Le Cours de Philosophie par Mr V. Cousin réunit les leçons du semestre d'hiver 1819-1820, précédées de quelques cours sur l'École sensualiste et sur la Philosophie de Kant. Il s'agit là d'un travail préparatoire en vue de la composition d'une oeuvre "dogmatique" que Cousin n'a jamais écrite.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Book Reviews Bibliography on Plato's "'Laws, "" 1920-1970: With Additional Citations through May, 1975. By Trevor J. Saunders. (New York: Arno Press, 1976. Pp. i + 60. $15.00) The Penguin Classics translator of the non-Socratic Laws, as Leo Strauss called them, has here compiled in a most usable way a thorough bibliography of books and articles about the Laws or parts of them. The section "Texts, Translations, and Commentaries" (...) properly excludes translations not made directly from the Greek. In previous centuries this would, also properly, have excluded many a famous or popular translation, such as Thomas Taylor's or Victor Cousin's, worked out from the text of M. Ficino's "first edition" in Latin. Given the state of the Greek text and the practice, inaugurated by Ficino, of improving upon the Greek in the translatioias, some notation about the literalness of the translations cited would have been of additional value. Section B, in thirty pages, is the largest and also deliberately the most selective in striving to limit itself to work concerned exclusively or primarily with the Laws. But it cannot avoid including much material about some aspect of Plato in general rather than about the Laws; this is especially true of the subsection, B1, on comprehensive accounts. Section B2, on the text and its tradition, has overwhelmingly more citations about the indirect tradition than about the texts themselves, an interesting indication of the current state of this question. The next subsections, to B12, divide according to subject matter. BI3 lists studies on the influence of the Laws. The last section, in twenty-four pages, is most valuable. It lists, by Stephanus page number, an abundance of discussions of individual passages from Book I through Book XII wherever these discussions, bibliographically speaking, may have occurred. Students of the Laws will be well served by, and most grateful to, Professor Saunders for this bibliography. I can only second the intent of his parting epigraph that sends us back to the study of the Laws themselves. But I must add that more explicitly detailed work appears to be required both on the difficulties the text itself presents to students of Plato (one thinks of A. Boeckh's analyses of the prose in Books I through III) and on those which arise when the Laws is contrasted--from the point of view of design and intellectuality--with those of Plato's works that are comparable, if not in number of pages, at least in scale of conception and monumentality. V. TEJERA SUNY at Stony Brook Science and Philosophy in Aristotle's Biological Works. By Anthony Preus. (Hildesheim and New York: George Olms, 1975. Pp. ix + 404. DM.88) A reciprocal influence between Aristotle's philosophy and biology--if it could be demonstrated through step-by-step criticism and not merely asserted in generalities about functionalism--might help to explain both, and might also itself be philosophically interesting ; for it should clarify Aristotle's concepts of form, essence, universal, and species-concepts which have been mercilessly jumbled in the traditional interpretations. With the failure of Jaegerian developmental analyses, we can hardly now hope for help from detailed chronology. But a general dating of Aristotle's biological interest to the Assos-Mytilene period, when he was already aged forty, is accepted by most people (though not by Jaeger who [463]... (shrink)

The source and inspiration of French “eclecticism” in the first half of last century was historical; its immediate purpose, the reconstitution of philosophical doctrines of the past; its riper though remoter effects, the formation of a tradition which insisted on reinterpretation as an indispensable preliminary to further construction. And it is largely a result of this that we to-day find commonplace the declaration: “A peculiarity of systems that are epoch-making is that their influence should extend beyond their own generation, and (...) that they should prepare, as it were in secret, the thought that is to come.” So far as fuller and comparative scholarship have been applied to the elucidation of Cartesian philosophy and science, the results appear to fall into three groups. First, largely a result of the impetus of Cousin's teaching at the École Normale, there is the ample story of the development and modifications of Cartesianism in Bouillier's Histoire, and the Cartésianisme of Bordas-Demoulin. Later in the century, after the reaction against Cousin, come the invaluable study of Liard, insisting on the greater importance of Descartes' methodology and physics and the priority of the latter over his metaphysics, and the elegant monograph of Fouillee stressing the “voluntarist” tendencies in Descartes. (shrink)

False belief tasks have enjoyed a monopoly in the research on children’s development of a theory of mind. They have been granted this status because they promise to deliver an unambiguous assessment of children’s understanding of the representational nature of mental states. Their poor cousins, true belief tasks, have been relegated to occasional service as control tasks. That this is their only role has been due to the universal assumption that correct answers on true belief tasks are inherently ambiguous regarding (...) the level of the child’s understanding of mental states. It has also been due to the universal assumption that nothing in the child’s developing theory of mind would lead to systematically incorrect answers on true belief tasks. We review new findings that 4- and 5-year-olds do err, systematically and profoundly, on the true belief versions of all the extant belief tasks. This reveals an intermediate level of understanding in the development of children’s theory of mind. Researchers have been unaware of this intermediate level because it produces correct answers in false belief tasks. A simple two-task battery—one true belief task and one false belief task—is sufficient to remove the ambiguity from each task. The new findings show that children do not acquire an understanding of beliefs, and hence a representational theory of mind, until after 6 years of age, or 2 years later than most developmental psychologists have concluded. This raises the question of how to interpret other new findings that infants are able to pass false belief tasks. We review these new infant studies, as well as recent studies on chimpanzees, in light of older children’s failure on true belief tasks, and end with some speculation about how all of these new findings might be reconciled. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Humanism, Female Education, and Myth:Erasmus, Vives, and More's To CandidusA. D. CousinsWhen considering pleasure and chance as aspects of human experience, Thomas More sometimes gendered them female; that is to say, at times he represented them by drawing from the mythographies of Venus and of Fortune. But what did he suggest that actual women, as distinct from goddesses, were or should be or might become: what were his notions (...) of being a woman, of femaleness? Further, what did he suggest that women might contribute to the common weal? A useful way to start answering that question is to look at what More seems to have thought about educating women: in particular, women who were entering adult life—entering into what was agreed to be the major female role—by marrying for the first time and therefore newly taking upon themselves the management of a household. In one of his most ambitious Latin poems, as nowhere else, More wrote elaborately, concisely and problematically on the education of women who were in just those circumstances. My discussion attempts a repositioning of that poem, To Candidus: How to Choose A Wife A Poem in Iambic Dimeter Brachycatalectic (Versvs Iambici Dimetri Brachycatalectici ad Candidvm, Qvalis Vxor Deligenda). To make the attempt involves examining More's other Latin poems on women, as would be anticipated; however, I am mainly concerned here with affinities between To Candidus—then, to a lesser extent, some of More's associated Latin poems—and notions about female education that were or were to become part of the already long, and mostly male, debate about the nature of femaleness.1 To be [End Page 213] specific, I am chiefly concerned with affinities between More's poem and writings by Erasmus and by Vives on the education of prospective or of recent brides.Because the primary concern in my discussion is to clarify the relations between More's To Candidus and humanist notions on female education, especially notions put forward by two of More's humanist friends about young brides, I want initially to revisit the early modern debate on educating women, of course an important element of the wider debate about femaleness itself. One medieval and thence early modern idea on female education was that, in addition to what their mothers taught them, most women needed merely to receive religious and ethical instruction from their husbands, who would likewise instruct them in how to govern a household.2 After all, it was often pointed out, the household was women's natural domain: since, therefore, they would not normally engage with the world at large as would men—since, for example, they would not normally be educators, or writers, or politicians—women did not usually need the broad education appropriate to men.3 Assertion to the contrary was variously argued—and differences between or among those contrary assertions did not always depend on whether an author was male or female. In The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), a response to Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris and, perhaps unknowingly, also to Plutarch's The Virtues of Women, Christine de Pizan attempted to construct at once a refuge and a resource for [End Page 214] women, whom she recognized as having been misrepresented to themselves no less than to men throughout generations of misogynistic male fictions, ranging from satire to epic, from fable to history.4 Her City, in so far as it is a revisionist history of women, forms a textual space which does indeed offer a refuge as well as a resource, for Christine advocates that women, fulfilling their capabilities as women, aim at "cultivat[ing] virtue" and thereby gaining inclusion in the true, illustrious record of female achievement: membership of a textual community within which they will see themselves reflected and which is at one with the City of God.5 Inseparable from their seeking to do so, she emphasizes, will be their receiving education.6 Despite that emphasis—and despite her emphasizing that women are men's intellectual equals or, not infrequently, superiors—Christine nevertheless defends the concept that the domestic sphere and not the public is in general that "appropriate" to women.7... (shrink)

The Jeffreys–Lindley paradox displays how the use of a \ value ) in a frequentist hypothesis test can lead to an inference that is radically different from that of a Bayesian hypothesis test in the form advocated by Harold Jeffreys in the 1930s and common today. The setting is the test of a well-specified null hypothesis versus a composite alternative. The \ value, as well as the ratio of the likelihood under the null hypothesis to the maximized likelihood under the (...) alternative, can strongly disfavor the null hypothesis, while the Bayesian posterior probability for the null hypothesis can be arbitrarily large. The academic statistics literature contains many impassioned comments on this paradox, yet there is no consensus either on its relevance to scientific communication or on its correct resolution. The paradox is quite relevant to frontier research in high energy physics. This paper is an attempt to explain the situation to both physicists and statisticians, in the hope that further progress can be made. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on care homes in the United Kingdom, particularly for those residents living with dementia. The impetus for this article comes from a recent review conducted by the authors. That review, a qualitative media analysis of news and academic articles published during the first few months of the outbreak, identified ethical care as a key theme warranting further investigation within the context of the crisis. To explore ethical care further, a set of salient (...) ethical values for delivering care to care home residents living with dementia during the pandemic was derived from a synthesis of relevant ethical standards, codes and philosophical approaches. The ethical values identified were caring, non-maleficence, beneficence, procedural justice, dignity in death and dying, well-being, safety, and personhood. Using these ethical values as a framework, alongside examples from contemporaneous media and academic sources, this article discusses the delivery of ethical care to care home residents with dementia within the context of COVID-19. The analysis identifies positive examples of ethical values displayed by care home staff, care sector organisations, healthcare professionals and third sector advocacy organisations. However, concerns relating to the death rates, dignity, safety, well-being and personhood – of residents and staff – are also evident. These shortcomings are attributable to negligent government strategy, which resulted in delayed guidance, lack of resources and Personal Protective Equipment, unclear data, and inconsistent testing. Consequently, this review demonstrates the ways in which care homes are underfunded, under resourced and undervalued. (shrink)

J'étais au lycée depuis la neuvième. Lors de la drôle de guerre, je suis restée à la campagne dans l'Ain ­ j'étais en cinquième et ai suivi l'enseignement dispensé par mes cousines, l'une faisant les mathématiques, l'autre les lettres. Ce n'était pas très sérieux mais pas si mauvais tout de même puisqu'après un court troisième trimestre à Henri IV (nous sommes repartis en juin à l'arrivée des Allemands), j'ai pu entrer en quatrième l'année suivante grâce à quelques cours particuliers d..

J'étais au lycée depuis la neuvième. Lors de la drôle de guerre, je suis restée à la campagne dans l'Ain ­ j'étais en cinquième et ai suivi l'enseignement dispensé par mes cousines, l'une faisant les mathématiques, l'autre les lettres. Ce n'était pas très sérieux mais pas si mauvais tout de même puisqu'après un court troisième trimestre à Henri IV (nous sommes repartis en juin à l'arrivée des Allemands), j'ai pu entrer en quatrième l'année suivante grâce à quelques cours particuliers d...

Ocherk 1. Voprosy ontologii -- Ocherk 2. Voprosy ėtiki i ėstetiki -- Ocherk 3. Voprosy gnoseologii i aksiologii.

The following discussion arises out of reflection upon a number of related topics. One of these is the problem of perception, and in particular of perceptual illusion. Another is the use which has been made, e.g. by Bradley, of the distinction between appearance and reality as a guiding principle of metaphysical inquiry. But the immediate occasion of the present inquiry is the attempt to discover what Kant in particular has to say upon these and similar problems. It is for this (...) reason that I have given the paper its title, and not because I wish to pose as an expert in Kantian scholarship. What contribution I can make to Kantian studies is only that of the outsider whose questions may perhaps suggest to the experts lines of inquiry which their very familiarity with Kant's ways of expressing himself may have led them to overlook. But the aim of the paper is not so much to discover what Kant meant as to formulate a particular view which may have been Kant's in such a way that we can judge whether it is true or not. The decision on that point, however, falls outside the scope of the present discussion. (shrink)

Richard of St. Victor's elaboration of the themes of interpersonal relations and of human love as self-transcendence links him to contemporary philosophical and theological interests.

In an illusion, if what has been said in the earlier part of this section is right, the essential thing is the presence to the mind of some false proposition, which may be affirmed or denied according as we are or are not deceived. But what precisely is this false proposition in each case? And, a second question, on what grounds do we entertain it?

The following discussion arises out of reflection upon a number of related topics. One of these is the problem of perception, and in particular of perceptual illusion. Another is the use which has been made, e.g. by Bradley, of the distinction between appearance and reality as a guiding principle of metaphysical inquiry. But the immediate occasion of the present inquiry is the attempt to discover what Kant in particular has to say upon these and similar problems. It is for this (...) reason that I have given the paper its title, and not because I wish to pose as an expert in Kantian scholarship. What contribution I can make to Kantian studies is only that of the outsider whose questions may perhaps suggest to the experts lines of inquiry which their very familiarity with Kant's ways of expressing himself may have led them to overlook. But the aim of the paper is not so much to discover what Kant meant as to formulate a particular view which may have been Kant's in such a way that we can judge whether it is true or not. The decision on that point, however, falls outside the scope of the present discussion. (shrink)