The Islamic Medieval Philosopher al-Ghazᾱlî, known to the Latins as Algazel, was influential in the shaping of the intellectual philosophic movements in the thirteenth century. Though Ghazali’s predecessor Ibn Sînᾱ and successor Ibn Rushd received the philosophic credit due to them, Ghazali’s own philosophic ideas have not been significantly assessed; and hence Ghazali’s “fame” lies, we are told, in being responsible for the decline of Medieval Philosophy, especially Islamic Philosophy, a claim that is extremely difficult to prove. But be that (...) as it may, the intellectual movement in Europe during the thirteenth century pursued the intellectual Islamic heritage, not just of Avicenna and Averroës, but also that of Ghazali. Granted that Ghazali’s philosophic ideas did not assume a definite pattern in the philosophic literature—as was the case with Avicenna and Averroës—still a careful study of Ghazali’s works will reveal how profound and widespread his influence was on Western Medieval scholars. A case in point is the influence of Ghazali on Saint Thomas Aquinas—who studied the works of the Islamic philosophers, especially Ghazali’s, at The University of Naples. Thus in the course of the subsequent analysis, similarities between Ghazali and Aquinas will reveal themselves. The aim of this paper, however, does not consist in delineating their refutations of the arguments of the philosophers that one finds in Ghazali’s and Aquinas’s works. Rather I shall primarily deal with their discussion of the principle of causality and then indicate how the works of Ghazali have played an important role in the shaping of the philosophic ideas of Aquinas. (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to exhibit the influence of both logical positivism and operationalism on neo-behaviorism. specifically, i shall attempt to show how logical positivists and p w bridgman influenced the neo-behaviorist, e c tolman. it is my contention that the methodological views championed by logical positivism and by bridgman deeply influenced tolman who was genuinely concerned with (a) finding an adequate base to anchor securely his purposive behaviorism, and (b) finding sound ways of introducing variables in his (...) pursuit of psychological laws. (shrink)

Plato. The republic.--Aristotle. Politics.--Cicero, M. T. On the commonwealth.--John of Salisbury. The prince versus the tyrant.--Machiavelli, N. The prince and the people.--Hobbes, T. The state of nature and the Leviathan.--Locke, J. The right of revolution.--Marx, K. and Engels, F. Bourgeois and proletarians.--Bakunin, M. A. The Paris Commune and the idea of the state.--Mill, J. S. On liberty.--Lenin, V. I. Marxism and the withering away of the state.--Hitler, A. Race and the folkish state.--Mao Tse-tung. From the masses, to the masses.--Che Guevara, (...) E. Create two, three, many Vietnams. (shrink)

Schweppenhauser, H. Quelques exemples de critiques adressées à Adorno.--Bellasi, P. Le bébé avec l'eau du bain.--Höhn, G. Une logique de la décomposition.--Jimenez, M. Théorie critique et théorie de l'art.--Baučar, E. L'esthétique comme anthropologie.--Revault d'Allonnes, O. Adorno non adorno.--Makarius, M. I. Adorno et le viol de la médiation.--Ladmiral, J. R. Adorno contra Heidegger.--Naggar, C. John Heartfield, dada-monteur.--Noguez, D. Jean Mitry et le cinéma expérimental.--S., E. In memoriam Jacques Duron.--Revault d'Allonnes, O. L'Institut d'esthétique s'installe 162, rue Saint-Charles à Paris XVe.--Saison, M. Étude (...) critique d'une création théâtrale. (shrink)

In this note we present a three-valued intensional logic, which is an extension of both Montague's intensional logic and ukasiewicz three-valued logic. Our system is obtained by adapting Gallin's version of intensional logic (see Gallin, D., Intensional and Higher-order Modal Logic). Here we give only the necessary modifications to the latter. An acquaintance with Gallin's work is pressuposed.

This book, first published in 1990, is a detailed examination of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. It shows that the theory of mind developed in the Trestise is a thread which ties together many of the seemingly unrelated philosophical issues discussed in the work. Hume's primary objective was to defend a 'bundle theory' of mind, and, through a close examination of the texts, this book provides a thorough account of how Hume understood this theory and the problems he discovered (...) with it. (shrink)

"Under what conditions are obedience and disobedience required or justified? To what or whom is obedience or disobedience owed? What are the differences between authority and power and between legitimate and illegitimate government? What is the relationship between having an obligation and having freedom to act? What are the similarities and differences among political, legal, and moral obligations?..." Originally published in 1972, Professor Flathman discusses these crucial issues in political theory in a lucid and stimulating argument. Though mainly concerned to (...) develop his own modified utilitarian standing point he also reviews both the classical and modern literature from Plato and Hobbes to Hare and Rawls. The treatment is philosophical but it is frequently related to practical issues of civil obedience and disobedience and in particular focuses on the relation between law, obligation and social change. (shrink)

The progress of psychology as scientific theory has been handicapped by the circumstance that it has been inclined to deal with two kinds of problems: on the one hand, with emotions, instincts, complexes, ideas, etc.; on the other, with the working of the sense-organs and of the central and sympathetic nervous system. To approach the first task it has had to create a system of mentalistic or introspective concepts, like the ones mentioned; to deal with the second enterprise it has (...) adopted the physical language used by the natural sciences. (shrink)

A critical edition of the correspondence between Astell and John Norris of Bemerton, which had a profound significance in 18th-century intellectual and religious circles and which represents a crucial step in the development of Norris and Astell's opposition to John Locke.

The purpose of this work is to analyse the cognitive process of the domain theories in terms of the measurement theory to develop a computational machine learning approach for implementing it. As a result, the relational data mining approach, the authors proposed in the preceding books, was improved. We present the approach as an implementation of the cognitive process as the measurement theory perceived. We analyse the cognitive process in the first part of the paper and present the theory and (...) method of the logically most powerful empirical theory discovery in the second. The theory is based on the notion of law-like rules, which conform to all the properties of laws of nature, namely generality, simplicity, maximum refutability and minimum number of parameters. This notion is defined for deterministic and probabilistic cases. Based on the method, the discovery system is developed. The system was successfully applied to many practical tasks. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 119 alienated, as a result of their doctrines, a large segment of the Islamic community. As a matter of fact the mu'tazilites were branded as infidels by the community. The remainder of the book, i.e. chapters 4, 5, and 6, are respectively devoted to the expected deliverer, the emphasis on struggle (jihad) and the friends of god. The essays concerning the expected deliverer and the friends of (...) god are philosophically uninteresting, except I should add for some of the editor's commentaries. However the essays on struggle are illuminating, for they attempt to clear some of the standard misconceptions about the use of the term "jih~d," which is usually translated into English as "holy war." No doubt the early Muslims did engage in holy wars. The underlying justification for waging such a war was primarily for self-defense and secondarily for strengthening Islam. However the modern interpretation of fihad is in striking contrast to the traditional one. A modern writer expresses it as: It (jih~d) denotes a state of mind in which after undergoing sufferings, a man is forced to resort in self-defense to measures not necessarily warlike. In daily life we find people saying that they wish to carry on a ]ihad against drinking and smoking or against foreign goods. But this does not mean that they intend making a war on anybody.... It [i.e. fih~d] is an institution which enjoins on every Muslim to sacrifice his all for the protection of the weak and oppressed. He is duty bound to see that oppression and injustice, in whatever form, are stopped. (p. 300) As I indicated earlier this book is unlike many others dealing with Islamic civilization. What is needed now is for Western philosophers to start seriously entertaining some of the philosophical themes in the intellectual development of Islam. This is indeed a neglected area; hopefully then Themes o[ Islamic Civilization could be a starting point for some of us in philosophy. ROBERT ELIAS ABU SHANAB The Florida Stale University, Tallahassee Inventaire de la correspondance d'Andrd Rivet (1595-1650). By Paul Dibon. (La Haye: Nijhoff, 1971. xxiii and 406 pp., FI. 90) The French protestant A. Rivet (1572-1651), a confidant of La Tr6moille and of Duplessis-Mornay, was appointed professor of theology at Leyden University in 1620, immediately after the Dordrecht Synod. In 1632 he was appointed tutor to the Prince of Orange, the future William II, and was an advisor to the Stathouder FredericHenry. He maintained a lively correspondence with more than 450 personalities in the learned world, without regard to religion or nationality. Notable among his correspondents are Louis Cappel, Valentin Conrart, Jean Daille, Samuel Desmarets, Charles Drelincourt, Paul Ferry, Pierre Gouhier, J. F. Gronovius, C. Huygens, J.-M. de Langle, Antoine L~ger, Mersenne, Andr~ Pineau, Abraham Rambour, Guillaume Rivet (his brother), Claude de Saumaise, Philippe Vincent, G.-J. Vossius, David Willem. The correspondence, starting in 1595, includes about 4,350 letters, of which only 480 have hitherto been published. Topics of the correspondence are recently published books, diplomatic, political, and military events, ideological disputes, etc. Through his connections, Rivet received a considerable amount of qualified and, frequently confidential information, and this is an invaluable source for the study of the intellectual and political history of his time. Rivet published about sixty books, sermons, and pamphlets, in Latin and in French, mostly on theological subjects. The most important were collected in his 120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Opera theologica quae latine edidit, 3 vols. (Roterodami, 1651-1660). His religious polemics with Amyrault and Grofius were famous. Paul Dibon, professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, is the most prominent contemporary historian of seventeenth-century Dutch philosophy and intellectual life; he is perfectly aware of the fact that genuine history can only be founded on solid erudition, and this inventory is a first-class contribution to it. Only those who ignore the difficulties of this kind of research will underestimate the enormous effort it involves--an effort which is, much more than a pedantic and mechanical listing of data, a kind of venatio, requiring a continuous alertness, a surprising amount of imagination and intelligence, a... (shrink)

Epistemological issues associated with Cantorian set theory were at the center of the foundational debates from 1900 onward. Hermann Weyl, as a central actor, saw this as a smoldering crisis that burst into flames after World War I. The historian Herbert Mehrtens argued that this “foundations crisis” was part of a larger conflict that pitted moderns, led by David Hilbert, against various counter-moderns, who opposed the promotion of set theory and trends toward abstract theories. Among counter-moderns, L.E.J. Brouwer went a (...) step further by proposing new foundational principles based on his philosophy of intuitionism. Meanwhile, Felix Hausdorff emerged as a leading proponent of the new modern style. In this essay, I offer a reassessment of the foundations crisis that stresses the marginal importance of the various intellectual issues involved. Instead, I offer an interpretation that focuses on tensions within the German mathematical community that led to a dramatic power struggle for control of the journal Mathematische Annalen. (shrink)

The present article intends to call the attention to the role played by Rodolfo Mondolfo, with his theory of the early greek philosophy's dependence in relation with an earlier reflexion about man and social life, in the "turning " that restored the beginning of phylosophy in to history.O presente artigo pretende chamar a atenção para o papel representado por Rodolfo Mondolfo, com sua teoria da dependência da primeira filosofia grega em relação a uma reflexão anterior sobre o homem e a (...) vida social, na "viragem" que reinseriu na história o início da filosofia. (shrink)