This is an ambitious and substantial study of metaphysics: its nature and inescapability. Professor Körner's method may be described as 'philosophical anthropology', and aims to arrive at a characterisation of the metaphysical beliefs with which we (have to) operate. Professor Körner begins by describing how the categorical framework of a person's metaphysical beliefs may be embedded in more ordinary beliefs and practical attitudes to the world. He illustrates the variety of such frameworks and describes their role, going on to explain (...) how they may be modified by argument and reflection. This is an independent inquiry, but also the culmination of a series of Professor Körner's earlier works. The writing is extremely clear and the material sensitively controlled, revealing great learning and many suggestive insights and comparisons. It presents overall a comprehensive and carefully thought-out account of metaphysics. (shrink)

First published in 1976, this is a comprehensive study of practical thinking. Professor Körner shows the complex relations which a person's practical attitudes bear to each other, and shows in particular how their moral or prudential character depends not only on their content and form but also on their place in the system constituted by them. There are detailed accounts of the concepts of morality, prudence, justice, welfare and legality, as well as the logical foundations, epistemology and metaphysics of practical (...) thinking. The book is intended for philosophers and for those political theorists and social scientists who are concerned with the philosophical presuppositions and implications of their enquiries. The book is deliberately organized so that those with less interest in the logical issues dealt with in Part I can proceed quickly and easily to the more substantive issues in Parts II and III. (shrink)

This volume shows how late medieval dream-poetry explored problems arising from the reception of Aristotle's philosophical work concerning human knowledge. Marco Nievergelt explores how the work of three medieval poets in the genre of allegorical fiction addressed these problems in distinctive, non-academic terms.

Preface -- 1. Propositional logic : proofs from axioms and inference rules -- 2. First order logic : proofs with quantifiers -- 3. Set theory : proofs by detachment, contraposition, and contradiction -- 4. Mathematical induction : definitions and proofs by induction -- 5. Well-formed sets : proofs by transfinite induction with already well-ordered sets -- 6. The axiom of choice : proofs by transfinite induction -- 7. applications : Nobel-Prize winning applications of sets, functions, and relations -- 8. Solutions (...) to some odd-numbered exercises. (shrink)

The thirteenth-century allegorical dream vision, the Roman de la Rose, transformed how medieval literary texts engaged with philosophical ideas. Written in Old French, its influence dominated French, English and Italian literature for the next two centuries, serving in particular as a model for Chaucer and Dante. Jean de Meun's section of this extensive, complex and dazzling work is notable for its sophisticated responses to a whole host of contemporary philosophical debates. This collection brings together literary scholars and historians of philosophy (...) to produce the most thorough, interdisciplinary study to date of how the Rose uses poetry to articulate philosophical problems and positions. This wide-ranging collection demonstrates the importance of the poem for medieval intellectual history and offers new insights into the philosophical potential both of the Rose specifically and of medieval poetry as a whole. (shrink)

Circadian rhythm abnormalities in bipolar disorder have led to a search for genetic abnormalities in circadian "clock genes" associated with BD. However, no significant clock gene findings have emerged from genome-wide association studies. At least three factors could account for this discrepancy: complex traits are polygenic, the organization of the clock is more complex than previously recognized, and/or genetic risk for BD may be shared across multiple illnesses. To investigate these issues, we considered the clock gene network at three levels: (...) essential "core" clock genes, upstream circadian clock modulators, and downstream clock controlled genes. Using relaxed thresholds for GWAS statistical significance, we determined the rates of clock vs. control genetic associations with BD, and four additional illnesses that share clinical features and/or genetic risk with BD. Then we compared the results to a set of lithium-responsive genes. Associations with BD-spectrum illnesses and lithium-responsiveness were both enriched among core clock genes but not among upstream clock modulators. Associations with BD-spectrum illnesses and lithium-responsiveness were also enriched among pervasively rhythmic clock-controlled genes but not among genes that were less pervasively rhythmic or non-rhythmic. Our analysis reveals previously unrecognized associations between clock genes and BD-spectrum illnesses, partly reconciling previously discordant results from past GWAS and candidate gene studies. (shrink)

Professor Bergmann is an original thinker who has for many years wrestled with some of the most important and difficult problems of philosophy. Although at first mainly interested in epistemology, he has gradually come to the conclusion that the fundamental questions of philosophy are ontological and that even epistemology is in the last analysis “the ontology of the knowing process.” He holds that by neglecting the explicit formulation of his ontology, a philosopher courts intellectual disaster because the inadequacies of the (...) ontological foundation are likely to affect all philosophical superstructures built on it. In his last book [1], Bergmann explains some of the main features of his ontology in systematic form and criticizes competing systems, especially those of Brentano and Meinong, by comparing them with his own. In the critical parts of his work he tries to show that the competing ontologies are not adequate to the tasks for which they are intended and why this is so. The constructive and the critical parts supplement each other very well, since Brentano's and Meinong's questions and emphases are similar to Bergmann's. Broadly speaking, he regards his own ontology as a phase in a development of ontological insight which consists, at least negatively, in the gradual elimination of three major errors: nominalism, reism, and representationalism. (shrink)

Based on “laws” of contagion and similarity, it is understood that people tend to believe that meanings associated with one object may be transferred onto another, and the meanings of the first may “contaminate” the second. The perceived contamination may influence the individual’s way of interacting with the object. We aimed to produce a rich description of individual differences that predict intuitive judgments in response to scenarios involving activation of contagion heuristics. Adolescents and adults in Germany completed a survey and (...) provided rated responses to hypothetical scenarios. They also gave open-ended remarks on one scenario: whether they would wear a sweater that had belonged to Adolf Hitler if they were cold. Content analysis produced a composite description of reflections with insights into historical consciousness in contemporary Germany. Also examined was the extent to which quantitative responses were related to demographics, personality characteristics, supernatural beliefs, and responses to other scenarios. (shrink)

Tradução de Über Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1796).

The purpose of this paper is first to explain a general notion of transcendental deductions, of which the Kantian are special cases; next to show, and to illustrate by examples from Kant’s work, that no transcendental deduction can be successful; and thirdly to put one of Kant’s achievements in its proper light by substituting for his spurious distinction between metaphysical exposition and transcendental deduction, a revised notion of metaphysical exposition and of the philosophical tasks arising out of it.