Locke clearly intends what I call his 'linguistic thesis,' the claim that words signify nothing but ideas, to tell against Aristotelian essentialism. I argue that current interpretations of Locke's anti-essentialist arguments have not accorded the linguistic thesis its proper role. This is largely due to the prevalent misreadings of that thesis. Locke's view is that words reliably indicate ideas in the mind of the speaker. It is only once we see this that we can understand how the thesis functions in (...) Locke's anti-Aristotelian project. (shrink)

Profiles of art education in nineteen countries around the world by citizens or longtime residents of those countries comprise the core of this book. Guidelines for the cross-cultural study of art education are presented by the editors in a general introduction and three part introductions, and also by contributing specialists. The nineteen national profiles, with accompanying examples of children's artwork, make up the largest section of the book, Part II. The three chapters in Part I review research that has identified, (...) on one hand, certain universal characteristics of children's artwork attributable to common human stages of development, and, on the other hand, certain differing and unique cultural influences. The need for further research on this distinction is emphasized. Contributors to Part I are Elliot W. Eisner, William Ives and Howard Gardner, and Marjorie and Brent Wilson. The three chapters in Part III discuss three major problems in art education: the use of museum visits, the worldwide attempt to establish valid tests of teacher and pupil proficiency in art, and the design of sound and useful cross-cultural research. Resources for such research are described. Contributors to Part III are Robert Ott and Lois Swan Jones, William Bradley, and Frances E. Anderson. Professionals and students in art education can broaden their perspective through Art in Education, while their counterparts in child development and psychology can gain insights into the creative process. Profiles: Western Europe—England,Finland, Germany, Netherlands; Eastern Europe—Hungary, Poland, Soviet Union; Middle East and South Asia Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Israel; East Asia and the Pacific Australia, China, Japan; Africa—Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa; The Americas—Brazil, United States. (shrink)

We report specific heat and μSR measurements on Th and/or B substituted UBe13. The specific heat data show that either Th or B substitution reduces the Kondo temperature TK and increases the entropy at the superconducting transition by almost 20%, indicating an enhanced density of states. However, whereas μSR shows clear evidence for magnetic correlations for Th substitutions, no magnetism is observed for B substitutions. The enhanced specific heat jump in the B-substituted material is associated with a change in the (...) superconducting properties as TK is reduced. (shrink)

What is the origin of the concept of a law of nature? How much does it owe to theology and metaphysics? To what extent do the laws of nature permit contingency? Are there exceptions to the laws of nature? Is it possible to give a reductive analysis of lawhood, or is it a primitive? -/- Twelve brand-new essays by an international team of leading philosophers take up these and other central questions on the laws of nature, whilst also examining some (...) of the most important intuitions and assumptions that have guided the debate over laws of nature since the concept's invention in the seventeenth century. -/- Laws of Nature spans the history of philosophy and of science, contemporary metaphysics, and contemporary philosophy of science. Contents: 1. Intuitions and Assumptions in the Debate over Laws of Nature, Walter Ott and Lydia Patton 2. Early Modern Roots of the Philosophical Concept of a Law of Nature, Helen Hattab 3. Laws of Nature and the Divine Order of Things: Descartes and Newton on Truth in Natural Philosophy, Mary Domski 4. Leges sive natura: Bacon, Spinoza, and a Forgotten Concept of Law, Walter Ott 5. Laws and Powers in the Frame of Nature, Stathis Psillos 6. Laws and Ideal Unity, Angela Breitenbach 7. Becoming Humean, John W. Carroll 8. A Perspectivalist Better Best System Account of Lawhood, Michela Massimi 9. Laws: An Invariance Based Account, James Woodward 10. How the Explanations of Natural Laws Make Some Reducible Physical Properties Natural and Explanatorily Powerful, Marc Lange 11. Laws and their Exceptions, Stephen Mumford 12. Are laws of nature consistent with contingency?, Nancy Cartwright and Pedro Merlussi. (shrink)

This book offers another in a long line of Creighton Peden’s contributions to understanding the thought of perhaps neglected religious thinkers in the American liberal tradition. Peden has stated that his approach in writing about figures like Gerald Birney Smith, George Burman Foster, and Edward Scribner Ames has not been critical or even comparative, but explicative. His goal is to make more of their work more accessible. And Peden is especially well positioned to do so in the case of Bernard (...) Meland, as he has been a long-standing student, colleague, interlocutor, and ultimately literary executor to Meland.The book has a slightly quirky structure. The first twenty or so pages are an intellectual autobiography.. (shrink)

Some have suggested that certain classical physical systems have undecidable long-term behavior, without specifying an appropriate notion of decidability over the reals. We introduce such a notion, decidability in (or d- ) for any measure , which is particularly appropriate for physics and in some ways more intuitive than Ko's (1991) recursive approximability (r.a.). For Lebesgue measure , d- implies r.a. Sets with positive -measure that are sufficiently "riddled" with holes are never d- but are often r.a. This explicates Sommerer (...) and Ott's (1996) claim of uncomputable behavior in a system with riddled basins of attraction. Furthermore, it clarifies speculations that the stability of the solar system (and similar systems) may be undecidable, for the invariant tori established by KAM theory form sets that are not d-. (shrink)

The unanimity theory is an account of property-level causation requiring that causes raise the probability of their effects in specified test situations. Richard Otte (1981) and others have presented counterexamples in which one property is probabilistically sufficient for at least one other property. Given the continuing discussion (e.g., Cartwright 1989; Cartwright and Dupre 1988; Eells 1988a,b), many apparently think that these problems are minor. By considering the impact of Otte's cases on recent versions of the theory, by raising several new (...) examples, and by criticizing natural replies, I argue that the problems for the unanimity theory are severe. (shrink)

How language works — its functions, mechanisms, and limitations — matters to the early moderns as much as it does to contemporary philosophers. Many of the moderns make reflection on language central to their philosophical projects, both as a tool for explaining human cognition and as a weapon to be used against competing views. Even in philosophers for whom language is less central, we can find important connections between their views on language and their other philosophical commitments.

In 1985, Swiss legal philosopher Walter Ott visited Herbert Hart in Oxford and made this record of their meeting, which casts novel light on some of Hart’s ideas. Ott engaged Hart in a fresh encounter with the legal philosophy of Gustav Radbruch, particularly Hart’s and Radbruch’s reasons for a minimum content of justice in law. They also discussed the grudge informer, state responsibility under laws of an earlier régime, and questions of the definition and falsifiability of legal theories. Hart surprisingly (...) reported Hans Kelsen as stating, when they had met at Berkeley in 1961, that Hume (and not Kant, and certainly not Wittgenstein) was the greatest philosopher who had ever lived. The translation is accompanied with annotations explaining references, assumptions and contexts. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Classical Tradition Descartes: Minds as Captains, Bodies as Ships Rejecting Descartes: Ships Passing in the Night.

The paper at hand analyzes the economic implications of service robots as expected important future technology. The considerations are embedded into global trends, focusing on the interdependencies between services and industry not only in the context of the provision of services but already starting at the level of the innovation process. It is argued that due to the various interdependencies combined with heterogenous application fields, the resulting implications need to be contextualized. Concerning the net labor market effects, it is reasonable (...) to assume that the field of service robotics will generate overall job creation that goes along with increasing skill requirements demanded from involved employees. It is analyzed which challenges arise in evaluating and further developing the new technology field and some policy recommendations are given. (shrink)

The publication aims to make suggestions for a 'decolonisation of aesthetics' within an Afro-European framework. The texts (whose authors come from different cultural contexts between Germany, France, Senegal, Benin, Nigeria and Tunesia) do not only refer to heterogenous aesthetic practices understood as subversive and decolonial strategies, but also discuss philosophical questions of a renewed (non-in)dividual humanism. The artistic practices analyzed include artistic installations and ensembles as well as actions in urban and rural space, deceptive manœuvres at the borders and their (...) photographic documentation, and many more. (shrink)

Überblick über die theologische briefliteratur der frühscholastik.-Die theologischen Briefe Walters von Mortagne.-Die theologischen Briefe Hugos von St. Viktor.-Die theologischen Briefe Richards von St. Viktor.

This book analyses some of the seminal texts of the Chinese tradition and shows how they exemplify aspects of embodiment theory: the Analects of Confucius, the Zhuangzi, and the Treatise on Music. Margus Ott also develops far-reaching possibilities of an embodied philosophy. The embodied understanding did not go unchallenged in Ancient China. There were important counter-currents, most notably the Mohists and the so-called Legalists. By using embodiment theory Ott demonstrates how these ideas can be seen as a decontextualizing tendency of (...) thought that plays an important role in human affairs. (shrink)

Anstelle einer Einleitung: ein Thema und eine Sichtweise desselben -- Analytische Philsophie zwischen Sprache, Logik und Mathematik -- Die analytische Philosophie und das Phänomenon der Komplementarität -- Kant, Bolzano und Peirce: die Unterschedung des Analytischen und Synthetischen, oder: von der Erkenntnistheorie zur Semantik und Zeichentheorie -- Ernst Cassirer und die Entwicklung von Analyse und Synthese seit Descartes und Leibniz -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) -- Die naturalisierte Erkenntnistheorie zwischen Wiener Kries und Pragmatismus: Willard Van Orward [sic] Quine -- Richard Rorty: der (...) Spiegel der Natur -- Die analytische Philosophie, der Mensch, die Kunst und das Denken der Maschinen. (shrink)