A different picture of learning is suggested by Karl Popper's account of knowledge growing through 'conjectures and refutations'. The facts of human language are best explained by taking language acquisition to be a case of Popperian learning.

Recent technical developments in the logic of nominalism make it possible to improve and extend significantly the approach to mathematics developed in Mathematics without Numbers. After reviewing the intuitive ideas behind structuralism in general, the modal-structuralist approach as potentially class-free is contrasted broadly with other leading approaches. The machinery of nominalistic ordered pairing (Burgess-Hazen-Lewis) and plural quantification (Boolos) can then be utilized to extend the core systems of modal-structural arithmetic and analysis respectively to full, classical, polyadic third- and fourthorder number (...) theory. The mathenatics of many structures of central importance in functional analysis, measure theory, and topology can be recovered within essentially these frameworks. (shrink)

Possibilities haunt history. The force of our explanations of events turns on the alternative possibilities these explanations suggest. It is these possible worlds which give us our understanding; and in human affairs we decide them by practical rather than theoretical judgement. In his widely acclaimed account of the role of counterfactuals in explanation, Geoffrey Hawthorn deploys extended examples from history and modern times to defend his argument. His conclusions cast doubt on existing assumptions about the nature and place of (...) theory, and indeed of the possibility of knowledge itself, in the human sciences. (shrink)

A history of the pre-Socratic philosophers, with selected writings and texts.

Bernard Williams is remembered as one of the most brilliant and original philosophers of the past fifty years. Widely respected as a moral philosopher, Williams began to write about politics in a sustained way in the early 1980s. There followed a stream of articles, lectures, and other major contributions to issues of public concern--all complemented by his many works on ethics, which have important implications for political theory.This new collection of essays, most of them previously unpublished, addresses many of the (...) core subjects of political philosophy: justice, liberty, and equality; the nature and meaning of liberalism; toleration; power and the fear of power; democracy; and the nature of political philosophy itself. A central theme throughout is that political philosophers need to engage more directly with the realities of political life, not simply with the theories of other philosophers. Williams makes this argument in part through a searching examination of where political thinking should originate, to whom it might be addressed, and what it should deliver.Williams had intended to weave these essays into a connected narrative on political philosophy with reflections on his own experience of postwar politics. Sadly he did not live to complete it, but this book brings together many of its components. Geoffrey Hawthorn has arranged the material to resemble as closely as possible Williams's original design and vision. He has provided both an introduction to Williams's political philosophy and a bibliography of his formal and informal writings on politics.Those who know the work of Bernard Williams will find here the familiar hallmarks of his writing--originality, clarity, erudition, and wit. Those who are unfamiliar with, or unconvinced by, a philosophical approach to politics, will find this an engaging introduction. Both will encounter a thoroughly original voice in modern political theory and a searching approach to the shape and direction of liberal political thought in the past thirty-five years. (shrink)

In this paper I defend and develop Bernard Williams’ claim that the ‘constitutive thought’ of regret is ‘something like “how much better if it had been otherwise”’. An introductory section on cognitivist theories of emotion is followed by a detailed investigation of the concept of ‘agent-regret’ and of the ways in which the ‘constitutive thought’ might be articulated in different situations in which agents acknowledge casual responsibility for bringing about undesirable outcomes. Among problematic cases discussed are those in which agents (...) have caused harm through no fault of their own, or have been constrained to choose the lesser of two evils or to act against their moral values. R. Jay Wallace’s ‘bourgeois predicament’ and related cases, in which we recognize that our present advantages have flowed from regrettable antecedents, further show that regret is often not a simple emotion, and it is argued that conflicted regrets are sometimes unavoidable. Finally, the paper looks at Descartes’ account of regret as a form of sadness engendered by the recollection of irrecoverable happy experiences, to which the ‘constitutive thought’ does not readily apply. It is suggested that what Descartes is discussing is a different genre of emotion for which ‘nostalgia’ might be a better name. (shrink)

It is possible to learn multiple layers of non-linear features by backpropagating error derivatives through a feedforward neural network. This is a very effective learning procedure when there is a huge amount of labeled training data, but for many learning tasks very few labeled examples are available. In an effort to overcome the need for labeled data, several different generative models were developed that learned interesting features by modeling the higher order statistical structure of a set of input vectors. One (...) of these generative models, the restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM), has no connections between its hidden units and this makes perceptual inference and learning much simpler. More significantly, after a layer of hidden features has been learned, the activities of these features can be used as training data for another RBM. By applying this idea recursively, it is possible to learn a deep hierarchy of progressively more complicated features without requiring any labeled data. This deep hierarchy can then be treated as a feedforward neural network which can be discriminatively fine-tuned using backpropagation. Using a stack of RBMs to initialize the weights of a feedforward neural network allows backpropagation to work effectively in much deeper networks and it leads to much better generalization. A stack of RBMs can also be used to initialize a deep Boltzmann machine that has many hidden layers. Combining this initialization method with a new method for fine-tuning the weights finally leads to the first efficient way of training Boltzmann machines with many hidden layers and millions of weights. (shrink)

It is a remarkable feature of most contemporary discussions of emotion that they have been conducted without any reference to what it could mean to talk of the expression of emotion in music. This is a crucial absence, I shall argue, since a proper understanding of music's expression of emotion must lead to a correct view of the nature of emotion itself. Such an understanding will yield the view that emotion is a state of consciousness which is both intentional and (...) affective, and at the same time totally undermine the view that emotions are, or necessarily involve, judgments or evaluations. (shrink)

Chomsky has constructed an empirical theory about syntactic universals of natural language by defining a class of 'possible languages' which includes all natural languages (inter alia) as members, and claiming that all natural languages fall .within a specified proper subset of that class. I extend Chomsky's work to produce an empirical theory about natural4anguage semantic universals by showing that the semantic description of a language will incorporate a logical calculus, by defining a relatively wide class of 'possible calculi', and by (...) specifying a proper subset of that class which, I hypothesize, includes the calculi needed for the semantic description of any natural language. I argue that the special status, with respect to natural languages, of this particular type of logical calculus is an empirical finding which does not follow from any independently-known principles, and I conclude that the question why the laws of human thought have the structure they do is a biological rather than a logical question. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between love, learning and knowledge as found in three dialogues of Plato, Symposium, Phaedrus and Republic. It argues that the account of the ascent from carnal desire to the love of beauty, as set out in the Symposium, is best seen in terms of a genealogy of love in which the object of love is transformed into an object of knowledge. The Phaedrus shows us how affection and love between two individuals can help motivate a (...) love of learning. The Republic demonstrates the value of knowledge through the distinction between knowledge and opinion. A love of learning is, therefore, driven by that which is genuinely valuable and worthy of love. Plato helps us today in two respects: first, he reminds us that learning can have an affective quality. Second, he reminds that the value of learning is related to the knowledge and insight it yields. (shrink)

Many recent writers in the virtue ethics tradition have followed Aristotle in arguing for a distinction between virtue and continence, where the latter is conceived as an inferior moral condition. In this paper I contend that rather than seeking to identify a sharp categorical difference between virtue and continence, we should see the contrast as rather one of degree, where virtue is a continence that has matured with practice and habit, becoming more stable, effective and self-aware.

In this fascinating collection of essays, noted critic Geoffrey Hartman raises the essential question of where we can find the real or authentic in today's world, and how this affects the way we understand our human predicament. Hartman explores such issues as the fantasy of total information and perfect communication encouraged by the internet, the biographical excesses of tell-all talk shows that serve to shore up a personal sense of unreality, the tendency to motivate violence in the name of (...) some moral or spiritual necessity, and the increased difficulty of distinguishing between fakery and truth in confessional and testimonial writing. Underlying the entire book is the crucial issue of how the trauma of the Holocaust and other genocidal acts, brought home to us almost daily by the media, is shaping our quest for agency, identity and meaning. Against what he describes as a contempt for the aesthetic in the face of social suffering, Hartman produces a defense of art that helps to recast these questions. His idea is that the form of contemplation produced by the aesthetic, and particularly by poetry, resists both the fantasy of data delivering up their own final meaning and of ideology as a shortcut seeking to deliver us from literature and other deeply reflective and sometimes vulnerable--because self-critical--modes of expression. (shrink)

In this bold interdisciplinary work, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that asceticism has played a major role in shaping Western ideas of the body, writing, ethics, ...

In a critical scene deeply troubled by questions of justice and responsibility, and beset by political and moral scandals, no issue in recent years has been more urgent or more unsettled than the question of ethics. Geoffrey Galt Harpham, whose previous book, The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism, was one of the first to announce the critical renewal of ethics, attempts in this new book to explain why ethical questions resist settlement. He urges a new account of ethics (...) not as a stable set of principles, values, or prescriptions, but as a variable factor of "imperativity" immanent in language, analysis, narrative, and creation. (shrink)

Widely regarded as the most influential proponent of the truth of original sin in the twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr worked hard to excise any "literalistic" element from his interpretation of the doctrine. In his attempt to "correct" the Augustinian tradition on original sin by purging it of all "literalistic errors," however, Niebuhr assumed as his starting point the most characteristically modern objection to the doctrine: that birth is a thoroughly natural, animal, and morally meaningless event. As a result, Niebuhr unnecessarily (...) constrained his vision of the dimensions of human freedom, and hence his description of the dynamic of anxiety and freedom that energizes sin. Through a careful reading of Reinhold Niebuhr's writings on original sin, in light of the truth that the end of human life is inseparable from its origins, a reappraisal and recovery of the meaningfulness of the assertion of original sin as a literal inheritance is possible. The result of such a reappraisal and recovery is an amplified insight into the existential anxiety that Niebuhr otherwise described so convincingly. (shrink)

This essay argues that the overuse of the idiom of forgiveness has distorted our understanding of the nature and requirements of political reconciliation, and proposes its supplementation by a notion of grace. This is a mode of response to wrongs that is less hedged around by conventions and conditions, and grace complements forgiveness in contexts in which the latter is inappropriate; it is also more serviceable for maintaining inter-community harmony in the long term. Following a detailed analysis of grace in (...) the political environment, the paper concludes by tracing a concept of grace in the Sermon on the Mount. (shrink)

Although the mathematization of nature is a distinctive and crucial feature of the emergence of modern science in the seventeenth century, this volume shows that it was a far more complex, contested, and context-dependent phenomenon than the received historiography has indicated.0.

Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level (...) is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy. (shrink)

Following a brief preface, the second section of this paper discusses Mill's early reflections on the problem of how deductive inference can be illuminating. In the third section it is suggested that in his Logic Mill misconstrued the feature that the premises of a logically valid argument contain the conclusion as the ground of a charge that deductive proof is question-begging. The fourth section discusses the nature of the traditional petitio objection to syllogism, and the fifth shows that Mill had (...) a theory capable of answering it. The final section cites the confusion described in section 3 to explain why Mill nevertheless continued to think that syllogistic proofs beg the question. (shrink)

This is a critical examination of Quine's "Two Dogmas" that leaves nothing much of Quine's paper still standing. It concludes with a short study of a bit of bad work in philosophy that results from following the doctrines of "Two Dogmas".

Modern utilitarianism has largely abandoned the view that human well-being consists solely in pleasurable sensations. Too much was wanting in that view for it to withstand the critique of a more refined philosophical psychology than was available to Bentham and Mill. The objections are by now familiar and need no detailed rehearsal. The older view failed to characterize adequately the structure of human satisfactions, forgetting that we can care about things that will happen after we are dead, that we generally (...) prefer to be told a distasteful truth to a comforting lie, and that we wish to be actors in our own lives and not merely passive recipients of pleasures from external sources. The extent to which a life is a flourishing one cannot be determined by summing the pleasures and pains, and calculating the balance. Nor, indeed, can it be determined by summing anything else. A life that is happy or eudaimon in the Aristotelian sense is an organic unity in which the significance of its parts rests on their contribution to the meaning of the whole. Nur im Zusammenhange eines Lebens hat ein Erlebnis Bedeutung. Utilitarianism needs to find a way of incorporating an organic view of human satisfaction. (shrink)

A nontechnical review is given of a topological bootstrap theory, with emphasis on theraison d'être for an electromagnetism whose fine-structure constant is of order10 −2.

The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno and the American social scientist Ernest Becker see death as humanity’s fundamental anxiety. My essay explores the ethical ramifications attendant upon making that anxiety a well-spring of human activity. More specifically, I am interested in humanity’s effort to escape death via the secular milieu of social remembrance. Does such an effort produce a vista where the other exhibits an intrinsic value? Alternatively, does the other become a mere means in light of one’s project of (...) self-preservation? Pursuing such questions, this reflection will explore both positive and negative responses. It will take up the Columbine school shootings in reference to the latter and a notion of protest with regard to the former. The treatise will culminate with a discussion of Unamuno’s ethics of irreplaceability and its potential to engender a universal human respect while also endorsing one’s commitment to her concrete individuality. (shrink)

The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno and the American social scientist Ernest Becker see death as humanity’s fundamental anxiety. My essay explores the ethical ramifications attendant upon making that anxiety a well-spring of human activity. More specifically, I am interested in humanity’s effort to escape death via the secular milieu of social remembrance. Does such an effort produce a vista where the other exhibits an intrinsic value? Alternatively, does the other become a mere means in light of one’s project of (...) self-preservation? Pursuing such questions, this reflection will explore both positive and negative responses. It will take up the Columbine school shootings in reference to the latter and a notion of protest with regard to the former. The treatise will culminate with a discussion of Unamuno’s ethics of irreplaceability and its potential to engender a universal human respect while also endorsing one’s commitment to her concrete individuality. (shrink)

How would a liberation theologian respond to Marx’s famous critique that religious belief and, even more specifically, a hope for heaven is “the opium of the people”? I utilize the conceptual resources found within the work of liberation theologians Gustavo Gutiérrez, Enrique Dussel, and Jon Sobrino to argue that a belief in heaven is able to constitute a protest against oppressed persons’ present hell. To strengthen the connection between a believer’s heavenly hope and a commitment to worldly struggle, I examine (...) how the hope must be conceived as the completion and fulfillment of a process of temporal transformation. (shrink)

How would a liberation theologian respond to Marx’s famous critique that religious belief and, even more specifically, a hope for heaven is “the opium of the people”? I utilize the conceptual resources found within the work of liberation theologians Gustavo Gutiérrez, Enrique Dussel, and Jon Sobrino to argue that a belief in heaven is able to constitute a protest against oppressed persons’ present hell. To strengthen the connection between a believer’s heavenly hope and a commitment to worldly struggle, I examine (...) how the hope must be conceived as the completion and fulfillment of a process of temporal transformation. (shrink)

La création d’un système de santé public a été l’un des éléments clés de la Révolution tranquille dans les années 1960 au Québec. Toutefois, le développement de nouveaux traitements et de nouvelles technologies, en particulier des produits pharmaceutiques, ont fait naître un nouveau débat sur la gestion de notre système de santé. En se basant sur une analyse récente des valeurs libérales dans la société québécoise par Claude Ryan, l’auteur souligne l’importance que le gouvernement doit accorder à ces valeurs dans (...) la modernisation de notre système de santé. À la lumière des recommandations présentées par la commission Clair au provincial et par la commission Romanow au fédéral, la situation se prête bien à une modernisation du système de soins au Québec. Les valeurs libérales ont fourni une base au système de santé public ; elles sont plus pertinentes qu’elles ne l’ont jamais été alors que le débat sur notre système de santé est engagé. (shrink)

On Civic Republicanism explores the enduring relevance of the ancient concepts of republicanism and civic virtue to modern questions about political engagement and identity.".