Plato's fondness for words compounded with παν- is obvious at the most cursory reading of his works; this characteristic of his style becomes even more striking when his use of these words is compared with their frequency in earlier authors. An investigation of Platonic usage in this respect, relatively easy since the publication of Leonard Brandwood's Word Index to Plato , yields interesting results. Whether the effect of the παν-prefix is intensive or determinative , Plato has a tendency to associate (...) these words with some sort of disapproval; this disapproval is sometimes explicit enough and can sometimes be inferred from the use of the word, or of a word related to it, in other contexts. The words may be used ironically, as πγκαλος often is and πσσοος always. Another sort of disapproval springs from what may be called Plato's general dislike of (promiscuous plurality, excess and variety; for a philosopher who believes in single, unchanging Forms there is something intrinsically objectionable in such words as πμπολυς and παντοδαπς. It also transpires that Plato may have coined a number, of these words and that he was probably the first prose writer to import others from poetry; in the face of the fragmentary nature of surviving Greek literature it would be unwise to be more dogmatic. The following, somewhat dry, survey will, it is hoped, throw some light on the usage of these interesting words. (shrink)

Plato's fondness for words compounded with παν- is obvious at the most cursory reading of his works; this characteristic of his style becomes even more striking when his use of these words is compared with their frequency in earlier authors. An investigation of Platonic usage in this respect, relatively easy since the publication of Leonard Brandwood's Word Index to Plato, yields interesting results. Whether the effect of the παν-prefix is intensive or determinative, Plato has a tendency to associate these words (...) with some sort of disapproval; this disapproval is sometimes explicit enough and can sometimes be inferred from the use of the word, or of a word related to it, in other contexts. The words may be used ironically, as πγκαλος often is and πσσοος always. Another sort of disapproval springs from what may be called Plato's general dislike of (promiscuous plurality, excess and variety; for a philosopher who believes in single, unchanging Forms there is something intrinsically objectionable in such words as πμπολυς and παντοδαπς. It also transpires that Plato may have coined a number, of these words and that he was probably the first prose writer to import others from poetry; in the face of the fragmentary nature of surviving Greek literature it would be unwise to be more dogmatic. The following, somewhat dry, survey will, it is hoped, throw some light on the usage of these interesting words. (shrink)

Implicit processes almost certainly preceded explicit processes in our evolutionary history, so they are likely to be more resistant to disruption according to the principles of evolutionary biology [Reber, A. S. . The cognitive unconscious: An evolutionary perspective. Consciousness and Cognition, 1, 93–133.]. Previous work . Knowledge, nerves and know-how: The role of explicit versus implicit knowledge in the breakdown of a complex motor skill under pressure. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 343–358.]) has shown that implicitly learned motor skills remain (...) stable under psychological pressure and concurrent cognitive demands, and recently [Poolton, J. M., Masters, R. S. W., & Maxwell, J. P. . Passing thoughts on the evolutionary stability of implicit motor behaviour: Performance retention under physiological fatigue. Consciousness and Cognition, 16, 456–468.] showed that they also remain stable under conditions of anaerobic fatigue that would have significantly challenged the survival skills of our ancestors. Here we examine the stability of an implicitly learned motor skill under fatigue conditions that primarily tax a different physiological system , but which have equally strong evolutionary connotations. Participants acquired a throwing task by means of an errorless learning method or an errorful method. Motor performance in the errorless condition, but not the errorful condition, remained stable following an exhaustive VO2 max. running test. Our findings replicate and extend the work of Poolton et al., providing further support for Reber’s evolutionary distinction between implicit and explicit processes. (shrink)

Three experiments explore the role of working memory in motor skill acquisition and performance. Traditional theories postulate that skill acquisition proceeds through stages of knowing, which are initially declarative but later procedural. The reported experiments challenge that view and support an independent, parallel processing model, which predicts that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired separately and that the former does not depend on the availability of working memory, whereas, the latter does. The behaviour of these two processes was manipulated (...) by providing or withholding visual (and auditory) appraisal of outcome feedback. Withholding feedback was predicted to inhibit the use of working memory to appraise success and, thus, prevent the formation of declarative knowledge without affecting the accumulation of procedural knowledge. While the first experiment failed to support these predictions, the second and third experiments demonstrated that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired independently. It is suggested that the availability of working memory is crucial to motor performance only when the learner has come to rely on its use. (shrink)

A modernized transcription of the 1550 Venice edition with a valuable introduction and index. The aim of the present edition is not identical with that of the critical edition of the Arabic text edited by Father Bouyges, or with that of the English translation of the Arabic text by Simon Van der Bergh. "The scholar of the Renaissance finds his interest primarily in the Averroes of the printed Latin version." The author explains the difficulties of a critical edition stemming from (...) the fact that the extant Arabic manuscripts are later than the Hebrew versions and some of the Latin versions. A handsome edition.--R. S. W. (shrink)

Heuristics of evolutionary biology dictate that phylogenetically older processes are inherently more stable and resilient to disruption than younger processes. On the grounds that non-declarative behaviour emerged long before declarative behaviour, Reber argues that implicit learning is supported by neural processes that are evolutionarily older than those supporting explicit learning. Reber suggested that implicit learning thus leads to performance that is more robust than explicit learning. Applying this evolutionary framework to motor performance, we examined whether implicit motor learning, relative to (...) explicit motor learning, conferred motor output that was resilient to physiological fatigue and durable over time. In Part One of the study a fatigued state was induced by a double Wingate Anaerobic test protocol. Fatigue had no affect on performance of participants in the implicit condition; whereas, performance of participants in the explicit condition deteriorated significantly. In Part Two of the study a convenience sample of participants was recalled following a one-year hiatus. In both the implicit and the explicit condition retention of performance was seen and, contrary to the findings in Part One, so was resilience to fatigue. The resilient performance in the explicit condition after one year may have resulted from forgetting or from consolidation of declarative knowledge as implicit memories. In either case, implicit processes were left to more effectively support motor performance. (shrink)

Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1969/1972.

This selection of papers that were presented (or nearly so!) to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during the seventies fairly re presents some of the most disturbing issues of scientific knowledge in these years. To the distant observer, it may seem that the defense of rational standards, objective reference, methodical self-correction, even the distin guishing of the foolish from the sensible and the truth-seeking from the ideological, has nearly collapsed. In fact, the defense may be seen to (...) have shifted; the knowledge business came under scrutiny decades ago and, indeed, from the time of Francis Bacon and even far earlier, the practicality of the discovery of knowledge was either hailed or lamented. So the defense may be founded on the premise that science may yet be liberating. In that case, the analysis of philosophical issues expands to embrace issues of social interest and social function, of instrumentality and arbitrary perspective, of biological constraints (upon knowledge as well as upon the species-wide behavior of human beings in other relationships too), of distortions due to explanatory metaphors and imposed categories, and of radical comparisons among the perspectives of different civilizations. Some of our contributors are frankly programmatic, showing how problems must be formulated afresh, how evasions must be identified and omissions rectified, but they do not reach their own completion. (shrink)

During the last twelvemonth we have been engaged in finally preparing for press the first volume of our text of Livy in the Bibliotheca Classica Oxoniensis, and we now desire to submit beforehand to the judgement of scholars some of the chief alterations in the current text that we have been led to adopt. It will be seen that some proportion of them consist of little more than a defence of the MS tradition; and where we have proposed changes of (...) our own, we have, we believe, rigorously confined ourselves not merely to such suggestions as can be readily reconciled with the reading of at least one good manuscript, but to such as provide in each case a tenable explanation of the origin of all the variants in all the MSS that we have consulted. In several difficult places we have become persuaded that corruption has arisen through slight and accountable dislocations of order, and in a still larger number from the incorporation of marginal or interlinear glosses not differing in character from those which still appear in great numbers in all the MSS of the 9th to the 12th centuries, but which have not forced their way into the text. A typical example will be found in our note on V. 2. 8. (shrink)