The covariant Klein-Gordon equation requires twice the boundary conditions of the Schrödinger equation and does not have an accepted single-particle interpretation. Instead of interpreting its solution as a probability wave determined by an initial boundary condition, this paper considers the possibility that the solutions are determined by both an initial and a final boundary condition. By constructing an invariant joint probability distribution from the size of the solution space, it is shown that the usual measurement probabilities can nearly be recovered (...) in the non-relativistic limit, provided that neither boundary constrains the energy to a precision near ℏ/t 0 (where t 0 is the time duration between the boundary conditions). Otherwise, deviations from standard quantum mechanics are predicted. (shrink)

A time-symmetric formulation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics is developed by applying two consecutive boundary conditions onto solutions of a time- symmetrized wave equation. From known probabilities in ordinary quantum mechanics, a time-symmetric parameter P0 is then derived that properly weights the likelihood of any complete sequence of measurement outcomes on a quantum system. The results appear to match standard quantum mechanics, but do so without requiring a time-asymmetric collapse of the wavefunction upon measurement, thereby realigning quantum mechanics with an important (...) fundamental symmetry. (shrink)

There is a great deal of interest in the relation between the status of women and fertility—by humanists, academics and policy-makers concerned with bringing about fertility declines. The three aspects of women's status most frequently linked to fertility are their education, employment and type of husband-wife interaction. Research to date has not given us a clear and consistent explanation of these relationships and has not confirmed causality. The effects of these three factors on fertility vary considerably across national boundaries and (...) even within different sectors of the same society. Some of the assumptions held by both researchers and policymakers must be re-thought in the interests of more useful future research and of sounder policy. (shrink)

Mind uploading speculation and debate often concludes that a procedure described as gradual in-place replacement preserves personal identity while a procedure described as destructive scan-and-copy produces some other identity in the target substrate such that personal identity is lost along with the biological brain. This paper demonstrates a chain of reasoning that establishes metaphysical equivalence between these two methods in terms of preserving personal identity.

This volume brings together flux essays by an eminent scholar on the origins, development, and import of Kant's philosophy, chiefly in its metaphysical aspects. Four of these were separately published between 1924 and 1926, but until now have been difficult to obtain, despite great demand. Their appearance here will be welcomed. The thesis emerging from these studies is that the critical philosophy originates in metaphysical probings concerning the nature and presuppositions of being, and issues in doctrines which, despite psychological, epistemological, (...) and ethical presentation, are intended to have definite ontological import. --L. K. B. (shrink)

Stone, J. Thoughts on supposed "Death of law".--Krishna Iyer, V. R. Jurisprudence and jurisconscience.--Sharma, G. S. Law and social change in India.--Sharma, S. D. The concept of justice in Manu.--Chand, H. Legal values for a developing country.--Ramarao, T. S. The new international law relating to the rights and duties of States.--Sinha, B. S. Custom and customary law in Indian jurisprudence.--Mazumdar, D. L. Techno-economic structure of our industrial society.--Subrahamanian, N. Law and social change.

An attempt to clarify and establish systematically foundations for a "formal" science of axiology, relating it to the social sciences and humanities as mathematics is related to the natural sciences.--L. K. B.

The report of a special commission engaged by the National Book Committee, Inc. to make an inquiry into the theory of censorship and the freedom to read. It presents 1. a philosophical, sociological, and legal analysis of the grounds and implications of censorship, 2. recommendations concerning the needed systematic empirical investigation into the effects of books, the formation of reading taste, etc., and 3. suggestions as to immediate action.--L. K. B.

This book professes to give a semantic analysis of the main concepts of classical and quantum physics. The author holds that the task of philosophy of science is to explicate the meanings of scientific theories, laws, and hypotheses by formal reconstruction; semantic rules are a necessary part of such a reconstruction. Beginning with an extremely, indeed fatally, simplified treatment of the required concepts of logical syntax and semantics, he proceeds to discuss in non-technical language the concepts of the chief physical (...) theories, and concludes with a description of the methodology of theory construction and confirmation. His only unusual thesis is that, contrary to what physicists tell us, models still essentially underlie all physical theories and constitute the link between theory and experiment on which must be based the semantic rules needed to supplement attempts at formal reconstruction. The strength of the book lies not in its semantic emphasis but in its stress on the hypothetico-deductive character of modern exact science, as opposed to the inductive accounts imputed to empiricists. --L. K. B. (shrink)

A reprint of Freud's lectures of 1910. In his philosophically critical preface, Allers briefly but effectively points up logical and scientific weaknesses in Freud's theories, attributes their peculiar success to the appealing ambiguity of approach as between the scientific and the historical, then finds their chief merit in furthering the recognition of man's "historicity."--L. K. B.

Not a philosophical analysis or explication, this compact, lyrical study remains deliberately within the "organic" categories of biblical speech--which it is part of its purpose to exemplify--and with considerable success communicates the Christian conception of ethical life as man's response to God's self-revealing activity in history, to be understood only in terms of "the living continuity between man-in-God and man-in-man."--L. K. B.

This book claims to state a "method of polarity" whereby philosophy can be advanced significantly. This method presupposes a conception of knowledge as rooted in value and of truth as encompassing contrary or "contrapletive" positions. Finding in experience irreducible oppositions demanding a definite method of treatment, it prescribes for this a "calculus," which is then applied to "typical philosophical problems." A vast amount of reading --somewhat over-documented by more than four hundred citations and references--are brought to bear rather externally on (...) the problems treated, which themselves are hardly more than posed in terms of the polarity concept.--L. K. B. (shrink)

Part of a series on Spanish philosophy, this work presents medieval Islamic philosophy from an unusual and consciously restricted perspective. This is most evident in the distribution of emphasis: Al-Kindi, Al-Zarabi, Algazel, even Avicenna are considered in the brief introductory discussion of "Oriental" Islamic philosophy, while the system of Averroes is treated in great detail as the culmination of a distinctly Spanish tradition. Not a definitive history of the subject, but a "scientific manual" of the present state of historical-philosophical knowledge, (...) based on available bibliographies and edited texts, this work will nevertheless serve many as a valuable and authoritative reference source on a neglected chapter in the history of ideas.--L. K. B. (shrink)

A collection of essays on various aspects of philosophy of science, written around the turn of the century by a perceptive historian of science and methodologist who, under the influence of Peirce, Mach and Peano, anticipated many basic doctrines of the later semantically oriented analytic philosophy. The short introduction discusses Vailati's viewpoint in connection with his chief contemporaries; a brief biography and bibliography are provided. --L. K. B.

Five previously published articles dealing with various topics in philosophy of history. They center on the problem of a metaphysics adequate to a radical emphasis on history over against nature and to a conception of values as emergent through history.--L. K. B.

A remarkably condensed statement of the main features of Ortega's philosophy, organized "biographically" around three stages of his intellectual development, termed "objectivism," "perspectivism," and "ratio-vitalism," with chief attention given to the last. The presentation is marked by a soberness unusual in writers on Ortega. As a result, a certain fairness and balance are achieved, yet not at the cost of any adequacy to the vitality of Ortega's own thought.--L. K. B.

This well-translated and slightly revised edition of El Hombre en la Encrucijada approaches the problem of social crisis and creative integration of conflicting strains into higher "forms of material and spiritual life" with Spanish intimacy and terseness and with wide erudition in unusual combination with a sense of reality. Part II treats the modern period as a series of crises, roughly describable as the inception, spread, and ultimate failure of secular, scientific intellectualism. This work combines the usual "cultural heritage" and (...) "crisis" themes with striking success.--L. K. B. (shrink)

Begins with a critique of traditional metaphysics and of modern natural science, disclosing a common root in the more basic fact of creative symbolic expression, which is held to be the key to a radical and rectifying refounding of metaphysics. Expression and symbolization, are held to be essentially constitutive of human existence, of knowledge and of the known, and to be historical communal and creative. The merit of the work is in facing the question of the import for metaphysics of (...) the recent insights into the nature and importance of symbolization. The claims are sometimes too strong, but the discussions, though repetitious, are generally built on sound insights and wide learning, and are often illuminating. --L. K. B. (shrink)

To the task undertaken here of articulating the common values and goals which should be ours as heirs of Western culture, Greene brings a scholarly grasp of the history of ideas, a sensitive insight into the actual ideals of our nation, and a responsible concern for an honest and critical national self-understanding. The result is not novel; but it does offer a well expressed and compelling Christian, liberal social philosophy, stressing reverence for God, respect for man, and rich participation in (...) all areas of human activity. --L. K. B. (shrink)

A timely and competently argued case for a broadened conception of rationality, this book attacks the currently orthodox dogma that rational justification must proceed according to the model either of logico-mathematical deduction or "piecemeal inductive engineering," and tries positively to clarify the concept of such justification in important cases where these models are inadequate. The use of reason is considered first in the context of political theory, then in ethics, finally in terms of generalized philosophical methodology. The traditional modes of (...) rational justification are found at best adequate only for propositions, whereas an adequate world view must involve non-propositional modes of understanding, "decisions in action," which infect not just ethics but every sphere of theoretical activity, and which require their own appropriate modes of justification. -- L. K. B. (shrink)

Noting the shift from the old science-vs.-religion conflicts to the cooler query, "In what sense and to what extent, if any, does religion involve knowledge?" Randall surveys the history of the question on the way to developing his thesis. Religion is socially indispensable, he holds; in it beliefs function not primarily as expressions of truth but as non-cognitive symbols directing the group's "organized expression of the feelings, actions, and beliefs... centering around the emotionally significant and valuable elements of their social (...) experience." Still, religion involves a kind of insight inasmuch as the use of its symbolism transforms experience and the way we view it; and there remains within it an important role for intelligence--"to clarify...the values to which we are actually consecrated."--L. K. B. (shrink)

A clear and well-written defense of the Christian theistic world-view, marked by a constructive and well-balanced philosophical orientation, with only slight hints, through most of the book, of the underlying religious fundamentalism. The stress on the fundamental importance of commitment is balanced by a recognition of its constitutive role in reasoning, and by an insistence on the need for the integration of the intellectual, the practical, and the religious. The author takes as his main field of evidence man's "power of (...) moral and rational self-transcendence," and builds upon an epistemological scheme involving a triad of methods of knowing--by acquaintance, by inference, and by moral self-acceptance. The book concludes with a frankly dogmatic summary of the author's evangelical convictions. --L. K. B. (shrink)

A technical but lucid and relatively elementary discussion of the development of the physical concepts of space and time and the bearing of the parity hypothesis of Lee and Yang on the future course of this development.--L. K. B.

A revised edition of a work originally published in 1952, this book offers an entertaining exposé of various pseudoscientific fads and cults, from dowsing and flying saucers to flat earth theories and dianetics. It includes brief but responsible chapters on the theories of Wilhelm Reich, Count Korzybski, and J. B. Rhine.--L. K. B.

A collection of six unrelated articles by as many authors. First come three scholarly studies, dealing with causality in Aristotle, St. Augustine's metaphysics of created being, and St. Thomas as a commentator on Aristotle. The fourth is an exposition of Hegel's views on scepticism. Next comes a reconstruction, within the scholastic spirit, of "classical formal logic." The concluding and most interesting article is a bibliographical survey of recent works in the history of ancient philosophies. --L. K. B.

In a critical study of the factor-analytical theory of knowledge of the psychologist C. E. Spearman, the author tries to show that many so-called discoveries of modern psychology are mere elementary and unconscious repetitions of the older but much clearer Thomistic concepts.--L. K. B.

This presentation of scientific methodology tries to avoid metaphysical issues without being unphilosophical. Drawing from a wide range of material, the book describes clearly but rather generally what empirical scientists are concerned with, how they proceed, what they accomplish. The five parts deal with the roles in science of definitions, physical laws and theories, induction, and the interplay of reason and immediate experience. Despite the slant indicated by the many quotations from St. Thomas and Aristotle--peculiarly but pleasantly combined with passages (...) from Einstein, Schrödinger, de Broglie, Eddington, etc.--a rather objective presentation is achieved.--L. K. B. (shrink)