Hume’s view of reason is notoriously hard to pin down, not least because of the apparently contradictory positions which he appears to adopt in different places. The problem is perhaps most clear in his writings concerning induction - in his famous argument of Treatise I iii 6 and Enquiry IV, on the one hand, he seems to conclude that “probable inference” has no rational basis, while elsewhere, for example in much of his writing on natural theology, he seems happy to (...) acknowledge that such inference is not only reasonable, but is even a paradigm of reasoning against which the theistic arguments must be judged. In the face of this apparent contradiction, many recent commentators have proferred “non-sceptical” interpretations of Hume’s argument concerning induction, but in this paper I sketch an alternative and perhaps less radical method of resolving the problem, by identifying a major threefold ambiguity in Hume’s use of the word “reason”. On this interpretation, Hume indeed sees induction as a paradigm of reasonableness in what is arguably the most important sense, but he nevertheless believes induction to be entirely non-reasonable in another sense, which though less important in common life is nevertheless very significant philosophically. A comparison with Locke can help to illuminate Hume’s position, which though indeed not entirely sceptical about induction, is by no means entirely non-sceptical either. (shrink)

This is the first of two volumes of essays in commemoration of Alan Turing, whose pioneering work in the theory of artificial intelligence and computer science continues to be widely discussed today. A group of prominent academics from a wide range of disciplines focus on three questions famously raised by Turing: What, if any, are the limits on machine `thinking'? Could a machine be genuinely intelligent? Might we ourselves be biological machines, whose thought consists essentially in nothing more than the (...) interaction of neurons according to strictly determined rules? The discussion of these fascinating issues is accessible to non-specialists and stimulating for all readers. (shrink)

To gain an insight into how those entering the teaching profession regard cyberbullying, two focus groups were conducted with nine pre-service teachers. Thematic analytical approach revealed...

Followers’ perceptions of their leaders’ ethics have the potential to impact the way they react to the influence of these leaders. The present study of 365 U.S. Air Force Academy Cadets examined how followers’ perceptions of their leaders’ ethics moderated the relationships found between the leaders’ use of power, as conceptualized by French and Raven, and the followers’ contextual performance. Our results indicated that leaders’ use of expert, referent, and reward power was associated with higher levels of organizational citizenship behaviors (...) among their followers when the followers perceived these leaders to be more ethical. Moreover, when followers perceived their leaders to be less ethical, these followers reported lower levels of OCBs when their leaders’ utilized referent power. Practical implications, limitations, and future research are also discussed. (shrink)

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

Guido de Ruggiero (1888-1948) was perhaps the greatest Italian intellectual historian in the twentieth century. He was a fierce champion of liberalism, an ardent opponent of Fascism, an insightful critic and interpreter of his contemporaries, and a formidable philosopher in his own right. Idealism & Experience: The Philosophy of Guido de Ruggiero comprises eight new critical essays, as well as English translations of five of de Ruggiero's most important shorter writings, which chart the development of his thought between 1914 and (...) 1946. Taken together, these essays reveal the range, richness and philosophical sophistication of de Ruggiero's ideas, enabling Anglophone readers to appreciate their enduring relevance in our own troubled times. (shrink)

Over the last century, Alzheimer’s disease has proven a highly malleable concept. Initially an obscure diagnosis pertaining to rare cases of young onset dementia, by the latter half of the 20th cen...

The metaphysical status of the placenta has bearing on several ongoing discussions within Catholic moral theology. Numerous bioethicists and theologians have touched on this topic briefly, but to date no robust metaphysical argument appears in the literature. The authors aim to provide such an analysis. First, they provide an overview of the existing literature on the topic. Second, they briefly review the anatomy and physiology of the placenta. Third, they provide metaphysical and biological reasons why the placenta cannot be a (...) part of the fetus, a part of the mother, simultaneously a part of both, the border at which mother and fetus meet, or a separate individual substance. Finally, they provide reasons that support their claim that the placenta is a quasi-substance that exists in symbiosis with mother and child. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14.2 : 295–333. (shrink)

Although much has been written about the vigorous debates over science and religion in the Victorian era, little attention has been paid to their continuing importance in early twentieth-century Britain. Reconciling Science and Religion provides a comprehensive survey of the interplay between British science and religion from the late nineteenth century to World War II. Peter J. Bowler argues that unlike the United States, where a strong fundamentalist opposition to evolutionism developed in the 1920s (most famously expressed in the (...) Scopes "monkey trial" of 1925), in Britain there was a concerted effort to reconcile science and religion. Intellectually conservative scientists championed the reconciliation and were supported by liberal theologians in the Free Churches and the Church of England, especially the Anglican "Modernists." Popular writers such as Julian Huxley and George Bernard Shaw sought to create a non-Christian religion similar in some respects to the Modernist position. Younger scientists and secularists—including Rationalists such as H. G. Wells and the Marxists—tended to oppose these efforts, as did conservative Christians, who saw the liberal position as a betrayal of the true spirit of their religion. With the increased social tensions of the 1930s, as the churches moved toward a neo-orthodoxy unfriendly to natural theology and biologists adopted the "Modern Synthesis" of genetics and evolutionary theory, the proposed reconciliation fell apart. Because the tensions between science and religion—and efforts at reconciling the two—are still very much with us today, Bowler's book will be important for everyone interested in these issues. Contents: Illustrations Preface Introduction: A Legacy of Conflict? Confrontation, Cooperation, or Coexistence? Victorian Background Science and Religion in the New Century Part One: The Sciences and Religion 1. The Religion of Scientists Changing Patterns of Belief Scientists and Christianity Scientists and Theism Method and Meaning Science and Values 2. Scientists against Superstition Science and Rationalism Religion without Revelation Marxists and Other Radicals Science, Religion, and the History of Science 3. Physics and Cosmology Ether and Spirit The New Physics The Earth and the Universe 4. Evolution and the New Natural Theology Science and Creation Evolution and Progress The Role of Lamarckism Darwinism Revived 5. Matter, Life, and Mind The Origin of Life Vitalism and Organicism Mind and Body Psychology and Religion Part Two: The Churches and Science 6. The Churches in the New Century The Challenge of the New The Churches’ Response 7. The New Theology in the Free Churches Precursors of the New Theology Campbell and the New Theology Modernism in the Free Churches 8. Anglican Modernism Modernism and the New Natural Theology Charles F. D’Arcy E. W. Barnes W. R. Inge Charles Raven 9. The Reaction against Modernism Evangelicals against Evolution Liberal Catholicism The Menace of the New Psychology Science and Modern Life Theology in the Thirties Roman Catholicism Part Three: The Wider Debate 10. Science and Secularism Against Idealism Popular Rationalism The Social Reformers 11. Religion’s Defenders From Idealism to Spiritualism Creative and Emergent Evolution Evolution and the Human Spirit Progress through Struggle The Christian Response Epilogue Biographical Appendix Bibliography Index. (shrink)

‘Only the naïve or innocent observer’, says Sir Moses Finley in his book Politics in the ancient world, ‘can believe that Pericles came to a vital Assembly meeting armed with nothing but his intelligence, his knowledge, his charisma and his oratorical skill, essential as all four attributes were.’ Historians of the Roman Republic have been assiduous in studying clientelae,factiones and ‘delivering the vote’, but much less work has been done on the ways in which Athenian politicians sought to mobilise support. (...) There have been studies of family connections and of links between individual politicians; there have been studies of the associations known as hetaireiai; but many questions remain unanswered. W. R. Connor in The new politicians of fifth-century Athens contrasted an old style of politics, based on ties of philia within the upper classes, with a new style, which spurned philia and appealed directly to the people. Even in his old style, the votes of the ordinary, middling-to-poor citizens counted for more in the straightforward Athenian assembly than in the Roman comitia with their complex systems of block votes. Connor limits political friendship to the upper classes; he pours cold water on Sealey's suggestion that rich families might have brought pressure to bear on their tenants and other dependants ; but apart from general references to largesse he does not really explain how an old-style Cimon or a new-style Cleon would ensure that the assembly was full of voters willing to elect him as general or approve a motion which he proposed. J. K. Davies has tried to take the matter further in Wealth and the power of wealth in classical Athens. (shrink)

In all facets of our lives, humans construct meaning to understand their place in the world and their relationships to one another and to broader environments. Within this semantic web, words, stor...

Consistent with Ruchkin and colleagues' proceduralist account, recent research on grouping and verbal-spatial binding in immediate memory shows continuity across short- and long-term retention, and activation of classes of information extending beyond those typically allowed in modular models. However, Ruchkin et al.'s account lacks well-specified mechanisms for the retention of serial order, binding, and the control of activation through attention.

Recent studies have provided evidence of associations between neurochemistry and reading (dis)ability (Pugh et al., 2014). Based on a long history of studies indicating that fluent reading entails the automatic convergence of the written and spoken forms of language and our recently proposed Neural Noise Hypothesis (Hancock et al., 2017), we hypothesized that individual differences in cross-modal integration would mediate, at least partially, the relationship between neurochemical concentrations and reading. Cross-modal integration was measured in 231 children using a two-alternative forced (...) choice cross-modal matching task with three language conditions (letters, words, and pseudowords) and two levels of difficulty within each language condition. Neurometabolite concentrations of Choline (Cho), Glutamate (Glu), gamma-Aminobutyric (GABA), and N- acetyl-aspartate (NAA) were then measured in a subset of this sample (n = 70) with Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS). A structural equation mediation model revealed that the effect of cross-modal word matching mediated the relationship between increased Glu (which has been proposed to be an index of neural noise) and poorer reading ability. In addition, the effect of cross-modal word matching fully mediated a relationship between increased Cho and poorer reading ability. Multilevel mixed effects models confirmed that lower Cho predicted faster cross-modal matching reaction time, specifically in the hard word condition. These Cho... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11.4 (2001) 391-400 [Access article in PDF] Bioethics Inside the Beltway A Shooting on Capitol Hill: "The Ruby Satellite System," Mental Illness, and Failure of the American Legal System Peter J. Cohen On 24 July 1998, Russell Eugene Weston, Jr., stormed the United States Capitol, forced his way through a security checkpoint, bypassed a metal detector, and entered the office complex of Representative (...) Tom DeLay (R-TX), the House Majority Whip (Weil 1998). During this period of terror, he shot and killed two officers of the Capitol Police and seriously wounded another as they attempted to end his foray. 1 Weston was severely wounded by several Capital police officers and taken into custody. After being treated for his injuries, he was incarcerated in the District of Columbia. 2On 5 May 1999, Weston was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institute in Butner, North Carolina (United States v. Weston, 69 F. Supp. 2d 99 (D.D.C. 1999), 103), where he remains to this day. He has neither been brought to trial nor received appropriate psychiatric therapy, but continues to be warehoused "in solitary confinement under constant observation... in a psychotic state (United States v. Weston, 255 F.3d 873; LEXIS 16851 (U.S. App. 2001b), 3-4 [LEXIS]). I will briefly detail the legal events responsible for this mad situation and suggest alternative actions that should have been taken at the very onset of the case. Early Chronology Although overtly the crime appeared to be senseless and without any conceivable motivation, Weston believed that his acts were justified and necessary. The story he told to the court-appointed forensic psychiatrist, Sally C. Johnson, M.D., 3 was that while working for NASA in the early 1980s, he had developed a "Ruby Satellite System," a powerful machine that could reverse time. With access to this system, nothing was permanent--the user could simply reverse time and exit from the current scene. However, the "System" was now controlled by cannibals who were developing and spreading "Black Heva," the deadliest disease known to [End Page 391] humankind, similar to HIV or the plague. It resulted from human corpses rotting and turning black. Time was running out, and Weston believed he had to return to override the "Ruby Satellite System" in the Capitol so that he could stem the spread of "Black Heva" and prevent world calamity. He believed that if he were tried, convicted, and even executed, he could simply time reverse himself, place himself in a safe within the Capitol, and subsequently resume his life at whatever point he chose (United States v. Weston, 206 F.3d 9 (D.C. Cir. 2000), 19-20).On 22 April 1999, the district court accepted Dr. Johnson's diagnosis that Weston suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, the symptoms of which were so severe that he would be incapable of understanding the proceedings against him and of assisting in his own defense. On this basis, the court had no difficulty in finding him incompetent to stand trial (U.S. v. Weston 1999, 102).At Weston's initial hearing, Dr. Johnson had testified that medication would be efficacious in treating Weston's delusions: [T]he standard of care in someone suffering from this type of symptom picture would be to treat them with medication.... [T]here is a good likelihood that he'll have a positive response, positive in the sense that his symptoms will diminish in response to treatment.... The potential benefits to treating the defendant far outweigh the risks.... (U.S. v. Weston 1999, 108) The defense presented no expert testimony refuting Dr. Johnson's presentation. The district court then ordered that Weston begin receiving medication in order to render him nondangerous and competent for trial (U.S. v. Weston 1999, 108-9). The Problem Weston refused to be medicated! 4 He has continued to claim that the administration of antipsychotic drugs against his will would violate his Fifth Amendment due process liberty interest in avoiding unwanted bodily intrusion and implicated... (shrink)

Moral leadership matters. As world politics enters a new and dangerous era, judgment, constancy, moral purpose, and a willingness to overcome partisan politicking are essential for America's leaders. Tempered Strength finds the alternative standard of leadership that Americans are seeking in the classical philosophy of prudence. Ethan Fishman's new work brings together leading American political scientists—including Ronald Beiner, Kenneth L. Deutsch, and George Anastaplo—to discuss the evolution of a standard of prudential leadership both reasonable in nature and practical in scope. (...) Section One studies the meaning of prudence and its evolution in the history of political science from Aristotelian phronesis to Xenophon, Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Burke, and Michael Oakeshott. Section Two demonstrates how the theory of prudential leadership can be applied to practical political issues. (shrink)

We sought to gain more insight into the effects of attention focus and time constraints on skill learning and performance in novices and experts by means of two complementary experiments using a table tennis paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that skill-focus conditions and slowed ball frequency disrupted the accuracy of experts, but dual-task conditions and speeded ball frequency did not. For novices, only speeded ball frequency disrupted accuracy. In Experiment 2, we extended these findings by instructing novices either explicitly or by (...) analogy . Explicitly instructed novices were less accurate in skill-focused and dual-task conditions than in single-task conditions. Following analogy instruction novices were less accurate in the skill-focused condition, but maintained accuracy under dual-task conditions. Participants in both conditions retained accuracy when ball frequency was slowed, but lost accuracy when ball frequency was speeded, suggesting that not attention, but motor dexterity, was inadequate under high temporal constraints. (shrink)

Humans hunt and kill many different species of animals, but whales are our biggest prey. In the North Atlantic, a male long-fi nned pilot whale (Globiceph- ala melaena), a large relative of the dolphins, can grow as large as 6.5 meters and weigh as much as 2.5 tons. As whales go, these are not particularly large, but there are more than 750,000 pilot whales in the North Atlantic, traveling in groups, “pods,” that range from just a few individuals to a (...) thousand or more. Each pod is led by an individual known as the “pilot,” who appears to set the course of travel for the rest of the group. This pilot is both an asset and a weakness to the pod. The average pilot whale will yield about a half ton of meat and blubber, and North Atlantic societies including Ireland, Iceland, and the Shetlands used to manipulate the pilot to drive the entire pod ashore. In the Faroe Islands, a group of 18 grassy rocks due north of Scotland, pilot whale hunts have continued for the last 1200 years, at least. The permanent residents of these islands, the Faroese, previously killed an average of 900 whales each year, yielding about 500 tons of meat and fat that was consumed by local residents. Hunts have declined in recent years. From 2001 to 2005, about 3400 whales were killed, yielding about 890 metric tons of blubber and 990 metric tons of meat. The whale kill, or grindadráp in the Faroese language, begins when a fi shing boat spots a pod close enough to a suitable shore, on a suitably clear day. A single boat, or even a small group of fi shermen, is not suffi cient to trap a.. (shrink)

For some of us, the defeasibility theory of knowledge remains the most plausible approach to the Gettier Problem. Epistemological fashion and faded memories notwithstanding, persuasive objections to the theory are very hard to find. The most impressive of those objections to the theory that have hitherto gone unanswered are examined and rejected here. These are objections put forward by Richard Feldman, Richard Foley, and John Turri. While these are all interesting, the objection recently put forward by Turri is, we think, (...) by far, the most serious threat to the theory that we have seen in a long time. A successful reply to it requires a surprising amount of care, as it turns out. If tenable, Turri's objection deals a devastating blow to the theory developed by Roderick Chisholm, Keith Lehrer, Peter Klein, Marshall Swain, Risto Hilpinen, John Pollock, and Paul Moser, among others. Under scrutiny, however, the threat proves illusory. It results from inattention to a crucial, but relatively subtle, aspect of.. (shrink)

© 2015 Elsevier Inc.Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan pathogen in the phylum Apicomplexa that resides within an intracellular parasitophorous vacuole that is selectively permeable to small molecules through unidentified mechanisms. We have identified GRA17 as a Toxoplasma-secreted protein that localizes to the parasitophorous vacuole membrane and mediates passive transport of small molecules across the PVM. GRA17 is related to the putative Plasmodium translocon protein EXP2 and conserved across PV-residing Apicomplexa. The PVs of GRA17-deficient parasites have aberrant morphology, reduced permeability to (...) small molecules, and structural instability. GRA17-deficient parasites proliferate slowly and are avirulent in mice. These GRA17-deficient phenotypes are rescued by complementation with Plasmodium EXP2. GRA17 functions synergistically with a related protein, GRA23. Exogenous expression of GRA17 or GRA23 alters the membrane conductance properties of Xenopus oocytes in a manner consistent with a large non-selective pore. Thus, GRA17 and GRA23 provide a molecular basis for PVM permeability and nutrient access. (shrink)

This book basically traces the historical movements that saw Aristotelian thought introduced to Islamic studies. The most significant translation movement was begun in Baghdad in the eighth century and sporadically continued until the middle of the eleventh century. When this movement was completed, every extant work of Aristotle was translated into Arabic. Peters offers a formidable collection of bibliography, doxography, and gnomonology that appeals more to eastern classical scholars than to Aristotelian philosophers. No significant philosophical issues are raised--this is really (...) not the author's intention. Whenever a remote philosophical point does arise, however, it does so a bit arbitrarily. For example, when Peters introduces a chapter on the triumph of Kalam in Islamic thought, he asserts, "it was the Greeks themselves who reduced philosophy to its status of 'handmaiden of theology'." No further explanation is given and Peters continues on his more certain ground--Islamic culture.--J. J. R. (shrink)