"[This book] proposes new foundations for the Bayesian principle of rational action, and goes on to develop a new logic of desirability and probabtility."—Frederic Schick, _Journal of Philosophy_.

The 65th year of a scholar who has devoted 40 years to editing and elucidating Robert Grosseteste provides us with a collection of essays. Not surprisingly, they emanate from colleagues and former students of Richard Dales and reflect his interest, among other concerns, in Grosseteste's aspectus et affectus - range of vision and disposition of mind - those twin peaks with which the 13th century thinker helped to get Christian thought through Aristotle without mutual destruction.

One of our most brilliant evolutionary biologists, Richard Lewontin has also been a leading critic of those--scientists and non-scientists alike--who would misuse the science to which he has contributed so much. In The Triple Helix, Lewontin the scientist and Lewontin the critic come together to provide a concise, accessible account of what his work has taught him about biology and about its relevance to human affairs. In the process, he exposes some of the common and troubling misconceptions that misdirect (...) and stall our understanding of biology and evolution.The central message of this book is that we will never fully understand living things if we continue to think of genes, organisms, and environments as separate entities, each with its distinct role to play in the history and operation of organic processes. Here Lewontin shows that an organism is a unique consequence of both genes and environment, of both internal and external features. Rejecting the notion that genes determine the organism, which then adapts to the environment, he explains that organisms, influenced in their development by their circumstances, in turn create, modify, and choose the environment in which they live.The Triple Helix is vintage Lewontin: brilliant, eloquent, passionate, and deeply critical. But it is neither a manifesto for a radical new methodology nor a brief for a new theory. It is instead a primer on the complexity of biological processes, a reminder to all of us that living things are never as simple as they may seem. (shrink)

This book offers a concise survey of basic probability theory from a thoroughly subjective point of view whereby probability is a mode of judgment. Written by one of the greatest figures in the field of probability theory, the book is both a summation and synthesis of a lifetime of wrestling with these problems and issues. After an introduction to basic probability theory, there are chapters on scientific hypothesis-testing, on changing your mind in response to generally uncertain observations, on expectations of (...) the values of random variables, on de Finetti's dissolution of the so-called problem of induction, and on decision theory. (shrink)

Following in the fashion of Stephen Jay Gould and Peter Medawar, one of the world's leading scientists examines how "pure science" is in fact shaped and guided by social and political needs and assumptions.

In this paper I discuss logic from a naturalist point of view, characterizing it as those shared patterns of thought which are socially selected from among the various patterns of thought to which we are naturally inclined. Drawing on Evans-Pritchard's anthropology. I discuss a particular example of Zande thought. I argue that Evans-Pritchard's and Timm Triplett's analyses of this example make the mistake of applying Western logic to Zande beliefs and thus find a contradiction. I argue that from the naturalistic (...) point of view. Zande logic is different from Western logic and that there is no contradiction in Zande thought. (shrink)

Richard Jeffrey is beyond dispute one of the most distinguished and influential philosophers working in the field of decision theory and the theory of knowledge. His work is distinctive in showing the interplay of epistemological concerns with probability and utility theory. Not only has he made use of standard probabilistic and decision theoretic tools to clarify concepts of evidential support and informed choice, he has also proposed significant modifications of the standard Bayesian position in order that it provide a (...) better fit with actual human experience. Probability logic is viewed not as a source of judgment but as a framework for explaining the implications of probabilistic judgments and their mutual compatability. This collection of essays spans a period of some 35 years and includes what have become some of the classic works in the literature. There is also one completely new piece, while in many instances Jeffrey includes afterthoughts on the older essays. (shrink)

None would doubt that medieval Europeans ate fish and that they fished for food. But did they also fish for fun? as a pastime? as sport? Not in the generally accepted view of the supposed evidence. But newly discovered, recently rediscovered, and simply reread manuscript and printed sources from several areas of Europe show that medieval Europeans did on occasion think of fishing as a leisure activity, pursued for pleasure and not just as a means of subsistence.

This paper makes the case for using the independent non-executive directors of a company listed in the United Kingdom exclusively as monitors and regulators of management, particularly as regulators of executive directors’ conflicts of interest, rather than as participants in management who also have a control function. It is suggested that these proposals can be accommodated within current corporate law in the United Kingdom, that they are practicable, and that they are desirable. The proposals are made against the background of (...) a continued strong emphasis in the United Kingdom on non-executive directors’ dual role both as managers of a company’s business and as monitors of its executive directors. It is suggested that this dual role for non-executive directors tends significantly to undermine the effectiveness of their control function, and that consequently the dual role should be abandoned in favor of the more focused role proposed in the paper. Improving the effectiveness of non-executive directors as regulators of executive directors’ conflicts of interest is vitally important to corporate governance in the United Kingdom: as the paper explains, other legal methods of controlling those conflicts in the United Kingdom suffer from serious deficiencies. (shrink)

This monograph rigorously argues for a Thomistic account of the human person. Each chapter addresses different stages of...

Within evolutionary biology a distinction is frequently made between proximate and ultimate causes. One apparently plausible interpretation of this dichotomy is that proximate causes concern processes occurring during the life of an organism while ultimate causes refer to those processes (particularly natural selection) that shaped its genome. But ultimate causes are not sought through historical investigations of an organisms lineage. Rather, explanations referring to ultimate causes typically emerge from functional analyses. But these functional analyses do not identify causes of any (...) kind, much less ultimate ones. So-called ultimate explanations are not about causes in any sense resembling those of proximate explanations. The attitude, implicit in the term ultimate cause, that these functional analyses are somehow superordinate to those involving proximate causes is unfounded. Ultimate causes are neither ultimate nor causes. (shrink)

Averroes asserts in his Long Commentary on the De Anima and in his Long Commentary on the Metaphysics that principles of the science of metaphysics are established in the science of psychology. In psychology, human intellectual understanding is found to require the separate agent intellect for the coming to be of knowledge. The analysis of human psychology establishes that intellect must exist and must be separate from the human being in existence. Moreover there exists potency in those things called intellect, (...) thanks to the argument for the existence of the material intellect. (shrink)

This study of the interaction of the Aristotelian and Augustinian views of the soul traces the disarray of Latin concepts by 1240, the solutions of Bonaventure ...