This annotated critical edition is the first attempt to make Morris's 42,000-word verse sequence accessible to a modern audience.

William Boos (1943–2014) was a mathematician, set theorist, and philosopher. His work is at the intersection of these fields. In particular, Boos looks at the classic problems of epistemology through the lens of the axiomatic method in mathematics and physics, or something resembling that method.

The Plight of Humanity in Paul In Paul and Palestinian Judaism, E. P. Sanders argues that, for Paul, humanity’s plight was not the condition that necessitated the solution of Jesus Christ. Instead, the solution was presented to Paul first on the Damascus road, and humanity’s plight was simply the logical corollary to the solution. This study will critically examine the particulars of Sanders’s argument— particularly with regard to Romans 7, Philippians 3, and Galatians 3—and offer some alternative exegetical analyses. This (...) essay will argue that, while the development of Paul’s thinking may indeed have run from solution to plight, the exposition of Paul’s thinking goes from plight to solution. The movement of Paul’s exposition may suggest that his conception of the plight of humanity was born out of his ideational milieu, which must have been fed, at least, by the Old Testament and evidenced, at least, by literature such as 4 Ezra. (shrink)

BackgroundPreprint usage is growing rapidly in the life sciences; however, questions remain on the relative quality of preprints when compared to published articles. An objective dimension of quality that is readily measurable is completeness of reporting, as transparency can improve the reader’s ability to independently interpret data and reproduce findings.MethodsIn this observational study, we initially compared independent samples of articles published in bioRxiv and in PubMed-indexed journals in 2016 using a quality of reporting questionnaire. After that, we performed paired comparisons (...) between preprints from bioRxiv to their own peer-reviewed versions in journals.ResultsPeer-reviewed articles had, on average, higher quality of reporting than preprints, although the difference was small, with absolute differences of 5.0% [95% CI 1.4, 8.6] and 4.7% [95% CI 2.4, 7.0] of reported items in the independent samples and paired sample comparison, respectively. There were larger differences favoring peer-reviewed articles in subjective ratings of how clearly titles and abstracts presented the main findings and how easy it was to locate relevant reporting information. Changes in reporting from preprints to peer-reviewed versions did not correlate with the impact factor of the publication venue or with the time lag from bioRxiv to journal publication.ConclusionsOur results suggest that, on average, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is associated with improvement in quality of reporting. They also show that quality of reporting in preprints in the life sciences is within a similar range as that of peer-reviewed articles, albeit slightly lower on average, supporting the idea that preprints should be considered valid scientific contributions. (shrink)

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Socratic Discourses" by Plato, Xenophon. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Punning on names was common in Old Comedy. Aristophanes punned on the name of Lamachus, who died at Syracuse. In the same play he made the famous joke, ‘some went to Kamarina, others to Gela, and some to Katagela’—‘an invention of the poet's from the fact that the men's officers laughed at them’.

Macrocephaly is present in about 2–5% of the general population. It can be found as an isolated benign trait or as part of a syndromic condition. Brain overgrowth has been associated with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism during the first year of life, however, evidence remains inconclusive. Furthermore, most of the studies have involved pathological or high-risk populations, but little is known about the effects of brain overgrowth on neurodevelopment in otherwise neurotypical infants. We investigated the impact of brain overgrowth (...) on basic perceptual learning processes during the first year of life. We recorded high density electroencephalograms in 116 full-term healthy infants aged between 3 and 11 months, 35 macrocephalic and 81 normocephalic classified according to the WHO head circumference norms. We used an adapted oddball paradigm, time-frequency analyses, and auditory event-related brain potentials to investigate differences between groups. We show that brain overgrowth has a significant impact on repetition effects and change detection response in the 10–20 Hz frequency band, and in N450 latency, suggesting that these correlates of sensorial learning processes are sensitive to brain overgrowth during the first year of life. (shrink)

A well-established narrative in the history of science has it that the years around 1800 saw the end of a purely descriptive, classificatory and static natural history. The emergence of a temporal understanding of nature and the new developmental-history approach, it is thought, permitted the formation of modern biology. This paper questions that historical narrative by closely analysing the concepts of development, history and time set out in Karl Ernst von Baer’s study of the mammalian egg (1827). I show that (...) Baer’s research on embryogenesis aimed not simply to explain temporal changes, but to inscribe the formation of new individual organisms into a continuous, unending organic process. I confront Baer’s views with other explanations of embryogenesis arising in the 1820s and 1830s, especially those of Jean-Baptiste Dumas and Jean-Louis Prévost and of Theodor Schwann. By highlighting divergences between these scientists, especially as to their view of the role of gender differences in reproduction, I argue that biology evolved not from a homogeneous concept of developmental history but out of various, even opposing, views and research programmes. Thus, the birth of biology did not imply the end of all natural history’s thought models. (shrink)

Model-theoretic 1-types overa given first-order theory T may be construed as natural metalogical miniatures of G. W. Leibniz' ``complete individual notions'', ``substances'' or ``substantial forms''. This analogy prompts this essay's modal semantics for an essentiallyundecidable first-order theory T, in which one quantifies over such ``substances'' in a boolean universe V(C), where C is the completion of the Lindenbaum-algebra of T.More precisely, one can define recursively a set-theoretic translate of formulae νNϕ of formulae ν of a normal modal theory Tm based (...) on T, such that the counterpart `ξi' of a the modal variable `xi' of L(Tm) in this translation-scheme ranges over elements of V(C) that are 1-types of T with value 1 (sometimes called `definite' C-valued 1-types of T).The article's basic completeness-result (2.13) then establishes that ϕvarphi; is a theorem of Tm iff [[νN(ϕ) is aconsequenceof νN(Tm) for each extension N of T which is a subtheory of the canonical generic theory (ultrafilter) u]] = 1 – or equivalently, that Tm is consistent iff[[there is anextension N of T such that N is a subtheory of the canonical generic theory u, and νN(ϕ) for all ϕ in Tm]] > 0.The proof of thiscompleteness-result also shows that an N which provides a countermodel for a modally unprovable ϕ – or equivalently, a closed set in the Stone space St(T) in the sense of V(C) – is intertranslatable with an `accessibility'-relation of a closely related Kripke-semantics whose `worlds' are generic extensions of an initial universe V via C.This interrelation providesa fairly precise rationale for the semantics' recourse to C-valued structures, and exhibits a sense in which the boolean-valued context is sharp. (shrink)

SummaryThis essay explores analogies between classical notions of pyrrhonist skepticism and reflexive phenomena of twentieth‐century metamathematics. In a theoretical framework T, for example, one may interpret1T's appearances () as its axioms;2evident and inevident assertions () in the language L of T as sentences 0 which are decidable and undecidable in T; and3skeptical self ‐doubt about T in L as T's Godel‐sentence γ .These analogies complement another one, between pyrrhonist ‘modes’() of indefinite semantic regress (), and recurrent appeals to ‘new’ metatheories (...) T', T., to consider ‘new’, identify alternate interpretations, and adjudicate claims of consistency.These analogies are also reflexive in a wider sense. ‐ are stated for theories T, T', T., in some unspecified metatheory t̄–to which they also apply. This wider reflexivity suggests that ‘problems' of skeptical self‐doubt are not vicious or otiose, but significant aspects of the phenomena of indefinite semantic regress.RésuméCet essai explore quelques analogies entre les notions classiques du scepticisme pyrrhonien et les phénomenes réflexifs de la métamathématique du vingtième siècle. Dans un cadre théorique T du premier ordre, par exemple, on peut interpréter les apparences de T (), comme des axiomes; les assertions évidentes et non évidentes (), dans la langue L de T, comme les énoncés ø decidables et indecidables dans L; et le doute sceptique de ‘soi au sujet de T dans L, come ľénoncé ‐γ de Gödel de T .Ces analogies en complèment une autre, entre les ‘modes' pyrrhoniens() dela régression sémantique indéfinie(), et les appels récurrents à de ‘nouvelles' métathéories T', T., pour considérer de ‘nou‐veaux’, identifier des interpretations alternatives et juger des questions de consistance.Ces analogies sont aussi réflexives dans un sense plus large. ‐ se constatent pour les théories T, T T., dans une métathéorie indéterminée T –aG laquelle ilss'appliquent à nouveau. Cette réflexivité plus étendue suggère que les problèmes de doute sceptique de soi‘ ne sont pas vicieux ou vides, mais représentent au contraire des aspects signifiants des phénomènes de régression sémantique indéfinie.ZusammenfassungIn der vorliegenden Arbeit werden einige Analogien zwischen klassischen Begriffen des pyrrhonischen Skeptizismus und reflexiven Phänomenen der Metamathematik des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts untersucht. In einem theoretischen Rahmenwerk T kann man die folgenden Interpretationen geben:1die Erscheinungen () von T als dessen Axiome;2evidente und nicht‐evidente Aussagen () in der Sprache L von T als Sätze ø, die entscheidbar, bzw. unentscheidbar sind; und3den skeptischen Selbst zweifel über T in L als den Güdel‐Satz γ für T .Diese Analogien sind complementär zu einer anderen, nämlich derjenigen zwischen den Pyrrhonischen Modi () des semantischen regresssus in indefinitum (), und dem wiederholten Rekurs auf ‘neue’ Metatheorien T', T, …, in denen man ‘neue’ berücksichtigt, alternative Deutungen erwägt und Fragen der Widerspruchsfreiheit beurteilt.Diese Analogien sind auch reflexiv in einem weiteren Sinne. ‐ werden für T, T, T, …, in einer Metatheorie T – bestimmt, für die sie auch gelten. Diese weitere Reflexivität legt nahe, dass ‘Probleme’ des skeptischen ‘Selbsf zweifels weder zu circuit vitiosi führen noch Scheinprobleme sind, sondern beachtenswerte Aspekte der Phänomene des indefiniten semantischen Regresses darstellen. (shrink)

"An impressively reasoned and startlingly unorthodox treatise on religion." - Belles Lettres Florence Nightingale (1820-1920) is famous as the heroine of the Crimean War and later as a campaigner for health care founded on a clean environment and good nursing. Though best known for her pioneering demonstration that disease rather than wounds killed most soldiers, she was also heavily allied to social reform movements and to feminist protest against the enforced idleness of middle-class women. This original edition provides bold (...) new insights into Nightingale's beliefs and a new picture of the relationship between feminism and religion. Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers after Truth Among the Artisans of England (1860), which contains the novel Cassandra , is a central text in 19th-century history of feminist thought and is published here for the first time. Nightingale argues that work was the means by which every individual sought self-fulfillment and served God. She wrote influentially about the group most Victorians declared to be above work: unmarried, middle-class women. (shrink)

Auguste Comte’s classical status in sociology and social theory is routinely taken to mean outdated. Coupled with this perception, there has been a pervasive tendency within contemporary discourse to presume a positivism that is largely rationalistic or scientistic and therefore critically and analytically useless. This paper explores how some of Comte’s lesser acknowledged perspectives on science, history, ‘progress’ and what it is to be human may yet compel us to reexamine our ideas about the kind of positivism we think we (...) have inherited and therefore need to renounce. I focus my reading of Comte through the lens of genealogies of thought not normally associated with his work, for instance, science and technology studies (STS) and posthumanist social theory. (shrink)

Florence Chiew interviews Maurizio Meloni on his new book, Impressionable Biologies: From the Archaeology of Plasticity to the Sociology of Epigenetics. The conversation reflects on a number of key themes and arguments in Meloni’s work, such as the use of the term ‘impressionability’ to explore longstanding ideas of the permeable body in constant flux in response to cosmological changes. This notion of the body-porous is one whose history Meloni traces back to ancient traditions and systems of medicine, such as (...) humoralism. In this important book, Meloni makes a compelling argument for questioning the current emphasis on the novelty of biological plasticity as an exclusively contemporary phenomenon, and urges us to take a longer genealogical perspective to appreciate how histories of corporeal plasticity have always been part of deeply gendered, racialized and classed discourses in which social hierarchies have been made through physiological distinctions. (shrink)

At Euripides' Heraclidae 630, an anonymous character arrives onstage to report the arrival of Hyllus' army, and returns at 928 accompanying the defeated Eurystheus. He is generally identified by editors as a therapōn, following the dramatis personae of the hypothesis. Mastronarde briefly challenges this assumption, stating that ‘he is a soldier, not a servant’. There are, however, four reasons to identify the character as neither a soldier nor a therapōn, but as Hyllus' herald. Although none of these reasons is conclusive (...) on its own, the cumulative weight of the evidence is compelling. This identification contributes to the structural coherence and thematic development of the play, and gains special significance from the play's interest in the representation of absent characters. (shrink)

Cette thèse de doctorat se propose de reprendre l'ensemble de la philosophie pratique de Kant en aval, c'est-à-dire à partir de l'ouvrage chronologiquement tardif dans le corpus kantien, "La religion dans les limites de la simple raison" (1793), dont la première partie assigne à la volonté un défi : le "mal radical". Le "mal radical" n'est pas le mal absolu ou diabolique, mais il consiste en une inversion (Verkehrtheit) de l'ordre des principes au sein du vouloir, et ne peut être (...) déraciné que par l'entière conversion du coeur. Avec le mal, s'ouvre l'antinomie du judaïsme, considéré par le philosophe comme le contre-modèle de la foi par excellence, et du christianisme, criterium unique et anhistorique de la religion, seul à même de résoudre le problème de l'homme nouveau. Si, selon Kant, le judaïsme est nouménalement nul parce qu'incapable de véhiculer le contenu de la religion rationnelle, le philosophe, qui considère l'interdit biblique de l'idolâtrie comme "le commandement le plus sublime du Livre de loi des Juifs", lui reconnaît néanmoins le mérite de mettre l'accent sur le respect. Le christianisme, quant à lui, met l'accent sur l'amour, dont Kant retient la signification pratique, à savoir qu'il est l'état de perfection de l'intention vers lequel nous devons tendre. (shrink)

Back in 1988, when my department chair encouraged me to pursue my interest in developing a course on the social and ethical impact of computing, I was thrilled at the prospect but had no idea how difficult it would be to find resources to support my teaching. I did some pre-Web digging and found two organizations that delivered on their promises to provide me with valuable sources of material: ACM SIGCAS and CPSR. I quickly joined each group, subscribed to each (...) one's publications, and the rest, as they say, is history. Over the past twenty years, I have enjoyed a rich and rewarding career in the area of computer ethics and its pedagogy, and have benefited professionally and personally through my affiliation with a vibrant interdisciplinary community of computer ethics scholars. I am happy to report that Computers and Society continues to provide my students with thought-provoking material, and is now part of a large and growing body of literature. (shrink)

Feminism is going to ruin your life--in the best way possible--because society screams numerous messages every moment about how women must look, act, and speak in order to earn their right to be seen and heard. The only thing any human needs to do in order to earn their right to exist, however, is to exist. Break free of the insidious narratives that hold you back from being your most authentic self.

Qu’est-ce qu’un costume de femme en Grèce ancienne? Un costume de séduction? Un costume rituel? Quel est son statut? Le vêtement fait-il la femme et quelle femme? L’étoffe de tissu en raison de sa qualité (texture, couleur, richesse) et de son agencement est un prolongement du corps et un marqueur visible d’identité. L’article s’interroge dès lors sur les valeurs attachées aux costumes féminins en fonction de l’âge, des contextes (domestique, érotique, rituel, politique) et du rang dans la société, sur les (...) façons dont ceux-ci qualifient les femmes et leurs comportements, et disent finalement la condition féminine comme masculine dans le discours poétique, au théâtre, chez les historiens, dans les lois cultuelles et en images. Le vêtement propose un discours sur soi, sur l’autre, et est source de discours. Doté d’un pouvoir agissant, il énonce aussi bien le kosmos, ornement et ordre, autrement dit la beauté des femmes et du monde, l’eukosmia, que le désordre et le chaos politiques dans les cités grecques durant l’Antiquité. (shrink)

Increasingly in certain circles the idea is growing up that ‘intellectual property is theft’. With companies being concentrated into multimedia groups, literary works being captured electronically, products being created for a mass-media culture, commercial exchange on a worldwide scale, the legitimacy of the creator's literary and artistic property is being challenged. Originally the ‘droit d'auteur’ or copyright were mainly protective rules laid down by law to regulate the author's status. The legal system of literary and artistic ownership still ensures that (...) creators receive revenue each time their works are reproduced, adapted or communicated to the public. In addition the droit d'auteur has another aspect through the existence of moral right, which establishes a personal link between author and work. It is true that moral right, which is sometimes seen as an obstacle to economic development, is almost non-existent in the systems of law recognizing copyright, which do not incorporate the same balance of interests as between the author and the company. On the other hand, in its formulation the droit d'auteur takes a more human approach and to say that intellectual property is theft would be equivalent to weakening, or even eradicating, a system that protects individual creators facing the reality of the exploitation of their work. This is why this criticism of legitimacy should, in my view, be considered in the context of a debate about the status of the author. The electronic capture of creative works has meant that the general public has easier access to them. (shrink)

Drawing on the principle of subsidiarity, this article develops a framework for allocating medical decision-making authority in the absence of capacity to consent and argues that decisional authority in paediatric transgender healthcare should generally lie in the patient. Regardless of patients’ capacity, there is usually nobody better positioned to make medical decisions that go to the heart of a patient’s identity than the patients themselves. Under the principle of subsidiarity, decisional authority should only be held by a higher level decision-maker, (...) such as parents or judges, if lower level decision-makers are incapable of satisfactorily addressing the issue even with support and the higher level decision-maker is better positioned to satisfactorily address the issue than all lower level decision-makers. Because gender uniquely pertains to personal identity and self-realisation, parents and judges are rarely better positioned to make complex medical decisions. Instead of taking away trans youth’s authority over their healthcare decisions, we should focus on supporting their ability to take the best possible decision for themselves. (shrink)

The article focuses on stories and storytelling practices as explanatory resources in standardization processes. It draws upon an ethnographic study of the development of a technical standard for data sharing in an ecological research community, where participants struggle to articulate the difficulties encountered in implementing the standard. Building from C. Wright Mills’ classic distinction between private troubles and public issues, the authors follow the development of a story as it comes to assist in transforming individual troubles in standard implementation into (...) an institutional issue for the ecological scientific community. The authors present the “hands-on” social science collaboration in this study as an example of a mechanism for supporting institutionalization of issues. Finally, the authors argue that narratives can serve as effective organizing principles within institutional settings, thereby providing an approach to understand the practical, substantive difficulties that occur in work with data in the sciences. (shrink)

Le problème historique majeur posé par l’étude de la prostitution à Rome est celui de l’existence de prostitué(e)s libres dans une société esclavagiste. Puisque des corps serviles, ou affranchis, masculins et féminins étaient disponibles en grand nombre, aussi bien dans les demeures des hommes libres que dans les maisons de prostitution, comment se fait-il que des femmes nées libres aient renoncé à leurs privilèges et statut de matrones? Comment se fait-il aussi que la société ait institutionnalisé ce renoncement en prévoyant (...) d’enregistrer officiellement ces prostituées d’origine libre? L’explication proposée ici est que les prostitué(e)s libres assument une fonction symbolique qui est d’être l’autre du soldat comme l’acteur est l’autre de l’orateur. Ces « parias » de la société romaine, toujours « efféminés » servent à marquer les marges de l’humanité civilisée dans la continuité, à définir les hommes, libres et adultes et donc « masculins » par ce qu’ils ne sont pas mais ce qu’ils pourraient par malheur, devenir des « effeminés » ou leur équivalent, des prostituées libres. (shrink)

The basic purpose of this essay, the first of an intended pair, is to interpret standard von Neumann quantum theory in a framework of iterated measure algebraic truth for mathematical (and thus mathematical-physical) assertions — a framework, that is, in which the truth-values for such assertions are elements of iterated boolean measure-algebras (cf. Sections 2.2.9, 5.2.1–5.2.6 and 5.3 below).The essay itself employs constructions of Takeuti's boolean-valued analysis (whose origins lay in work of Scott, Solovay, Krauss and others) to provide a (...) metamathematical interpretation of ideas sometimes considered disparate, heuristic, or simply ill-defined: the collapse of the wave function, for example; Everett's many worlds'-construal of quantum measurement; and a natural product space of contextual (nonlocal) hidden variables. (shrink)

We conduct an experiment to investigate the joint effects of advisor reassurance and advice source in enhancing the impact of advice on auditors’ whistleblowing propensity. Participants from a Big 4 firm assess the likelihood that a questionable act involving a superior will be reported, both before and after receiving advice. We manipulate, between-participants, the advice source and advisor reassurance on the firm’s policy on whistleblower protection, holding constant the advice recommendation. Our study is underpinned by the premise that moral agents (...) may require an impetus to do the right thing in the form of advice whose effects may vary by its source and nature. Results are consistent with our hypothesis. Specifically, while auditors’ propensity to report a questionable act increases after receiving advice, the increase is significantly higher when the advice is received with reassurance on whistleblower protection than without reassurance, with the effect of reassurance being greater when the advice is from an authoritative source than from a non-authoritative source. These results underscore the importance of advice in promoting whistleblowing and demonstrate how the impact of advice is jointly determined by its source and reassurance on whistleblower protection. (shrink)

Metamathematics and the Philosophical Tradition is the first work to explore in such historical depth the relationship between fundamental philosophical quandaries regarding self-reference and meta-mathematical notions of consistency and incompleteness. Using the insights of twentieth-century logicians from Gödel through Hilbert and their successors, this volume revisits the writings of Aristotle, the ancient skeptics, Anselm, and enlightenment and seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Pascal, Descartes, and Kant to identify ways in which these both encode and evade problems of (...) a priori definition and self-reference. The final chapters critique and extend more recent insights of late 20th-century logicians and quantum physicists, and offer new applications of the completeness theorem as a means of exploring "metatheoretical ascent" and the limitations of scientific certainty. Broadly syncretic in range, Metamathematics and the Philosophical Tradition addresses central and recurring problems within epistemology. The volume’s elegant, condensed writing style renders accessible its wealth of citations and allusions from varied traditions and in several languages. Its arguments will be of special interest to historians and philosophers of science and mathematics, particularly scholars of classical skepticism, the Enlightenment, Kant, ethics, and mathematical logic. (shrink)

A ground-motive for this study of some historical and metaphysical implications of the diagonal lemmas of Cantor and Gödel is Cantor's insightful remark to Dedekind in 1899 that the Inbegriff alles Denkbaren (aggregate of everything thinkable) might, like some class-theoretic entities, be inkonsistent. In the essay's opening sections, I trace some recent antecedents of Cantor's observation in logical writings of Bolzano and Dedekind (more remote counterparts of his language appear in the First Critique), then attempt to relativize the notion of (...) Inkonsistenz to self-sufficient theories T which interpret themselves. In effect, I argue that Gödel's diagonal lemma suggests a sense in which metatheoretic notions of proof, well-foundeness and satisfaction are object-theoretically inkonsistent. With respect to Cantor's Inbegriff, for example, the lemma yields that any object-theoretic reconstruction of thinkability generates an antidiagonal sentence , which one can paraphrase asSelf-referential application of the assertion that. (shrink)

Quel type d'expérience faisons-nous quand " nous regardons un film "? Bien que cette formule consacrée ne prenne pas en compte la complexité du voir/entendre spectatoriel, elle souligne néanmoins une forme d'équivocité à propos de ce qu'on " regarde ", comme de ce qui est ainsi mis en jeu. Le présent essai s'efforce de rendre compte des différentes modalités d'appréhension d'un film par le spectateur. L'auteure a choisi de travailler au plus près de la texture filmique en analysant de courts (...) extraits de films. (shrink)

In the “Commentary” on “Our Recent Rousseau: on Paul Shepard,” the author praises Lawrence Cahoone’s comprehensive and critical analysis of Shepard’s interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of human ecology, in particular, his theories of the wild and hunting and the contributions of archaic cultures to civilization. The author then elaborates further on the importance of the Paul Shepard’s unifying ideas of evolution, ontogeny, and neoteny to the understanding of the psychohistory of human development.

In the the passage just quoted from the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, David Hume developed a thought-experiment that contravened his better-known views about "chance" expressed in his Treatise and first Enquiry. For among other consequences of the 'eternal-recurrence' hypothesis Philo proposes in this passage, it may turn out that what the vulgar call cause is nothing but a secret and concealed chance. (In this sentence, I have simply reversed "cause" and "chance" in a well-known passage from Hume's Treatise, p. 130). (...) In the first eight sections of this essay, I develop one topological and model-theoretic analogue of Hume's thought-experiment, in which 'most' ('A-generic') models M of a 'scientific' theory U are both 'eternally recurrent' and topologically random (in a sense which will be made precise), even though they are 'inductively' defined, via a step-by-step ('empirical'?) procedure that Hume might have been inclined to endorse. The last aspect of this model-theoretic thought-experiment also serves to distinguish it from simpler measure-theoretic prototypes that are known to follow from Kolmogorov's Zero-One Law (cf. the Introduction, 5.2, 6.1 and 6.7 below). In the last three sections, I will argue more informally (1) that the metamathematical thought-experiments just mentioned do have a genuine metaphysical relevance, and that this relevance is predominantly skeptical in its implications; (2) that such 'nonstandard' instances of semantic underdetermination and 'pathology' seem to be the metatheoretic rule rather than the exception; and therefore, (3) that metamathematical and metatheoretic 'malign-genius' arguments are quite coherent, contrary (e.g.) to assertions such as that of Putnam (1980), pp. 7-8. In the essay's conclusion, finally, I assimilate (2) and (3) to the familiar datum that 'simplicity', rather than 'pathology', has more often than not turned out to be an anomalous 'special case' in the historical development of scientific and mathematical ontology. (shrink)

This article is based on a PhD study entitled: ‘Wellbeing and work performance of Christians in managerial positions: A Namibian case study’. The main aim of the study was to find out if there is a correlation between the well-being and work performance of Christian managers and support from their families, which would culminate into a model for use by Christian managers, Christian managers’ families and Christian practitioners such as pastors, counsellors and other practitioners in the helping profession. The study (...) was based on Don Browning’s revised correlational approach to practical theology and used a mixed methods research design. Thirty-two Christian managers in Ohangwena Region, Namibia, participated in the study, and six biblical examples and other key scriptures were selected to draw theological principles related to Christian managers’ well-being and work performance in relation to family support. The aim of this article is to present the model, which is based on the understanding that Christian managers’ well-being affects their work performance, that family support contributes significantly to Christian managers’ well-being, that Christian managers have a role to play if they are to receive family support, and that churches play an important part in encouraging family support for Christian managers. (shrink)

In the shadow of various business scandals and societal crises, scholars and practitioners have developed a growing interest in authentic leadership. This approach to leadership assumes that leaders may access and leverage their “true selves” and “core values” and that the combination of these two elements forms the basis from which they act resolutely, lead ethically, and benefit others. Drawing on Heidegger’s work, we argue that a concern for authenticity can indeed instigate a leadership ethic, albeit one that acknowledges the (...) unfounded openness of existence and its inherent relationality. On this basis, we propose an ethics-as-practice approach in which leaders respond to the situation at hand by being “attuned to attunement,” which cultivates an openness to otherness and a responsibility to others. (shrink)

Around 1716, the French astronomer and academician Joseph-Nicolas Delisle took up a new project: the twinned topics of Chinese chronology and astronomy. Unable to access Chinese sources and not knowing any fellow savants who shared this particular interest, Delisle methodically made extracts and compiled data from the existing European literature. Among Delisle's papers at the Observatoire de Paris still exist the results of this research, including a list of the books he found relevant. This paper develops a close reading of (...) Delisle's notes from this period to stage his journey into a recondite arena of technical and textual analysis, and to examine the scholarly practices and generic conventions through which early modern European savants confronted the Chinese astronomical tradition. (shrink)

Il est courant de déplorer la perte d’un horizon politique fédérateur apte à mobiliser les membres de nos sociétés dans la poursuite de l’intérêt général. Entre autres responsables de la dissolution du lien politique et de l’affaiblissement du devoir civique, est convoquée la philosophie libérale dont la portée individualiste aurait rendu inconcevable le sacrifice des intérêts particuliers au nom de l’intérêt général. Il s’agit d’éclaircir cette critique en montrant que la reformulation moderne du bien commun par le libéralisme a surtout (...) introduit une indétermination qui rend compte de la difficulté pour ses membres à s’y rapporter. En vertu du droit de chacun à poursuivre ses propres buts, l’intérêt général peut aussi bien désigner la protection des droits que la satisfaction des intérêts particuliers. Or ces deux finalités sont non seulement distinctes mais peuvent également entrer en conflit, comme le révèlent aujourd’hui les débats autour des objectifs de l’Union européenne ou ceux entourant la protection des Biens Publics Mondiaux. Cet ouvrage se propose de montrer que cette tension est déjà présente chez les auteurs fondateurs du libéralisme qui oscillent entre la consécration d’un droit déterminant la sphère des intérêts légitimes et la préservation des intérêts dont découle le régime des droits. L’ambiguïté entre ce qui est d’intérêt général, la garantie des droits, et la poursuite de l’intérêt général sur le principe de composition des intérêts particuliers, contraint alors à redéfinir la nature de la participation politique et citoyenne, en particulier dans le cadre de nos démocraties. (shrink)