The single most important source for Second Temple Jewish exegetical traditions is the three commentaries series written by Philo of Alexandria. Wanting to understand Second Temple Judaism more fully, a group of scholars founded the Philo Institute in 1971 to explore those traditions. The following year they began publication of The Studia Philonica as a venue for their research; however, the significance of Philo's work soon captured the interest of a broader group of scholars and quickly opened the journal's pages (...) up to all aspects of Philonic studies. Six issues were released from 1972-1980 containing twenty-five articles, annual bibliographies, and abstracts of notable publications. The list of contributors is a who's who in Philonic studies in the 1970s and 1980s. After a lapse of almost a decade, the journal was revived as the Studia Philonica Annual, which is devoted to furthering the study of Hellenistic Judaism, in particular the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria (ca. 15 b.c.e. to ca. 50 c.e.). Each year the Annual publishes the most current Philonic scholarship along with an extensive bibliography that is maintained by David Runia. (shrink)

BackgroundStory recall tests have shown variable sensitivity to rate of cognitive decline in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers. Although SR tasks are typically scored by obtaining a sum of items recalled, item-level analyses may provide additional sensitivity to change and AD processes. Here, we examined the difficulty and discrimination indices of each item from the Logical Memory SR task, and determined if these metrics differed by recall conditions, story version, lexical categories, serial position, and amyloid status.Methodsn = 1,141 participants from (...) the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention longitudinal study who had item-level data were included in these analyses, as well as a subset of n = 338 who also had amyloid positron emission tomography imaging. LM data were categorized into four lexical categories, and by serial position. We calculated difficulty and discriminability/memorability by item, category, and serial position and ran separate repeated measures ANOVAs for each recall condition, lexical category, and serial position. For the subset with amyloid imaging, we used a two-sample t-test to examine whether amyloid positive and amyloid negative groups differed in difficulty or discrimination for the same summary metrics.ResultsIn the larger sample, items were more difficult in the delayed recall condition across both story A and story B. Item discrimination was higher at delayed than immediate recall, and proper names had better discrimination than any of the other lexical categories or serial position groups. In the subsample with amyloid PET imaging, proper names were more difficult for Aβ+ than Aβ−; items in the verb and “other” lexical categories and all serial positions from delayed recall were more discriminate for the Aβ+ group compared to the Aβ− group.ConclusionThis study provides empirical evidence that both LM stories are effective at discriminating ability levels and amyloid status, and that individual items vary in difficulty and discrimination by amyloid status, while total scores do not. These results can be informative for the future development of sensitive tasks or composite scores for early detection of cognitive decline. (shrink)

Scientific experts have confirmed that anthropogenic warming is underway, and some degree of adaptation is now unavoidable. However, the details of impacts on the scale of climate change at which humans would have to prepare for and adjust to them are still the subject of considerable research, inquiry, and debate. Planning for adaptation requires information on the scale over which human organizations and institutions have authority and capacity, yet the general circulation models lack forecasting skill at these scales, and attempts (...) to “downscale” climate models are still in the early stages of development. Because we do not know what adaptations will be required, we cannot say whether they will be harder or easier—more expensive or less—than emissions control. Whatever improvements in regional predictive capacity may come about in the future, the lack of current predictive capacity on the relevant scale is a strong argument for why we must both control greenhouse gas emissions and prepare to adapt. (shrink)

How do people attribute responsibility in situations where the contributions of multiple agents combine to produce a joint outcome? The prevalence of over-determination in such cases makes this a difficult problem for counterfactual theories of causal responsibility. In this article, we explore a general framework for assigning responsibility in multiple agent contexts. We draw on the structural model account of actual causation (e.g., Halpern & Pearl, 2005) and its extension to responsibility judgments (Chockler & Halpern, 2004). We review the main (...) theoretical and empirical issues that arise from this literature and propose a novel model of intuitive judgments of responsibility. This model is a function of both pivotality (whether an agent made a difference to the outcome) and criticality (how important the agent is perceived to be for the outcome, before any actions are taken). The model explains empirical results from previous studies and is supported by a new experiment that manipulates both pivotality and criticality. We also discuss possible extensions of this model to deal with a broader range of causal situations. Overall, our approach emphasizes the close interrelations between causality, counterfactuals, and responsibility attributions. (shrink)

Traditional explanations of multistable visual phenomena (e.g. ambiguous figures, perceptual rivalry) suggest that the basis for spontaneous reversals in perception lies in antagonistic connectivity within the visual system. In this review, we suggest an alternative, albeit speculative, explanation for visual multistability – that spontaneous alternations reflect responses to active, programmed events initiated by brain areas that integrate sensory and non-sensory information to coordinate a diversity of behaviors. Much evidence suggests that perceptual reversals are themselves more closely related to the expression (...) of a behavior than to passive sensory responses: (1) they are initiated spontaneously, often voluntarily, and are influenced by subjective variables such as attention and mood; (2) the alternation process is greatly facilitated with practice and compromised by lesions in non-visual cortical areas; (3) the alternation process has temporal dynamics similar to those of spontaneously initiated behaviors; (4) functional imaging reveals that brain areas associated with a variety of cognitive behaviors are specifically activated when vision becomes unstable. In this scheme, reorganizations of activity throughout the visual cortex, concurrent with perceptual reversals, are initiated by higher, largely non-sensory brain centers. Such direct intervention in the processing of the sensory input by brain structures associated with planning and motor programming might serve an important role in perceptual organization, particularly in aspects related to selective attention. (shrink)

It is not often that one is graced with a mini-symposium upon reception of an article for publication, and for this I am grateful to Bill Hasker, who had to wait until after his editorship to respond to my provocative piece, and equally grateful to Richard Cross, whom Bill solicited for an assist. Since my piece called for a “radical transformation of standard philosophical strategies,” and Bill addressed that perspectival issue from the outset, while Richard focused on some axial semantic (...) and epistemological contentions, I shall begin with Bill Hasker’s overall puzzlements, proceed to address some issues on which Richard Cross and I seem fated to disagree, and close by addressing the neuralgic point of created freedom, which both Hasker and I find axial to attempting to articulate the creator/creature relation. What gratifies me is the opportunity to interact with such sterling critics, and to try to ascertain whether we can advance a discussion (as Bill Hasker suggests) of issues which no sane human inquirer can ever pretend to “get right.”. (shrink)

I propose an analysis of the metaphysically important distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties, and, in the process, provide a neglected model for the analysis of recalcitrant distinctions generally. First, I recap some difficulties with Kim's well-known (1982) proposal and its recent descendants. Then I define two independence relations among properties and state a ‘quasi-logical’ analysis of the distinction in terms of them. Unusually, my proposal is holistic, but I argue that it is in a certain kind of equilibrium and (...) so probably pins down the target distinction uniquely. Finally, I suggest diagnoses of the previous failed attempts to analyse the distinction. (shrink)

It is well-known that the invocation of `equilibrium processes' in thermodynamics is oxymoronic. However, their prevalence and utility, particularly in elementary accounts, presents a problem. We consider a way in which their role can be played by sets of sequences of processes demarcated by curves carrying the property of accessibility. We also examine the vexed question of whether equilibrium processes are necessarily reversible and the revision of this property in relation to sets of sequences of such processes.

The Boltzmann and Gibbs approaches to statistical mechanics have very different definitions of equilibrium and entropy. The problems associated with this are discussed and it is suggested that they can be resolved, to produce a version of statistical mechanics incorporating both approaches, by redefining equilibrium not as a binary property but as a continuous property measured by the Boltzmann entropy and by introducing the idea of thermodynamic-like behaviour for the Boltzmann entropy. The Kac ring model is used as an example (...) to test the proposals. (shrink)

In this clear and reasoned discussion of self- knowledge and the self, the author asks whether it is really possible to know ourselves as we really are. He illuminates issues about the nature of self-identity which are of fundamental importance in moral psychology, epistemology and literary criticism. Jopling focuses on the accounts of Stuart Hampshire, Jean-Paul Sartre and Richard Rorty, and dialogical philosophical psychology and illustrates his argument with examples from literature, drama and psychology.

I present, motivate, and defend a theory of properties. Its novel feature is that it takes entire determinables-together-with-their-determinates as its units of analysis. This, I argue, captures the relations of entailment and exclusion among properties, solves the problem of extensionality, and points the way towards an actualist analysis of modality.

Pointing by apes is near-ubiquitous in captivity, yet rare in their natural habitats. This has implications for understanding both the ontogeny and heritability of pointing, conceived as a behavioral phenotype. The data suggest that the cognitive capacity for manual deixis was possessed by the last common ancestor of humans and the great apes. In this review, nonverbal reference is distinguished from symbolic reference. An operational definition of intentional communication is delineated, citing published or forthcoming examples for each of the defining (...) criteria from studies of manual gestures in apes. Claims that chimpanzees do not point amongst themselves or do not gesture declaratively are refuted with published examples. Links between pointing and cognitive milestones in other domains relating means to ends are discussed. Finally, an evolutionary scenario of pointing as an adaptation to changes in hominid development is briefly sketched. (shrink)

This paper addresses ethical issues surrounding global supply chains of multinational companies in developing countries. In particular, it considers the development and application of industry-wide ethical standards and codes of conduct for multinational supply chains in China. We describe and analyze the ethical norms and compliance components of such industry-wide regimes in the toy, textile, and consumer electronics industries. We argue that this development represents an positive attempt to institutionalize emergent international ethical standards and practices into this component of the (...) Chinese economy. (shrink)

This paper addresses ethical issues surrounding global supply chains of multinational companies in developing countries. In particular, it considers the development and application of industry-wide ethical standards and codes of conduct for multinational supply chains in China. We describe and analyze the ethical norms and compliance components of such industry-wide regimes in the toy, textile, and consumer electronics industries. We argue that this development represents an positive attempt to institutionalize emergent international ethical standards and practices into this component of the (...) Chinese economy. (shrink)

This paper describes and offers an analysis of a "new cosmopolitanism" emerging in the late 1990's --which is contrasted with cultural pluralism.

Resource extraction companies worldwide are involved with Indigenous peoples. Historically these interactions have been antagonistic, yet there is a growing public expectation for improved ethical performance of resource industries to engage with Indigenous peoples. (Crawley and Sinclair, Journal of Business Ethics 45, 361–373 (2003)) proposed an ethical model for human resource practices with Indigenous peoples in Australian mining companies. This paper expands on this work by re-framing the discussion within the context of sustainable development, extending it to Canada, and generalizing (...) to other resource industries. We argue that it is unethical to sacrifice the viability of Indigenous cultures for industrial resource extraction; it is ethical to engage with indigenous peoples in a manner consistent with their wishes and needs as they perceive them. We apply these ideas to a case study in the coastal temperate rainforest of Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada. In this case a scientific panel comprised of Nuu-Chah-Nulth elders, forest scientists and management professionals, achieved full consensus on developing sustainable forest practice standards by drawing equally on Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and Western science in the context of one of the most heated and protracted environmental conflicts in Canadian history. The resulting sustainable forest practice standards were later adopted by leading forestry firms operating on the coast. Our analysis of this scientific panels success provides the basis for advancing an ethical approach to sustainable development with Indigenous peoples. This ethical approach is applicable to companies working in natural resource industries where the territories of Indigenous peoples are involved. (shrink)

The revival of virtue ethics is largely inspired by Aristotle, but few---especially Christians---follow him in seeing virtue supremely exemplified in the “magnanimous” man. However, Aristotle raises a matter of importance: the character traits and type of psychological stance exemplified in those who aspire to acts of extraordinary excellence. I explore the accounts of magnanimity found in both Aristotle and Aquinas, defending the intelligibility and acceptability of some central elements of a broadly Aristotelian conception of magnanimity. Aquinas, I argue, provides insight (...) into how Christian ethics may appropriate central elements of a broadly Aristotelian conception of extraordinary virtue. (shrink)

There is a great deal of support for the contention that the ethical cognition of health care professionals are of consequence to the level of patient care provided. The present study examines the ethical cognition of what has traditionally been deemed a profession of incomplete or marginal status: the retail, or community, pharmacy setting. An empirical examination of ethical cognition compares a systematic random sample of retail pharmacists with pharmacy students. Additional comparisons are made with a baseline of ethical cognition (...) abilities of other health care professionals, such as physicians and nurses.Based on cognitive-developmental theory and using a well-known measure of ethical reasoning, two hypotheses are explored regarding the ethical reasoning skills of retail pharmacy practitioners and pharmacy students. Results indicate that, contrary to cognitive moral development theory, students possess greater ethical reasoning skills than do their practitioner counterparts. In addition, baseline comparisons with other health professional groups reflect unfavorably on the retail pharmacists. It is suggested that the selection-socialization processes inherent in the retail pharmacy setting may result in one or more of the following outcomes: 1) the selection of lower ethical reasoners to the community pharmacy setting, 2) the exodus to other pharmacy settings of higher reasoners, and 3) a possible retrogression in the ethical cognition of community practitioners. Implications for retail practice and limitations are discussed. (shrink)

Understanding how activity in the brain leads to a subjective percept is of great interest to philosophers and neuroscientists alike. In the last years, neurophysiological experiments have approached this problem directly by measuring neural signals in animals as they experience well-defined visual percepts. Stimuli in these studies are often inherently ambiguous, and thus rely upon the subjective report, generally from trained monkeys, to provide a measure of perception. By correlating activity levels in the brain to this report, one can speculate (...) on the role of individual neurons and groups of neurons in the formation and maintenance of a particular percept. However, in order to draw valid conclusions from such experiments, it is critical that the responses accurately and reliably reflect what is perceived. For this reason, a number of behavioural paradigms have been developed to control and evaluate the truthfulness of responses from behaving animals. Here we describe several approaches to optimizing the reliability of a monkey's perceptual report, and argue that their combination provides an invaluable approach in the study of subjective visual perception. (shrink)

This essay provides a brief overview of ethical issues and challenges relevant to international firms doing business in China. Those issues include the uncertainties of further economic liberalization within an authoritarian government framework, the impacts of bribery and low transparency on competitiveness and profitability, uncertainty about what ethics and values within the Chinese cultural ethos will prevail in shaping economic behavior, questions about the rights and status of Chinese workers, and significant challenges of environmental sustainability.

Consider the task of predicting which soccer team will win the next World Cup. The bookmakers may judge Brazil to be the team most likely to win, but also judge it most likely that a European rather than a Latin American team will win. This is an example of a non-aligned hierarchy structure: the most probable event at the subordinate level (Brazil wins) appears to be inconsistent with the most probable event at the superordinate level (a European team wins). In (...) this paper we exploit such structures to investigate how people make predictions based on uncertain hierarchical knowledge. We distinguish between aligned and non-aligned environments, and conjecture that people assume alignment. Participants were exposed to a non-aligned training set in which the most probable superordinate category predicted one outcome, whereas the most probable subordinate category predicted a different outcome. In the test phase participants allowed their initial probability judgments about category membership to shift their final ratings of the probability of the outcome, even though all judgments were made on the basis of the same statistical data. In effect people were primed to focus on the most likely path in an inference tree, and neglect alternative paths. These results highlight the importance of the level at which statistical data are represented, and suggest that when faced with hierarchical inference problems people adopt a simplifying heuristic that assumes alignment. (shrink)

Henrich et al. convincingly caution against the overgeneralization of findings from particular human populations, but fail to apply their own compelling reasoning to our nearest living relatives, the great apes. Here we argue that rearing history is every bit as important for understanding cognition in other species as it is in humans.

How Heidegger criticizes and "locates" science, and some problems with what he is trying to do.

For more than twenty years, Opinion 6.01 of the American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics has specified that “a physician's fee for medical services should be based on the value of the service provided by the physician to the patient.” In 1994, the AMA amended Opinion 6.01, adding a new statement that “a physician's fee should not be made contingent on the successful outcome of medical treatment.”We believe that the amendment is wholly indefensible. Therefore, in this essay, we argue (...) that the AMA should lift this prohibition and encourage the use of result-based compensation for medical services in appropriate circumstances.The 1994 amendment dramatically changed the significance and scope of Opinion 6.01. Result-based compensation arrangements clearly satisfy the original version of Opinion 6.01 because they base compensation on the “value of the services provided … to the patient.” Yet, it is equally clear that result-based compensation arrangements violate the amended version of Opinion 6.01 because they necessarily make compensation “contingent on the successful outcome of medical treatment.”. (shrink)

This is Hollinger's book on the life and work of the American philosopher of science Morris R. Cohen.

The fundamentals of Kahn's architectural philosophy begin with his personal history: his inherent talent; his family background and childhood experiences; his education, from elementary school through architectural school; the influences of Paul Philippe Cret and Beaux Arts architecture; and his travels, especially those to study the antique monuments of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Because the causal aspects of these experiences were absorbed by him, rather than being the products of Kahn's own thinking, he rarely acknowledged them. His conclusions led to (...) a philosophy that echoed some of the thoughts of earlier philosophers, like Spinoza and Heidegger, but were arrived at independently.1 Kahn expressed his philosophy in lectures, seminars, writings, interviews, conversation, and often through sketches. However, he habitually expressed himself elliptically-his phrasing poetic, his metaphors original and apt. Therefore, his meaning was often felt rather than understood. Extensive studies of Louis Kahn's architecture exist, but few focus on his fully developed architectural philosophy.2 This text addresses that subject, incorporating his own words (in italics) and relating them where relevant to his final work, the Yale Center of British Art (hereafter, "the Center"). Kahn died during the construction of the building, the last material expression of his architectural philosophy. I was the first director of the Center, a participant in the selection of the architect and throughout the building's planning and creation. Coincidental with the early years of Kahn's planning for the Center, two young architectural historians-John Cook and Heinrich Klotz-interviewed several leading architects, including Kahn. Working with a verbatim transcript of the Kahn interviews, made by Karen Denavit, I produced an edited version of the interviews in book format. Louis I. Kahn in Conversation: Interviews with John W. Cook and Heinrich Klotz (hereafter, "Kahn in Conversation") is the source for many of the Kahn quotations included here. A researcher can consult the full, verbatim transcript of the interviews in the Center's Institutional Archives, in the Manuscripts and Archives collections in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, and in the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

Many theories assimilate the idioms of modality to those of quantification; they hold that so-and-so is possible iff there is a "world" at which it is true that so-and-so. "Modal realism" identifies worlds with certain concrete particulars, and truth at a world with what is true of it. Rival "ersatz" theories identify worlds with certain abstract entities and identify what is true at them with what they represent. ;David Lewis argues that pre-theoretic modal intuitions are best explained by modal (...) realism. I try to make a case for ersatzism. ;First, I argue that modal realism is flawed on the grounds that it entails the impossibility of certain intuitively possible spatiotemporal structures; it fails to explain fully even those intuitions with which it is compatible; and it renders the origin of modal knowledge mysterious. ;Next, I argue that objections to ersatzism are not conclusive. ;Lewis objects that even a generic version of ersatzism requires an unnameable and maybe unintelligible primitive relation. I suggest that the problems with naming are perfectly general; they have nothing to do with metaphysical theories of modality in particular. And I suggest a solution taken from Lewis himself. I also argue that any purported unintelligibility is due to illegitimately assimilating the relation to spatiotemporal relations. ;Finally, I consider some difficulties with a version of ersatzism that aims to reduce modality to impure set-theory. One concerns the accommodation of intuitions about properties that are not, but might have been, instantiated. Another concerns accommodation of intuitions about relations of exclusion and entailment among properties. I suggest that these difficulties are due to faulty assumptions about the nature of properties rather than any fundamental flaws in this ersatz approach. So I propose an account of properties that when incorporated into ersatzism circumvents these difficulties and allows it to claim the advantages of modal realism without its drawbacks. Unlike traditional accounts, this takes the essence of a property to consist in its role in imposing a certain classificational structure on the particulars that instantiate it, rather than in any unique and irreducible "quiddity". (shrink)

Comparative and developmental psychology are engaged in a search for the evolutionary and developmental origins of the perceptions of “intentions” and “desires,” and of epistemic states such as “ignorance” and “false belief.” Shanker & King (S&K) remind us that these are merely words to describe public events: All organisms that can discriminate states of “knowledge” in others have learned to do this through observation of publicly available information.

Due to its considerable length, this article has been published in two parts. Part 1, which appeared in the previous issue of the journal, discussed the intriguing relationship between John Dewey and Albert Barnes, as well as the circumstances behind the creation of the Barnes Foundation and its art education programs. Following this, it established both areas of convergence and divergence in Barnes’s and Dewey’s understandings of aesthetic formalism, organic unity, and form and content in the arts. Part 2 now (...) builds on these findings to explore important differences in their respective treatments of the significant sociocultural context of art. After returning briefly to the question of aesthetic formalism in... (shrink)

This ethical analysis compares two mid-size Asian-based multinational corporations (Japanese and Taiwanese) that have established extensive operations in China. We describe and analyze ethically relevant dimensions of each corporation's culture and practices, including their corporate cultures and the ethical issues they face. We argue that these companies add value to China's social and economic transformation in several important ways, including their development of human capital – the enhanced skill sets, work experiences, and values acquired by their workers. We conclude by (...) highlighting three ethical challenges that seem most critical for these two firms: (a) creating mutual benefit for the corporation and the host country; (b) localization and management of the cultural gap between expats and local workers; and (c) dealing effectively with the power and roles of a large, pervasive government in a non-democratic society. The experiences of these two international firms can provide insights into how international firms might construct effective management strategies for doing business in countries such as China. (shrink)

The examination of the cleroterium by Sterling Dow left few questions connected with it untouched. His publications on this ingenious device are as follows: ‘Allotment Machines', Prytaneis: A Study of the Inscriptions Honoring the Athenian Councillors, Hesperia, Suppl. i 198–215, with photographs ; ‘Aristotle, the Kleroteria, and the Courts’, HSCP 1 1–34 ; ‘Kleroterion’, in PW, Suppl. vii, col. 322–328. G. Klaffenbach summarised Dow's analysis in ‘Antike Losungsapparate’, Die Antike xiv 353–355. Prior to Dow, notice of one fragment of (...) a cleroterium was published by B. Tamaro, ‘Pianta Epigrafica dell’ Acropoli', ASAA iv/v 63 nr. 124. P has clear photographs of all remains then known. There are drawings in PW based on the drawing of I and photographs of I, II, III, X, and XI in P—Dow labelled the remains with roman numerals; I follow his labelling. Drawings in P are found opposite the photographs of I and of VI; in H, as frontispiece. Since Dow's publications appeared, there has been no reconsideration of his work nor any re-examination of his reconstruction. This is proof of the quality of his work.In 1960 when I first studied Dow's reconstruction, I relied on the excellent and revealing photographs in P. My own mechanical aptitude made me feel uneasy over certain small details in the reconstruction. (shrink)

In the Italian universities, there was traditionally a strong alliance between natural philosophy and medicine, which however was all to the advantage of the latter; its teachers were better regarded and better paid than others in the faculty of Arts and Medicine, and this led to career paths that sought out the teaching of medicine as soon as possible. This article examines a reversal of this trend observable in sixteenth-century Bologna and some other Italian universities , leading to careers concentrating (...) on natural philosophy and on the interpretation of Aristotelian works. It appears that financial incentives were part of the context leading to specialization in philosophy. An appendix listing the careers of nearly 200 teachers of natural philosophy in Bologna between 1340 and 1600 illustrates the developments. (shrink)