IN examining Herodotos' account of the Samian tyranny, historians have long been disturbed by two considerations. First, it seems strange that the period of settled tyranny should have begun no earlier than the rise of Polykrates and his two brothers c. 533 B.C., even though Samos was among the most advanced cities in Ionia. Yet it seems equally impossible to revise this accession date in an upward direction, at least by any significant margin. Furthermore, there had been at work in (...) Samos from c. 600 or earlier many of the factors which elsewhere in Ionia did in fact lead to a comparatively stable period of tyranny at that date, for instance at Miletos and Ephesos. Secondly, though Herodotos knows of no tyrant before Polykrates, it has been observed that the policies ascribed to him as characteristic were very largely the continuation of policies initiated a generation or more previously. (shrink)

This article, which was originally presented at the annual conference of the Venerable John Henry Newman Association in Mundelein, Illinois, in August 2004, portrays Newman as anticipating three aspects of postmodernism:the question of epistemological foundations, the role of theology in the academy, and a conversational model of truth.

The emperor's new mind (hereafter Emperor) is an attempt to put forward a scientific alternative to the viewpoint of according to which mental activity is merely the acting out of some algorithmic procedure. John Searle and other thinkers have likewise argued that mere calculation does not, of itself, evoke conscious mental attributes, such as understanding or intentionality, but they are still prepared to accept the action the brain, like that of any other physical object, could in principle be simulated (...) by a computer. In Emperor I go further than this and suggest that the outward manifestations ofconscious mental activity cannot even be properly simulated by calculation. To support this view, I use various arguments to show that the results of mathematical insight, in particular, do not seem to be obtained algorithmically. The main thrust ofthis work, however, is to present an overview ofthe present state of physical understanding and to show that an important gap exists at the point where, quantum and classical physics meet, as well as to speculate on how the conscious brain might be taking advantage ofwhatever new physics is needed to fill this gap to achieve its nonalgorithmic effects. (shrink)

Professor Sir Roger Penrose's work, spanning fifty years of science, with over five thousand pages and more than three hundred papers, has been collected together for the first time and arranged chronologically over six volumes, each with an introduction from the author. Where relevant, individual papers also come with specific introductions or notes. The first volume covers the beginnings of a career that is ground-breaking from the outset. Inspired by courses given by Dirac and Bondi, much of the early (...) published work involves linking general relativity with tensor systems. Among his early works is the seminal 1955 paper, 'A Generalized Inverse for Matrices', his previously unpublished PhD and St John's College Fellowship theses, and from 1967, his Adam's Prize-winning essay on the structure of space-time. Add to this his 1965 paper, 'Gravitational collapse and space-time singularities', and the 1967 paper that introduced a remarkable new theory, 'Twistor algebra', and this becomes a truly stellar procession of works on mathematics and cosmology. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a limited defence of “fairness” or “fair play” arguments for political obligation by focussing on one important critique of such arguments, that offered by A. John Simmons. I isolate Simmons's concentration on the idea of “accepting” benefits and argue that, among other difficulties, his criteria for when we can be said to accept a benefit from our political communities are too restrictive. While the scope of the discussion is narrow, I try to sketch ways (...) in which the failings of Simmons's critique are symptomatic of deeper problems with his libertarian approach. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.23(3) 2004: 282-291. (shrink)

MEDIEVAL LOGICS LAMBERT MARIE DE RIJK (ed.), Die mittelalterlichen Traktate De mod0 opponendiet respondendi, Einleitung und Ausgabe der einschlagigen Texte. (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge Band 17.) Miinster: Aschendorff, 1980. 379 pp. No price stated. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MARTA FATTORI, Lessico del Novum Organum di Francesco Bacone. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1980. Two volumes, il + 543, 520 pp. Lire 65.000. VIVIAN SALMON, The study of language in 17th century England. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory (...) and History of Linguistic Science, Series 111: Studies in theHistory of Linguistics, Volume 17.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1979.x + 218 pp. Dfl. 65. Theoria cum Praxi. Zum Verhaltnis von Theorie und Praxis im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. (Akten des 111. Internationalen Leibnizkongress, Hannover, 12. bis 17.November 1977, Band 111: Logik, Erkenntnistheorie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Metaphysik, Theologie.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980. vii + 269 pp. DM 48. CLASSICAL AND NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS MICHAEL CLARK, The place of syllogistic in logical theory. Nottingham: University of Nottingham Press, 1980. ix + 151 pp. £3.00. A.F. PARKER-RHODES, The theory of indistinguishables. Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981. xvii + 216 pp. Dfl.90.00/$39.50. NICHOLAS RESCHER and ROBERT BRANDOM, The logic of inconsistency. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1980. x + 174 pp. f 11.50. MISCELLANEOUS J. ZELENY, The logic of Marx. Translated from the German by T. Carver. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. xcii + 247 pp. £12.50. FELIX KAUFMANN, The infinite in mathematics. Edited by Brian McGuinness. Introduction by E. Nagel. Translation from the German by Paul Foulkes. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978. xvii + 235 pp. Dfl 85/$39.50 (cloth); Dfl 45/$19.95 (paper). PAMELA MCCORDUCK, Machines who think. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979. xiv + 275 pp. $14.95. J. MITTELSTRASS (ed.), Enzyklopadie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie Bd. 1 : A-G. Mannheim, Wien, Ziirich: Bibliographisches Institut, 1980. 835 pp. DM 128. (shrink)

It has long been one of the most fundamental problems of philosophy, and it is now, John Searle writes, "the most important problem in the biological sciences": What is consciousness? Is my inner awareness of myself something separate from my body? In what began as a series of essays in The New York Review of Books, John Searle evaluates the positions on consciousness of such well-known scientists and philosophers as Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, (...) David Chalmers, and Israel Rosenfield. He challenges claims that the mind works like a computer, and that brain functions can be reproduced by computer programs. With a sharp eye for confusion and contradiction, he points out which avenues of current research are most likely to come up with a biological examination of how conscious states are caused by the brain. Only when we understand how the brain works will we solve the mystery of consciousness, and only then will we begin to understand issues ranging from artificial intelligence to our very nature as human beings. (shrink)

Why should one believe that conscious awareness is solely the result of organizational complexity? What is the connection between consciousness and combinatorics: transformation of quantity into quality? The claim that the former is reducible to the other seems unconvincing—as unlike as chalk and cheese! In his book1 Penrose is at least attempting to compare like with like: the enigma of consciousness with the progress of physics.

"A person is not explainable in molecular, field-theoretical, or physiological terms alone." With that declaration, Nobel laureate Gerald M. Edelman goes straight to the heart of Nature's Imagination, a vibrant and important collection of essays by some of the world's foremost scientists. Ever since the Enlightenment, the authors write, science has pursued reductionism: the idea that the whole can be understood by examining and explaining each of its parts. But as this book shows, scientists in every discipline are reaching for (...) a new paradigm that accounts for the whole--from the individual person to the universe itself. Nature's Imagination gathers together the work of thirteen leading mathematicians, astronomers, neuroscientists, and philosophers, as they discuss the revolution sweeping the sciences. Here Roger Penrose, Oliver Sacks, John Barrow, Gregory Chaitin, Maragret Boden, and others explore how and why classic reductionism is falling by the wayside in their own fields. As Freeman Dyson writes in the introduction, science is an art form, not a philosophical method, and it is always in search of new tools. Reductionism has done its work, and scientists are in search of another. Roger Penrose offers a fascinating account of irreducibility in mathematics, starting with the example of an impossible triangle--a drawing of a triangular object twisted so that could not exist in three dimensions. He breaks the triangle into three parts, showing that each corner is physically possible; only in combination is the triangle impossible. Both Penrose and mathematician Gregory Chaitin explore Godel's incompleteness theorem--as does John Barrow, who explains that Chaitin's proof of the theorem shows that, if we ever arrive at a Theory of Everything, there may be a still deeper and simpler unifying theory beyond that. Other contributors discuss the changing thinking in neuroscience, and the limitations of a mechanical view of the mind: as Oliver Sacks writes, "if we are to have a model or theory of mind as this actually occurs in living creatures in the world, it may have to be radically different from anything like a computational one." In addition, this volume includes staunch defenders of the classic scientific approach, such as Peter Atkins ("The omnicompetence of science, and in particular the simplicity its reductionist insight reveals, should be accepted as a working hypothesis until, if ever, it is proved inadequate"). The advance of science has been so startlingly swift in the last century that it has begun to approach limits never dreamed of before. This remarkable volume captures the latest thinking on where we must turn if we are to truly understand oursevles and the universe we live in. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a growing consensus in the philosophical community that the grandfather paradox and similar logical puzzles do not preclude the possibility of time travel scenarios that utilize spacetimes containing closed timelike curves. At the same time, physicists, who for half a century acknowledged that the general theory of relativity is compatible with such spacetimes, have intensely studied the question whether the operation of a time machine would be admissible in the context of the same theory and of (...) its quantum cousins. A time machine is a device which brings about closed timelike curves—and thus enables time travel—where none would have existed otherwise. The physics literature contains various no-go theorems for time machines, i.e., theorems which purport to establish that, under physically plausible assumptions, the operation of a time machine is impossible. We conclude that for the time being there exists no conclusive no-go theorem against time machines. The character of the material covered in this article makes it inevitable that its content is of a rather technical nature. We contend, however, that philosophers should nevertheless be interested in this literature for at least two reasons. First, the topic of time machines leads to a number of interesting foundations issues in classical and quantum theories of gravity; and second, philosophers can contribute to the topic by clarifying what it means for a device to count as a time machine, by relating the debate to other concerns such as Penrose's cosmic censorship conjecture and the fate of determinism in general relativity theory, and by eliminating a number of confusions regarding the status of the paradoxes of time travel. The present article addresses these ambitions in as non-technical a manner as possible, and the reader is referred to the relevant physics literature for details. (shrink)

In this paper Lucas suggests that many of his critics have not read carefully neither his exposition nor Penrose’s one, so they seek to refute arguments they never proposed. Therefore he offers a brief history of the Gödelian argument put forward by Gödel, Penrose and Lucas itself: Gödel argued indeed that either mathematics is incompletable – that is axioms can never be comprised in a finite rule and so human mind surpasses the power of any finite machine – (...) or there exist absolutely unsolvable diophantine problems, and he suggest that the second disjunct is untenable; on the other side, Penrose proposed an argument similar to Lucas’ one but making use of Turing’s theorem. Finally Lucas exposes again his argument and considers some of the most important objections to it. (shrink)

A common reaction to the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems is that Einstein's general theory of relativity contains the seeds of its own destruction. This attitude is critically examined. A more tolerant attitude toward spacetime singularities is recommended.

In this stimulating work, six distinguished authors describe the major phases in the development of scientific conceptions of nature, from classical Greece to the present. Geoffrey Lloyd shows how different ideas of nature originated in the polemics of ancient Athens. Alexander Murray analyzes medieval conceptions of nature in terms of contrasts between learned and unlearned, between schools of thought, and between Christianity and Greek philosophy. Richard Westfall argues that the essence of the scientific revolution of the 17th century was its (...) novel conception of nature: quantified, mechanized, and secularized. Elliott Sober examines ways in which Darwinism undermined teleological thinking in biology. Finally, Roger Penrose makes accessible to the layman the nine basic theories on which modern physics draws in constructing its world-views, and Robert May shows how biological processes can now be investigated, and perhaps controlled, at both the molecular and the population level. Presenting the views of some of the leading researchers and scientific thinkers in the world today, this is a remarkable survey is intended for all readers interested in the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Roger Penrose, in _The Emperor's New Mind_ (1989), writes about the way Mozart perceived music. Mozart did not play a piece in his mind in real time, or even speeded up, but could hold it before him all at once. We all do this, although usually for much shorter riffs than entire symphonies. I have argued that the all-at-onceness of our thoughts and perceptions is at least as inexplicable as what it is like to see red; I think the (...) aural/temporal all-at-onceness makes the point at least as vividly as the visual/spatial all-at-onceness of the curl of smoke in an art nouveau poster. (shrink)

A detailed outline is presented of several convergent points of view connecting the self-dual and anti-self-dual fields with their free data. This is done for the Maxwell and for linearized gravity as exemplifying the approaches. The Sparling equation provides one tool of great power and characterizes one approach. The twistor theory of Penrose yields another equally powerful point of view. The links between these two basic approaches given in this paper provide a unification that allows workers and others with (...) interest in this area to proceed more readily toward the goal of understanding the full nonlinear Einstein equations. (shrink)

John Searle and Roger Penrose are two staunch critics of computationalism who nonetheIess believe that with the right framework the mind can be naturalized. while they may be successful in showing the shortcomings of computationalism, I argue that their alternative noncomputational frameworks equally fail to carry out the project to naturalize the mind. The main reason is their failure to resolve some fundamental incompatibilities between mind and science. Searle tries to resolve the incompatibility between the subjectivity of consciousness (...) and the objectivity of silence by means of conceptual clarification. He, howeve4 fails to deal with the concepts crucial to this incompatibility, namely, the publicness of scientific knowledge and the privacy of psychological knowledge. Penrose tries to resolve the incompatibility between the non-computationality of psychological process and the computationality of scientific process by expanding the scope of science through some radical changes in quantum physics. His strategy, howeve4 has the danger of trivializing the distinction between science and non-science thereby putting into question the very value of the project to naturalize the mind. In addition, the feasibility of this strategy remains dubious in light of the mysteries that still surround quantum physics. (shrink)

What can fashionable ideas, blind faith, or pure fantasy possibly have to do with the scientific quest to understand the universe? Surely, theoretical physicists are immune to mere trends, dogmatic beliefs, or flights of fancy? In fact, acclaimed physicist and best-selling author Roger Penrose argues that researchers working at the extreme frontiers of physics are just as susceptible to these forces as anyone else. In this provocative book, he argues that fashion, faith, and fantasy, while sometimes productive and even (...) essential in physics, may be leading today's researchers astray in three of the field's most important areas--string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology... The result is an important critique of some of the most significant developments in physics today from one of its most eminent figures."--Jacket. (shrink)

For many decades, the proponents of `artificial intelligence' have maintained that computers will soon be able to do everything that a human can do. In his bestselling work of popular science, Sir Roger Penrose takes us on a fascinating roller-coaster ride through the basic principles of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy to show that human thinking can never be emulated by a machine.

Gödel appears to have believed strongly that the human mind cannot be explained in terms of any kind of computational physics, but he remained cautious in formulating this belief as a rigorous consequence of his incompleteness theorems. In this chapter, I discuss a modification of standard Gödel-type logical arguments, these appearing to strengthen Gödel’s conclusions, and attempt to provide a persuasive case in support of his standpoint that the actions of the mind must transcend computation. It appears that Gödel did (...) not consider the possibility that the laws of physics might themselves involve noncomputational procedures; accordingly, he found himself driven to the conclusion that mentality must lie beyond the actions of the physical brain. My own arguments, on the other hand, are from the scientific standpoint that the mind is a product of the brain’s physical activity. Accordingly, there must be something in the physical actions of the world that itself transcends computation. We do not appear to find such noncomputational action in the known laws of physics, however, so we must seek it in currently undiscovered laws going beyond presently accepted physical theory. I argue that the only plausibly relevant gap in current understanding lies in a fundamental incompleteness in quantum theory, which reveals itself only with significant mass displacements between quantum states (“Schrödinger’s cats”). I contend that the need for new physics enters when gravitational effects just begin to play a role. In a scheme developed jointly with Stuart Hameroff, this has direct relevance within neuronal microtubules, and I describe this (still speculative) scheme in the following. (shrink)

The first Dr. Lerner -- Super doctor -- Illness hits home -- The second Dr. Lerner -- Forging my own path -- Treating the whole patient -- Family practitioner -- Growing disillusionment -- Slowing down -- Epilogue.

Social theory can sometimes seem as though it's speaking of a world that existed long ago, so why should we continue to study and discuss the theories of these dead white men? Can their work still inform us about the way we live today? Are they still relevant to our consumer-focused, celebrity-crazy, tattoo-friendly world? This book explains how the ideas of classical sociological theory can be understood, and applied to, everyday activities like listening to hip-hop, reading fashion magazines or watching (...) reality TV. Taking the reader through central sociological texts, Social Theory In Popular Culture explains why key theorists – from Marx to Saussure – are still considered to be the bedrock of sociology and sociological enquiry. Each chapter examines a different key thinker and applies their work to a recognisable aspect of popular cultural, showing how the central issues underpinning classic social thought - class, conflict, gender, power, ethnicity, and social status - can still be readily observed within the modern global world. Encouraging the reader to critique and reflect upon the ways in which classic social theory applies to their own worlds, this is the perfect antidote to dry social theory explanations. It is an eye-opening read for all students and scholars across the social sciences. (shrink)

This new edition includes a substantial postscript by the author, in which he responds to thirty years of discussion, criticism and further work in the field to ...

Objectives: To explore opinions and attitudes regarding the current information-giving practices in research involving adults with intellectual disabilities.Design: Qualitative focus group study with a purposive sample.Setting: An intellectual disabilities service within the NHSParticipants: A sample of 26 individuals including adults with mild intellectual disability, carers, clinicians, care managers and the charitable sector.Results: Three main themes were identified: process, format, and content. There was agreement that there is a need for improvement in the process and quality of information giving. With regard (...) to the content of information, there was little discrepancy between the study findings and existing guidance.Conclusions: Information should be presented in different formats and prepared with input from appropriate professions. Additionally the roles of peers, carers and other professionals in the process of information giving should be considered. (shrink)