Edward P Thompson’s disapproval of Methodism (which was his own background) is well known, especially in The Making of the English Working Class. There he describes it as religious terrorism with a destructive moral machinery and all too reactionary. However, through a close reading of the sections on Methodism, this article reveals an ambivalence within Thompson’s own text. Again and again, he notes in passing that radicals emerged from the Methodist ranks, so much so that the Methodist (...) Conference worked hard to deal with the problem. It would seem that Thompson has stumbled across a political tension within theology, one that he was to explore in much greater detail in his study of Blake. (shrink)

Keith Thomas: Gerald Edward Aylmer, 1926-2000 Adrian Hollis: William Spencer Barrett, 1914-2001 Bruce Williams: Charles Frederick Carter, 1919-2002 Malcolm Mackintosh: John Erickson, 1929-2002 J. H .R. Davis: Raymond William Firth, 1901-2002 F. M. L. Thompson: Hrothgar John Habakkuk, 1915-2002 A. W. Price: Richard Mervyn Hare, 1919-2002 Hugh Lloyd-Jones: Geoffrey Stephen Kirk, 1921-2003 Michael Lapidge and Peter Matthews: Vivien Anne Law, 1954-2002 Ann Moss: John Lough, 1913-2000 Terence Cave: Ian Dalrymple McFarlane, 1915-2002 Ludwig Paul: David Neil MacKenzie, 1926-2001 Peter (...) Birks: John Kieran Barry Moylan Nicholas, 1919-2002 Jonathan Shepard: Dimitri Dimitrievich Obolensky, 1918-2001 David Cannadine: John Harold Plumb, 1911-2001 Daniel Waley: Nicolai Rubinstein, 1911-2002 Ian Wood: John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, 1916-1985 R. G. M. Nisbet: William Smith Watt, 1913-2002 G. W. Bernard: Richard Bruce Wernham, 1906-1999. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky and other linguists and psychologists have suggested that human linguistic behavior is somehow governed by a mental representation of a transformational grammar. Challenges to this controversial claim have often been met by invoking an explicitly computational perspective: It makes perfect sense to suppose that a grammar could be represented in the memory of a computational device and that this grammar could govern the device's use of a language. This paper urges, however, that the claim that humans are such (...) a device is unsupported and that it seems unlikely that linguists and psychologists really want to claim any such thing. Evidence for the linguists' original claim is drawn from three main sources: the explanation of language comprehension and other linguistic abilities; evidence for formal properties of the rules of the grammar; and the explanation of language acquisition. It is argued in this paper that none of these sources provides support for the view that the grammar governs language processing in something like the way a program governs the operation of a programmed machine. The computational approach, on the contrary, suggests ways in which linguistic abilities can be explained without the attribution of any explicit representation of rules governing linguistic behavior. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions AGOSTINO NIFO'S EARLY VIEWS ON IMMORTALITY Various historians of Renaissance philosophy have taken some notice of the prolific author and important philosopher of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Agostino Nifo (1470-1538), x but no one has yet studied his writings in a methodical and exhaustive fashion. 2 He not only published philosophical works in logic, physics, psychology and metaphysics, but he also authored treatises (...) on humanist topics? Recent scholars have tended to concentrate their attention on his psychological doctrines, no doubt because he was one of the major opponents of Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525) during the immortality controversy.4 Nifo published his De Immortalitate Animae in 1518 as a reply to the De lmmortalitate Ardmae, On the year of Nifo)s birth, see Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull'aristotelismo padovano dal secolo xav al xvl ('Florence, 1958), p. 284, n. 8. There is contemporary evidence that he died on January 18, 1538. See Bartolommeo Capasso, "Le cronache de li antiqui ri del regno di Napoli di D. Gaspare Fuscolill0," Archivio storico per le province napoletane, I (1876), p. 538. The standard bio-bibliography still remains Pasquale Tuozzi, "Agostino Nifo 9 le sue opere," Atti e memorie della R. Accademia di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova, Nuova scrie, XX (Padua, 1904), pp. 63-86. But see also Giuseppr Tommasino, Tra umanisti e filosoft (Maddaloni, 1921), Porte I, pp. 123-147; and Edward P. Mahoney, "A Note on Agostino Nifo," Philological Quarterly (forthcoming). z See Franeeseo Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi; Studi storici su la scuola bolognese e padovana del secolo xvI (Florence, 1868); Carlo Giacon, La seconda scolastica: 1 grandi commentatori di San Tommaso (Milan, 1944); Etienne Gilson, "L'affaire de l'immortalit6 de l'fime ~t Venise at* d6but du xvIe si~ele," in Umanesirno europeo e uraanesimo veneziano, ed. Vittore Branea (Florence, 1963), pp. 31-61; Miehele Giorgiantonio, "Un nostro filosofo dimentieato dcl '400 (Luea Prassicio e Agostino Nifo)," Sophia, XVI (1948), pp. 212-214 and 303-312; Bruno Nardi, Saggi sulraristotelismo padovano dal secolo x]v al xvI (Florence, 1958); idem, Sigieri di Brabante nel pensiero del Rinascimento Italiano (Rome, 1945); Giovanni di NapoH, L'immortalitd delranima nel Rinascimento ('Turin, 1963); John Herman Randall, Jr., The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science (Padua, 1961); Wilhelm Risse, Die Logik der Neuzeit, I (Stuttgart, 1964); Eugenio Garin, La cultura [ilosofica del Rinascimento Italiano (Florence, 1961); idem, Storia della filosofia italiana, II (Turin, 1966). See Nifo's De Armorum Literarumque Comparatione Commentariolus (Naples, 1526); De Pulchro et Amore (Rome, 1531); De Re Aulica (Naples, 1534); and Prima Pars Opusculorum (Venice, 1535). The second of these works has been studied by Jules Houdoy, La beaut~ des femmes dans la litt#rature et darts rart du xII" au xvIe si~cle; Analyse du livre de A. Niphus du Beau et de l'amour (Paris, 1876). 4 For recent discussion of the immortality controversy, see Etienne Gilson, "Autour de Pomponazzi, ProbMmatique de l'immortalit~ de l'~me en Italic au d~but du xvIe si~.cle," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litt~raire du moyen dge, Ann6e 1961, pp. 163-179; Giovanni di Napoli, op. cit., especially pp. 227-338; Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford, 1964), pp. 72-90; Bruno Nardi, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi (Florence, 1965); Martin Pine, "Pomponazzi and the Problem of 'Double Truth'," Journal ot the History of Ideas, XXIX (1968), pp. 163-176; Harold Shulsky, "Paduan Epistemology and the Doctrine of the One Mind," lournal of the History of Philosophy, VI (1968), pp. 341-361. [451] 452 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (1516) of Pomponazzi, who had argued that personal immortality cannot be philosophically demonstrated, s But while these scholars correctly point out that Nifo abandoned an Averroist interpretation of Aristotle concerning the unity of the intellect and the immortality of the soul for the position which they assume to be Thomistic, they are not precise as to just when Nile made the shift.6 They have not observed that in his first two printed works, namely, the commentary on Averroes' Destructio Destructionum (1497) and the early commentary on the De Anima (1503), Nifo explicitly accepts Averroes as the... (shrink)

Saul Kripke has proposed an argument to show that there is a serious problem with many computational accounts of physical systems and with functionalist theories in the philosophy of mind. The problem with computational accounts is roughly that they provide no noncircular way to maintain that any particular function with an infinite domain is realized by any physical system, and functionalism has the similar problem because of the character of the functional systems that are supposed to be realized by organisms. (...) This paper shows that the standard account of what it is for a physical system to compute a function can avoid Kripke's criticisms without being reduced to circularity; a very minor and natural elaboration of the standard account suffices to save both functionalist theories and computational accounts generally. (shrink)

Attempts to understand farmer conservation behavior based on quantitative socio-demographic, attitude, and awareness variables have been largely inconclusive. In order to understand fully how farmers are making conservation decisions, 32 in-depth interviews were conducted in the Eagle Creek watershed in central Indiana. Coding for environmental attitudes and practice adoption revealed several dominant themes, representing multi-dimensional aspects of environmental attitudes. Farmers who were motivated by off-farm environmental benefits and those who identified responsibilities to others (stewardship) were most likely to adopt conservation (...) practices. Those farmers who focused on the farm as business and were most concerned about profitability were less likely to adopt practices. The notion of environmental stewardship in particular was found to be much more complex than the way it is traditionally measured in quantitative studies. The interplay between on-farm and off-farm benefits to practice adoption is an issue that quantitative studies largely do not address. This study seeks to increase understanding of farmers’ environmental attitudes and the connections to conservation behavior. (shrink)

I argue that we can explain how we acquire knowledge from what a speaker tells us by appealing to facts about the speaker's reasons for telling. That is because (1) among our reasons for telling somebody that P can be the fact that P; and (2) these reasons that are facts can be made manifest to our audiences by our telling them that P.

Minimalist grammars (MGs) and multiple context-free grammars (MCFGs) are weakly equivalent in the sense that they define the same languages, a large mildly context-sensitive class that properly includes context-free languages. But in addition, for each MG, there is an MCFG which is strongly equivalent in the sense that it defines the same language with isomorphic derivations. However, the structure-building rules of MGs but not MCFGs are defined in a way that generalizes across categories. Consequently, MGs can be exponentially more succinct (...) than their MCFG equivalents, and this difference shows in parsing models too. An incremental, top-down beam parser for MGs is defined here, sound and complete for all MGs, and hence also capable of parsing all MCFG languages. But since the parser represents its grammar transparently, the relative succinctness of MGs is again evident. Although the determinants of MG structure are narrowly and discretely defined, probabilistic influences from a much broader domain can influence even the earliest analytic steps, allowing frequency and context effects to come early and from almost anywhere, as expected in incremental models. (shrink)

In henadological Platonism, the significance of “the One” is understood to lie, not in an eminent singular entity, but in the modes of unity and the ways of being a unit. The science of units qua units is a systematic ground and counterweight to substance-based ontology, and manifests an organic bond with theology as the science of relation to supra-essential individuals or Gods. Because of the basic nature of unity relative to being, doctrines respecting unity tend to situate themselves as (...) critiques of ontology; they exhibit both an analytical and a soteriological value. For its part, bhakti is not a mere sectarian movement but rather an inquiry at once speculative and practical into the nature of the relationship between the human and the divine. It bridges the diverse genres of ancient Indian thought (including the theophanic/cultic, the epic, along with diverse philosophical perspectives) and displays key commonalities with henadological Platonism. This paper begins the process of identifying these common themes with particular reference to the Bhagavadgītā. Chief among its themes is the distinction between structuring cause and structured mixture, which runs through Platonism from the Phaedo to the doctrine of principles, and which parallels the account of action in the Gītā as freedom independent of result, insofar as the latter pertains to the solidarity of worldly causality heteronomous to the agency of the ātman. (shrink)

This article seeks in the Platonic philosophers of late antiquity insights applicable to a new discipline, the philosophy of Pagan religion. An impor¬tant element of any such discipline would be a method of mythological hermeneutics that could be applied cross-culturally. The article draws par¬ticular elements of this method from Sallust and Olympiodorus. Sallust’s five modes of the interpretation of myth (theological, physical, psychical, material and mixed) are discussed, with one of them, the theological, singled out for its applicability to all (...) myths and because it interprets myth in reference exclusively to the nature of the Gods and their relationship to a model of the cosmos in its totality. The other modes of interpretation, while useful in particular contexts, are not uniformly applicable to all myths, interpret the myths as concerning things other than the Gods themselves, and interpret the myths with reference to particular sectors of the cosmos. Accordingly, it is from Sallust’s theological mode of interpre¬tation that the new method draws its inspiration. From Olympiodorus the method derives strategies for interpreting basic narrative attributes that myths share with all stories. Thus temporal sequence is interpreted as an ascent, from our perspective, from less perfect to more perfect manifestations of the powers of the Gods. Passivity, conflict, and transitive relations in general between the Gods are interpreted as expressing attributes of the cosmos to the constitution of which the Gods dedicate their energies, rather than as placing constraint upon the Gods themselves. The article concludes with a series of broad principles meant to guide the new method. (shrink)

Completing the systematic henadological interpretation of Proсlus’ Platonic Theology begun in The Intelligible Gods in the Platonic Theology of Proclus (“Méthexis” 21, 2008, pp. 131-143) and The Second Intelligible Triad and the Intelligible-Intellective Gods (“Méthexis” 23, 2010, pp. 137-157), the present article concerns the conditions of the emergence of fully mediated, diacritical multiplicity out of the polycentric henadic manifold. The product of the activity of the intellective Gods (that is, the product of the intellective activity of Gods as such), in (...) resolving the contradiction between existential uniqueness and universalizable potencies in the divine natures, also grounds the human exercise of philosophical cognition in the founding self-analysis of divine individuals. (shrink)

In a famous quote reported by his biographer Marinus, Proclus says that a philosopher should be like a “priest of the whole world in common”. This essay examines what this universality of the philosopher’s religious practice entails, first with reference to Marinus’ testimony concerning Proclus’ own devotional life, and then with respect to the systematic Platonic understanding of divine ‘locality’. The result is, first, that the philosopher’s ‘universality’ is at once more humble than it sounds, and more far-reaching; and second, (...) that the meaning of locality in the Platonic metaphysics is more flexible and dynamic than we might have expected. Particular attention is given to the relations of ‘universality’ and ‘particularity’ as they exist among the Gods, and to the account in Proclus’ Timaeus commentary concerning the places sacred to the Gods as immaterial intervals (diastêmata) not identical to physical places, and the consequences of this for understanding changes in the religious life of places and in the localization of cults. (shrink)

Linguists rely on intuitive conceptions of structure when comparing expressions and languages. In an algebraic presentation of a language, some natural notions of similarity can be rigorously defined (e.g. among elements of a language, equivalence w.r.t. isomorphisms of the language; and among languages, equivalence w.r.t. isomorphisms of symmetry groups), but it tums out that slightly more complex and nonstandard notions are needed to capture the kinds of comparisons linguists want to make. This paper identihes some of the important notions of (...) structural similarity, with attention to similarity claims that are prominent in the current linguistic tradition of transformational grammar. @ 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

By formalizing recent syntactic theories for natural languages Stabler shows how their complexity can be handled without guesswork or oversimplification. By formalizing recent syntactic theories for natural languages in the tradition of Chomsky's Barriers, Stabler shows how their complexity can be handled without guesswork or oversimplification. He introduces logical representations of these theories together with special deductive techniques for exploring their consequences that will provide linguists with a valuable tool for deriving and testing theoretical predictions and for experimenting with alternative (...) formulations of grammatical principles. Stabler's novel approach allows results to be deduced with straightforward calculations and provides a systematic framework for tackling the problem of how speakers can infer the properties of an utterance from principles of the grammar. The special treatment of equality, induction principles, and inclusion of a general method for collecting structures from proofs means that sophisticated linguistic arguments can be carried out in detail, giving a rich perspective to issues in linguistic theory and parsing. (shrink)

Saul Kripke has proposed an argument to show that there is a serious problem with many computational accounts of physical systems and with functionalist theories in the philosophy of mind. The problem with computational accounts is roughly that they provide no noncircular way to maintain that any particular function with an infinite domain is realized by any physical system, and functionalism has the similar problem because of the character of the functional systems that are supposed to be realized by organisms. (...) This paper shows that the standard account of what it is for a physical system to compute a function can avoid Kripke's criticisms without being reduced to circularity; a very minor and natural elaboration of the standard account suffices to save both functionalist theories and computational accounts generally. (shrink)

Four different kinds of grammars that can define crossing dependencies in human language are compared here: (i) context sensitive rewrite grammars with rules that depend on context, (ii) matching grammars with constraints that filter the generative structure of the language, (iii) copying grammars which can copy structures of unbounded size, and (iv) generating grammars in which crossing dependencies are generated from a finite lexical basis. Context sensitive rewrite grammars are syntactically, semantically and computationally unattractive. Generating grammars have a collection of (...) nice properties that ensure they define only “mildly context sensitive” languages, and Joshi has proposed that human languages have those properties too. But for certain distinctive kinds of crossing dependencies in human languages, copying or matching analyses predominate. Some results relevant to the viability of mildly context sensitive analyses and some open questions are reviewed. (shrink)