Individual and institutional conflict of interests in biomedical research have becomes matters of increasing concern in recent years. In the United States, the growth in relationships — sponsored research agreements, consultancies, memberships on boards, licensing agreements, and equity ownership — between for-profit corporations and research universities and their scientists has made the problem of conflicts, particularly financial conflicts, more acute. Conflicts can interfere with or compromise important principles and obligations of researchers and their institutions, e.g., adherence to accepted research norms, (...) duty of care to patients, and open exchange of information. Disclosure is a key component of a successful conflict policy. Commitments which conflict with a faculty member's primary obligations to teaching, research, administrative responsibilities, or patient care also need attention. Institutional conflict of interests present different problems, some of which are discussed in an analysis of an actual problem posed by two proposed clinical trials. (shrink)

A partir de las reflexiones que Durkheim lleva a cabo en La División del Trabajo Social, podemos entender que un intento por desarrollar un concepto de sociedad es una tarea abordable a partir de la indagación sobre sus formas de integración. Siguiendo sus planteamientos, referirse sociológicame..

Gary Steiner argues that ethologists and philosophers in the analytic and continental traditions have largely failed to advance an adequate explanation of animal behavior. Critically engaging the positions of Marc Hauser, Daniel Dennett, Donald Davidson, John Searle, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, among others, Steiner shows how the Western philosophical tradition has forced animals into human experiential categories in order to make sense of their cognitive abilities and moral status and how desperately we need a new approach (...) to animal rights. Steiner rejects the traditional assumption that a lack of formal rationality confers an inferior moral status on animals vis-à-vis human beings. Instead, he offers an associationist view of animal cognition in which animals grasp and adapt to their environments without employing concepts or intentionality. Steiner challenges the standard assumption of liberal individualism according to which humans have no obligations of justice toward animals. Instead, he advocates a "cosmic holism" that attributes a moral status to animals equivalent to that of people. Arguing for a relationship of justice between humans and nature, Steiner emphasizes our kinship with animals and the fundamental moral obligations entailed by this kinship. (shrink)

This article argues that reality and virtuality are still very much phenomenologically distinguishable, although this might not be the case forever. I argue for two main types of virtuality – one inherently involved in the dynamic horizons of perceptual experiences, while the other is all of our experiences of digital images – in order to show that a particular possible instantiation of the latter type, namely “pure” mixed reality (MR), might come to blur and collapse various experiential categories in the (...) future, not least real and irreal, like never before. To show this, there are three main sections. First, I outline my understanding of the two basic types of virtuality, as understood from a classical phenomenological analysis. Second, I give an account of the most important family of “virtual technologies” relevant to the question at hand, namely virtual, augmented and mixed reality (VR, AR and MR respectively) technologies. After homing in on MR, I explain what “pure” MR is and how, through tactile holograms, this might change even basic experiential distinctions going forward, and not necessarily for the better. (shrink)

I wish to examine the “justification” or “vindication” of inductive procedure that has been set forth in various places by the late Professor Reichenbach and by Professor Feigl, most recently by the latter. Although Professor Feigl has explicitly referred to this kind of a “vindication” as “trivial,” it is nevertheless evident, from the stress placed upon and the space devoted to this proposal, that both Professors Feigl and Reichenbach attach considerable importance to it. Thus Professor Feigl says:It has to be (...) shown that the normal inductive procedure is reasonable, not merely by definition in the light of common usage, but that this definition itself is not merely a result of linguistic habituation or of an arbitrary fiat. This can be achieved, as I have tried to show..., largely in agreement with Reichenbach's ideas, if the adoption of the rule of induction is made a matter of practical justification rather than a matter of theoretical justification. (shrink)

Carbon monoxide intoxication leads to acute and chronic neurological deficits, but little is known about the specific noxious mechanisms. 1 H magnetic resonance spectroscopy may allow insight into the pathophysiology of CO poisoning by monitoring neurochemical disturbances, yet only limited information is available to date on the use of this protocol in determining the neurological effects of CO poisoning. To further examine the short-term and long-term effects of CO on the central nervous system, we have studied seven patients with CO (...) poisoning assessed by gray and white matter MRS, magnetic resonance imaging and neuropsychological testing. Five patients suffered from acute high-dose CO intoxication and were in coma for 1–6 days. In these patients, MRI revealed hyperintensities of the white matter and globus pallidus and also showed increased choline and decreased N -acetyl aspartate ratios to creatine, predominantly in the white matter. Lactate peaks were detected in two patients during the early phase of high-dose CO poisoning. Two patients with chronic low-dose CO exposure and without loss of consciousness had normal MRI and MRS scans. On follow-up. five of our seven patients had long-lasting intellectual impairment, including one individual with low-dose CO exposure. The MRS results showed persisting biochemical alterations despite the MRI scan showing normalization of morphological changes. In conclusion, the MRS was normal in patients suffering from chronic low-dose CO exposure; in contrast, patients with high-dose exposure showed abnormal gray and white matter levels of NAA/Cr, Cho/Cr and lactate, as detected by 1 H MRS, suggesting disturbances of neuronal function, membrane metabolism and anaerobic energy metabolism, respectively. Early increases in Cho/Cr and decreases of NAA/Cr may be related to a poor long-term outcome, but confirmation by future studies is needed. (shrink)

Filmosophy is a provocative new manifesto for a radically philosophical way of understanding cinema. It coalesces twentieth-century ideas of film as thought (from Hugo Münsterberg to Gilles Deleuze) into a practical theory of "film-thinking," arguing that film style conveys poetic ideas through a constant dramatic "intent" about the characters, spaces, and events of film. Discussing contemporary filmmakers such as Béla Tarr and the Dardenne brothers, this timely contribution to the study of film and philosophy will provoke debate among audiences and (...) filmmakers alike. FILMOSOPHY ® is a registered U.S. trademark owned by Valentin Stoilov (www.filmosophy.com) for educational services in the field of motion picture history theory and production. Mr. Stoilov is not the source or origin of this book and has not sponsored or endorsed it or its author. (shrink)

In this 1970 introduction to philosophy Mr Taylor concentrates on two central topics - explanation and meaning. He takes the argument far enough to acquaint the reader first-hand with the methods and approach of analytical philosophy, and yet because of the scope of these two topics he is able to introduce many of the traditional philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and logic. By this approach he avoids the dangers both of superficiality and of undue technicality. Philosophers are concerned (...) to analyse and describe certain concepts and modes of argument, not to establish facts or conclusions of any sort that can be tested by formal demonstration or controlled observation; their findings cannot be conveniently categorized or graded into a comprehensive and progressive course of studies. Mr Taylor meets this difficulty with his extended discussions of specific topics and questions which have implications over the whole subject. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Freedom describes Rudolf Steiner's path to freedom. It contains the nonconformist ideals of his youth that result from his study of mathematics, science, and philosophy culminating in a philosophy of life founded upon individualistic truth and ethical individualism. This is the first English translation and the only one sanctioned by Rudolf Steiner himself. Joint translators Prof. and Mrs. R. F. Alfred Hoernlé were selected for their outstanding qualifications. First published in 1916, it is based on (...) the original 1894 German "Die Philosophie der Freiheit". Other translations have been based on the 1918 revised German edition and renamed "The Philosophy Of Spiritual Activity" and "Intuitive Thinking As A Spiritual Path". This original edition includes inspiring passages about individualism that were removed from the book in 1918 and are missing in later translations: "We no longer believe that there is a norm to which we must all strive to conform." "If only we probe deep enough into the very heart of our being, there dwells something noble, something worthy of development." Learn all about Rudolf Steiner's The Philosophy Of Freedom at https: //philosophyoffreedom.com/. (shrink)

Sex differences in mortality rates stem from genetic, physiological, behavioral, and social causes that are best understood when integrated in an evolutionary life history framework. This paper investigates the Male-to-Female Mortality Ratio (M:F MR) from external and internal causes and across contexts to illustrate how sex differences shaped by sexual selection interact with the environment to yield a pattern with some consistency, but also with expected variations due to socioeconomic and other factors.

Dans son « Découverte d'un nouveau principe de mécanique » (1750) Euler a donné, pour la première fois, une preuve du théorème qu'on appelle aujourd'hui le Théorème d'Euler. Dans cet article je vais me concentrer sur la preuve originale d'Euler, et je vais montrer comment la pratique mathématique d Euler peut éclairer le débat philosophique sur la notion de preuves explicatives en mathématiques. En particulier, je montrerai comment l'un des modèles d'explication mathématique les plus connus, celui proposé par Mark (...) class='Hi'>Steiner dans son article « Mathematical explanation » (1978), n'est pas en mesure de rendre compte du caractère explicatif de la preuve donnée par Euler. Cela contredit l'intuition originale du mathématicien Euler, qui attribuait à sa preuve un caractère explicatif spécifique. (shrink)

In this classic work by one of America's most distinguished historians, Daniel Boorstin enters into Thomas Jefferson's world of ideas. By analysing writings of 'the Jeffersonian Circle,' Boorstin explores concepts of God, nature, equality, toleration, education and government in order to illuminate their underlying world view. The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson demonstrates why on the 250th anniversary of his birth, this American leader's message has remained relevant to our national crises and grand concerns. "The volume is too subtle, (...) too rich in ideas for anyone to do justice to it in brief summary, too heavily documented and too carefully wrought for anyone to dismiss its thesis. . . . It is a major contribution not only to Jefferson studies but to American intellectual history. . . . All who work in the history of ideas will find themselves in Mr. Boorstin's debt."—Richard Hofstadter, South Atlantic Monthly. (shrink)

“It may be thought that I am prejudiced. Perhaps I am. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not.” 1 When Mark Twain undertook correspondence for San Francisco’s Alta California on a $1250 trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867 he had an established reputation as a humorist and was on the cusp of making the transition from journalist to author. Innocents Abroad, “an unvarnished tale” 2 published in 1869 and sewn together with questionable regard for (...) coherence or thematic consistency, sold thirty-one thousand copies in one year. Only Uncle Tom’s Cabin had done better, as Twain himself noted. What made his work such a success? “This book is the record of a pleasure trip” , Twain declared, yet there had already been innumerable pleasure trips and by more established authors than he. The multiplicity and seemingly contradictory narrative stances in Innocents makes any essentialist reading hard to establish and what one stance purports is as likely and easy to prove as any other. In the main though, two bodies of criticism have prevailed hitherto, one seeing the text as flawed by internal discontinuities, the other perceiving that disjointed narration need not preclude a unified authorial consciousness. It is my contention that Twain most likely wrote with at least five entirely separate purposes in mind, none of which coexisted simultaneously: i. The profit, reputation and contractual fulfilment to be had in writing c. 1500 words to newspapers daily. ii. The demonstrable acquisition of high society vocabulary and cultural regard commended by Mrs. Fairbanks and Olivia Langdom. iii. An arrant attack upon Presbyterianism. iv. A break with the codified genre of travel writing. v. The promotion of Twain as healer of a wounded nation. Point v) has gone largely neglected by critics. Yet Twain’s role as a unifier in post Civil-War society, as projector of national identity abroad for the benefit of domestic patriotism, and as healer of war-torn America is a cornerstone to our understanding Innocents. As shall be seen, shades of mental/national injury coexist in the text, alongside a humorous denigration of foreigners. The resultant implied superiority of America and Americans, notwithstanding Twain’s passing jabs at them and in spite of their bloody internecine conflict, is what I term “imperial therapy.”. (shrink)

The paper explores the philosophical treatment of sacrifice in four of Jiří Menzel’s films of the 1960’s, Closely observed trains (Ostře sledované vlaky), Capricious summer (Rozmarné léto), Mr Balthazar’s death (Smrt pana Baltazara), his short film contribution to the anthology film of the New Wave, Pearls of the deep (Perličky na dně), and Larks on a string (Skřivánci na niti). The paper argues that Menzel problematizes romanticized versions of messianic sacrifice as they all too easily disregard the moral significance of (...) mundane relations. By analysing the treatment of sacrifice in each of these films, the paper makes a case for the significance of Menzel’s treatment of sacrifice for current philosophical debates. (shrink)

El artículo indaga la legitimidad libertaria de las fronteras estatales para excluir inmigrantes. Se sostiene que en estas teorías la legitimidad de las fronteras se construye mediante la legitimidad de la propiedad. El artículo analiza las teorías libertarias de Nozick y Steiner y argumenta contra la idea de que el derecho de propiedad libertario permite excluir en las fronteras y sostiene que las condiciones de legitimidad de la propiedad implican una potestad estatal reducida para controlar fronteras. Si bien en (...) un mundo ideal las comunidades dispondrían del poder total para controlarlas, en nuestro mundo imperfecto los estados carecen de esa potestad. (shrink)

Medical professionals often deny patients who inject opioids a second or third heart valve replacement, even if such a surgery is medically indicated. However, such a position is not well defended. As this paper demonstrates, the ethical literature on the topic too often fails to develop and apply an ethical lens to analyse the issue of multiple valve replacements. This paper addresses this lacuna by analysing the case of Mr Walsh, a composite case which protects the identity of any one (...) patient, through the principlist approach of Beauchamp and Childress. It argues that the hospital should offer Mr Walsh, a second valve replacement because the procedure is: medically indicated, autonomously requested, non-maleficent, beneficent and does not violate a formal account of justice. The paper concludes with clinical ethical guidelines for valve surgery for patients with opioid use disorder. (shrink)

PRESIDENT BUSH, announcing this month that he was in favor of teaching about "intelligent design" in the schools, said, "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." A couple of weeks later, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, made the same point. Teaching both intelligent design and evolution "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone," Mr. Frist said. "I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about (...) education and training people for the future.". (shrink)

Soon after modern spiritualism announced itself with the “Rochester knockings” of 1848, tables took on a new and controversial life. No longer were they content to live out their days impassively upholding dishes and glasses and silverware, vases, papers and books, bibelots, elbows, or weary heads. They were changed: they began to move. Tables all over the United States and then in England, France, and other countries commenced rapping, knocking, tilting, turning, tapping, dancing, levitating, and even “thrilling”—though this last was (...) uncommon. So Mrs. Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan said in her discussion of Daniel Dunglas Home, probably the most famous nineteenth-century medium:It is only in Mr. Home’s presence that I have witnessed that very curious appearance, or process, the thrilling of the table. This takes place for some seconds, perhaps more, before it rises from the floor. The last time I witnessed this phenomenon, an acute surgeon present said that this thrilling, the genuineness of which was unmistakable, was exactly like what takes place in that affection of the muscles called subsultus tendinum.2And the tables did still more. Their actions were a language; and so they came to symbolize “the ‘movement,’ as it has been called,”3 of modern spiritualism. Spirits had chosen the table as an organ of speech.Tables were customarily viewed as objects of economics, aesthetics, utility, diversion, tradition, even theology . Now, though, as Professor De Morgan jokes, “London and Paris were running after tables in a new sense.”4 Tables had become a different kind of thing. Whatever one might think about reports of spiritual communications, the conception of tables had changed. They had become moral objects. 2. C. D. [Mrs. Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan], From Matter to Spirit. The Result of Ten Years’ Experience in Spirit Manifestations, with a preface by A. B. [Augustus De Morgan] , p. 27. Daniel Cottom is an associate professor of English at the University of Florida. His most recent books are Social Figures: George Eliot, Social History, and Literary Representation and Text and Culture: The Politics of Interpretation . This essay is adapted from a work in progress on spiritualism and surrealism. (shrink)

Mrs. P is a seventy‐six‐year old woman with osteoporosis and a failed left hip prosthesis. In addition, she has severe chronic asthmatic bronchitis. The management of her lung disease has been hampered by her allergy to theophylline, which is one of the mainstays of treatment. As a result, she has had increasing difficulty walking and confinement to a wheelchair is imminent. When surgery to replace the prosthesis was recommended, Mrs. P expressed concern about the possibility of ending up after the (...) operation dependent on a ventilator, possibly comatose. She feared that her resources would be depleted for medical expenses. Little or nothing would be left to pass on to her children. She was willing to have an operation only if she could prepare a legal document that, in the event of prolonged ventilator dependence, would require her physician to remove her from the ventilator after a specified time (for example, two weeks). Should the surgeon agree to be bound by Mrs. P's instructions, or should he refuse her request even if doing so means that she will not have the surgery that might prevent increasing disability? (shrink)

Weaver birds create intricate nests; sculptors and other artists and artisans also create intricate, ingenious constructions out of similar materials. The products may look similar, and outwardly the creative processes that create those processes may look similar, but there are surely large and important differences between them. What are they, and how important are they? The weaverbird nestmaking is ‘instinctual,’ and ‘controlled by the genes’ some would say, but we know that this is a crude approximation of a more interesting (...) truth, involving an intricate interplay between genetic variation, long-term developmental and environmental interaction and short-term environmental variation–in opportunities and materials accessible at the time of nest building. And on the side of the human creator, a similarly complex story must be told. Genes play some role surely (think of the likelihood of heritable differences in musical aptitude, for instance), but so do both long-term and short-term environmental interactions. The myth of the artist “blessed†by a spark of ‘divine genius’ is even cruder and more distorted than the myth of the birdnest as a simple product of a gene–as if it were a protein.                Our thinking about human creativity is pulled out of shape somewhat by a famous contrast introduced to the world by Darwin. One of his earliest–and most outraged–critics summed it up vividly:   In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin's meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the achievements of creative skill.. (shrink)

Daniel Marcelle, Aron Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch, Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective, Dordrecht: Springer, 2009; Volume II: Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, Dordrecht: Springer, 2010; Volume III: The Field of Consciousness: Theme, Thematic Field, and Margin, Dordrecht: Springer, 2010; Claudia Șerban, Jean-Luc Marion, Certitudes negatives, Paris: Grasset, 2010; Christian Rössner, Hans-Dieter Gondek, László Tengelyi, Neue Phanomenologie in Frankreich, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011; Daniel Dwyer, Hans-Helmuth Gander, Husserl-Lexikon, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010; Délia Popa, Jean-François Lavigne, (...) Acceder au transcendantal? Reduction et idealisme transcendantal dans les Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie pure et une philosophie phénoménologique de Husserl, Paris: Vrin, 2009; Mădălina Diaconu, Lambert Wiesing, Das Mich der Wahrnehmung. Eine Autopsie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009; Mădălina Diaconu, Sam B. Girgus, Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption. Time, Ethics, and the Feminine, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010; Rolf Kühn, Frédéric Seyler, ≪ Barbarie ou culture ≫ : L’ethique de l’affectivitedans la phenomenologie de Michel Henry, Paris: Kimé, 2010; Stephan Steiner, Mette Lebech, On the Problem of Human Dignity. A Hermeneutical and henomenological Investigation, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009. (shrink)

In this 1970 introduction to philosophy Mr Taylor concentrates on two central topics - explanation and meaning. He takes the argument far enough to acquaint the reader first-hand with the methods and approach of analytical philosophy, and yet because of the scope of these two topics he is able to introduce many of the traditional philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and logic. By this approach he avoids the dangers both of superficiality and of undue technicality. Philosophers are concerned (...) to analyse and describe certain concepts and modes of argument, not to establish facts or conclusions of any sort that can be tested by formal demonstration or controlled observation; their findings cannot be conveniently categorized or graded into a comprehensive and progressive course of studies. Mr Taylor meets this difficulty with his extended discussions of specific topics and questions which have implications over the whole subject. (shrink)

The Morphogenetic Régulation approach (MR) contributes to the Morphogenetic Approach by explaining the material and ideational origins of change and stasis in agency, structure, and culture. In this paper, we focus on the expressive quality of ideas and systemic persistence in three research projects. The first demystifies inclusive governance and its adverse impacts. It shows how, contrary to institutions of governance, inclusiveness is not simply a norm but actually the explication of corporate agents’ ideas about rational choice institutionalism which leads (...) to adverse impacts on vulnerable groups and ecologies known as adverse inclusion. The second investigates the role of ideas as adequacy and self-explication in guiding Palestinian actors’ actions towards the deepening of neoliberalization in Palestine. The third explains the relevance of the systemic persistence problematique for understanding how three juxtaposed themes – Web2, Web3, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) – are shaping the political economy and infrastructure of the Internet. (shrink)

Childress and colleagues (2023) review several arguments that would support the unilateral withdrawal of ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) against the wishes of a capacitated patient (Mr....

Les défis permanents, mais très actuels, liés aux questions éducatives nécessitent d'enrichir les ressources à disposition des enseignants, des formateurs, des éducateurs... Cet ouvrage propose de re-découvrir des réflexions et des propositions d'auteurs soucieux de renforcer la relation entre l'apprenant et le savoir, entre apprenants, entre apprenants et adultes-référents favorisant l'émergence d'un homme rigoureux intellectuellement et pleinement équilibré. Ce travail s'appuie sur des contributions diversifiées permettant de disposer de nouvelles clés pour exercer au quotidien un métier sans cesse en questionnement. (...) On appréciera ce travail de synthèse mettant à la portée de chacun les enseignements de Jung, Krishnamurti, La Garanderie, Rogers, Steiner, mais également les apports du yoga, d'une éducation à la joie, à la recherche du sens... (shrink)

On April 16, 2007, Cho Seung-Hui used two semiautomatic handguns to kill 32 persons and then himself at Virginia Tech University in the largest campus shooting in U.S. history. Mr. Cho purchased his handguns from a pawnshop and a gun store in Virginia, where under state law a background check was conducted to determine whether he had any disqualifying criminal or mental health history. The paperwork for the background check was completed at the gun store, and the check itself was (...) conducted through an “instant” system facilitated by a toll-free telephone number. The entire transaction took approximately 20 minutes. At no point was Mr. Cho asked why he wished to purchase the guns. And although he had been deemed a potential danger to himself by a state magistrate in 2005 – which should have disqualified his purchase of a gun under federal law – this information never reached those conducting the background check. (shrink)

In 1661, Samuel pepys arranged for his portrait to be painted for the first time. In his diary pepys refers to the painter only as ‘Mr Savill’. Using a range of archival sources, this Note conclusively identifies him as Daniel Savile, a successful City of London artist whose career has not previously been recognised. Savile catered to those men and women who could not afford the services of a ‘great’ painter such as peter Lely or Samuel Cooper. Savile’s interactions (...) with pepys offer insights into the pleasures and challenges of portrait commissioning in the Restoration. The records of Savile’s business also reveal that that he was responsible for training a significant proportion of the young women apprenticed to the painter-Stainers’ Company—an area of female employment about which little is known. The evidence about Savile’s studio allows us to deduce the potential benefits of such apprenticeship arrangements for the young women, for their employers, and for sitters. Together pepys’s diary and the records of Savile’s life illuminate the ways that painters and sitters from the middling sort negotiated the artistic culture of seventeenth-century London. (shrink)

A Mathematical Review by John Corcoran, SUNY/Buffalo -/- Macbeth, Danielle Diagrammatic reasoning in Frege's Begriffsschrift. Synthese 186 (2012), no. 1, 289–314. ABSTRACT This review begins with two quotations from the paper: its abstract and the first paragraph of the conclusion. The point of the quotations is to make clear by the “give-them-enough-rope” strategy how murky, incompetent, and badly written the paper is. I know I am asking a lot, but I have to ask you to read the quoted passages—aloud if (...) possible. Don’t miss the silly attempt to recycle Kant’s quip “Concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind”. What the paper was aiming at includes the absurdity: “Proofs without definitions are empty; definitions without proofs are, if not blind, then dumb.” But the author even bollixed this. The editor didn’t even notice. The copy-editor missed it. And the author’s proof-reading did not catch it. In order not to torment you I will quote the sentence as it appears: “In a slogan: proofs without definitions are empty, merely the aimless manipulation of signs according to rules; and definitions without proofs are, if no blind, then dumb.”[sic] The rest of my review discusses the paper’s astounding misattribution to contemporary logicians of the information-theoretic approach. This approach was cruelly trashed by Quine in his 1970 Philosophy of Logic, and thereafter ignored by every text I know of. The paper under review attributes generally to modern philosophers and logicians views that were never espoused by any of the prominent logicians—such as Hilbert, Gödel, Tarski, Church, and Quine—apparently in an attempt to distance them from Frege: the focus of the article. On page 310 we find the following paragraph. “In our logics it is assumed that inference potential is given by truth-conditions. Hence, we think, deduction can be nothing more than a matter of making explicit information that is already contained in one’s premises. If the deduction is valid then the information contained in the conclusion must be contained already in the premises; if that information is not contained already in the premises […], then the argument cannot be valid.” Although the paper is meticulous in citing supporting literature for less questionable points, no references are given for this. In fact, the view that deduction is the making explicit of information that is only implicit in premises has not been espoused by any standard symbolic logic books. It has only recently been articulated by a small number of philosophical logicians from a younger generation, for example, in the prize-winning essay by J. Sagüillo, Methodological practice and complementary concepts of logical consequence: Tarski’s model-theoretic consequence and Corcoran’s information-theoretic consequence, History and Philosophy of Logic, 30 (2009), pp. 21–48. The paper omits definitions of key terms including ‘ampliative’, ‘explicatory’, ‘inference potential’, ‘truth-condition’, and ‘information’. The definition of prime number on page 292 is as follows: “To say that a number is prime is to say that it is not divisible without remainder by another number”. This would make one be the only prime number. The paper being reviewed had the benefit of two anonymous referees who contributed “very helpful comments on an earlier draft”. Could these anonymous referees have read the paper? -/- J. Corcoran, U of Buffalo, SUNY -/- PS By the way, if anyone has a paper that has been turned down by other journals, any journal that would publish something like this might be worth trying. (shrink)

The three papers which follow this meeting report by Paul J. Friedman , Daniel Steiner , and Joost P. H. Drenth were presented at the symposium reviewed above.

In Daniel Manus Pinkwater's quirkily illustrated book, The Big Orange Splot, a strange accident leads a man to change his life. The book presents an important claim that the existentialists and other philosophers have embraced: That the life of conformity is one that people ought to avoid, despite its attractiveness. Instead of living a life just like everyone else and fulfilling expectations that others have for us, our lives should resemble the transformed facades of all the homes on Mr. (...) Plumbean's street: reflections of our own, individual dreams. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:142 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Das literarische und kiinstlerische Werk. By Rudolf Steiner. Eine bibliographische Uebersicht, 1961. (Dornaeh: 1961. Pp. 277.) This is a complete list of the writings, lectures, and artistic creations of the founder of Anthroposophy, Dr. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). It is, in addition, a description of the Temple of Anthroposophy, the "Goetheanum" in Dornach built after the ideas of Steiner, of his "mystery-plays," of (...) his ideas on "eurhythmy," of his designs of furnishings for the "Goetheanum," of his sculptural suggestions, etc. Thus, the booklet encompasses the whole life-work of Steiner and was published in 1961 at the 100th anniversary of his birth. It is prefaced by a biographical sketch based on Steiner's "Autobiography." Rudolf Steiner was the son of a railway employer from Lower Austria. He studied first in technical high schools (Realschule) in the neighborhood of the Austrian capital and then in the Technical University of u In the high school, he was already most impressed by the study of geometry and arithmetic because they seemed to show that there is an independent realm of thought not connected with the world of senses. This conviction led him to a lifelong search for a spiritual world beyond and above the visible world. While this impulse was rather scientific than religious, it led him also into the theosophical movement, then headed by Mrs. Annie Besant in London. But this connection was broken when Mrs. Besant wanted to appoint a young Hindu to be a reincarnation of Christ. This was unacceptable to Steiner and he founded the independent anthroposophical movement in Germany where he spent most of his life writing, teaching, and lecturing. His first writings were commentaries to the work~ of Goethe oa natural sciences. Goethe thus became the "heros eponymus" of Anthroposophy. In 1913, Steiner started to build the Temple of Anthroposophy at Dornaeh (Switzerland) which he called "Goetheanum." This temple, the details of the structure, its style, its furniture were supposed to be symbolical of.the ideas contained in Anthroposophy. In a cycle of lectures entitled "What was the purpose of the Goetheanum?" and "What is the purpose of Anthroposophy?" he states that this aim was the "exaltation of the human cognitive power into imagination, inspiration, and intuition." The results of this exaltation were a somewhat complicated and phantastic mysticism. The Goetheanum, which, for symbolical reasons, was built of wood, burned to the ground in 1922. Starting in 1924, it was replaced by a building in concrete. Steiner did not live to see the reconstructed Temple because he died in 1925. Steiner tried to invent new forms of art in his Goetheanum, new forms of dramatic poetry in his mystery-plays, and new forms of a spiritualized symbolic dance in his "eurhythmy." His life-work is prodigious. Apart from his writings he gave some 6,000 lectures. MAx RIESER New York City Gegenw~rtiges und Vergangenes im Menschengeiste. By Rudolf Steiner. (Dornach: 1962. Pp. 308.) This is a new printing in the framework of the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner of twelve lectures given during World War I in Berlin in 1916. These lectures are historically interesting since they refer to contemporary publications in Germany and Austria, but they also offer in nuce the main elements of "Anthroposophy" in the form of an anthroposophical anthropology and also of an anthroposophical philosophy of cosmic and human history. The whole is based on the assumption of the existence of a spiritual world paralleling the physical world. This anthropology is aimed at the refutation of the materialistic conceptions based on the natural sciences of that time. Steiner thinks that a man built according to the ideas of the natural sciences would not be a living being but a sort of "homunculus," i.e., an automaton. Apart from the physical body, man has an "ethereal body," an "astral body," and an "Ego." These three entities do not die a physical death. In addition they represent the world of animals, of plants, and of minerals, respectively, incorporated in man. There are also different epochs of human development in which the relationship of the spiritual parts of the human being were not related to each other in the same... (shrink)

Jeffrey (1983) proposed a generalization of conditioning as a means of updating probability distributions when new evidence drives no event to certainty. His rule requires the stability of certain conditional probabilities through time. We tested this assumption (“invariance”) from the psychological point of view. In Experiment 1 participants offered probability estimates for events in Jeffrey’s candlelight example. Two further scenarios were investigated in Experiment 2, one in which invariance seems justified, the other in which it does not. Results were in (...) rough conformity to Jeffrey (1983)’s principle. (shrink)

Review of Daniel Cook, Hartmut Rudolph, and Christoph Schulte, editors. _Leibniz und das Judentum_. Studia Leibnitiana Sonderhefte, 34. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008. Pp. 283.

Probably few scholars would now doubt that at least the bulk of the matter both of Servius' commentary on Virgil and of the additions to it which were first printed by Daniel descends from Donatus. The problem of these additions has been approached by a number of writers from different directions, and different lines of evidence have been found to converge on one conclusion. An important contribution to the discussion has recently been made by J. J. Savage in a (...) thorough study of the multifarious scholia contained in the well-known Bernensis 165 and some other Virgil manuscripts.1 He shows that some of these scholia go back to a commentary which was fuller than that of Servius, and which moreover was related both to S and to D.2 Other fragments of such a commentary are to be found by those who have the patience to sift the rubbish of the Latin glossaries,3 and also, among other sources, in Isidore, who is all the more useful for his habit of verbal transcription.4 When material of this kind is found, there is a strong temptation to say ‘Here is Donatus,’ and one can hardly doubt that that is where much of it ultimately comes from; but the question how far we may assume that the words of Donatus are directly reproduced can hardly yet be regarded as satisfactorily answered. I have before ventured to doubt whether Donatus was the immediate source of D.5 Professor Rand and Mr. Savage think that he was, that the compiler of SD supplemented S with material which S had not reproduce from Donatus the statement to which S had objected. (shrink)