In this aricle, I argue that Descartes can be seen as a occupying a distinct middle ground between ancient music theory, which was being revived in the Renaissance, and eighteenth-century aestheticians. Descartes’ approach to music had its roots in humanist thought but, even from the start, it wasn’t simply another humanist theory of music. The views Descartes begins to develop in his early years, in the Compendium musicae (1618), is continuous with the views he articulates near the end of his (...) life in the Passions of the Soul (1649). And the position on the effects of music is an interesting and important one, bridging humanist thought with the new philosophy. Unlike the humanists, Descartes will be unwilling to identify particular musical proportions as intrinsically connected with pleasure or other affects, but he will nevertheless develop an objective account of aesthetic value. (shrink)

It is claimed by the future like ours anti-abortion argument that since killing adult humans is wrong because it deprives them of a future of value and the fetus has a future of value, killing fetuses is wrong in the same way that killing adult human beings is wrong. In The morality of abortion and the deprivation of futures (this journal, April 2000) I argued that the persuasive power of this argument rests upon an equivocation on the term “future of (...) value”. If the expression means “a potential future of value” then the moral claim is implausible because people do not in general have rights to what they need to fulfill their potential; if the expression means “self-represented future of value” then the argument fails because the fetus does not represent its future. Under no interpretation is the argument sound. In Deprivations, futures and the wrongness of killing (this journal, December 2001) Donald Marquis, author of the future like ours argument, responds at length to this objection. In the present essay the focus of the debate shifts to the proper interpretation of the right not to be killed. Donald Marquis argues that this liberty right entails the welfare right to the means necessary to sustain life; I argue that the right not to be killed does not entail unlimited welfare rights. On Marquis's view, the right not to be killed confers upon the fetus the right to whatever it takes to sustain life; on the view I defend, the right not to be killed does not confer upon the fetus or anyone else the right to another person's body. On Marquis's view, abortion is almost never permissible; on my view abortion is almost always permissible. (shrink)

Este artículo pasa revista a las principales contribuciones de Víctor Sánchez de Zavala a la lingüística y a la filosofía, a traves del análisis de las ideas centrales de su pensamiento expuestas en sus libros y artículos. Despues de una breve introdueción a su biografía académica, se analiza y explica el papel esencial que Víctor Sánchez de Zavala tuvo en la introducción de la gramatíca generativa en España. Se examina en este sentido su trabajo corno profesor, editor, traductor y escritor (...) y la Iínea central de su trabajo lingüístico. La segunda parte del artículo analiza las hipótesis fundamentales de la teoda pragmática desarrollada por este filósofo y lingüísta a lo largo de toda su vida. En esta sección, por otra parte, se presenta y discute su novedoso enfoque global de la actividad lingüística expuesta en su obra póstuma, de reciente aparieión: Hacia la pragmática (psicoIógica), Madrid, Visor.This paper reviews Víctor Sánehez de Zavala’s main contributions to linguistics and philosophy through a close look at the central ideas developed in his articles and books. In the first part, after a brief introduction to his academic biography, the leading role of Víctor Sánchez de Zavada in the introduction of formal linguistics in Spain is analysed and justified. His work as editor, professor, translator and writer is examined through his main publications. The second part of the paper is devoted to provide an analysis of the central hypotheses on which this theory of psychologicaI pragmatics is based. Furthermore, this second part examines his novel and global approach to linguistic activity, developed in his posthumous book Towards a psychological pragmatics. (shrink)

Thus far, discarding such manuscripts as are copies of printed editions, we have arrived at the following grouping: 1. The group x, in which K is a copy of A, and B of C, while A and C are brothers, the former being only slightly superior to the latter. 2. SQq. Here Q is a copy of S, whose borrowings from Politian it incorporated. Q added some readings from C or K, and scholia and other readings from a manuscript of (...) the Ee stock; and after Q had received these additions, q was in turn copied from Q. 3. IID. Mr. Allen thinks it possible that, for the Homeric Hymns, these two are not direct copies of the same manuscript; and his conclusions may be accepted as indicating their mutual kinship in regard to Callimachus also. D's lost Callimachean portion gave some readings to Politian's text of Hymn V., and is in part represented by J. Lascaris' editio princeps of all six Hymns. 4.Ee, found to be brothers. 5. The group z. Here At appears to be a brother of F; and F stands apart from the z2 section, being nearer than they to xSTLDEe. Among the z2 manuscripts, Br is a copy of I, which is itself separated from GHA; this trio seem, on the imperfect evidence at hand, to be brothers. (shrink)

F is Milan, Ambrosianus 120 ;. foll. III. + 227 ; cmm. 25, 1 × 17, 8, with thirty lines to the page; cent. early XV. Contents: ff. 1v–125v, Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, with marginal and interlinear scholia; followed by his Life. 127, Batrachomyomachia. 132v, Pseudo-Herodotus, Life of Homer. 142v Maximus of Tyre, πς τις λνπος η. 145, Orpheus, Argonautica. 168v, πκοοι κα πρòς ρπετ, i.e. Orpheus, Lithica, Il. 91–110, 115–140, 145–171, 176–202, 207–233, 238–266, 271–300, 305–332, 337–364, 369–398, 467–498, 500–531, 533–564, (...) 566–774. 178v–209r, Homeric Hymns III.–XXXIII. 209r, ‘Homeric’ epigram ες ξένους. 209r–227v, Callimachus, Hymns, with marginal and interlinear scholia. 227V, four lines. The manuscript is bound in leather. Marks of gatherings are lacking from the Callimachean portion. All the writing is in the same small and very neat hand. Ligatures abound. In the text, final letters are frequently written above those which precede them; in the same position, but in the middle of a word, α and abbreviated εν appear frequently; αι, ε, σ or ς, and abbreviated ον and ας, rarely. Iota subscr. is not regularly employed. Horizontal supralinear strokes are used 38 times to indicate names of persons. The scribe was a careful copyist. His major errors, not found in the common stock either of the manuscripts in general or of the z group, nor shared with G and H, number only 25 ; his minor, 43. (shrink)

There are many shortcomings in Otto Schneider'sapparatus criticusto Callimachus'Hymns. Some of these appear on a perusal of thePraefatio. For it claims a thorough collation for only ten MSS. (ABCdEFGHIM); scantier citations are given from seven others (fKLQRST), from theeditio princeps(called by Schneider D), and from the MSS. used respectively by Politian forHymnV., and by Robortelli and H. Stephanus for all sixHymns. And, besides the unusedcodex Ambrosianus A63sup.. there is on pp. xxxix–xl a list of MSS., with the places where they (...) have been reported to exist, only one of which (F) is represented in Schneider's collation. (shrink)

S is Madrid, Biblioteca Nacionale, gr. 24; foll. 136 ; size folio, with thirty-two lines usually to the page; dated 1464. Contents: f. 2, a Life of Musaeus, followed by' AντƖπάpou σƖδωτíον ĺς ƿ καĺ λέαծpoδ and Musaeus, Hero and Leander. 7v, two poems by Marcus Musurus, viz. a version of Musaeus' poem in ten hexameter lines and four elegiac couplets ĺς μονοαîo. 8r, three epigrams on Orpheus, written as one. 8v, Constantine Lascaris ĺς Ƭձ πpoλƳòμα ƬoȖ σoοȖ òpέως 10v, (...) πpìπolŋroÛ on the life and writings of Orpheus. 11r, úπóƟσς ƬoȖ πλoȖ Ƭ pƳoα Ƭlκѵ. 11v, úπóƟσς ƬoȖ ծέpoς 12, Orpheus, Argonautica, with frequent marginal notes, and corrections in red ink, in Lascaris' hand. 35, Orpheus, Hymns, prefaced by the invocation to Musaeus, 'Opùς πρòς μoσαîo ùƬνXς Xp έƬαîρ ; of the Hymns are given II.; VI.; VIII.; XXXII.; XL. (shrink)

Ontological and methodological constraints on a theory of cognition that would generalize across species are identified. Within these constraints, ecological arguments for animal-environment mutuality and reciprocity and the necessary specificity of structured energy distributions to environmental facts are developed as counterpoints to the classical doctrines of animal-environment dualism and intractable nonspecificity. Implications of and for a cognitive theory consistent with Gibson's programme of ecological psychology are identified and contrasted with contemporary cognitivism.

A unifying theory of general anesthetic-induced unconsciousness must explain the common mechanism through which various anesthetic agents produce unconsciousness. Functional-brain-imaging data obtained from 11 volunteers during general anesthesia showed specific suppression of regional thalamic and midbrain reticular formation activity across two different commonly used volatile agents. These findings are discussed in relation to findings from sleep neurophysiology and the implications of this work for consciousness research. It is hypothesized that the essential common neurophysiologic mechanism underlying anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is, as with (...) sleep-induced unconsciousness, a hyperpolarization block of thalamocortical neurons. A model of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is introduced to explain how the plethora of effects anesthetics have on cellular functioning ultimately all converge on a single neuroanatomic/neurophysiologic system, thus providing for a unitary physiologic theory of narcosis related to consciousness. (shrink)

This essay explores the claim that bioethics has become a mode of biopolitics. It seeks to illuminate one of the myriad of ways that bioethics joins other institutionalized discursive practices in the task of producing, organizing, and managing the bodies—of policing and controlling populations—in order to empower larger institutional agents. The focus of this analysis is the contemporary practice of transnational biomedical research. The analysis is catalyzed by the enormous transformation in the political economy of transnational research that has occurred (...) over the past three decades and the accompanying increase in the numbers of human bodies now subjected to research. This essay uses the work of Michel Foucault, particularly his notion of docile bodies, to analyze these changes. Two loci from the bioethics literature are explored—one treating research in the United States and one treating research in developing countries. In the latter, we see a novel dynamic of the new biopolitics: the ways in which bioethics helps to create docile political bodies that will police themselves and who will, in turn, facilitate the production of docile human bodies for research. (shrink)

Within the moral/social order maintained and reproduced by biomedical ethics (i.e., the “peaceable community”), suffering is a senseless accident with no value. Insofar as suffering compromises the fundamental pillar of this order, namely, autonomy, it threatens the existence of the “peaceable community”. Consequently, biomedical ethics is only able to offer those who suffer one moral or practical response: that of elimination, embodied most vividly in the increasingly approved practice of assisted-suicide. Another moral/ social order, however, the “peaceable Kingdom” or the (...) “Body of Christ”, provides an alternative understanding of the meaning, purpose, and significance of suffering, through the Roman Catholic sacrament of anointing of the sick. Recognizing the power of sickness and suffering to “dis-inscribe” bodies of their normative self-understandings, the Church responds with a set of liturgical practices which intend to respond to the dynamics of suffering, re-inscribe these bodies, and assist persons in fulfilling the vocation of “participating in Christ's suffering for the salvation of the world”. (shrink)

There is already a copious literature comparing Claudius' oration on the admission of the primores Galliae into the Roman Senate with Tacitus’ account of the speech and of the opposition's case in Annals 11. 23–4. Yet the Emperor's own purpose in speaking as he did still needs some illumination. Scholarly concentration on technical points about the citizenship, on Claudius’ antiquarianism and on his debt to Livy has been fruitful, but it has often distracted attention from Claudius’ immediate aim. Meanwhile, Tacitus’ (...) interpretation has been insidious in colouring our view of what course of action the imperial orator was trying to defend before the Senate. (shrink)

There is a perplexing transition in Dr. Reza Davari's thought, when he problematizes the relation between Iranian and Western history/cultures, on which this paper is focusing. The interperative objective is to clarify this transition on the basis of the implicit relation between the two most fundamental concepts in his earlier and later thought respectively westernization and underdevelopment. Although, by this transition, the level of discussion transits from an ontologico-philosophical to an intellectualist one. So, there are two different levels of problematization (...) in his thought which differ deeply. Therefore, we are not just dealing with the substitution of fundamental concepts, but with different problematizations and different levels of discussion. Obviously, there will be new problems arising which are not just concerning with the justification of the transition but with the problematization of westernization itself. Finally, it's been concluded that in order to clarify these new problems, we should step back to the level of philosophical discussion, and first of all to the clarification of the I-not-I relation which has been neglected thoroughly in the whole project. (shrink)

Cadaveric transplantation and living transplantation exist side by side. Both practices help to alleviate organ need. They provide us with two separate moral schemes. Is it rational to keep them apart? The cadaveric system is organised along strict, impartial lines, while the living system is inherently partial and local. The ethical justification for this partial scheme seems to be that it merely supplements the cadaveric scheme: partial transplants do not come at the expense of cadaveric impartiality, but in fact significantly (...) reduce the waiting time for patients on the list for a cadaveric transplant.This seemingly peaceful coexistence is challenged by new initiatives, among them living donation list exchange, and also the LifeSharers initiative, leading to practices that undermine cadaveric impartiality. Should we bemoan this fact, or should we move on towards a new balance in the relationship between cadaveric and living transplantation practices, towards a new moral weighing of impartial and partial values? I argue, against the background of a rapid growth of living donations, that we have good, ethical reasons—not only utilitarian ones—for giving the value of partiality a more prominent place in our policies. (shrink)