This book introduces student to the three major figures of modern philosophy known as the rationalists. It is not for complete beginners, but it is an accessible account of their thought. By concerning itself with metaphysics, and in particular substance, the book relates an important historical debate largely neglected by the contemporary debates in the once again popular area of traditional metaphysics. in philosophy. (Do Not USE).

From the neurophysiological perspective, thinking in dreaming and the quality of dream thought have been considered hallucinatory, bizarre, illogical, improbable, or even impossible. This empirical phenomenological research concentrates on testing whether dream thought can be defined as rational in the sense of an intervening mental process between sensory perception and the creation of meaning, leading to a conclusion or to taking action. From 10 individual dream journals of male participants aged 22–59 years and female participants aged 25–49 years, we delimited (...) four dreams per journal and randomly selected five thought units from each dream for scoring. The units provided a base for testing a hypothesis that the thought processes of dream construction are rational. The results support the hypothesis and demonstrate that eight fundamental rational thought processes can be applied to the dreaming process. (shrink)

This volume provides a philosophical introduction to and analysis of the study of metaphor. By proceeding from the concrete analysis of complex metaphors, White is able to identify a range of features which are incompatible with standard accounts of the way words function in metaphor.

Introduction -- The mathematical roots of the concept of analogy -- Aristotle : the uses of analogy -- Aristotle : analogy and language -- Thomas Aquinas -- Immanuel Kant -- Karl Barth -- Final reflections.

Synaesthesia is considered a rare perceptual capacity, and one that is not capable of cultivation. However, meditators report the experience quite commonly, and in questionnaire surveys, respondents claimed to experience synaesthesia in 35% of meditation retreatants, in 63% of a group of regular meditators, and in 86% of advanced teachers. These rates were significantly higher than in nonmeditator controls, and displayed significant correlations with measures of amount of meditation experience. A review of ancient texts found reports suggestive of synaesthesia in (...) advanced meditators from India and China. These findings suggest that synaesthesia may be cultivated by meditation, and that laboratory studies of meditators could be rewarding. (shrink)

Twenty years is a long time in the life of a science. While the historical roots of psychology have not changed since the first edition of this book, some of the offshoots of the various theories and systems discussed have been crit ically reexamined and have undergone far-reaching modifications. New and bold research has led to a broadening of perspectives, and recent devel opments in several areas required a considerable amount of rewriting. I have been fortunate in the last fifteen (...) years to have worked with about 2,000 psychologists and other behavioral scientists who contributed to several collected volumes I have edited. As the editor-in-chief of the In ternational Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Neurol ogy, I have had the privilege of reading, scrutinizing, and editing the work of 1,500 experts in psychology and related disciplines. In addition, I have written several books and monographs and over one hundred scientific papers. Armed with all that experience, I have carefully examined the pages of the first edition. Chapter 8 required substantial rewriting and several new sections have been added to other chapters: "Current Soviet Psychol ogy" (Chapter 2, Section 7); "New Ideas on Purposivism" (Chapter 5, Sec tion 4); "Recent Developments in the Sociological School of Psychoanalysis" (Chapter 9, Section 4); and "Present Status of Gestalt Psychology" (Chapter 12, Section 4). Chapter 15 was omitted, and two new chapters were added: Chapter 14 ("Humanistic Psychology") and Chapter 16 ("Selected Research Areas"). (shrink)

Epistemological realism was postulated as a prolegomenon to clinical research. Observation of single cases must precede any effort for generalization. Observation of men by men is always a field process. In clinical research the experimenter exercises a great amount of power over the subject, thus a naive empirical approach and operationism may be misleading. Clinical theory must be coated in a language different from empirical data and enable the formation of causal chains of events.

In this paper, I argue that independent governmental human rights bodies at the sub-national level now comprise a meaningful group that can be understood as a sub-national counterpart to National Human Rights Institutions. In accordance with the term’s growing usage among human rights practitioners, I label these bodies as “Sub-national Human Rights Institutions” (“SNHRIs”). So far, however, SNHRIs (as a general concept) have been the subject of very little academic attention, although there have been many studies of individual SNHRIs or (...) particular types of SNHRIs. With the objective of promoting coherent and generalizable research into this relatively new institutional concept, in this paper I therefore stipulate and justify a general SNHRI definition and a scientific typology of SNHRIs based on administrative level, institutional form, and breadth of mandate. (shrink)

Until very recently, the lack of health insurance has been viewed primarily as a problem of financial risk for uninsured individuals. This article documents far broader adverse effects, drawn from the work of the Institute of Medicine Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance. It also synthesizes the Committee’s key findings, conclusions, and recommendations.In early 2004, following 3½ years of study, the IOM Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance recommended that “...the President and Congress develop a strategy to achieve universal insurance (...) coverage and establish a firm and explicit schedule to reach this goal by 2010.” The Committee presented 5 principles to be used to assess various proposals for extending coverage or to guide the design of a new strategy, specifying that health care coverage should be universal, continuous, affordable to individuals and families, and affordable and sustainable for society. (shrink)

Until very recently, the lack of health insurance has been viewed primarily as a problem of financial risk for uninsured individuals. This article documents far broader adverse effects, drawn from the work of the Institute of Medicine Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance. It also synthesizes the Committee’s key findings, conclusions, and recommendations.In early 2004, following 3½ years of study, the IOM Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance recommended that “...the President and Congress develop a strategy to achieve universal insurance (...) coverage and establish a firm and explicit schedule to reach this goal by 2010.” The Committee presented 5 principles to be used to assess various proposals for extending coverage or to guide the design of a new strategy, specifying that health care coverage should be universal, continuous, affordable to individuals and families, and affordable and sustainable for society. (shrink)

Can we justify our most basic beliefs about morality, religion and the nature of the world? Can there be a rational and objective way of choosing between alternative societies, modes of life or world-views? Dr Trigg shows how philosophical analysis is relevant to these questions and criticizes the tendency to emphasize notions of commitment and convention at the expense of truth and reason. He draws parallels between issues that are often too isolated from each other and identifies a cluster of (...) related ideas, all of which stress the notion of self-contained conceptual systems that define their own standards of rationality. First published in 1973, this book will interest professional philosophers as a vigorous and distinctive exposition of several fundamental philosophical problems and more especially it can be used as an introduction for students to a wide range of philosophical problems. (shrink)

This paper argues for two theses: that degrees of belief are context sensitive; that outright belief is belief to degree 1. The latter thesis is rejected quickly in most discussions of the relationship between credence and belief, but the former thesis undermines the usual reasons for doing so. Furthermore, identifying belief with credence 1 allows nice solutions to a number of problems for the most widely-held view of the relationship between credence and belief, the threshold view. I provide a sketch (...) of a formal framework on which both theses are true. This is a modified Bayesian framework; I argue that despite making credences context-sensitive, the framework lets Bayesians hold on to their signature explanatory successes. The sort of context-sensitivity claimed for credences here mirrors the sort of context-sensitivity I have elsewhere claimed for outright belief: one's credences depend, in part, on the space of alternative possibilities one takes seriously in a context. (shrink)

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the (...) compatibility of the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

I treat you as a thermometer when I use your belief states as more or less reliable indicators of the facts. Should I treat myself in a parallel way? Should I think of the outputs of my faculties and yours as like the readings of two thermometers the way a third party would? I explore some of the difficulties in answering these questions. If I am to treat myself as well as others as thermometers in this way, it would appear (...) that I cannot reasonably trust my own convictions over yours unless I have antecedent reason to suppose that I am more likely than you to get things right. I appeal to some probabilistic considerations to suggest that our predicament as thermometers might not actually be as bad as it seems. (shrink)

This paper defends moral testimony pessimism, the view that there is something morally or epistemically regrettable about relying on the moral testimony of others, against several arguments in Lillehammer. One central such argument is that reliance on testimony is inconsistent with the exercise of true practical wisdom. Lillehammer doubts whether such reliance is always objectionable, but it is important to note that moral testimony pessimism is best understood as a view about the pro tanto, rather than the overall, badness of (...) relying on testimony. One must also be clear about what counts as genuine moral testimony: there will be morally charged occasions when a virtuous person will properly rely on the views of others. It can also plausibly be argued that relying on moral testimony may constitute a lack of full autonomy. After discussing some remaining issues concerning the definition of moral testimony, a possible analogy between lying and relying on testimony, and the implications of untrustworthiness for the truth of moral testimony pessimism, the paper ends with a return to the case against relying on moral testimony, grounded on a conception of the role of knowledge and understanding in virtue. (shrink)

This paper strives to characterize the relation between accent placement and discourse in terms of independent constraints operating at the interface between syntax and interpretation. The Givenness Constraint requires un-F-marked constituents to be given. Key here is our definition of givenness, which synthesizes insights from the literature on the semantics of focus with older views on information structure. AvoidF requires speakers to economize on F-marking. A third constraint requires a subset of F-markers to dominate accents.The characteristic prominence patterns of "novelty (...) focus" and "contrastive focus" both arise from a combination of the Givenness Constraint and AvoidF. Patterns of prominence in questions as well as in answers to questions are explained in terms of the constraints, thanks in part to the way in which the Givenness relation is defined. Head/argument asymmetries noted in the literature on Focus Projection are placed in the phonology-syntax interface, independent of discourse conditions. Deaccenting follows when AvoidF is ranked higher than constraint(s) governing head/argument asymmetries. (shrink)

Explaining the behaviour of ecosystems is one of the key challenges for the biological sciences. Since 2000, new-mechanicism has been the main model to account for the nature of scientific explanation in biology. The universality of the new-mechanist view in biology has been however put into question due to the existence of explanations that account for some biological phenomena in terms of their mathematical properties (mathematical explanations). Supporters of mathematical explanation have argued that the explanation of the behaviour of ecosystems (...) is usually provided in terms of their mathematical properties, and not in mechanistic terms. They have intensively studied the explanation of the properties of ecosystems that behave following the rules of a non-random network. However, no attention has been devoted to the study of the nature of the explanation in those that form a random network. In this paper, we cover that gap by analysing the explanation of the stability behaviour of the microbiome recently elaborated by Coyte and colleagues, to determine whether it fits with the model of explanation suggested by the new-mechanist or by the defenders of mathematical explanation. Our analysis of this case study supports three theses: (1) that the explanation is not given solely in terms of mechanisms, as the new-mechanists understand the concept; (2) that the mathematical properties that describe the system play an essential explanatory role, but they do not exhaust the explanation; (3) that a non-previously identified appeal to the type of interactions that the entities in the network can exhibit, as well as their abundance, is also necessary for Coyte and colleagues’ account to be fully explanatory. From the combination of these three theses we argue for the necessity of an integrative pluralist view of the nature of behaviour explanation when this is given by appealing to the existence of a random network. (shrink)

In an influential recent paper, Hawthorne, Rothschild, and Spectre (“HRS”) argue that belief is weak. More precisely: they argue that the referent of believe in ordinary language is much weaker than epistemologists usually suppose; that one needs very little evidence to be entitled to believe a proposition in this sense; and that the referent of believe in ordinary language just is the ordinary concept of belief. I argue here to the contrary. HRS identify two alleged tests of weakness – the (...) neg-raising and weak upper bounds tests, as I call them – which they claim believe and think pass. But I identify several other expressions in ordinary English for attributing belief, all of which fail both tests. Therefore, even if HRS are correct that believe and think refer to a weak attitude, it does not follow that the ordinary concept of belief is weak. I conclude by raising some problems for the accounts of belief as guessing, building on HRS's arguments, due to Kevin Dorst, Matt Mandelkern, and Ben Holguín. (shrink)

In her book Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher, Ann Hartle argues that Montaigne’s thought is dialectical in the Hegelian sense. Unlike Hegel’s progressive dialectic, however, Montaigne’s thought is, according to Hartle, circular in that the reconciliation of opposed terms comes not in the form of a newly emergent term, but in a return to the first term, where the meaning of the first is transformed as a result of its dialectical interaction with the second. This analysis motivates Hartle’s claim that (...) Montaigne is not a skeptic at all, let alone a Pyrrhonian skeptic. In this paper, I argue that Hartle’s circular-dialectical interpretation of Montaigne is not only compatible with Pyrrhonism, but is in fact an ideal model for understanding Sextus Empiricus’s skeptical therapy. (shrink)

The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – which (...) allows such a solution. I sketch a sensitivist account of the preface writer's doxastic state. (shrink)

Methylation of DNA plays an important role in the control of gene expression in higher eukaryotes. This is largely achieved by the packaging of methylated DNA into chromatin structures that are inaccessible to transcription factors and other proteins. Methylation involves the addition of a methyl group to the 5‐position of the cytosine base in DNA, a reaction catalysed by a DNA (cytosine‐5) methyltransferase. This reaction occurs in nuclear replication foci where the chromatin structure is loosened for replication, thereby allowing access (...) to methyltransferases. Partly as a result of their recognising the presence of a methylcytosine on the parental strand following replication, these large enzymes are able to maintain the distribution of methyl groups along the DNA of somatic cells and, thereby, maintain tissue‐specific patterns of gene expression. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 2, Page 342-355, April 2022.

We claim that if a complete philosophy of evidence-based practice is intended, then attention to the nature of causation in health science is necessary. We identify how health science currently conceptualises causation by the way it prioritises some research methods over others. We then show how the current understanding of what causation is serves to constrain scientific progress. An alternative account of causation is offered. This is one of dispositionalism. We claim that by understanding causation from a dispositionalist stance, many (...) of the processes within an evidence-based practice framework are better accounted for. Further, some of the problems associated with the health research, e.g. external validity of causal findings, dissolve. (shrink)

Thompson Clarke’s seminal paper “The Legacy of Skepticism” (1972) is notoriously difficult in both substance and presentation. Despite the paper’s importance to skepticism studies in the nearly half-century since its publication, no attempt has been made in the secondary literature to provide an account, based on a close reading of the text, of just what Clarke’s argument is. Furthermore, much of the existing literature betrays (or so it seems to me) fundamental misunderstandings of Clarke’s thought. In this essay, I attempt (...) to explain—concisely but comprehensively—Clarke’s overall argument in “The Legacy of Skepticism.”. (shrink)

Roger North's The Musicall Grammarian 1728 is a treatise on musical eloquence in all its branches. Of its five parts, I and II, on the orthoepy, orthography and syntax of music, constitute a grammar; III and IV, on the arts of invention and communication, form a rhetoric; and V, on etymology, consists of a history. Two substantial chapters of commentary introduce the text, which is edited here for the first time in its entirety: Jamie Kassler places his treatise within (...) the broader context not only of North's musical and non-musical writings but also their relation to the intellectual ferment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and Mary Chan describes physical and textual aspects of the treatise as evidence for North's processes of thinking about musical thinking. (shrink)