In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminism and Classics:Framing the Research AgendaBarbara K. GoldA landmark conference on "Feminism and Classics: Framing the Research Agenda" was held at Princeton University on November 7-10, 1996; the coorganizers were Janet M. Martin (Princeton University) and Judith P. Hallett (University of Maryland). This conference is the second in a series of more-or-less triennial meetings devoted to feminist research in various areas of classical studies. The first of these conferences (...) ("Feminism and Classics I") was held at the University of Cincinnati in 1992 and was codirected by Kathryn J. Gutzwiller and Ann N. Michelini (both of the University of Cincinnati; for a review of this conference see Clara Hardy and Kirk Ormand, BMCR 4.2 [1993] 135-41).The goals of the Princeton conference were several:mdash To address the evidential deficiencies of the traditional classical literary canon-by examining new kinds of sources and evidence, particularly nonliterary texts and material culture; and by giving increased attention to the ancient Near East and Africa (especially Egypt) as well as to post-classical Greek and Latin texts;mdash To address the methodological inadequacies of traditional historical and philological approaches-by applying the new literary and textual criticism and theory to the traditional classical literary canon as well as to nonliterary and postclassical texts; by adopting comparative approaches to the study of ancient sexuality and gender; and by considering women (in addition to men) as agents in the transmission of the classical tradition;mdash To clarify, illuminate, and evaluate the relations between classical scholarship and the politics of social change-by defining the actual and potential relations among feminist studies, gender studies, and women's studies, and the relation of classical studies to each; by examining the variety of relations that feminist and other scholarship can have to the politics of social change; and by addressing the role of theory in feminist scholarship in classics.The conference was divided into four plenary sessions, each one devoted to a core area of feminist scholarly research in classics: The Historical Recovery of Ancient Women (Speakers: Shelby Brown, UCLA [End Page 328] and Alan Shapiro, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Discussants: Barry S. Strauss, Cornell University and Sandra R. Joshel, New England Conservatory of Music); Women and the Classical Tradition (Speakers: Joan M. Ferrante, Columbia University and Shelley P. Haley, Hamilton College; Discussants: Diana Robin, University of New Mexico and Judith P. Hallett, University of Maryland); Feminist Literary Studies and the Construction of Sexuality and Gender in the Ancient World (Speakers: David Konstan, Brown University and Barbara K. Gold, Hamilton College; Discussants: Ellen Oliensis, Yale University and Ruth Webb, Princeton University); Feminism and Classics in the Next Century: Feminist Studies, Gender Studies, Women's Studies (Speakers: Peter W. Rose, Miami University of Ohio and Nancy F. Partner, McGill University; Discussants: Sarah B. Pomeroy, Hunter College and CUNY and Amy Richlin, University of Southern California).In addition to the four plenary sessions, there was a rich variety of discussion and presentation in other formats: opening and closing roundtables (including, in addition to some of the speakers and organizers, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Hamilton College, Barbara M. McManus, College of New Rochelle, Bella Zweig, University of Arizona, Kathryn J. Gutzwiller, and Ann N. Michelini, both of the University of Cincinnati); the keynote address by Ernestine Friedl, Duke University; and sixteen interactive workshops, which followed up on the topics of the plenary sessions. These covered topics as broad as "Reading Gender in Epigraphical Text and Context" (Susan Guettel Cole), "The Classical World in Twentieth-Century Historical Fiction by Women" (Sheila Murnaghan and Deborah H. Roberts), "Feminist Theory/Queer Theory" (Kirk Ormand and Rabinowitz), "Politics, Pedagogy, and the Future of Gender Studies" (Mary Whitlock Blundell, Jeffrey S. Carnes, and John T. Kirby), and "Feminist Anthropology and Feminist Work in Classics" (Deborah Lyons).The conference was one of several events celebrating the 250th anniversary of Princeton University. In certain respects it carried on the work of the 1917 Princeton conference organized by Dean Andrew Fleming West. Entitled "Value of the Classics," the 1917 conference was also in its own way interdisciplinary, documenting the impact of classics on such fields as medicine, law, economics, sociology, and public... (shrink)

A preeminent scholar of American studies explores the American literary and philosophical traditions, and the connections between them, by investigating, first, Emerson's thought and its influence on American writing and, second, the pluralistic and radical ways in which American modernists engaged the world.

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) and Otto Neurath (1882-1945) decisively determined the development of the scientific world view of logical empiricism. The contributions to this volume illuminate from different perspectives the intricate relations between these two key thinkers.

A referral was made to our Cardiac Transplant Program for a patient who was in the New Jersey Prison System. The Medical Director of the New Jersey Department of Corrections called regarding a 39-year-old inmate who was being treated in a New Jersey hospital that has a unit for prisoners from a nearby cor- rectional facility. The referring physician described the patient to our Medical Director of heart transplantation as a “murderer” who had been incarcerated since 1987 and sentenced to (...) prison for 30 years without eligibility for parole before completion of his 30-year sentence. The patient was being treated in the CCU of the facility and according to preliminary studies, was suffering from a possible dilated cardiomyopathy. There was evidence of a prior cerebrovascular accident (etiology unknown) with a dense hemiplegia of the left side. The patient was alert but unable to care for himself. There were a number of specific tests necessary to evaluate the patient's candidacy for heart transplantation before actually placing him-on a waiting list. However, the transplant director was uncertain about having the patient brought to our facility for further testing and called some members of the Transplant Selection Committee team to discuss the case. (shrink)

One of the great attractions of Thomas Reid's account of knowledge is that he attempted to avoid the alternative between skepticism and dogmatism. This attempt, however, faces serious problems. It is argued here that there is a pragmatist way out of the problems, and that there are even hints to this solution in Reid's writings.

Spontaneously broken symmetries are often called hidden or secret symmetries. They are symmetries in the laws of nature that do not show up in observable phenomena. This raises the basic epistemological question: Is there reason to believe that these hidden symmetries are real features of nature rather than artifacts of theorizing. This paper clarifies the epistemic status of spontaneously broken symmetries. It presents the details of an argument by analogy that suggests the spontaneously broken gauge symmetry of electroweak interactions, and (...) the subsequent hypothetico-deductive testing of the hypothesis. It is a story of how dubious means can lead to a credible end. (shrink)

Are sensation ascriptions descriptive, even in the first person present tense? Do sensation terms refer to, denote, sensations, so that truth and falsity of sensation ascriptions depend on the properties of the denoted sensations? That is, do sensation terms have a denotational semantics? As I understand it, this is denied by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein rejects the idea of a denotational semantics for public language sensation terms, such as‘pain’. He also rejects the idea that speakers can recognizesensations. I think these views are (...) mistaken.In this paper I shall present the following: first, my own basic views on how public language sensation terms relate to sensations ; second, to what extent these views are inconsistent with some of Wittgenstein's main tenets about sensations and sensation language, as set out in Philosophical Investigations##243–315, and what I take to be Wittgenstein's main arguments, in the same text, for those tenets ; third, why I think that those arguments are inconclusive ; and fourth, what I see as the best arguments for my own views. Sections 3 and 5 are concerned with the bearing of the private language argument on these matters. (shrink)

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Political theory has been described as an `enterprise of discovery' that carries within it the danger of utopianism. This article explores one aspect of that danger: the question of the paradoxical or circular nature of much political thinking. This seems to be both a necessary and an impossible feature of such theorizing. Political theory itself seems to require an idea of utopia that is, by definition, impossible to achieve.

The idea of higher-order vagueness is usually associated with conceptions of vagueness that focus on the existence of borderline cases. What sense can be made of it within a conception of vagueness that focuses on tolerance instead? A proposal is offered here. It involves understanding ‘definitely’ not as a sentence operator but as a predicate modifier, and more precisely as an intensifier, that is, an operator that shifts the predicate extension along a scale. This idea is combined with the author’s (...) earlier approach to the semantics of vague expressions, which builds on the idea of a central gap associated with a predicate. The central gap approach is generalized to handle arbitrarily many iterations of ‘definitely’. (shrink)

Emerging as a hot topic in the mid-twentieth century, causality is one of the most frequently discussed issues in contemporary philosophy. Thinking about Causes brings together top philosophers from the United States and Europe to focus on causality as a major force in philosophical and scientific thought.

This article is concerned with the reasons why sometimes good arguments in health communication leaflets fail to convince the targeted audience. As an illustrative example it uses the age-dependent eligibility of women in the Netherlands to receive routine breast cancer screening examinations: according to Dutch regulations women under 50 are ineligible for them. The present qualitative study rests on and complements three experimental studies on the persuasiveness of mammography information leaflets; it uses interviews to elucidate reasons why the arguments in (...) the health communication leaflets for the exclusion of women under 50 from routine mammographic screenings do not work. (shrink)

I reply to seven objections to anthropomorphic theism: (1) That anthropomorphic theism is idolatrous. In reply I rely on the concept/conception distinction. (2) That faith requires certainty. In reply I argue that full belief may be based on probable inference. (3) That the truly infinite is incomprehensible. In reply I distinguish two senses of knowing what you mean. (4) "You Kant say that!" In reply I distinguish shallow from deep Kantianism. (5) "Shall Old Aquinas be forgot?" In reply I discuss (...) the simplicity of God. (6) What those garrulous mystics say about the ineffable. In reply I argue that mystics should be anthropomorphites. (7) Antitheodicy. In reply I distinguish the community of all agents from the community of finite frail agents. (shrink)