William Abraham studied Philosophy at the University of Ghana, and even more Philosophy at Oxford University. Thereafter, he gained permission to take part in the competitive examination and interview for a fellowship at All Souls' College. The examination was once described, with some exaggeration, as 'the hardest exam in the world!' It included a three-hour essay. Following his success in becoming the first African fellow of All Souls, his interest in African politics quickly developed into a Pan-African perspective. The Mind (...) of Africa, written while he was still at All Souls, was a fruit of that enlarged perspective. After several years as a Fellow, he had occasion to visit Ghana in 1962. There Kwame Nkrumah, then President of Ghana, successfully persuaded him to return to Ghana to teach at the University of Ghana, Legon and he subsequently resigned from All Souls. In 1968, he went to the United States as a visiting professor. This was followed by invitations to teach at various academic institutions there, including Berkeley and Stanford. He subsequently settled in California, where he continued to teach and research philosophy in the University of California at Santa Cruz until his retirement. The Mind of Africa appeared at a time when a number of African countries were obtaining, or fighting for, their political freedom from their colonial rulers and becoming independent nations and expecting to build new societies in accordance with their own visions and conceptions, though not necessarily jettisoning all the features of their colonial heritage. Building new societies requires appropriate ideologies and philosophies fashioned within the crucible of their cultural and historical experiences. Thus, the relation between ideology and society is taken up at the very outset of the book... The Mind of Africa is important for Africa's future and identity. (shrink)

Even lawyers who obey the law often seem to act unethically--interfering with the discovery of truth, subverting justice, and inflicting harm on innocent people. Standard arguments within legal ethics attempt to show why it is permissible to do something as a lawyer that it would be wrong to do as an ordinary person. But in the view of most critics these arguments fail to turn wrongs into rights. Even many lawyers think legal ethics is flawed because it does not accurately (...) describe the considerable moral value of their work. In Lawyers and Fidelity to Law, Bradley Wendel introduces a new conception of legal ethics that addresses the concerns of lawyers and their critics alike.Wendel proposes an ethics grounded on the political value of law as a collective achievement that settles intractable conflicts, allowing people who disagree profoundly to live together in a peaceful, stable society. Lawyers must be loyal and competent client representatives, Wendel argues, but these obligations must always be exercised within the law that constitutes their own roles and confers rights and duties upon their clients. Lawyers act unethically when they treat the law as an inconvenient obstacle to be worked around and when they twist and distort it to help their clients do what they are not legally entitled to do. Lawyers and Fidelity to Law challenges lawyers and their critics to reconsider the nature and value of ethical representation. (shrink)

W. H. Walsh; XII—Historical Causation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 63, Issue 1, 1 June 1963, Pages 217–236, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.

This essay defends a reading of Hegel as a metametaphysical antirealist. Metametaphysical antirealism is a denial that metaphysics has as its subject matter answers to theoretical questions about the mind-independent world. Hence, on this view, metaphysical questions are not, in principle, knowledge transcendent. I hold that Hegel presents a version of metaphysical antirealism in the Science of Logic because he pursues his project by suspending reference to all supposed objects of metaphysical theory as practiced before him. Hegel introduces reference in (...) his theory only by the self-reference of thought to itself in the Doctrine of the Concept. I motivate the relevance of Hegel’s approach to metaphysics by comparing it to Kit Fine’s concept of ‘naïve metaphysics’. I argue that Hegel’s theory results from a comprehensively naïve metaphysics. (shrink)

RésuméLe modèle complexe de Mercure dans le De revolutionibus de Copernic est virtuellement identique, géométriquement, à celui d'Ibn al-Šāṭir. Cependant, le modèle, antérieur, du Commentariolus est différent et il fonctionne mal. Certains en ont déduit que le jeune Copernic n'avait pas compris le modèle de son pré- décesseur; d'autres ont affirmé que l'œuvre de Copernic était totallement indépendante d'Ibn al-Šāṭir. Nous soutenons que Copernic avait les modèles d'Ibn al-Šāṭir mais qu'il a dû les modifier pour les rendre “quasi-homocentriques” dans le (...) Commentariolus. Cette modification et le passage d'une cosmologie géocentrique à une cosmologie héliocentrique étaient rendus aisés par le “biais héliocentrique” des modèles d'Ibn al-Šāṭir, pour qui la Terre était le centre effectif du mouvement moyen, contrairement à Ptolémée et à la plupart des astronomes islamiques. Nous montrons que : 1) Ibn al-Šāṭir a cherché à reproduire les élongations critiques à ±120° de l'apogée, mais il a changé les valeurs ptoléméennes à 0, ±90 et 180° ; 2) dans le Commentariolus, Copernic n'essaie pas de reproduire des élongations viables pour Mercure;et 3) au moment de la rédaction du De revolutionibus, Copernic contrôle pleinement le modèle de Mercure et il est capable de reproduire les élongations de Ptolémée aux points critiques. Nous soutenons aussi que les arguments concernant des solutions “naturelles” qui excluent la transmission sont niés par l’évidence historique. (shrink)

Although much evidence indicates that young infants perceive unitary objects by analyzing patterns of motion, infantsÕ abilities to perceive object unity by analyzing Gestalt properties and by integrating distinct views of an object over time are in dispute. To address these controversies, four experiments investigated adultsÕ and infantsÕ perception of the unity of a center-occluded, moving rod with misaligned visible edges. Both alignment information and depth information affected adultsÕ and infantsÕ perception of object unity in similar ways, and infants perceived (...) object unity by integrating information about object features over time. However, infants perceived a moving, misaligned, three-dimensional object as indeterminate in its connectedness, whereas adults perceived it as connected behind the occluder. These findings indicate that the effectiveness of common motion in specifying unified surfaces across an occluder is reduced by misalignment of edges. Alignment information enhances perception of object unity either by serving directly as information for unity or by optimizing the detectability of motion-carried information for unity. In addition, young infants are able to retain information about edge orientation over short intervals in determining connectedness via a process of spatiotemporal integration. Ó 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. (shrink)

Anton Wilhelm Rudolph Amo (1703–c. 1759 ce), philosopher and physician, was born at Axim, Ghana, and died at Fort Chama, Ghana. When he was four years old, the Dutch West Indies Company's preacher in Ghana sent him to Holland to be baptized and educated in the Bible for future service in Ghana. However, the Company headquarters, undesirous of any interference with its lucrative trade in slaves, turned little Amo over to the German Duke Anton Ulric‐Wolfenbuttel.

Can poem and picture collaborate successfully in a composite art of text and design? Or does one art inevitably dominate the other? W.J.T. Mitchell maintains that Blake's illuminated poems are an exception to Suzanne Langer's claim that "there are no happy marriages in art—only successful rape." Drawing on over one hundred reproductions of Blake's pictures, this book shows that neither the graphic nor the poetic aspect of his composite art consistently predominates: their relationship is more like an energetic rivalry, a (...) dialogue between vigorously independent modes of expression. W.J.T. Mitchell is Professor of English and Art and Design at the University of Chicago and editor of Critical Inquiry. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

A publication by Professor Margenau is always of interest to persons concerned with philosophy of science. This is especially true, however, of his recently published book, The Nature of Physical Reality; for this book, dealing with basic epistemological problems arising from the development of modern quantum mechanics, is the most comprehensive and most systematic formulation of its author's philosophical position and is at the same time conceived as a “challenge” to “uncritical realism, unadorned operationalism, and radical empiricism”—to points of view, (...) that is, which Professor Margenau regards as “outmoded and in disharmony with the successful phases of contemporary physics”. (shrink)

Las reflexiones en torno al concepto de abducción de Peirce no han estado exentas de controversias, debido a la dificultad para determinar con claridad la naturaleza y la función epistémica de esta inferencia. Se examinan tres formas de acceso a la comprensión del concepto de abducción que el propio..

These suggestions for the betterment and elucidation of the text of the De Beneficiis are additional to those already published in the Classical Quarterly in January, 1934. They are based on a conviction much deepened since that time that Buck1 is right when he says: N allein, und zwar ohne seine Ueberarbeitungen von späteren Händen, darf die Grundlage des Textes von de beneficiis bilden. Préchac3, the latest critical editor in this field, substantially confirms Buck's sweeping conclusion by an independent survey (...) of the evidence. The readings designated in the Teubner text3 as N2 and N3 are themselves conjectures, not readings drawn from independent sources of testimony, and as conjectures they must be judged. Gertz4 had long before discerned the truth even if he seemed somewhat cavalier in his attitude toward other manuscripts than N. (shrink)

This history of theories and theorists of economic growth elucidates the economic theory, economic history, and public policy observations of the renowned scholar W. W. Rostow. Looking at the economic growth theories of the classic economists up to 1870, Rostow compares Hume and Adam Smith, Malthus and Ricardo, and J.S. Mill and Karl Marx. He then examines the period 1870-1939 and its economic theorists, including Schumpeter, Colin Clark, Kuznets, and Harrod, and surveys the three forms of growth analysis in the (...) postwar era: formal models, statistical morphology, and development theories. This authoritative overview also includes an agenda of unresolved problems in growth analysis and a description of the five major tasks statesmen will confront over the next several generations. (shrink)