A common characterization of scientific cosmology is to say that it is a study of the universe as a whole, or of the large-scale properties of the universe. A major problem in the clarification of the conceptual foundations of this discipline is connected with the use of the terms ‘universe’ or ‘universe-as-a-whole’. Is the universe the same as the observed or observable universe, or should a distinction be drawn between what is open to observation and what might in some sense (...) be said to lie beyond what is observable? What are the roles played by both observation and theory in describing or construing what the universe is? Are models of the universe to be thought of as in some way articulating the structure of the universe itself? What is the universe itself? Is it a unique whole? Does it have a structure? Are we justified in making use of such a concept at all? (shrink)

In this work the distinguished philosopher Milton Munitz provides a lucid account of the chief empirical findings and theories of recent cosmology and a systematic assessment of their broader philosophical implications.

When we read that scientists have come close to pinpointing the "origin of the universe" by means of a Big Bang cosmology, or are engaged in formulating a "theory of everything," as in current ten-dimensional superstring theories of particle physics, can we doubt that such inquiries or their results inevitably raise important philosophical questions? In the present book, as well as in his previous work Cosmic Understanding, the renowned philosopher Milton Munitz attempts to answer some of these questions by (...) examining recent scientific theories of cosmology in a philosophical context. (shrink)

The extension of the method of science to the study of the astronomical universe as a whole is an impressive and important feature of recent intellectual history. In a field where previously myth and metaphysics ranged at will with speculative abandon but with little in the way of progressively cumulative information or insight, by contrast, scientific cosmology has already produced significant results of an observational sort and opened up vistas of disciplined theoretical vision that are a token of even more (...) extensive disclosures to come. With the aid of high-powered telescopes, observationally grounded descriptive generalizations have been established about the structure, distribution and motions of the bodies constituting the basic astronomical units out of which the universe is composed. Such units are, in contemporary investigations, identified as the extragalactic nebulae. Preliminary surveys revealed a uniformity of distribution of these nebulae throughout space and in all directions. Also original surveys, accomplished primarily by Hubble, suggested an empirical law stating a linear proportionality between the distances to nebulae and the red-shift in their spectra. If such red-shift is interpreted as a velocity effect, it may be taken as marking a mutual recession of nebulae from one another, and leads thereby to the general idea of an “expanding universe.' Meanwhile, theoretical cosmology in the hands of the mathematical physicists has kept pace with observational advances by offering a variety of ”models” or explanatory theoretical devices for the systematic ordering and incorporation of the fruits of observation. Beginning with the ground-breaking paper by Einstein in 1917 where an extension was made of relativistic principles to the cosmologic domain, a variety of further attempts were made along classical relativistic lines by Einstein himself, de Sitter, Robertson, Tolman and Lamaître while somewhat different modes of approach were subsequently opened in several directions by Milne, Eddington, Hoyle, and others. While nothing in the way of a stable or wholly acceptable theory has yet made its appearance, nevertheless fruitful and promising lines of research have thus been inaugurated. (shrink)

This article asks under what circumstances controversial technologies would be considered seriously for remediation instead of being rejected out of hand. To address this question, the authors developed a conceptual framework called public acceptability of controversial technologies. PACT considers site-specific, decision-oriented dialogues among the individuals and groups involved in selecting or recommending hazardous waste remediation technologies. It distinguishes technology acceptability, that is, a willingness to consider seriously, from technology acceptance, the decision to deploy. The framework integrates four dimensions: an acceptability (...) continuum that underlies decision-oriented dialogues among individuals and constituency groups, the attributes of these individuals and groups, the attributes of the technology at issue, and the community context—social, institutional, and physical. This article describes and explores PACT as a tool for understanding and better predicting the acceptability of controversial technologies. (shrink)

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches (...) that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Louis Agassiz and the Platonist Story of Creation at Harvard, 1795-1846David K. NartonisIn 1846, naturalist Louis Agassiz took Harvard College by storm with his idealist approach to nature. In his initial lectures, repeated in New York the following year, Agassiz announced, "We have that within ourselves which assures us of participation in the Divine Nature and it is a particular characteristic of man to be able to rise in (...) that way above material Nature, and to understand intellectual existences." He then made it clear that by intellectual existences he meant a divine plan of creation. "What naturalists intend when they speak of what they call 'types'... may be easily understood by comparison. We all know that architects construct our dwellings according to plans conceived by them before the erection of the edifice."1 There is no doubt that Agassiz valued the careful collection of observational data. "It has only been step by step that man has acquired an insight into this plan."2 But his empiricism, if that is the right term, was entirely subordinate to apprehension of divine ideas, which alone deserved to be called science. In one recent account, The Metaphysical Club, which contains an excellent discussion of Agassiz's American career, author Louis Menand accurately describes this dual emphasis on observation and intuition. But Menand leaves unstated the problem of [End Page 437] Agassiz's welcome at Harvard, attributing his instant popularity to force of character.3A fuller explanation of Agassiz's welcome is to be found in the Scottish textbooks that dominated the Harvard philosophy curriculum prior to his arrival.4 Like Agassiz, textbook authors Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Brown recognized observation and intuition as twin sources of human knowledge. According to them, we observe our own moral tendencies and interpret them in the light of intuited ethical principles that even God must obey. Similarly, we observe nature and interpret its workings with the aid of intuited principles of common sense.5 There is no doubt that this dual emphasis on observation and intuition was entirely consistent with Agassiz's idealist biology. But his definition of species and genera as intellectual existences in the divine mind was not to be found in the official Scottish texts. In fact, Dugald Stewart, who governed the philosophy curriculum after 1820, insisted that there are "no existences in nature corresponding to general terms, and the objects of our attention in all our general speculations are not ideas but words."6 This was "long misunderstood by philosophers, who imagined that a generic word expresses an actual existence distinct from the individuals of which the genus is composed."7 Similarly, Thomas Brown lamented, "One fundamental error... as long as it retained its hold of the understanding, must have rendered all its energies ineffectual, by wasting them in search of objects, which had no real existence... I allude to... the various orders of universals."8 In this one respect, Stewart and Brown were in agreement with Alexander Pope when he counseled his many American readers "presume not God to scan" and ridiculed those who would "soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere."9But Harvard students and faculty were also reading books that promoted the intellectual existences that Agassiz saw behind nature and the Scots did [End Page 438] not. Chief among these books were Plato's Works (ca. 360 BCE), Philo's De Opificio Mundi (20 BCE to 50 CE), Ralph Cudworth's The True Intellectual System of the World (1678), and John Norris's An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intellectual World (1701–04). These combined with such widely popular literature as John Milton's Paradise Lost (1668) and the prose works of Samuel Coleridge to form a kind of unofficial curriculum that ultimately made Agassiz's idealist view of nature especially welcome at Harvard.10 Modest at first, Harvard interest in intellectual existences bloomed with the appearance of books by Romantic writers on campus. In order to illustrate this long development, I will bolster my explanation with data from Harvard College library borrowing records—handwritten lists of the books borrowed by each library user during a one- or two-year period... (shrink)

The debate over the central issue confronted in Closing--the role of the university and the liberal arts in the United States--has become increasingly urgent and contentious. The goal of this collection of essays is to consider what we can learn about the dilemmas confronting American culture through a consideration of both The Closing of the American Mind and the debate it has aroused. The contributors differ among themselves as to the validity of both the diagnoses and the solutions Bloom offers, (...) yet they do not engage in "Bloom-bashing" or hero-worship. The goal of the book is to place the debate over Closing into the larger context than can be achieved in a book review format. To provide the historical perspective that has been missing in the controversy over Bloom, included in this volume is Christopher Lasch's "The Great Experiment: Where Did it Go Wrong?" Also included are essays by other leading critics: John K. Roth, Frank Caucci, William K. Buckley, Milton R. Stern, Susan Bourgeois, Margaret C. Jones, Daniel Zins, Kenneth Alan Hovey, Bonnie A. Hain, John Peacock, Patricia L. Lundberg, Peter Siedlecki, Mark W. Roche, William Thickstun, Lorraine Clark, and Gerald Graff. This volume of essays does much to illuminate the issue surrounding The Closing of the American Mind. (shrink)

Metaphysics and language: Quine, W. V. O. On the individuation of attributes. Körner, S. On some relations between logic and metaphysics. Marcus, R. B. Does the principle of substitutivity rest on a mistake? Van Fraassen, B. C. Platonism's pyrrhic victory. Martin, R. M. On some prepositional relations. Kearns, J. T. Sentences and propositions.--Basic and combinatorial logic: Orgass, R. J. Extended basic logic and ordinal numbers. Curry, H. B. Representation of Markov algorithms by combinators.--Implication and consistency: Anderson, A. R. Fitch on (...) consistency. Belnap, N. D., Jr. Grammatical propaedeutic. Thomason, R. H. Decidability in the logic of conditionals. Myhill, J. Levels of implication.--Deontic, epistemic, and erotetic logic: Bacon, J. Belief as relative knowledge. Wu, K. J. Believing and disbelieving. Kordig, C. R. Relativized deontic modalities. Harrah, D. A system for erotetic sentences. (shrink)

In this paper we present a new hierarchy of analytical tableaux systems TNDC n, 1≤n (...) and also prove that these systems are logically equivalent to the corresponding systems Cn, 1≤nshrink)

This fully revised new edition re-establishes Paul Griffiths's survey as the definitive study of music since the Second World War. The disruptions of the war, and the struggles of the ensuing peace, were reflected in the music of the time: in Pierre Boulez's radical reforming of compositional technique and in John Cage's move into zen music, in Milton Babbitt's settling of the serial system and in Dmitry Shostakovich's unsettling symphonies, in Karlheinz Stockhausen's development of electronic music and in Luigi (...) Nono's pursuit of the universally human, in Iannis Xenakis's view of music as sounding mathematics and in Luciano Berio's consideration of it as language. The initiatives of these composers and their contemporaries opened prospects that have continued to unfold. This constant expansion of musical thinking since 1945 has left us with no single history of music. Paul Griffiths's study accordingly follows several different paths, showing how and why they converge and diverge. In addition to the composers mentioned above, others whose music is discussed include Steve Reich, Jean Barraque, Elliott Carter, Olivier Messiaen, Gyorgy Kurtag, Harrison Birtwistle, and Gyorgy Ligeti. Publication and recording details are given for the works of all these composers and many others. (shrink)

The essays in philosophical logic collected in this volume are dedicated to Henry S. Leonard who was one of the first American philosophers to urge the application of modern logic to non-mathematical areas. Leonard also inspired the development of certain areas of contemporary philosophical logic discussed in some of the papers of this volume. This is especially clear in the case of free, or presupposition free, logics which Leonard's early work on a logic of existence inspired. In one essay of (...) this volume Bas C. Van Frassen further develops his work on the semantics of free logic. In another, Milton Fisk relates free logic to modal logic, suggesting a new semantics of strength to deal with various problems in the area and in a third essay, Karel Lambert relates free logic to certain logical puzzles about quantum theory. Leonard was also one of the first to entertain the idea of and discuss a logic of questions and an erotetic logic or logic of interests. The volume contains essays on these topics by Nuel D. Belnap and David Harrah. Leonard's interest in modal logic is reflected in Fisk's article as well as in an article by Richmond Thomason on modal logic and metaphysics. His interest in epistemic logic is seen in an essay on the logic of belief by Jon Vickers and an essay by Hintikka applying the logic of belief and knowledge to problems about the ontological argument. In addition to these essays, there are five others of high quality on diverse topics: R. M. Martin on intentions, Wilfrid Sellars on the metaphysics of the person, R. M. Chisholm on agency, Frederick Fitch on combinatory logic and negative numbers, and H. E. Hendry and G. J. Massey on Sheffer functions. This is a worthy memorial to a quietly influential American philosopher.--R. H. K. (shrink)

In this paper we examine many of the arguments contained in Milton Friedman’s classic essay, in the form of critiques linked with learning objectives forclassroom discussions.