This article examines land-use changes by large-scale plantations in Ethiopia and evaluates the impacts thereof on soil organic carbon, micronutrients and bulk density. Remote sensing analysis and field research activities were undertaken at four large-scale plantation projects in Benshanguel Gumuz, Gambella, and Oromia regional states. Results show that the projects largely involved the conversion of both closed and open to closed forests and grasslands, which in turn reduced soil carbon stock and micronutrient levels and increased soil compaction. We argue that (...) unless appropriate soil management activities and impact mitigation strategies are adopted by plantation proponents, these land-use changes will pose a serious threat to the long-term economic viability and sustainability of plantation agriculture in Ethiopia. This could undermine long-term ecosystem health and national food security. (shrink)

Recently, Stefan Wintein published an article in which he presents four objections to my modal-epistemic argument for the existence of God. His first objection is an alleged counterexample to the argument’s first premise, and the second objection is an alleged counterexample to the argument’s second premise. Wintein’s third objection attempts to show that the modal-epistemic argument is circular. Finally, the fourth objection is a parody objection. In this paper, I show that Wintein’s four objections all fail.

De Interpretatione is among Aristotle's most influential and widely read writings; C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system. He shows that De Interpretatione is not a disjointed essay on ill-connected subjects, as traditionally thought, but a highly organized and systematic treatise on logic, argument, and dialectic.

This article takes some first steps towards the establishment of the intellectual biography of the medical historian, classicist, and moral philosopher Ludwig Edelstein . Based on scattered archival records, it sheds light on Edelstein's early career in Germany, the decisions he was forced to make in 1933 when he left Germany and the events that led to his appointment as associate professor at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University in the autumn of 1934. The representative nature of Edelstein's case will be highlighted (...) in terms of both the history of exile and the history of the academic disciplines involved ; in doing so, the article attempts to reinscribe Edelstein's achievements and influence back into their respective discourses. (shrink)

This collection of current research on logic programming languages presents results from a three-year, ESPRIT-funded effort to explore the integration of the foundational issues of functional, logic, and object-oriented programming. It offers valuable insights into the fast-developing extensions of logic programming with functions, constraints, concurrency, and objects. Chapters are grouped according to the unifying themes of functional programming, constraint, logic programming, and object-oriented programming.

In recent years, the trend to present the notion of imperfection as a plus rather than a problem has resonated across a range of social and creative disciplines and a wealth of world localities. As digital tools allow media users to share ever more suave selfies and success stories, psychologists promote 'the gifts of imperfections' and point to perfectionism as a catalyst for rising depression and burnout complaints and suicide rates among millennials. As sound technologies increasingly permit musicians to 'smoothen' (...) their work, composers increasingly praise glitches, noise, and cracks. As genetic engineering upgrades with swift speed, philosophers, marketeers, and physicians plea 'against perfection' and supermarkets successfully advertize 'perfectly imperfect' vegetables. Meanwhile, cultural analysts point at skewed perspectives, blurry images, and other 'deliberate imperfections' in new and historical cinema, painting, photography, music, and literature. In less positive terms, scholars in fields ranging from disability studies to tourism critically interrogate a trend to fetishize imperfection and poverty. They rightfully warn against projecting privileged (and, often, emphatically western-biased) feel-good stories onto the less privileged, the distorted, or the frail. Imperfections synthesizes the swiftly growing but fragmented critical scholarship on mistakes, glitches, and other aesthetics and logics of imperfection into the first transdisciplinary, transnational framework of imperfection studies. With this framework, the editors offer scholars and students across various disciplines tools to craft more historically grounded and critically informed conceptualizations of the imperfect. (shrink)

I propose a new argument for the existence of God. God is defined as a conscious being that is the first cause of reality. In its simplified initial form, the argument has two premises: all possible truths are knowable, and it is impossible to know that the proposition that God does not exist is true. From and it follows that the proposition that God exists is necessarily true. After introducing the argument in its crude initial form and laying out the (...) core intuitions behind its premises, I point to two difficulties that this simplified version faces. I then go on to show how the argument can be revised to handle these difficulties. I defend the revised argument from various objections. (shrink)

Both Carnap and Quine made significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics despite their diversedviews. Carnap endorsed the dichotomy between analytic and synthetic knowledge and classified certainmathematical questions as internal questions appealing to logic and convention. On the contrary, Quine wasopposed to the analytic-synthetic distinction and promoted a holistic view of scientific inquiry. The purpose of thispaper is to argue that in light of the recent advancement of experimental mathematics such as Monte Carlosimulations, limiting mathematical inquiry to the domain of (...) logic is unjustified. Robustness studies implemented inMonte Carlo Studies demonstrate that mathematics is on par with other experimental-based sciences. (shrink)

Over the last few decades there has been a strong narrative turn within the humanities and social sciences in general and educational studies in particular. Especially Jerome Bruner’s theory of narrative as a specific ‘mode of knowing’ was very important for this growing body of work. To understand how the narrative mode works Bruner proposes to study narratives ‘at their far reach’—as an art form—and on several occasions he refers to the dramatistic pentad as an important method for ‘unpacking’ narratives. (...) The pentad proposed by Bruner to study narratives was developed by the American philosopher and rhetorician Kenneth Burke and is embedded in his general linguistic theory of dramatism. From an educational perspective Bruner’s reference to the work of Burke has not been elaborated upon thus far. In this paper we aim to take Bruner’s suggestion at hand and explore how his educational theory of narrative as a mode of knowing can indeed be enriched by Kenneth Burke’s theory and method of dramatism. We claim that specifically the rhetorical framework that is developed by dramatism offers an important perspective about perspectives for education in a context that is increasingly confronted with a plurality of interpretive frameworks. (shrink)

This volume contains the selected discourses of four seventeenth-century philosophers, carefully chosen to illustrate the tenets characteristic of the influential movement known as Cambridge Platonism. Fundamental to their beliefs is the statement most clearly voiced by Benjamin Whichcote, their leader by common consent, that the spiritual is not opposed to the rational, nor Grace to nature. Religion is based on reason, even in the presence of 'mystery'. Free will and Grace are not mutually exclusive. The editor's comprehensive introduction delineates the (...) main principles of the Cambridge Platonists, in the light of their heritage. It compares their attitude to contemporary thought, stressing their mistrust both of institutionalised religion and of the rising tide of materialism. The sermons are reprinted from the original texts and fully annotated with comparisons and references to a wide range of works. The editor also includes a useful list for further reading, biographical notes and a comprehensive index. (shrink)

Cette etude suppose un releve exhaustif des occurences d'aporia, et de douze autres mots etymologiquement apparentes, dans la litterature philosophique des Grecs, depuis les debuts jusqu'a Aristote. Les divers textes, que se sont repartis les collaborateurs du volume, sont etudies du point de vue de la grammaire et de la semantique. Chaque chapitre s'acheve sur des conclusions d'ordre philosophique, comme font aussi les trois grandes parties de l'ouvrage: philosophes preclassiques, Platon, Aristote. On trouvera en outre a la fin du volume (...) des etudes relatives au vocabulaire de l'aporia aussi bien dans la tradition arabe que chez les latins. Bibliographie et index des mots grecs etudies. (shrink)

In our research and teaching we explore the value and the place of rhetoric in education. From a theoretical perspective we situate our work in different disciplines, inspired by major ‘turns’: linguistic, cultural, anthropological/ethnographic, interpretive, semiotic, narrative, literary, rhetorical etc. In this article we engage in the discussion about what all these turns might entail for education by elaborating on what it implies to read the world as a ‘text'—as is central in a semiotic approach—and by introducing new rhetoric in (...) general, and the work of the literary critic and rhetorician Kenneth Burke in particular, as a possible theoretical and methodological resource. We illustrate its application in the analysis of a fictional narrative. Our aim is to explore how an understanding of education as rhetoric can be integrated into the teacher education curriculum. (shrink)

In his 2012 book God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason Herman Philipse argues that all known deductive versions of the cosmological argument are untenable. His strategy is to propose a few objections to two classical deductive cosmological arguments. The first argument is from the impossibility of there being contingent entities that are the sufficient cause for the existence of a contingent entity. The second argument is from the impossibility of there being an infinite causal regress. (...) In this article I argue that Philipse’s attempt to write off all deductive cosmological arguments fails. (shrink)

Johannes Versor († after 1482) was a prominent philosopher in the late fifteenth century, whose works were widely diffused. In recent scholarship, Versor has been associated with two schools of thought: Thomism and Albertism. These, however, were rivals—especially in Cologne, where Versor's works were printed repeatedly. Given this historical context, how should Versor's position amidst the quarrels of the schools be interpreted? Although he evidently used the works of both Albert and Thomas, there is no evidence that Versor ever committed (...) himself to either Albertism or Thomism. In addition, the Cologne printings of his works suggest that Versor's contemporaries considered him an independent authority. Therefore, Versor cannot be rated among the members of either school. (shrink)

Yellow sun in a blue sky. Green leaves caressed by the wind. Open the shutters of the eye, that window of the soul, and all such things are revealed. Nothing is more apparent than that things have colors, and that we have immediate perceptual access to those colors.

An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in divergent (...) explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993. (shrink)