This edition of Aristotelian scholarship contains the proceedings of the third Symposium Aristotelicum. Choosing to discuss one work of Aristotle, the Topics, the participants were thus able to center their discussions around Aristotle's notion of dialectics. Owen has arranged the papers into interesting categories, some of which contain critical analyses of the text. There is also a valuable index of sources. One especially interesting chapter deals with the question of the relationship between Aristotelian thought and Platonic thought. Under the specific (...) scrutiny of the Symposium, the question is: to what extent do the dialectics of Aristotle rely upon Plato's theory of Forms and the method of diaeresis that leads up to the Forms? Friedrich Solmsen, the most emphatic of all the writers on this point, claims that the dialectics of the Topics ignore any ontological reference. According to Solmsen, Aristotle accepted the logical structure of Plato's dialectic and diaeresis but then prescinded from any commitment to the Forms. C. J. De Vogel agrees with Solmsen insofar as Aristotle begins to see the theory of Forms as "problematic" due to the immaturity of Aristotle's own theory. De Vogel cites several passages that would seem to counter the position of Solmsen. For example, in defining "justice" as a virtue, Aristotle prefers the abstract term δικαιοσύνη as properly falling under the category ἀγαθόν, rather than the concrete δίκαιον. In a paper by Gilbert Ryle it is claimed that Aristotle never formally learned dialectical philosophy at Plato's academy, so that questions of how and why Aristotle broke from his master are unreal. Ryle suggests that the second part of Plato's Parmenides was written to exemplify the categories of the Topics and to school the more advanced students in the art of dialectics which was not taught to those under thirty years of age. How much Aristotle's dialectical philosophy is indebted to Plato is still a debatable point; but it is debated very well in these papers.--J. J. R. (shrink)

Too often the historians of philosophy tend to relegate a philosopher to a meaningless anonymity by rigidly classifying his thought into one particular category. De Vogel feels that this has been done to Pythagoras and the Pythagorean tradition. He claims that because philosophical scholars have relied chiefly on Platonic and Aristotelian accounts of Pythagoras, two misleading effects have ensued: 1. We have lost sight of the man Pythagoras and his charismatic influence on the people of Croton and Magna Graecia; (...) 2. Pythagoras, cosmic theory of numerical ratios has been emphasized to the neglect of, and in separation from, his political and social teachings. De Vogel hopes to remedy these two impressions by returning to "neglected evidence" and reconstructing the life of Pythagoras. He hopes to remove Pythagoras from that vague classification as one of the οἱ φυσικοί into which Aristotle had placed all the pre-Socratic thinkers. Furthermore, the author wants to show the essential unity of Pythagoras' cosmic, social, and political thinking. The neglected evidence on which De Vogel bases his reconstruction is mainly the testimony of Timaeus, an historian of Southern Italy and Sicily; Aristoxenus, a follower of Pythagoras; and Dicaearchus, a writer of cultural history. In addition to these last mentioned sources, the author cites the testimony of coins and quotes leading archaeologists; he refers to the many historians and biographers of Pythagoras; and especially, he draws from the four speeches of Pythagoras that are recorded by Iamblichus. With these source materials, De Vogel reconstructs a Pythagoras who is a charismatic preacher-moralist; one who gives precepts of life governing justice, friendship, love, health, education, rhetoric, and medicine. What is more, all of these social and political teachings are shown to be integrated with the cosmic theory of numbers which De Vogel removes from the realm of abstract and idle theory. Pythagoras emerges as a leading figure in Croton and throughout Magna Graecia. All in all, this volume is an excellent contribution to Pythagorean scholarship.--J. J. R. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Too often the historians of philosophy tend to relegate a philosopher to a meaningless anonymity by rigidly classifying his thought into one particular category. De Vogel feels that this has been done to Pythagoras and the Pythagorean tradition. He claims that because philosophical scholars have relied chiefly on Platonic and Aristotelian accounts of Pythagoras, two misleading effects have ensued: 1. We have lost sight of the man Pythagoras and his charismatic influence on the people of Croton and Magna Graecia; (...) 2. Pythagoras, cosmic theory of numerical ratios has been emphasized to the neglect of, and in separation from, his political and social teachings. De Vogel hopes to remedy these two impressions by returning to "neglected evidence" and reconstructing the life of Pythagoras. He hopes to remove Pythagoras from that vague classification as one of the οἱ φυσικοί into which Aristotle had placed all the pre-Socratic thinkers. Furthermore, the author wants to show the essential unity of Pythagoras' cosmic, social, and political thinking. The neglected evidence on which De Vogel bases his reconstruction is mainly the testimony of Timaeus, an historian of Southern Italy and Sicily; Aristoxenus, a follower of Pythagoras; and Dicaearchus, a writer of cultural history. In addition to these last mentioned sources, the author cites the testimony of coins and quotes leading archaeologists; he refers to the many historians and biographers of Pythagoras; and especially, he draws from the four speeches of Pythagoras that are recorded by Iamblichus. With these source materials, De Vogel reconstructs a Pythagoras who is a charismatic preacher-moralist; one who gives precepts of life governing justice, friendship, love, health, education, rhetoric, and medicine. What is more, all of these social and political teachings are shown to be integrated with the cosmic theory of numbers which De Vogel removes from the realm of abstract and idle theory. Pythagoras emerges as a leading figure in Croton and throughout Magna Graecia. All in all, this volume is an excellent contribution to Pythagorean scholarship.--J. J. R. (shrink)

Kann ein Werk, das vor allem Handbuch zu den Vorlesungen sein sollte, mit seinen Kurzfassungen von Logik und Phanomenologie die in den entsprechenden Buchern vorgelegten Entwurfe uberhaupt adaquat wiedergeben? Wie sind die Veranderungen bezuglich der Einleitungsfunktion der Phanomenologie zu bewerten? Wie schliesslich sind die auch sonst nur in Vorlesungsmitschriften uberlieferten Systemteile zur Philosophie der Natur und zur Philosophie des Geistes im Gesamtzusammenhang des Systems zu deuten? - Dies sind nur einige der Fragen, die der vorliegende Band aufgreift, um gleichzeitig eine (...) umfassende Einfuhrung in die Probleme des Hegel'schen Systems bzw. seiner einzelnen Teile zu liefern. Mit Beitragen von H.-Ch. Lucas, J. D'Hondt, N. Waszek, O. Poggeler, U. Rameil, G. Baptist, M. Bykova, W. Bonsiepen, R. Wahsner, M. Bienenstock, F. Hespe, B. Tuschling, A. Th. Peperzak, H. Schneider, M. Alvarez-Gomez, K. J. Schmidt, K. Dusing, A. Nuzzo und H. F. Fulda. (shrink)

The best philosophy of science during the last generation has been highly historical; and the best history of science, highly philosophical. No one has better exemplified this intimate relationship between history and philosophy than has Robert E. Butts in his work. Through out his numerous writings, science, its philosophy, and its history have been treated as a seamless web. The result has been a body of work that is sensitive in its conception, ambitious in its scope, and illuminat ing in (...) its execution. Not only has his work opened new paths of inquiry, but his enthusiasm for the discipline, his encouragement of others (particularly students and younger colleagues), and his tireless efforts to build an international community of scholars, have stimulated the growth of HPS throughout Europe and North America. Many of the essays in this volume reflect that influence. Our title, of course, is deliberately ambiguous. The essays herein are by colleagues and former students, all of us wishing to honour an intimate friend. Happy Birthday, Bob! IX INTRODUCTION The essays herein cover a variety of concerns: from Descartes to reduction, from Galileo to gambling, from Freud's psychoanalysis to Kant's thing-in-itself. But under this diversity there is an approach common to them all. Things are largely done with a concern for and a sensitivity to historical matters (including contemporary history, of course). (shrink)

The author of the acclaimed Gay Fiction Speaks brings us new interviews with twelve prominent gay writers who have emerged in the last decade. Hear Us Out demonstrates how in recent decades the canon of gay fiction has developed, diversified, and expanded its audience into the mainstream. Readers will recognize names like Michael Cunningham, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours inspired the hit movie; and others like Christopher Bram, Bernard Cooper, Stephen McCauley, and Matthew Stadler. These accounts explore the vicissitudes (...) of writing on gay male themes in fiction over the last thirty years--prejudices of the literary marketplace; social and political questions; the impact of AIDS; commonalities between gay male and lesbian fiction... and even some delectable bits of gossip. (shrink)

According to the thought experiment most commonly used to argue against reliabilism, Mr. Truetemp is given an unusual but reliable cognitive faculty. Since he is unaware of the existence of this faculty, its deliverances strike him as rather odd. Many think that Truetemp would not have justified beliefs. Since he satisfies the reliabilist conditions for justified belief, reliabilism appears to be mistaken. I argue that the Truetemp case is underdescribed and that this leads readers to make erroneous assumptions about Truetemp's (...) epistemic situation. After examining empirical studies of actual subjects who, like Truetemp, have received new perceptual faculties, I show that Truetemp must have been endowed with all of the reorganized neural circuitry and cognitive skills that subjects with new perceptual faculties normally acquire during a long and difficult process of adaptation and development. When readers realize how much more the designers of Truetemp's new faculty had to do than simply slip an artificial device under Truetemp's scalp, I find that they no longer think his beliefs would be unjustified. Because the thought experiment fails to support anti-reliabilist intuitions when further details of the case are made explicit, the Truetemp thought experiment does not constitute a clear and decisive counterexample to reliabilism. (shrink)

In this article, Lucas maintains the falseness of Mechanism - the attempt to explain minds as machines - by means of Incompleteness Theorem of Gödel. Gödel’s theorem shows that in any system consistent and adequate for simple arithmetic there are formulae which cannot be proved in the system but that human minds can recognize as true; Lucas points out in his turn that Gödel’s theorem applies to machines because a machine is the concrete instantiation of a formal system: therefore, for (...) every machine consistent and able of doing simple arithmetic, there is a formula that it can’t produce as true but that we can see to be true, and so human minds and machines have to be different. Lucas considers as well in this article some possible objections to his argument: for any Gödelian formula we could, for instance, construct a machine able to produce it or we could put the Gödelian formulae that we had proved as axioms of a further machine. However - as Lucas underlines - for every of such machines we could again formulate another Gödelian formula, the Gödelian formula of these machines, that they are not able to proof but that we can recognize as true. More general arguments, such as the possibility to escape Gödelian argument by suggesting that Gödel’s theorem applies to consistent systems while we could be inconsistent ones, are moreover refuted by Lucas by maintaining that our inconsistency corresponds to occasional malfunctioning of a machine and not to his normal inconsistency; indeed, a inconsistent machine is characterized by producing any statement, on the contrary human being are selective and not disposed to assert anything. (shrink)

Although there is a high degree of consensus in the existing literature regarding the importance of respect in mental health care, a realistic appraisal suggests that there is something of a disconnect between what is espoused in policy documents and what actually occurs in practice. As a result, this article seeks to explore and advance our understanding of the phenomenon of respect in mental health care and draws on real practice situations to illustrate this schism. To this end, the authors (...) present three case studies that focus on the following: “use of seclusion,” “respecting professional boundaries,” and “horizontal workplace violence.” The authors advance the, perhaps for some, provocative argument that it is relatively easy to write/speak about respect, while the reality of communicating respect to others is more difficult, challenging, and makes significant demands on the individual psychiatric/mental health nurse. (shrink)

In this 1970 introduction to philosophy Mr Taylor concentrates on two central topics - explanation and meaning. He takes the argument far enough to acquaint the reader first-hand with the methods and approach of analytical philosophy, and yet because of the scope of these two topics he is able to introduce many of the traditional philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and logic. By this approach he avoids the dangers both of superficiality and of undue technicality. Philosophers are concerned (...) to analyse and describe certain concepts and modes of argument, not to establish facts or conclusions of any sort that can be tested by formal demonstration or controlled observation; their findings cannot be conveniently categorized or graded into a comprehensive and progressive course of studies. Mr Taylor meets this difficulty with his extended discussions of specific topics and questions which have implications over the whole subject. (shrink)

This paper addresses the definition and the operational use of intuitions in philosophical methods in the form of a research study encompassing several regions of the globe, involving 282 philosophers from a wide array of academic backgrounds and areas of specialisation. The authors tested whether philosophers agree on the conceptual definition and the operational use of intuitions, and investigated whether specific demographic variables and philosophical specialisation influence how philosophers define and use intuitions. The results obtained point to a number of (...) significant findings, including that philosophers distinguish between intuitions used to formulate (discovery) and to test (justification) philosophical theory. The survey results suggest that strategies implemented to characterise philosophical intuition are not well motivated since, even though philosophers do not agree on a single account of intuition, they fail to capture a preferred usage of intuitions as aspects of discovery. The quantitative summary of survey findings informs the debate on this topic, and advances more defined routes for subsequent approaches to the study of intuitions. (shrink)

IT is a curious fact that more books on J. H. Newman have been written by foreign than by English authors, as A. R. Vidler remarks in a book review in the Philosophical Quarterly. He adds a number of reasons all of which have exercised a certain influence. He suggests the main reason to be that Newman “is naturally attractive and useful to Roman Catholics who are disposed to explore lines of thought that deviate from, or are not covered by, (...) scholasticism or Thomism.” We cannot quite agree with this suggestion. First of all it is not borne out by historical facts. Most of the earliest writings on Newman in the Netherlands were actually written by non-Catholics, mainly by Protestants of widely-different denominations. One of the first was Allard Pierson who wrote a lengthy biographical sketch in the same year as Newman died, and others brought out or used various parts of Newman’s teaching long before any Catholic publication—except for an occasional article—was printed. So we find J. W. Moll, Rector of the University in Groningen, making full use of Newman’s Idea of a University in an official address to the University as early as 1910, whilst H. Stoel, Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, offered a work on Newman to the same University in order to obtain the Doctorate of Divinity in 1914. There are other important works on Newman’s doctrine by two non-Catholics, who were later converted to the Roman Catholic Church, viz., one by W. H. v.d. Pol, who wrote on the Idea of the Church in Newman’s Life and Thought, and one by Prof. Dr. De Vogel on his doctrine of justification. Both these works excel in bringing home to the reader Newman’s own method of thought because they make us listen to that great Christian, and enable us to take in his way of contemplating reality, so that we acquire something of that mentality which Newman himself called: the true philosophical temper. In none of these works do we find the slightest indication that the authors were desirous of using Newman because he had deviated from the path trodden by traditional scholasticism. These authors wrote about him because they felt that to be true which Pierson had already testified: “Nobody can neglect him without suffering a sensible loss.”. (shrink)

Arenhart_Krause_Uma-logica-da-indistinguibilidade.