The encounter between Socrates and Thrasymachus in Republic I is notoriously baffling. Most of what is said seems straightforward, and the issues at stake are ones of common concern, but the argument remains elusive. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature and grounds of this elusiveness, and to show that some of it can be dispelled by a sufficiently free-ranging exegesis that bears in mind the general character of Plato’s writing.

F. E. Sparshott; IV—Avowals and their Uses, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 June 1962, Pages 63–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.

Of the platonic theory that four qualities make up the whole of virtue. I show that aristotle's repudiation of this scheme is more apparent than real.

The Presbyterian and Reformed tradition, as one representation of Biblical theology and ethics, has considerable application to physical health. This perspective is effectively embodied in the Westminster Confession of Faith which includes “the moral law,” especially as illustrated in the Larger Catechism Questions and Answers on the Ten Commandments. The WCF has many Biblical principles that promote health and prevent disease, for example, the Seventh Commandment can be “extensively demonstrated empirically” that violations promote morbidity and mortality. This result markedly contrasts (...) with the evolutionary and politically correct foundation of modern medicine that essentially promotes disease and death. Sexual “freedom” has become “slavery” to its disastrous results. Further, the modern attempt to define and treat “mental illness” does not begin to address the needs of patients and their families. By excluding the spiritual dimension of men and women, psychology and psychiatry has no moral answers by the naturalistic fallacy, and thus their various cognitive and pharmaceutical approaches mostly make “mental” problems worse. In this essay I present what the Bible claims through the WCF, and using modern medicine’s own “evidence-based medicine,” demonstrate how this approach has a strategic advantage in promoting health over contemporary medical ethics and practices. (shrink)

The internal paradoxes in the quantum measurement scheme related to violation of conservation laws, changes in entropy, absence of a dynamic description of collapse, Wigner's friend, as well as the paradox of violation of causality in the EPR experiment are shown to be partially circumvented in the measurement scheme of stochastic quantum mechanics.

The language of manuals may be used to discuss inference in measurement in a general experimental context. Specializing to the context of the frame manual for Hilbert space, this inference leads to state dominance of the inferred state from partial measurements; this in turn, by Sakai's theorem, determines observables which are described by positive operator-valued measures. Symmetries are then introduced, showing that systems of covariance, rather than systems of imprimitivity, are natural objects to study in quantum mechanics. Experiments measuring different (...) polarization components simultaneously are reexamined in this language. Finally, implications of the Naimark extension theorem for the manual approach are investigated. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman equates expression with metaphorical exemplification. That is, a character C in a symbol system expresses a property P if three conditions are fulfilled: C has P ; C exemplifies P ; and C has P metaphorically. Two points are emphasized. The first point is that a character actually is what it metaphorically is: sad music really is sad, really does express sadness, just as loud music really is loud. The decision to apply to works of art language that (...) is literally applicable only to persons is arbitrary, in that no reason can be given for it other than its felt aptness; but, once the decision to use the terminology has been made, decisions about which terms are applicable to which works are no more arbitrary than any other decisions about the applications of terms. The second point is that there is no intimate connection between the concept of expression as thus defined and the concepts of emotion or feeling. The latter merely furnish one common set of metaphors. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:66 IN DEFENCE OF KEMP SMITH D. C. Stove argues against Kemp Smith's contention that Hume's philosophy "was intended not to subvert but to endorse our natural beliefs" in general, and our belief in the Causal Principle in particular. His arguments are insufficient. Kemp Smith does not need to deny that the falsity of the Causal Principle is believed by Hume to be possible in the strongest of Stove's (...) three suggested 2 senses: it is not merely self-consistent, but the Principle is unverifiable and unconfirmable in the sense that no empirical proposition is relevant to its truth. However, to say flatly that its falsity is possible is to say that it is not impossible in any way at all; and that is what is at stake both in Hume's letter to Stewart and in the use Kemp Smith makes of it. If Hume had written a letter to Stewart or to any scientific enquirer urging him to desist from his labours on the ground that "something may begin to exist, or start into being without a cause," he would have been a fool, and in representing Hume's position in this way Stewart is in fact calling Hume a fool. It is not surprising that Hume is indignant. The problem is whether, and how, one can hold both that the Causal Principle is undeniably true and that it can be supported neither by deductive nor by inductive argument, and whether Hume on the most reasonable interpretation of his published works held both these views. Clues to the answer lie in the in tradition of sceptical philosophy, and in the difference between a cause and a reason. Hume's philosophy is indeed, as he says, 'very sceptical'. But scepticism is a kind of philosophy with a long history, from Sextus Empiricus to Bayle, and it is reasonable to suppose that Hume was aligning himself with this position, especially since so much of the argument in 67 the Treatise is derived from Bayle. But sceptics do not behave otherwise than ordinary men. Scepticism is not directed against everyday beliefs but again.st arguments: this is a point on which Sextus insists." It would not be the part of a sceptic to doubt that every event has a cause, but to refute all arguments purporting to show that such is the case. To assert "that any thing might arise without a Cause" would not be scepticism, but an inverse dogmatism: to infer from a philosophical argument a belief about the real world that is at variance with everyday belief. The crucial step in Stove's argument occurs in his gloss of Hume's claim that he had maintained "that our Certainty of the Falsehood of that Proposition proceeded neither from Intuition nor Demonstration; but from another Source" phrase "sic., experience, of course". This could be misleading. It could mean that Hume here claims that experience gives us reason to believe that the Causal Principle is true; and this Hume has denied, as Stove urges ad loc. But nothing in what Hume says in his letter requires us to interpret him thus. And his sceptical principles tell against it: an argument from experience, whether inductive or by analogy or whatever, is still an argument and thus liable to sceptical attack. What Hume could mean, and what Kemp Smith took him to mean, is that our experience causes us to regard the principle as necessary: experience is not a premise in any sort of argument at all, but a causal explanation for a universal propensity to believe in the Causal Principle. It is true that Hume's citation as analogues of such empirical affirmations as "That Caesar existed" is misleading. But it is not in fact the case that Hume represents these as in any way 'parallel' with the Causal Principle: he says only that, like it, They are believed without recourse to Reason and Intuition. In 68 point of fact, Stove is going a bit far when he says that this is (like "There is such an Island as Sicily") an observation-statement; but that point is hardly relevant here. It is worth noting that in the offending passage... (shrink)