ABSTRACTIn daily life, people make plenty of decisions, either intuitively or based on analysis. So far, research has examined when decision-making leads to correct or biased outcomes. In the prese...

Inspite of growing interest in research on language universals the concept of language universal itself has not been clarified beyond its status in Greenberg 1966. The present paper is an attempt at further clarification. The concept of language universal presents at least the following basic problems : Which entities are to be called universal? How can universality statements be deductively related to statements on individual languages and to non-linguistic statements, e.g. psychological ones? How are we to conceive the relation between (...) the 'empirical' and the 'non-empirical' in universality research? It is argued that the universal entities should be properties of languages. Three conceptions of universals are characterized: The Naive View , the Semantic View , and the Pragmatic View proposed by the author . It is argued that the Naive View and the Semantic View do not, and that the Pragmatic View may solve the basic problems formulated in Part I. Combining the Pragmatic View with the conception of theories developed in Lieb to appear the author characterizes the ultimate aim of universality research as defining a set of properties that, if taken as universal by any linguist, maximize the fruitfulness of any theory of language. The main task of universality research consists in making universality proposals that are well-founded with respect to that aim. Various principles are suggested by which the well-foundedness of universality proposals can be judged. (shrink)

Contributing specialists survey Hispanic literature of New Mexico and its influence. No index. The prevailing view in the history of philosophy has been that time is not basically real but has a derivative status. In contrast, Lieb establishes the thesis that time is a fundamental reality: it is individuals.".

Fully adequate answers to these questions are best provided in a comprehensive philosophy of logic. Within shorter compass, it is nevertheless possible to be guided by some conditions that are necessary to adequate answers. These will be results of the analysis of propositions and statements. They are necessary, since no answers to the questions about the constants will be acceptable if, for example, it follows from the answers that propositions or statements cannot be unities, or that propositions or statements cannot (...) be true or false. (shrink)

I AM GRATEFUL to Dean Dougherty and his colleagues for inviting me to this celebration of Paul Weiss's birthday. I admire and care for Paul Weiss, and I have learned from him. I have also learned because of him. Even now, years after my graduate studies, he is a familiar, a benign, but of course not always a gentle goad to my thoughts. Just the other day--I suppose Paul thought I was becoming too comfortable--he added a postscript to a short (...) note, urging me to hurry up to become seventy, because seventy is so fine a time to philosophize. (shrink)

WE ALL KNOW THAT TIME has something to do with value and that most of what we value is either present or past or something yet to come. In hundreds of well-known slogans, there is a good deal of wisdom about time and value: "the sooner, the better," for example, and "better late than never." It is also true, however, that "every thing has its due time" and that "time will always tell." We think, almost paradoxically, that even though each (...) of us is finally a person of his own time, we can also be out of joint with time; we can be ahead of our time or behind it, and people in our business wonder, of course, whether our ideas are the ideas whose time has come. (shrink)

2. If by "normative judgment" one means such statements as "We ought always to try to produce as much good as we can," I agree with Thesis 2.

We provide self-contained proof of a theorem relating probabilistic coherence of forecasts to their non-domination by rival forecasts with respect to any proper scoring rule. The theorem recapitulates insights achieved by other investigators, and clarifi es the connection of coherence and proper scoring rules to Bregman divergence.

Academic performance enhancement or cognitive enhancement (CE) via stimulant drug use has received increasing attention. The question remains, however, whether CE solely represents the use of drugs for achieving better academic or workplace results or whether CE also serves various other purposes. The aim of this study was to put the phenomenon of pharmacological academic performance enhancement via prescription and illicit (psycho-) stimulant use (Amphetamines, Methylphenidate) among university students into a broader context. Specifically, we wanted to further understand students’ experiences, (...) the effects of use on students and other factors, such as pressure to perform in their academic and private lives. (shrink)

An overview and assessment of the current state of research on individual consumption of Fair Trade (FT) products is given on the basis of 51 journal publications. Arranging this field of ethical consumption research according to key research objectives, theoretical approaches, methods, and study population, the review suggests that most studies apply social psychological approaches focusing mainly on consumer attitudes. Fewer studies draw on economic approaches focusing on consumers’ willingness to pay ethical premia for FT products or sociological approaches relying (...) on the concept of consumer identity. Experimental, qualitative and conventional survey methods are used approximately equally often. Almost all studies draw on convenience or purposive samples and most studies are conducted in the USA or the United Kingdom. Several problems in current research are identified: amongst others, studies’ rather narrow theoretical focus, potential hypothetical and social desirability bias of conventional survey data, and a lack of generalizability of empirical findings. In turn, we suggest that research would benefit from both a multiple-motives and a multiple-methods perspective. Considering competing theories can help to single out key behavioral determinants of individual FT consumption. The combination of different methods such as conventional surveys and field experiments contributes to uncovering respondents’ truthful answers and improves generalizability of results. Scholars in the field of ethical consumption research should use experiments to detect causal relations proposed by theories and conduct cross-country surveys to gather insights as to how differences in market structures, cultural traits, and other path dependencies affect patterns of individual FT consumption. (shrink)

A variety of theoretical approaches have been taken in an attempt to understand, explain, and promote pro-environmental behavior. The present article gives an overview, including specific applications, and identifies and discusses various strategies used by researchers to deal with the availability of different approaches. The overview includes elementary rational choice theory, the theory of planned behavior, norm-activation theory, theories of habitual behavior, and theories within a social dilemma framework. Strategies identified are ‘extending existing theories by single explanatory factors’, ‘comparing theories’ (...) in a competitive manner, and ‘combining theories’ in an integrative manner. It is argued that research would benefit from more standardization in empirical applications, from more competitive theory testing as opposed to integrative theory testing, and from an evaluation of approaches on theoretical grounds as opposed to focusing solely on empirical performance. (shrink)

The great charge against ontologies, according to Bergmann, is that they are senseless: they are paradoxical or absurd because they deny what is surely true or claim to say what can't be told. The answer to this charge, or Bergmann's answer, is that it con fuses appearance and reality. Ontological claims seem to us senseless when we fail to see that one or several of the words in them is used philosophically. To have their sense be clear, we have only (...) to talk commonsensically about the philosophical words, to set out and understand their patterns, and then to see how the patterns interlock to account for what there is. (shrink)

WHY DO NATURAL THINGS act or behave according to laws? The answer, I think, is that the laws of nature make them act or behave so. If this answer can be made clear and plausible, it will help us to understand the reality of laws.

The Zohar, the Cabbalistic ‘Bible’, has a special theory concerning magic. Magic, which for the Zohar is the essence of idolatry, is depicted there as identical in its form with Cabbalistic mystical theurgy, but directed not towards God but towards evil demons. This theory has been labeled in research Hermetic and Neo-Platonic, but only in general terms. This article makes a further step and finds a parallelism between a paragraph in the Zohar and a paragraph in On the Mysteries of (...) Iamblichus, the Neo-Platonic philosopher. The two paragraphs expound the above theory in similar terms, and also cite as their source a similar authority, namely eastern sages or Chaldaean prophets. This parallelism may establish a literary connection between the Zohar and Iamblichus, who may be related also in other respects. (shrink)

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

The differences in the styles of these books are only tokens of more important differences in their methods and results. To see this it might be useful to look at the theses about representation which are central to the Tractatus, but which Wittgenstein leaves altogether aside in his Investigations.