By appeal to the phenomenon of presupposition accommodation, Rae Langton and others have proposed that speakers can gain genuine authority over their audiences when they implicitly claim such autho...

Courts and jurors sometimes refuse to assign liability to defendants on the basis of statistics alone, despite their apparent reliability. I argue that this refusal is best understood as a recognition of defendants’ right to security. Understood as a robust good in Philip Pettit’s sense, security requires that someone risking harm to others’ protected interests adopt a disposition of concern that controls against wrongfully harming them. Since trials risk harm, the state must adopt such a disposition. Statistics leave open the (...) possibility of innocence and so wrongful harm in a way that the state cannot ignore; if it does use such statistics, it makes defendants wrongfully insecure. This explanation of the problem of bare statistical evidence is especially apt because security grounds the right to a fair trial and judicial procedural rights more generally. (shrink)

Savīyahʹhā-yi maʻrifatʹāfarīn-i nafs -- Falsafah-yi Ṣadrā -- Falsafahʹī barā-yi zīstan-i safar-i ʻishq.

Did Alcidamas invent the story of the contest of Homer and Hesiod? Martin West has argued that he did , 433 ff.). I believe that there are a number of reasons for thinking this improbable. The stories of the deaths of Homer and Hesiod were traditional before Alcidamas. Heraclitus knew the legend of the riddle of the lice and Homer's death , and the story of Hesiod's death was well known by Thucydides’ time . The first attempt to record information (...) about Homer's life is ascribed to Theagenes of Rhegium, in the late sixth century b.c. . By that time it seems likely that there was already a considerable body of legends about the early poets. The pieces of hexameter verse in the Herodotean Life of Homer, some of which show detailed knowledge of the area around Smyrna in the archaic period, probably date from before 500 b.c. In relating the stories of the poets’ deaths Alcidamas is recording the results of στορα, and this is what he implies in Michigan papyrus 2754 . West's theory requires one to assume that he has incorporated with these traditions his own fiction of the contest. This seems to me to go against what we know in general about the activity of sophists such as Alcidamas. Although they were capable of inventing myths , there is no evidence that they created such stories about earlier historical figures, rather than collecting popular legends about them, and using these for their own purposes. It is true that Critias used the evidence of Archilochus’ own poetry to draw conclusions about his life . But this is not the same as inventing a story virtually from scratch. Hesiod's own testimony about his poetic victory , the original starting-point for the legend of the contest with Homer, did not on its own provide a basis from which such inferences could be drawn. It seems more likely that the legend is the product of earlier popular embroidery, at a time when speculation about these early poets’ lives was becoming common. (shrink)

The question to be discussed in this paper can be put in simple terms: at what date were the collections of scholia on classical Greek authors compiled? Scholars have given two conflicting answers. The first was put forward by J. W. White in his edition of the scholia to Aristophanes' Birds. Developing an opinion of Dindorf, he suggested that the archetype of the scholia was a large parchment codex of the fourth or fifth century, which contained in the margins a (...) commentary drawn from several sources. A very similar view has been expressed about the scholia to Apollonius Rhodius and Pindar. (shrink)

The relation of the special and the general principle of relativity to the principle of covariance, the principle of equivalence and Mach's principle, is discussed. In particular, the connection between Lorentz covariance and the special principle of relativity is illustrated by giving Lorentz covariant formulations of laws that violate the special principle of relativity: Ohm's law and what we call “Aristotle's first and second laws.” An “Aristotelian” universe in which all motion is relative to “absolute space” is considered. The first (...) law: a free particle is at rest. The second law: force is proportional to velocity. Ohm's law: the current density is proportional to the electrical field strength. Neither of these laws fulfills the principle of relativity. The examples illustrate, in the context of Lorentz covariance and special relativity, Kretschmann's critique of founding Einstein's general principle of relativity on the principle of general covariance. A modification of the principle of covariance is suggested, which may serve as a restricted criterium for a physical law to satisfy Einstein's general principle of relativity. Other objections that have been raised to the validity of Einstein's general principle of relativity are based upon the preferred state of inertial frames in the general, as well as in the special theory, the existence of tidal effects in “true” gravitational fields, doubts as to the validity of Mach's principle, whether electromagnetic phenomena obey the principle, and, finally, the anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation. These objections are reviewed and discussed. (shrink)

Aproximación al pensamiento de Rodolfo Kusch -- Canto e identidad en el Martín Fierro según Carlos Astrada y Rodolfo Kusch -- Donde el barro se subleva -- La rehabilitación del saber seminal como camino hacia una mística popular -- Kusch y el impulso social de nuestra época -- La barbarización de la civilización, una grieta de antaño -- ¿De dónde pensarnos?

Articles, chiefly on Islamic philosophy.

This paper answers the title question, “Yes,” on both counts. The first part of the paper argues that modern liberals are socialists, and the second part argues that they are also social democrats. The main idea behind the first argument is that the state has effectively taken control of the incidents of ownership through its taxation, spending, and regulatory policies. The main idea behind the second argument is that the institutions of social democracy are replicated by the institutions favored by (...) modern American liberalism. Specifically, the takeover of the American healthcare system, Social Security, employers' mandatory contributions to unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation insurance replicate the institutions of social democracy. (shrink)

Ukraine has a special geopolitical location in Europe - between East and West, South and North. The specificity of this provision is due to multi-year contacts between peoples who lived or passed through its territory, the interactions of different cultures, traditions and worldviews. As a result, there is a rather varied ethno-national and religious palette of Ukrainian population. In today's conditions of building an independent state and civil society, this can be both a positive and a negative factor. Recent events (...) and practices show that the problem of religious and ethnic renaissance has acquired a special political and spiritual significance. Different directions of Christianity, other religions, existing for centuries on the Ukrainian ethnic basis, have been influenced by a wide range of social and national life. In addition, ethno-national and religious processes took place differently in the western and eastern regions of Ukraine, in the village and in the city. (shrink)

The essence оf the Christian dogma by Erich Fromm. In the article is widely considered the dynamics of religious beliefs Erich Fromm. For the first time a comparative analysis of all Fromm’s work relating to the theme of religion. Fromm devoted to the search itself and society in faith quite a lot of time because such research is very important and requires a recess in the nature of some of the world’s religions, including Christianity. Questions and countermeasures manifestations of humanism (...) and authoritarian Christianity, its historical evolution and ideals throw a kind of challenge to the outstanding philosopher, and forced him to work on this complex issue almost all his life. Dogma Erich Fromm developed so that initially there was an idea of the man who became God, and turned on the idea of God became man. The concept of the Old Testament prophets world extend beyond relationships between people, harmony should prevail between man and nature. Peace between man and nature is harmony between them. Erich Fromm permanently broke with Judaism in ‘26 and has since considered himself a Christian. But Christianity Fromm, his understanding of God, the role of Christ in history, the interpretation of the evolution of ideas and Savior is surprising for its boldness. (shrink)