This major study examines the most fundamental categories in terms of which we conceive of ourselves, critically surveying the concepts of substance, causation, agency, teleology, rationality, mind, body and person, and elaborating the conceptual fields in which they are embedded. The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind Written by one of the world’s leading philosophers, the co-author of the monumental 4 volume _Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations_ Uses broad (...) categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters. (shrink)

We analyse the extent of possible computations following Hogarth ([2004]) conducted in Malament–Hogarth (MH) spacetimes, and Etesi and Németi ([2002]) in the special subclass containing rotating Kerr black holes. Hogarth ([1994]) had shown that any arithmetic statement could be resolved in a suitable MH spacetime. Etesi and Németi ([2002]) had shown that some relations on natural numbers that are neither universal nor co-universal, can be decided in Kerr spacetimes, and had asked specifically as to the extent of computational limits there. (...) The purpose of this note is to address this question, and further show that MH spacetimes can compute far beyond the arithmetic: effectively Borel statements (so hyperarithmetic in second-order number theory, or the structure of analysis) can likewise be resolved: Theorem A. If H is any hyperarithmetic predicate on integers, then there is an MH spacetime in which any query ? n H ? can be computed. In one sense this is best possible, as there is an upper bound to computational ability in any spacetime, which is thus a universal constant of that spacetime. Theorem C. Assuming the (modest and standard) requirement that spacetime manifolds be paracompact and Hausdorff, for any spacetime there will be a countable ordinal upper bound, , on the complexity of questions in the Borel hierarchy computable in it. Introduction 1.1 History and preliminaries Hyperarithmetic Computations in MH Spacetimes 2.1 Generalising SADn regions 2.2 The complexity of questions decidable in Kerr spacetimes An Upper Bound on Computational Complexity for Each Spacetime CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Gordon Baker and I had been colleagues at St John’s for almost ten years when we resolved, in 1976, to undertake the task of writing a commentary on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. We had been talking about Wittgenstein since 1969, and when we cooperated in writing a long critical notice on the Philosophical Grammar in 1975, we found that working together was mutually instructive, intellectually stimulating and great fun. We thought that we still had much to say about Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and (...) it seemed to us that misinterpretations of passages in the Investigations were so extensive that it would be worth trying to write a detailed analytical commentary. It is difficult to recapture the excitement of those early days in being among the first to work on the microfilms and, subsequently, on the photocopies of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. We spent many hundreds of hours poring over the typescripts and the often only semi-legible manuscripts, fascinated and privileged to be able to try to follow the development of the thoughts of a great philosophical genius. We talked endlessly about what we had found in Wittgenstein’s manuscripts and typescripts, and debated how it should be understood. The first fruit of our labours was Wittgenstein – Understanding and Meaning. Its guiding idea was to draw attention to the manner in which Wittgenstein linked the concepts of meaning, understanding and explanation, and so to bypass the connections between meaning, truth and truth-conditions that so fascinated philosophers of the 1970s, and to abandon the red-herring of assertion-conditions and anti-realism. After a hiatus of four years, during which time we wrote a controversial book entitled Frege – Logical Excavations and a polemical book on contemporary philosophy of language – Language, Sense. (shrink)

This article, written by a former justice of the Supreme Court of India and chairman of the Press Council of India, describes the media accountability system in India and argues for the global necessity for such systems. It declares the need for free press systems for the survival of democratic institutions and claims that society has an obligation to monitor media systems so they remain free. The alternative will be government regulation, which will suspend the vital characteristics of a free (...) press. A press council, on the other hand, can work more cooperatively with the press to assure responsibility. Global forces make it important for the mass media to explore the virtues inherent in media accountability systems, such as press councils. This article suggests why those systems are increasingly important, proposes structures and functions for such councils, and uses the Press Council of India as an example of a working organization. (shrink)

We study the response of a uniformly accelerated model particle detector in a spacetime with compact spatial sections. The basic thermal character of the response re-emerges, in spite of the fact that the spacetime does not possess event horizons. Our model also permits a study of detector response to twisted field states.

Entertainments and celebrations are meant to give audiences and participants pleasure. Pleasure and enjoyment are an integral part of flourishing human life, and the desire for pleasure and enjoyment is a distinctive aspect of human nature. Psychological hedonism is a descriptive doctrine concerned with giving an account of actual human motivation. Ethical hedonism is a prescriptive doctrine that advances the view that human beings ought to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, that prospective pleasure and pain are severally the only good (...) reasons for action. ‘Pleasure’, ‘enjoyment’, and ‘being pleased’ are three graces that stand at the intersection of psychology, axiology, and practical reasoning. The relation between pleasure and awareness or consciousness of pleasure is subtle and unlike the corresponding relation to having a pain. To live the life of a practical hedonist is to live a life guided by the pursuit of pleasure. (shrink)

Striving to find a simple characterization of the essence of the imagination, philosophers have argued that it consists in the power to call up before the mind mental images, either in recollection and recognition or in fancy. Wittgenstein's interest in the imagination focused upon six interrelated themes. First, the concept of imagination is associated with the concept of a mental image. Second, imagination is connected in various ways with perception. Third, the faculty of imagination is associated with artistic creativity and (...) no less so with intellectual creativity, with originality, insight and deviation from stock solutions to problems. Fourth, 'to imagine' is connected not only with intellectual creativity, but also more generally with thought, conception or supposition. Fifth, 'to imagine' is associated with false belief, mistaken memory and misperception. Finally, the imagination is connected with make‐believe, pretence, play‐acting or idle fancy. The multitude of grammatical similarities between the visual imagination and visual perception is deceptive. (shrink)

We investigate the Sp(2, R) model for light and heavy nuclei and compare it to recent applications of the Sp(6, R) model. The same Hamiltonian is used and the basis states will have good angular momentum. We not only confirm that the restricted space of the Sp(6, R) model gives the dominant contribution but also that there is no practical difference from the Sp(6, R) model calculations. The Sp(2, R) model is then applied to the chain of Ba-isotopes which show, (...) according to a recent application of the geometrical model, a dominant prolate behavior with an important γ-unstable component. They represent limiting cases where the Sp(2, R) model can be put to an extreme test. (shrink)

Upshot: Time constraints, locked curriculums, strict management, and possible anarchy in the classroom are some of the themes that originated from the commentaries. I argue that these challenges should be viewed holistically in the broader picture. I also question the educator’s role in mitigating these obstacles. My advice: Do it anyway.

This chapter contains sections titled: Background The Tractatus The role of the Tractatus in the history of analytic philosophy The collapse of the Tractatus vision The Philosophical Investigations Philosophy of language Philosophy of mind The critique of metaphysics and nature of philosophy Wittgenstein's place in postwar analytic philosophy Notes Bibliography.

The physical world consists of relatively enduring objects that exist in an objective spatiotemporal framework, that consist of matter of one kind or another, and that interact with each other in physical processes and events. In the course of his reflections on the idea of a private language, and more generally in his ruminations on psychology and the philosophy of psychology, Wittgenstein subjected the traditional philosophical picture to critical scrutiny. In every respect he found it a distortion of grammar in (...) the flawed mirror of metaphysics. The concept of pain‐location is parasitic on the concept of the sufferer from pain, for the location of a pain is where the sufferer points and where he avows it is. Frege presented the idea that pains (experiences in general) are inalienably owned by the person whose pains or experiences they are as a metaphysical insight into the essential nature of things. (shrink)