In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Vice and Naturalistic OntologyChristopher R. Williams (bio)Keywordscausality, criminality, determinism, medical model, positivismThese questions have been posed: Is vice (encompassing criminal and other wrongful conduct) best regarded as “sick” behavior, “immoral” behavior, or some other type altogether? Are we to understand vice in natural-medical terms, or are we better served by utilizing a moral framework? Is criminality reducible to and best categorized as a metaphysical type the essential features of (...) which are neurological or otherwise biological in nature? Or, perhaps, is criminality closer to a (non-natural) sociological type, the essential features of which can be understood only through reference to social norms and cultural conventions? These are torturously involved philosophical and theoretical questions that have given rise to an equally torturous volume of literature. Without pretending to do justice to these questions or their corresponding literature, several key considerations that must be inserted into and accounted for within the discursive pursuit of these inquiries are worth noting.Where a naturalistic ontology is employed within the study of vice, we reduce the intricacies of deviant behavioral phenomena to what we presume to be their underlying medical/biological properties. It is worth remembering that behavior itself cannot rightfully be said to be “sick”; rather, what we mean to say is that the behavior in question—in our case, various forms of “vice”—is symptomatic of some underlying illness or medical/biological condition. The presumed underlying sickness and the behavior itself are distinct, ontologically linked only through their theorized relationship to one another. This, then, is a key assumption of the medical approach to vice and its ontological classification as a natural-medical kind: that there exists a relationship between the behavior (a symptom) and the underlying illness or medical condition, and that the relationship is of the causal kind. Vice, it is suggested, is a change in state that is caused by (or, at the very least, is a direct consequence of) sickness or illness. Second, to legitimate such attributions, the illness supplying the requisite causal force must be identifiable and its causal connection to the behavior must be or be capable of being sufficiently explicated. In other words, once we have identified the relevant medical/biological properties and the behavior to which they stand in causal relatedness, we must be prepared to characterize this dynamic—we must be able to show exactly how and why such and such a condition gives rise to such and such a behavior.Problematically, causation itself is and has always been a contentious metaphysical specimen. Hume (1955) reminded us of the troubling reality [End Page 39] that we cannot ever “see” one thing cause or necessitate another. We are left, rather, to merely presume the existence of causal relationships between things. How is it, exactly, that disorder in neurodevelopment can necessitate certain behavioral outcomes? Even if we can “see” (in the empirical sense) the disorder and equally “see” the behavior, we cannot of course witness the precise causal action of the former upon the latter. Even if we are content inferring causal action in such cases, we still need to demonstrate the basic conditions of causality. To show that Condition X is causally related Behavior Y, we need to show that they are regularly associated with one another, that Condition X temporally preceded Behavior Y and, most challengingly, that no other conditions or factors have an intervening (e.g., additive, synergistic) influence. Hypothetically, if we were to posit a causal relationship between schizotypal personality traits and violent behavior, we would need to establish: (1) that schizotypal traits and violent behavior regularly coexist; (2) that those traits presented before the manifestation of the violent behavior; and (3) that no other factors (biological, psychological, and/or sociological) contributed in any meaningful way to those manifestations. We would thus need to systematically rule out family dynamics, income, education, intelligence, substance use, and so forth, as contributing factors. If, in turn, we were to determine that the presence of schizotypal traits alone is not sufficient—even if a necessary condition—to produce violent behavior but, rather, that those traits act in concert with other variables to produce the behavior, then we would not truly be... (shrink)

While Meinong makes scattered remarks about perception in various writings, the one text in which he makes a concentrated effort to work out a theory of perception is Über die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens (1905). This paper is a critical examination of the theory which is presented there, but also some other texts are taken into account. Special attention will be given to Meinong's views on the object (Gegenstand) of perception, both the propositional object (Objektiv) and the non-propositional object (Objekt) which (...) is allegedly "part" of the propositional object. Also, some contrasts and parallels between these views and those of other members of the Brentano School, e.g. Husserl's notion of categorial perception are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I shall examine a variety of situations in which human agents make use of force. Section I will be concerned with the use of force in medical contexts, Section Ii with the use of force in defence of property, and Section in with the use of force in resolving international disputes. I shall argue that the boundary between what is and is not morally permissible needs to be, drawn more stringently than is commonly supposed. While agreeing that (...) in some medical contexts and in some situations where defence of property is involved the use of force may be necessary and even morally required, I shall suggest that in the absence of any suitably constituted world court the use of force in attempting to resolve international disputes creates a morally different situation. (shrink)

Before talking about the vision of Orikhov's essence of the relationship between the church and the state, one must first determine what the church is about - Catholic or Orthodox. After all, the thinker lived in Poland when there were still strong, even parity positions of both denominations. He himself was brought up in a family where his father was Catholic and his mother was Orthodox. This was reflected in his mentality: he repeatedly publicly stated the benefits of certain tenets (...) of the Orthodox faith. But most of all he settled on the problem of relations between the Catholic Church and the state. (shrink)

In his article ‘A Cavalry Unit in the Army of Antigonus Monophthalmus: Asthippoi’, N. G. L. Hammond argues that the reading of the manuscript R at Diodorus 19. 29. 2 should be retained and that we should read ⋯π⋯ π⋯σι δ⋯ το⋯ς τε ⋯σθ⋯ππους ⋯νομαζομ⋯νους κα⋯ τοὺς ⋯κ τ⋯ν ἄνω κατοικο⋯ντων ⋯κτακοσιο⋯ς. The readings of F and its copy X, ⋯νθ⋯ππους, and the commonly accepted conjecture of Wesseling ⋯μɸ⋯ππους, should both be abandoned. Hammond's arguments for retaining this reading are that (...) between the variant readings of R and F, R ‘is the more often correct’ ; ⋯σθ⋯ππους, the reading of R, is preferable to F's ⋯νθ⋯ππους on the principle of ‘lectio difficilior’; the ‘difficulty’ of his lectio difficilior is made less by the arguments presented by A. B. Bosworth, 245 ff.), for the restoration at several places in the text of Arrian's Anabasis the word ⋯σθ⋯ταιροι, in place of the editorial emendation of πεζ⋯ταιροι. ‘For just as asthetairoi meant an élite group of Macedonian infantrymen,’ says Hammond, ‘so asthippoi should mean an élite group of Macedonian cavalrymen.’ He then proceeds to examine the passage and its context in an attempt to find confirmation of this proposition and comes to the conclusion that Diodorus' text says that there were 800 cavalrymen, broken into two groups, the asthippoi and ‘the men from the up-country settlers’; these, though having different names, had a close relationship to each other, as is shown by their being brigaded together. Following his derivation of asthetairoi as meaning ‘townsmen-companions’, i.e. companions recruited from the towns of Upper Macedonia, he argues that asthippoi were cavalry recruited from the towns of Upper Macedonia and that τοὺς ⋯κ τ⋯ν ἄνω κατοικο⋯ντων means ‘the sons of settlers in up-country Macedonia’. These 800, says Hammond, were both among Antigonus' best troops and ‘were Macedonians from Europe’. We thus appear, on Hammond's interpretation, to have here a group of 800 Macedonian élite cavalrymen, all of whom were recruited in Upper Macedonia's townships, but of whom some were chosen to be the cavalry-equivalent of the élite ‘townsmen-companions’ by their title of ‘townsmen-cavalry’, whilst the others, similarly recruited – but perhaps of a younger generation? – had no particular distinguishing title beyond ‘sons of settlers in up-country Macedonia’.Now, while it would be exciting to be able to add another one, possibly two Macedonian cavalry units to the Macedonian army of Philip, Alexander and the Successors, there are several aspects of Hammond's arguments that, it seems to me, are less than convincing. Thus, whilst it seems beyond reasonable doubt that ⋯σθ⋯ταιροι should be retained in the text of Arrian, appearing, as it does, six times, this is not an argument that ⋯σθ⋯ππους should be read in Diodorus' text. Both it and F's reading of ⋯νθ⋯ππους are hapax legomena and it is possible that both readings are wrong. But even if we retain ⋯σθ⋯ππους as the correct reading, Hammond's explanation of its meaning is open to objection on several counts. (shrink)

A new approach to the analysis of the neuroendocrine system (NES) is suggested. It is based on the fact of structural and metabolic determination of any effect on cell and cell aggregates. The principle of a common communication channel in the NES is formulated and a possible method of its formalization is proposed.

Symmetric propositions over domain $\mathfrak{D}$ and signature $\Sigma = \langle R^{n_1}_1, \ldots, R^{n_p}_p \rangle$ are characterized following Zermelo, and a correlation of such propositions with logical type- $\langle \vec{n} \rangle$ quantifiers over $\mathfrak{D}$ is described. Boolean algebras of symmetric propositions over $\mathfrak{D}$ and Σ are shown to be isomorphic to algebras of logical type- $\langle \vec{n} \rangle$ quantifiers over $\mathfrak{D}$. This last result may provide empirical support for Tarski’s claim that logical terms over fixed domain are all and only those (...) invariant under domain permutations. (shrink)

History of Mongolian philosophy, intellectual life, and politics; covers until 14th century.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:R. D. Ackerman BELIEVING IN A FICTION: WALLACE STEVENS AT THE LIMITS OF PHENOMENOLOGY The "ring of men" of "Sunday Morning" will chant their "devotion to the sun, / Not as a god, but as a god might be, / Naked among them, like a savage source" (CP, pp. 69-70).' Solar nakedness is deferred even as it is named. The problem for belief is the question of appearance and (...) representation. Things appear as and like.... The phenomenological return to things is also a turn to fiction, as Husserl understood: "If anyone loves a paradox, he can really say... that the element which makes up the life of phenomenology... is fiction. ' " The sun is divine, and it is not; it is both naked and clothed, savage and civilized, source (or end) and means. But such paradox is ultimately unsatisfying, and as we will see with Stevens, the need for belief—for an image or idea of totality—forces the issue of fiction and reality. The Stevens we will have in view is not the Stevens—as if there were such a creature. Our Stevens is the one most persuaded by promises such as those of phenomenology, the one most concerned with decreation (reduction) and fresh beginnings, with discovery and recognition, with imagination, the body, and the earth. This is the Stevens for whom the barrier of language presages at last not absence and difference but fictive recovery of presence and identity, the one for whom poetry represents a way of belief beyond mysticism even as it bodes mythic proximity. Finally, this is the Stevens who predominates throughout the prose (as well as in much of the poetry), who tries mightily to secure a belief while disencumbering himself of metaphysics—but alas, I think, with small success. Although Stevens's association of the problem of belief with the idea of fiction occurs in early poems such as "A High-Toned Old Christian 79 80Philosophy and Literature Woman" and "To the One of Fictive Music," his most intensive involvement with fiction as belief dates from the early 1940s and spans the period of his major essays and his last four volumes of poems. He recounts, for instance, a 1942 conversation with a student: "I said that I thought that we had reached a point at which we could no longer really believe in anything unless we recognized that it was a fiction. The student said that that was an impossibility, that there was no such thing as believing in something that one knew was not true. It is obvious, however, that we are doing that all the time" (L, p. 430). What does it mean to believe in a fiction? That is my main subject here, as we seek out the limits of the phenomenological Stevens. His letters of this period are preoccupied with the problem of fictive belief: "If one no longer believes in God (as truth), it is not possible merely to disbelieve; it becomes necessary to believe in something else.... A good deal of my poetry recently has concerned an identity for that thing.... In one of the short poems that I have just sent to the harvard advocate, I say that one's final belief must be in a fiction. I think that the history of belief will show that it has always been in a fiction" (L, p. 370). The poem referred to, "Asides on the Oboe," begins: The prologues are over. It is a question now, Of final belief. So, say that final belief Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose. (CP, p. 250) Acknowledging that "in the long run, poetry would be the supreme fiction" (L, pp. 430-31), Stevens nonetheless singles out the nominative function of poetry as the essence of its claim to supremacy: "Poetry means not the language of poetry but the thing itself.... The subject matter is what comes to mind when one says of the month of August... 'Thou art not August, unless I make thee so'" (L, p. 377). The quoted line (also from "Asides") underscores the paradox that for Stevens the essence of fiction (the nontrue) is its capacity to nominate the true or the real. This... (shrink)

Every person acquires a worldview, a picture of reality. Within that picture, the existence of some things will be taken wholly for granted as the background to, and support of, everything else. Their existence will rarely be questioned. The cosmos or universe, the gods, God, Brahman, Heaven, the Absolute--R. T. Allen claims that all these and other world- views have been held to be that which necessarily exists and upon which all other beings depend in one way or another. European (...) philosophers, since antiquity, have offered arguments to show that their chosen candidates for the role of the necessary being or beings that support the rest of reality do actually exist. The Necessity of God sets the valid core of previous ontological arguments. It does not and cannot prove that God exists, but only that something necessarily exists. In an a priori manner and without inferring anything from what in fact exists, Allen proceeds to show that which necessarily exists is one, transfinite, eternal, and the archetype of personal existence: in short, that it is God as classically conceived. As for everything else that may exist, it must be finite and dependent for its existence upon God as its creator and sustainer. Few things are more erroneous in philosophy and disastrous in practice than artificial constructions produced without constant reference to concrete reality. That which necessarily exists may be the one exception. Before this constructive argument, Allen examines previous examples of ontological arguments in order to show exactly where they go wrong and to extract the valid core obscured within them. This will make clear the difference between them and his new version. The reader who is eager to engage the philosophical sources of belief will find a distinct treasure in The Necessity of God. (shrink)