In this article I examine the metaphysical foundations of Guido de Ruggiero’s liberalism and ask what these can tell us about his changing view of Giovanni Gentile's actualism, which was such an influence on de Ruggiero before the First World War. I argue that de Ruggiero’s ‘actualism’ was never the same as Gentile’s, but was drawn from the same intellectual sources; that the actualist conception of free and self-conscious agency runs through both versions of the doctrine, though interpreted in different (...) ways; and finally that the contrasts between de Ruggiero’s and Gentile’s political allegiances result from something other than their differing interpretations of actualism, which serves, in the end, not so much as a theory as a set of basic principles, images and ideals that each philosopher tried to modify and match to the political circumstances in which he found himself. (shrink)

In list-method directed forgetting, reexposure to forgotten List 1 items has been shown to reduce directed forgetting. proposed that reexposure to a few List 1 items only during a direct test of memory reinstates the entire List 1 episode. In the present experiments, part-list reexposure in the context of indirect as well as direct memory tests reduced directed forgetting. Directed forgetting was reduced when 50% or more of the items were reexposed, and was intact when only 25% were reexposed. Furthermore, (...) part-list reexposure appeared to reinstate only reexposed items-not the entire List 1 episode. (shrink)

The dynamics of populations of self-replicating, hierarchically structured individuals, exposedto accidents which destroy their sub-units, is analyzed mathematically, specifically with regardto the roles of redundancy and sexual repair. The following points emerge from this analysis:0 A population of individuals with redundant sub-structure has no intrinsic steady-statepoint; it tends to either zero or infinity depending on a critical accident rate α c . Increased redundancy renders populations less accident prone initially, but populationdecline is steeper if a is greater than a fixed (...) value α d . Periodic, sexual repair at system-specific intervals prevents continuous decline and stabilizesthe population insofar as it will now oscillate between two fixed population levels. The stabilizing sexual interval increases with increased complexity provided this is accom-panied by appropriate levels of redundancy. The model closely simulates the dynamics of heterosis effects. Repair fitness is a population fitness: the chance of an individual being repaired is a functionof the statistical make-up of the population as a whole at that particular period. Populationsliving at α > α c either engage in sexual repair at the appropriate time or they die out. The mathematical properties of the model illustrate mechanisms which possibly played arole in the evolution of a mortal soma in relation to sexual reproduction. (shrink)

This paper describes an intelligent algorithm for traffic sign recognition which converges quickly, is accurate in its segmentation and adaptive in its behaviour. The proposed approach can segment images of traffic signs in different lighting and environmental conditions and in different countries. It is based on using Kohonen's Self-Organizing Maps as a clustering tool and it is developed for Intelligent Vehicle applications. The current approach does not need any prior training. Instead, a slight portion, which is about 1% of the (...) image under investigation, is used for training. This is a key issue to ensure fast convergence and high adaptability. The current approach was tested by using 442 images which were collected under different environmental conditions and from different countries. The proposed approach shows promising results; good improvement of 73% is observed in faded traffic sign images compared with 53.3% using the traditional algorithm. The adaptability of the system is evident from the segmentation of the traffic sign images from various countries where the result is 96% for the nine countries included in the test. (shrink)

First published in 1953, this seminal introduction to political philosophy is intended for both the student of political theory and for the general reader. After an introduction which explains the nature and purpose of philosophy, Dr Murray provides a critical examination of the principle theories advanced by political philosophers from Plato to Marx, paying special attention to contemporary issues. The book also makes an attempt to define the essential issues of philosophical significance in contemporary politics, with special reference to the (...) conflict between political authority and individual rights, and to show how the different moral assumptions underlying authoritarian and democratic systems of government are ultimately based upon different theories of logic. (shrink)

Since the last decades of the 20th century the meaning and content of knowledge has dramatically changed. This necessitates adopting a historical perspective in ap­proa­ching the questions of knowledge. But so far all the efforts of putting knowledge in a historical perspective since Hegel’s historization of Spirit either suffer from the limitations of the presupposition of the One or fail to ground the historicity of knowledge on the history of coming-to-be and passing-away. Moving from Heidegger’s ‘history of Being’ toward the (...) Aristotelian understanding of coming-to-be and passing away as a process of becoming has the potential to open up new avenues in approaching the historical question of knowledge as well as establishing its relation with the never com­plete ground of the entities as its historical a priori condition of possibility. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the modest claim that people's apparent indifference to animal pain may not be predicated upon speciesism. I defend that claim by developing an analogy between current attitudes toward at least some non‐human animal pain — that which pigs endure while having their tails ‘docked’— and our culture's indifference to the pain that male human infants experience while being circumcised. And I conclude that to convince more of their philosophical and social critics, ‘animal liberationists’ need (...) to spend more time analyzing the pain that non‐human animals experience and defending its moral significance, rather than assuming that such pain is significant and then simply arguing that unnecessary forms of it exist. (shrink)

RESUMEN:El siguiente escrito ensaya una interpretación del rendimiento del mito de los metales expuesto por Platón en su diálogo llamado Politeia a propósito de la siguiente interrogación: ¿Cómo se constituye el orden social en la pólis platónica? Para responder a esta pregunta debemos esclarecernos respecto de: i) El papel de la educación en la constitución del orden social. ii) La correlación entre el mito de los metales y el orden social. iii) La constitución tripartita de la psykhḗ humana. Una vez (...) aclarado estos distintos puntos podremos comprender la oculta pero significativa función del mito de los metales en la constitución del orden social platónico. ABSTRACT:This article attempts an interpretation of the account of the myth of the metals as expounded by Plato in the Politeia. We address the following question: How is the social order established in the Platonic polis? To answer this question we must clarify: i) the role of education in the constitution of the social order; ii) the correlation between the myth of the metals and the social order; iii) the tripartite constitution of the human psyche. Once these various points have been made clear, we can understand the hidden but significant function of the myth of the metals in the constitution of the Platonic social order. (shrink)

We argue that thoughts are structures of concepts, and that concepts should be individuated by their origins, rather than in terms of their semantic or epistemic properties. Many features of cognition turn on the vehicles of content, thoughts, rather than on the nature of the contents they express. Originalism makes concepts available to explain, with no threat of circularity, puzzling cases concerning thought. In this paper, we mention Hesperus/Phosphorus puzzles, the Evans-Perry example of the ship seen through different windows, and (...) Mates cases, and we believe that there are many additional applications. (shrink)