novels even more than his poetry are (...) criticized for being inaccessible, which I generally take to be a compliment. It would be like saying that Fernando Pessoa is inaccessible, which he is not. Neither is Wijnberg. When we think of the combination economist-poet we are immediately reminded of the American poet Wallace Stevens, who, as the story goes, had two stacks of paper on his desk, one for contracts, one for poems. We also know that Stevens wrote on the economy and that questions of economy and insurance surface at multiple points in his poems. The following text is a very preliminary attempt to point at the intersections between poems, novels, business, and poetry in Wijnberg’s work. On the back cover of his novel De opvolging ( The Succession , 2005), Wijnberg states the following: “[This is] a novel for whomever is interested in the workings of a company as much as in the workings of a poem.” Wijnberg thus claims that the way in which a company “works” may be similar to the way in which a poem “works.” The question is the obvious one, what does this similarity consist in? De opvolging tells the story of company in which bosses and company doctors, secretaries, children, clowns, and beggars have tons of meetings, recite poems, perform plays, tell jokes, and succeed each other, climbing up and down in the company’s hierarchy. De opvolging is a novel in which the career of people follows the career of words. It resonates with Gertrude Stein's sentences, "Grammar. What is it. Who was it" (1975, 50). The words in Wijnberg's poems are like he characters in his novel. And if we keep in mind this allegorical reading of De opvolging , which is obviously only one of the possible readings, we may be able to understand some aspects of Wijnberg’s poetry. A repetition is already a pun. Look, that word is trying it again, as if it is afraid that by not doing it it would give up the hope that it will ever be able to do something. A pun is the opposite of the first word coming to the mind of someone who shouts it when he suddenly discovers something. (104) The repetition, the succession of the same word, is already a pun, a joke. The succession of the father by the son after the revolution is a joke. "Look he's trying it again!" The essence of a joke is a repetition. Archimedes’ “Eureka!” is its opposite. Poems can easily become jokes, depending on the way the words follow and repeat each other. In De opvolging , the careers of the bosses, good and bad secretaries, and company doctors easily become jokes, as they are “afraid that by not doing it [they] would give up the hope that [they] will ever be able to do something.” Not only the repetition, but also the distance and difference between the words in a poem, their cause and effect relations can be read as company relations. This becomes clear when we, for example, read the first lines of the poem “Cause, sign” from Het leven van ( The Life Of , 2009). A sign lets know what is going to happen, a cause lets it happen. If the sign also lets happen there is no reason to isolate it, because then I would isolate some- thing only because it’s different for me. If I didn’t have to write this myself, but would have secretaries to whom I could dictate it, I would be able to say more about it. (49) Upon reading the first two lines we can already conclude that any word may be cause or sign or both. If a sign is also a cause there is no reason to discriminate it, yet to the poet they are still different. This difference only becomes expressible the moment he would have a secretary. Just like in De opvolging , the secretary introduces a distance; not in a company but in a poem. Hence the difference between “good” and “bad” secretaries in a company, where the good secretary of one boss may be the bad secretary of another one. The more we can say about the bosses of the company, or signifiers of the poem, the greater the distance we introduce between them and us. We should take serious the relation between Wijnberg’s novels and poems. Although they operate on different scales, they explain and converse with each other. Another example may be the novel Politiek en liefde ( Politics and Love , 2002), which deals with the relation, precisely, between politics and love. In the novel, Nicolai, a lieutenant in the Dutch army, is sent to Africa on a military mission. Upon leaving a receives a letter from his father. Dear son, Don’t do anything stupid before your father has advised you to do so. Your mother asked me to write a wise letter. I have been looking for wisdom for half a day and haven’t found much. If you borrow a small amount from a bank you become the bank’s slave, but if you borrow a couple of millions and spend them as quickly as possible the bank becomes your slave. What I want to say is that you have to return from Africa in good health, and before you know it the world will be your slave [....] Signed with a kiss from your father. (88) The line, “If you borrow a small amount from a bank you become the bank’s slave, but if you borrow a couple of millions and spend them as quickly as possible the bank becomes your slave,” returns as the title of poem in Het leven van: “If I borrow enough money the bank becomes my slave” (12-3), which elaborates this theme. So both in the way that these poems are structured and in their subject matter, they refer to the structures of our economy, to the ever-continuing line of CEOs succeeding each other like words, to the distance between them introduced by bureaucracy, and giving and receiving as economical and poetical acts. Poem and economy map onto each other, as in another episode from De opvolging : Edward reads two of the beggar’s poems about presents. Of a holiday nothing remains, except for memories, and if some of them are bad I’d rather forget them all; if I get a present I’d rather get something that’s useful to me for a long time. If I may choose, I choose what I can use longest, long enough to partially forget that this was the present, because it feels bad when nothing is left of it. […] Giving away becomes destruction in the stock destruction economy [ voorraadvernie -tigings-economie ], that is a gift economy [ geschenkeneconomie ], encountering for the first time an economy in which there’s selling and buying on markets. Instead of destroying supplies someone can also quickly say that they aren’t worth anything anymore; if someone wants to take them I’d gladly give him something extra. In a stock destruction economy he is someone who each day wants to work more hours than his colleagues. If around a company there is a gift economy in which someone’s rank is determined and made visible by the gifts someone can give someone else, a company will be more often character- ized by an invisible or unclear system of ranks. (152) Two poems about gifts present two different economical models, described by Wijnberg with the terms “stock destruction economy” and “gift economy.” Here we immediately recall the opposition introduced by George Bataille’s work on the concept of expenditure in The Accursed Share , where a “general economy” would surpass the stock destruction economy based on scarcity (capitalism) and become a gift economy (potlatch) and an egalitarian (communist) society. These claims are made both on the level of the poems and in their discursive explanation. They follow each other and on each other. I would like to finish this introduction to Wijnberg’s writing with a translation from his novel De joden ( The Jews , 1999), which develops the story of Hitler abdicating as chancellor of the Third Reich, appointing philosopher Martin Heidegger as his successor. In a conversation with two Russian actor-spies, sent by Stalin to figure out the situation, philosopher Walter Benjamin describes the abdication scene. Maimon: You were there when Hitler resigned? Benjamin: In the room we’re right now. The desk and the chairs are new. After his resignation Hitler would like to take his furniture to his new house. Martin naturally agrees. It is a sunny day. Martin is very nervous and complains about the heat. Martin is wearing his best dark blue suit, not his professor’s robe. Hitler is wearing his uniform. We enter the room and Hitler gets up and embraces Martin. Martin is not very good at embracing. Hitler shakes his hand. Hitler’s cap is on the desk. The cap has a metal lining. Hitler has strong neck muscles. Hitler says: A man is unclean. He takes a bath. Does he make the bath water unclean? I say: a man is unclean. He steps into a river. A little further a man steps into the river; does he become unclean? Hitler nods. I say: a man is standing in music. Another man hears the music but also sees the first man moving on the beat of the music in a way that he is certain that the music would excite different feelings in him if he wouldn’t to see the first man. Hitler says: a man is clean, listens to music, is suddenly touched and he doesn’t know by what. The conversation ends in the way you know it ends. Hitler picks up his cap from the desk and puts it on Martin’s head. (73-4) Aware of the never ending debate on the question of Heidegger’s involvement in the Nazi regime, Wijnberg has the audacity to present the arguments of complicity in the religious terminology of cleanliness and uncleanliness, while at the same time recalling overtones of Hitler’s supposed love for Wagner, suggesting a relation between Benjamin and Hitler, and so on. The space of this introduction is to small to treat a novel like De joden , a reading of which together with passages from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's Heidegger, Art, and Politics: The Fiction of the Political , Jacques Derrida's Of Spirit , Christopher Fynsk's Heidegger: Thought and Historicity , and Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book would be extremely elucidating and potentially open new avenues in thinking Heidegger's emphasis on poetry after the fall of the Nazi empire. But at this point we will have to curb our curiosity and follow the poet himself. The themes of the relation between business and poetry, but also Chinese landscape painting, love, Indian and Japanese poetry, and Western philosophy are analyzed and assimilated in Wijnberg’s work without ever losing the clarity of expression. It may be that, according to Alain Badiou, the “Age of the Poets” is over, but its end (Paul Celan) has exactly brought a new balance between philosophy and poetry, and it is this playful, but nonetheless serious balance that makes one hope that one day Wijnberg’s complete oeuvre might become available to readers across the planet. Tiranë, Albania February 15, 2011 English translations (all of them translated by David Colmer, who is preparing an English collection of Wijnberg’s poems entitled Advanced Payment ): Poetry International Words Without Borders Green Integer Review from Het leven van ( The Life of ) THE LIFE OF KANT, OF HEGEL As if every day he takes a decision that is as good as when he’d been able to think about it all his life. The life of Kant, of Hegel, the days of the life of, select three or four of them. Tell what he has discovered during those days as if he were the last one who knew so little. Give me something that I can cancel against then I can prepare myself for it. The reward is that I may continue with what I’m doing, it doesn’t matter how long it takes. This has nothing to do with everything remaining the same if I say that I no longer want anything else. I wouldn’t be able to say in which one and the other occur in a way that I if I knew something to cancel that one against it wouldn’t be possible now. The stars above my head and being able to say what belongs to what if I’ve let them in. FOLLOWING MY HEART WITHOUT BREAKING THE RULES Observing the rules without observing the rules by going where the rules no longer apply. I could also observe the rules there by applying them to what at great distance may resemble what the rules are about. But why would I do that, not to confuse someone who is seeing me from a great distance? Behind this morning the morning prepares itself when the rules are everything I have. IF I BORROW ENOUGH MONEY THE BANK BECOMES MY SLAVE A bank lends me money, if I don’t pay it back they tell my boss that he has to pay them my salary. But they have to leave me enough to eat and sleep and an umbrella when it’s raining. They can also empty my house, the furniture isn’t worth a lot, but every little helps. Each morning I leave for work, if I don’t start early they’ll soon get someone else, no bank will lend me money when the sun is shining. My boss has given me a cat to raise as a dog. Of course I know that it won’t work out, but I’ve asked for a week—maybe the cat gets lucky, maybe I get lucky. My hands around a cup of coffee, before I leave for work, warm-empty, cold-empty, as if hidden in the mist over a lawn. What I make when there’s no work left for me, I’m ashamed to say how little it is. Once I’m outside I check it, if they watch out of the window they can see me doing it. Suppose it is so much that I’d stay counting for hours, it’s getting dark and I’m still there. They stay watching for a while once they’ve finished their work, but have to go home, I get that, sure, I could also go home and continue counting there. If it’s too little running back immediately won’t help, because nobody’s there anymore, and if I come back tomorrow I may have spent what’s missing tonight. Going somewhere where it’s warm enough to walk around without clothes during daytime, it helps me to know that something’s more there than here. For someone like me there’s work anywhere, it shouldn’t take a week to find work for me there. Three times work and a home close to work, I may choose one and try for a week whether I want to stay there. If at the end of the week I don’t want to stay I’m back on the next day, then it was a week’s holiday. RULES If that’s against a rule, it’s yet another one that I cannot observe, or only so briefly that I cannot re- member it later. Anyways the rules are only there to help me remember what I need in order to do better what I do. In that respect there’s no difference between the rules that I find in a book and the rules that I think of early in the morning. I know that because I’ve made a rule just now nothing has yet to observe it. CAUSE, SIGN A sign lets know what is going to happen, a cause lets it happen. If the sign also lets happen there is no reason to isolate it, because then I would isolate something only because it’s different for me. If I didn’t have to write this down myself, but would have secretaries to whom I could dictate it, I could to say more about it. If something is taken away from me I consider how it would be if the opposite had been taken from me. That is what causes or signifies what is farthest away from what is caused or signified by what has been taken away from me. note: For the translations of “The life of Kant, of Hegel” and “If I borrow enough money the bank becomes my slave” I was able to consult David Colmer’s wonderful translations. (shrink)

The first volume of a projected two-volume work in mathematical logic. Along with an introduction containing brief but careful and remarkably compact discussions of such topics as the kinds of expressions occurring in formalized language, the logistic method, syntax, and semantics, the book comprises clean and precise treatments of the propositional calculus, and first- and second-order functional calculi, including parenthetical remarks about the intended semantical interpretations of these calculi, some development of the calculi themselves, and discussions of completeness and consistency. (...) A great number of exercises are included, ranging from elementary exercises in technique to brief sketches of theories not treated in the text.--W. T. (shrink)

These long-awaited, well-edited volumes complete the projected ten-volume edition, six volumes of which appeared in 1931-5. Volume VII contains, among other things, the important but previously unpublished "On the Logic of drawing History from Ancient Documents," "The Association of Ideas," and "Habit," as well as a sharp criticism of telepathy. Volume VIII reprints Peirce's major reviews of such works as Frazer's Berkeley, Royce's The World and the Individual, and Pearson's Grammar of Science, and contains some of his correspondence with pivotal (...) figures such as Carus, Dewey, James, and Lady Welby. The bibliography is superb.--P. W. (shrink)

A massive series of meticulous clarifications and arguments is marshalled to attempt to refute, first, the doctrine that all relations are "internal", next, the claims that coherence is the sole criterion of the nature of truth, and finally, the theory of degrees of truth and falsity. The author's great familiarity with the literature of the coherence theorists proves almost a drawback: he prefers to cite texts extensively, but must then acknowledge important differences among them. There is little in the way (...) of a constructive alternative theory of truth, but the criticism is formidable.--W. L. M. (shrink)

This translation of Heidegger's 1959 essay Gelassenheit is an appealing example of Heidegger's later thought. The introduction, though at points helpful, tends towards greater obscurity than Heidegger himself. Gelassenheit consists of a 1955 speech on the occasion of a gathering commemorating the German composer Conradin Kreutzer. In it, Heidegger discusses the difference between calculative thinking and meditative thinking, and advances a characterization of the latter as "releasement". Following the address, there is a prose-poetic dialogue between a teacher, scientist and scholar (...) which develops these ideas further and relates them to other themes in Heidegger's thought. The translators follow the "Robinson-Macquarrie" method, rendering each of Heidegger's important German terms by a single English word. Perhaps due to the fact that relatively few such terms are employed by Heidegger in Gelassenheit, this method here succeeds not only in presenting a terminologically clear translation, but also in capturing a certain amount of the extraordinary poetic appeal of the original.—A. W. W. (shrink)

Leclerc's systematic introduction is predicated upon the thesis that "Whitehead's basic problems belong to the great tradition of philosophical inquiry first opened up by the Greeks." A lucid discussion of the traditional problems surrounding "being" leads simply and logically to a consideration of the categories in terms of which Whitehead reformulates the traditional approach to "that which is." The great merit of this progression is that it dispels the illusion, so overwhelming on an initial glance at Whitehead himself, that his (...) terminology is arbitrary and completely disassociated from traditional usage.--D. W. S. (shrink)

The dominant interest here is in metaphysics today; three-quarters of the articles date from the Twentieth Century. The editor has successfully kept internal editing to a minimum; the original authors thus develop their subjects in their own way. Nonetheless, to this reviewer, the composite impression from the book was that metaphysics, if it exists, is disputatious, technical, and inconsequential. This may derive from a persistent image of too many conflicting theoretic alternatives, suggested internally by the approach of many of the (...) contemporary articles, and externally by the editor's desire to be representative. Tending to counter this general dissatisfaction, happily, is a successful section on "Being and Substance." There are many printing errors, disruptive to thought.--E. W. (shrink)

A critique of Dewey's ethics. Arguing from a Thomistic point of view, Bausola claims that Dewey's ethics lacks adequate speculative grounding, but provides an occasionally useful anti-formalist attitude.--E. W.

In addition to serving as a competent and sympathetic text for classical Indian philosophy, this book is meant to show that it was the universally presupposed concern of Indian speculation to defend the possibility of human freedom as a liberation from worldly determinism. Early chapters introduce the topics of bondage, self-knowledge, and liberation in a way attractive to the Western point of view. There is a helpful chapter introducing Indian logic. The author's "fresh classification of India's philosophical systems" evolves as (...) a systematic comparison of the alternative Indian theories of relations, and especially those relations of dependence or causality which constitute bondage, and whose reversal would effect liberation.--E. W. (shrink)

The broadest principles of James's thought are reviewed to show the primacy of his concern for morality over metaphysics, religion, and epistemology. The treatment is often too sympathetic to bring out the difficulties with which James struggled, and to which his dicta were aimed. Of greatest interest is the theme of the enrichment and transformation of morality by religion. The result obtains its authority and reality for man in terms of the happiness and steadfastness of the life it promotes.--E. W.

In fascicles 9 through 12 of this volume, Weiss continues his analyses of art and begins to develop themes for his discussion of history and religion. There are also significant and lengthy sections devoted to metaphilosophy with critiques of Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein. The discussion of the arts reaches a degree of insight and breadth of synthesis not matched in the earlier fascicles, nor in The World of Art and The Nine Basic Arts. For here Weiss achieves a systematic relation (...) between fundamental concepts of Modes of Being and those of his aesthetic theory that is both less strained and schematic and more fruitful than any found elsewhere. The discussions of history are less happy, too quickly generalized and formalized in cosmic terms. The sections on religion are, however, excellent. Predominantly Christian themes are discussed at length. Weiss's metaphysics seems naturally sympathetic in their analysis. The metaphilosophy provides a valuable insight into Weiss's working habits and reveals what is, paradoxically, both a major strength and weakness-his appreciation of the formal and schematic demands of systematic thought. This appreciation can lead to productive analysis and insight, but also beyond experience and understanding. It is to Weiss's credit that these working journals show the dangerous side of his philosophic technique far more often than his regular, published work does. Now that we have the entire first volume of these journals, a few words must be said about their value as published works. They are, first, a useful, two-way bridge joining Weiss's formal, metaphysical works and his more descriptive, phenomenological works, such as The World of Art, Nine Basic Arts, History: Written and Lived, The God We Seek, etc.). Such a bridge is not absolutely necessary for one reasonably familiar with the whole of Weiss's published work, but it is helpful, especially to one beginning a study of Weiss with the more speculative formal writings. As independent works, the journals frequently provide valuable insights, suggest previously unsuspected avenues of analysis and inquiry, and demonstrate a level of argument and mode of explanation all too often ignored by contemporary philosophers. They should be read as what they are, journals, much as one would read Pepys' Diary. The Index is a thorough, accurate, and necessary tool for reference.—W. G. E. (shrink)

The author introduces axiology as a recently developed, independent branch of philosophy, in which values are found to reveal a subtle identity of nature and structure, and to constitute a domain distinct from that of being. Sketches of objectivist and subjectivist doctrines are offered, chiefly as foils for a final chapter which suggests that the exaggerations of both sides can be corrected and their truths preserved by analyzing and putting in proper context all relevant aspects of the concrete situation—factual, psychological, (...) and cultural.—E. W. (shrink)

These twenty-nine essays from a period of thirty-five years cover topics in ethics, critical and speculative philosophy, American philosophy and social philosophy. The late Professor Murphy's concern for the social and political relevance of theoretical philosophical issues is very much in evidence, and something of his humane personality shows through.—F. W. N.

An elementary analysis, both historical and systematic, of the two topics mentioned in the title. Although the book presents difficulties in both phases of its analysis, readers concerned with the topics should find it an interesting presentation of a Catholic view.--F. W. N.

The author, in outlining his theory of democracy, presents, with commendable logic of sequence, his views on the nature and scope of democracy, its presuppositions, its instruments, its conditions, its justification, and its prospects. Carey McWilliams, editor of The Nation, has called this book "by all odds the finest modern exploration of the subject by an American." From the standpoint of clarity, vigor, and good sense, that accolade is deserved. While not ranking as a seminal book or one that hoes (...) its ground with pioneering originality, it brilliantly molds into an unshakable structure an extensive amassment of stones, large and small, quarried diligently and judiciously from the tests of time and polished so as to smooth away ambiguities and other imperfections. Keystone of the structure is the definition, in which every word is expertly honed, "Democracy is that system of community government in which, by and large, the members of the community participate, or may participate, directly or indirectly, in the making of decisions which affect them all." The implications of this definition are meticulously studied in chapter after chapter, and Cohen presents at the end a "note on the future of democracy" in which, eschewing pessimism or optimism, he urges concerned citizens to do what is possible to improve the conditions which can make democracy effective.—W. G. (shrink)

Keen is dependent upon Norman O. Brown's Dionysian vision of reality in his description of the phenomenon of wonder. In a sense Keen's book is nothing more than a theological restatement of Brown's Love's Body in didactic and conceptual fashion. But the author argues persuasively that our vision of reality is much too dependent upon the Greek rational model, so that we become chained to ideas and can never be ourselves. From a Christian perspective, Keen argues, this is wrong. Christ (...) came to free men to be themselves--not to be slaves to ideas of themselves. The author uses much of the contemporary materials derived from the post-existentialistic mode of philosophizing. He discusses with appreciation Kazantzakis, Alan Watts, Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, MacLuhan, Merleau-Ponty, and others, whom he feels have attempted to pose a conception of reality that is characterized by "openness, availability, epistemological humility in the face of the mystery of being, and the ability to admire and be grateful."--W. A. J. (shrink)

This is a surprisingly good book. Published by Longmans in Great Britain as part of a series on "Education Today," it provides a very lucid and cogent first glimpse at the discipline of the philosophy of religion. The author's perspective is derivative of the analytic school, but what makes the book so valuable is that Goodall relates linguistic distinctions to Biblical categories. The author makes it obvious that he is a believer and authenticates the conviction that one can be a (...) believer and still sound like Flew or Ryle. The influence of Ian T. Ramsey comes through loud and clear. Goodall presents his proofs for the validity of religious statements with clarity and vigor. Worth the price of the book alone is Goodall's discussion of Lear's "The pobble who had no toes."--W. A. J. (shrink)

The Overview series functions as a kind of reputable pony for harried Roman Catholics. This particular volume gives a rather surprisingly competent description of what Existentialism is all about. The author finds Existentialism's greatest virtue in its emphasis upon human freedom. He rejects the Sartrean Existentialism in favor of its Marcelian form. This is a valuable little work, somewhat akin to Jean Wahl's book on the same subject of a few generations ago.--W. A. J.

Religion in the generic sense is presented as an irreducible mode of human judgment. By emphasizing the generic character of religion Arnett sets himself against the "sectarians," those who would claim unique worth for a particular tradition. By arguing for the irreducible nature of religious judgment he opposes himself to the "secularists," those who would reduce religion to some other mode of judgment, or to a non-cognitive status. The strongest chapters are the third and fourth, which deal with the relation (...) of religion to morality and art, respectively. While vigorous arguments are presented against those who tend to identify religion with one or the other, e.g., Dewey and Santayana, the problems are not oversimplified, and careful attention is given to the affinities as well as the discontinuities involved. The discussion of religion and truth deals more with the generic value of religious judgment than with the question of the truth of particular religious judgments.—M. W. (shrink)

Christian secularism is here the equivalent of theistic naturalism. It is sharply distinguished both from the more radical secularism of Van Buren and the death of God theologians, and from the supernaturalism of traditional Christian views of history, which deny its autonomy by affirming special divine breakthroughs into it and a mode of human existence transcending it. The book is less a case for Christian secularism than an account of what it is, or rather, what it is not. Its three (...) divisions are entitled "Faith," "History," and "Secularism."—M. W. (shrink)

These posthumously published lectures are designed to sponsor a new root metaphor for reflection on Christian ethics. The familiar models of teleological ethics and deontological ethics are not abandoned, but a new one is added to meet their inadequacies. It is man-the-answerer, homo dialogicus, and in terms of the symbol the notion of a responsible self is delineated. That the new model lends itself more readily to phenomenology than to casuistry is wholly within the author's intention. A lengthy, but useful, (...) introduction by James Gustafson places these lectures in the broader context of Niebuhr's thought.--M. W. (shrink)

The Indian philosophy of Maya is devoutly reviewed with extended analysis of Amobindo and Radhakrishnan. Introductions pose sharply the centrality of the concept, but in her faithfulness to the positions discussed, the author fails to reveal Maya as a unitary concept. Reyna's greatest admiration seems to be for the Sankaran formula that the phenomenal world is not real, a description which she "finds" vindicated by modern science.--E. W.

A translation of the earlier books of Galen's On Anatomical Procedures, extant in the original Greek text, was published by Charles Singer in 1956. The remainder, surviving in an Arabic translation, is here presented in a handsomely published English translation. A welcome supplement to the meagre Loch Galen.--R. W.

Subtitled "Rejections of Cartesian Dualism" this collection of essays traces through western Philosophy the strong but often overlooked idea that the body and the mind are not two different kinds of entity somehow reconciled in man, but rather a unity that is man. The editor's introduction sets forth Aristotle's ideas, concentrating on the dictum that it is the same man that thinks and runs. Spicker also treats Descartes' view, and the view of the Cartesians, ably separating the two when necessary. (...) The rest of the book is basically arranged chronologically, starting with extracts from Spinoza's Ethics, an essay on these extracts by Hans Jonas, and then moving through Julien de la Mettrie and two short essays by Kant. The second part of the book contains interesting essays on the human body by John Dewey, Douglas Long, and B. A. O. Williams, all defending the essential unity of body and soul. The third and last section of the book is itself divided into two parts, the first of which, entitled "Philosophy of Embodiment" contains four extracts from the works of prominent phenomenologists, Max Scheler, Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. These essays all center around the necessity of a concept of the "lived body" to the understanding of man's being-in-the-world. In the last section, the quality of the essays drops, although it is delightfully leavened by a witty essay by Richard Griffith on the foot. This section contains essays on particular parts of the human body, such as sight and the upright posture, by Herbert Plügge, Hans Jonas, and Erwin W. Straus. There is a selected bibliography for those who are captured by this basic thread of western thought.--W. A. de V. (shrink)