Book Information The Weight of Finitude: On the Philosophical Question of God. By Ludwig Heyde. State University of New York Press. Albany. 1999. Pp. 177 + xviii. Paperback, US$17.95.

Visuomotor adaptation to novel environments can occur via non-physical means, such as observation. Observation does not appear to activate the same implicit learning processes as physical practice, rather it appears to be more strategic in nature. However, there is evidence that interspersing observational practice with physical practice can benefit performance and memory consolidation either through the combined benefits of separate processes or through a change in processes activated during observation trials. To test these ideas, we asked people to practice aiming (...) to targets with visually rotated cursor feedback or engage in a combined practice schedule comprising physical practice and observation of projected videos showing successful aiming. Ninety-three participants were randomly assigned to one of five groups: massed physical practice, distributed physical practice, or one of 3 types of combined practice: alternating blocks, or all observation before or after blocked physical practice. Participants received 100 practice trials. All groups improved in adaptation trials and showed savings across the 24-h retention interval relative to initial practice. There was some forgetting for all groups, but the magnitudes were larger for physical practice groups. The Act and Obs_During groups were most accurate in retention and did not differ, suggesting that observation can serve as a replacement for physical practice if supplied intermittently and offers advantages above just resting. However, after-effects associated with combined practice were smaller than those for physical practice control groups, suggesting that beneficial learning effects as a result of observation were not due to activation of implicit learning processes. Reaction time, variable error, and post-test rotation drawings supported this conclusion that adaptation for observation groups was promoted by explicit/strategic processes. (shrink)

There appear to be a number of general things which can be said about forgiveness. If these are left sufficiently vague they seem to be applicable to all the situations in which the term is used.First, there can be no question of forgiveness unless an injury has been inflicted on somebody by a moral agent. There must be something to forgive; and the injury that is to be forgiven must be one for which a moral agent can be held responsible. (...) One cannot forgive a rock for falling on one's foot or a cougar for attacking one's child—even though a child might kick the rock and a father might shoot the cougar. (shrink)

The right to privacy is one of the rights most widely demanded today. Privacy has not always so been demanded. The reasons for the present concern for privacy are complex and obscure. They obviously relate both to the possibilities for very considerable enjoyment of privacy by the bulk of people living in affluent societies brought about by twentieth-century affluence, and to the development of very efficient methods of thoroughly and systematically invading this newly found privacy. However, interesting and important as (...) it is as a socio-philosophical inquiry, the concern of this paper is not with why privacy has come to be so highly prized, but rather with whether it is rightly prized, and if so, when and why. This means that my concern will be with what privacy is, what is its domain, whether there is a right to privacy, and, if so, whether it is an ultimate, basic, albeit, a prima facie right, or simply a conditional right. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers writing on punishment seek to show that much of the dispute between retributionists and utilitarians springs from a failure on the part of both parties to elucidate the concept of punishment. The writers are usually utilitarians who seek to show that what is true in the retributive theory is simply a point about the concept of punishment, and that for the rest, the morality of punishment is to be explained in terms of the utilitarian theory. Those who (...) attempt to destroy the retributive theory by reducing its element of truth to a mere conceptual point about the concept of punishment, seek to argue that the notion of being guilty of an offence is part of the concept of punishment. Against this kind of approach, I wish to consider whether a general theory of punishment is possible, and if so, what are its basic concepts—punishment, deserving of punishment, deserved, or justifiable punishment—and how they are to be elucidated. I shall be concerned to argue that much contemporary writing on punishment commits the Platonic fallacy of assuming that there is a single, core, paradigm use of ‘punishment’ which is to be found by elucidating the concept of legal punishment. (shrink)

That mox means, or can mean, ‘soon,’ is an assertion which is made often and positively, in works of all sorts, from the ordinary dictionaries, such as Facciolati-Forcellini and Lewis and Short, and valuable writings on lexicography such as Merguet's lexicon to Cicero and Krebs-Schmalz' Antibarbarus, down to the latest little school book at which I have looked. As I had never been able to find a passage in which it clearly and unambiguously had that meaning, in any classical author, (...) I have thought it worth while to examine all the instances in a few good writers, with a view to finding out how they really do use it. (shrink)

The Gods and Typhon.—The story of how the gods took bestial shape to hide from the fury of Typhon is several times told in Hellenistic and Latin authors. There seems no room for doubt that it is an aetiological myth, intended to explain the cult of beasts in Egypt, and also, in one or two versions, the sacredness of fish in Syria. That in one form, that given by Antoninus Liberalis, it goes back to Nikandros is reasonably certain. The doubtful (...) point, to my mind, is whether it can be traced much further, and, in particular, whether it was known to Pindar, as is commonly assumed. The authority for supposing that he knew and referred to it is a single passage of Porphyry, de abstinentia III. 16 . It runs: Πίνδαρος δ ν προσοδίοις παντας τος θεος ποίησεν τε ύπ Τυνος διώκοντα οủκ νθρώποις όμοιωθέντας λλ τοις λοις ζοις έρασθέντα δ Πασιάης Δία γενέσθαι μν ταρον νν δ ετν και κύκνον. (shrink)

Not a little speculation has been expended on the Genius in ancient and modern times. I propose very briefly to recapitulate the known facts about him, examine the chief explanations, and give what I consider the true one.

The sumptuous edition of Herodas by Headlam-Knox, while it throws welcome light on many dark places, is perhaps hardly adequate in a few points where ancient religious ideas are involved. I venture, therefore, to offer the following suggestions: I. II and 66, μà τàς Моίρας. IV.30, πρòς Моιρέων. I. 32,μà τήν Αϊδεω Κούρην. I. 69, μà … τήν Φίλην δήμητρα.

No ancient has told us in any surviving writing when Iambulos lived. Lucian says no more than that he composed a work obviously fabulous but quite amusing; Diodoros of Sicily, the only other author to mention him at all, earns our gratitude by excerpting his romance, apparently under the impression that it was sober fact. Moderns are accordingly vague in dating him. It is obvious that he must be earlier than or contemporary with Diodoros, whose historical work mentions no date (...) later than 54 B.C, but his allusions to events of his own life indicate that he was old enough to take an intelligent interest in the world as early as about 60 B.C, and still alive as late as 21 B.C. Kroll contents himself with indicating that Iambulos is later than Megasthenes, which gives us a range of close on 250 years. I think, however, that we may reduce this very considerably and place Iambulos, if not in any definite year, at least within a period of less than a century. (shrink)

Reinhold Niebuhr, approaching the ethical field as a theologian rather than as a philosopher, has maintained that the Christian ethic is not single and indivisible, but that, on the contrary, it consists of what one might call an absolute ethic and a kind of interim ethic in which the notion of justice is prominent. Without commenting on Niebuhr's work I wish to put forward a view which, although more general than his, is perhaps not without a superficial resemblance to it.

Quine seems to maintain that there is no sharp distinction between analytic and synthetic sentences, and also that 'analytic' and 'synthetic' have no meaning. the dependence of these concepts on 'meaning' is used to show the incompatibility of these two interpretations of quine's conception of the analytic and the synthetic, and to show that both have a paradoxical character of their own. that may threat reductionist semantics as a whole. still the need for a totally different (rationalistic, essentialistic) semantics may (...) be obviated by a reasonable explication of a vague distinction between the analytic and the synthetic. (shrink)