The U.S. stock market is one of the largest and most complex marketplaces in the global financial system. Over the past several decades, this market has evolved at multiple structural and temporal scales. New exchanges became active, and others stopped trading, regulations have been introduced and adapted, and technological innovations have pushed the pace of trading activity to blistering speeds. These developments have supported the growth of a rich machine-trading ecology that leads to qualitative differences in trading behavior at human (...) and machine time scales. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of comprehensive market data to quantify nonstationary dynamics throughout this system. We quantify the relationship between fluctuations in the number of active trading venues and realized opportunity costs experienced by market participants. We find that information asymmetries, in the form of quote dislocations, predict market-wide volatility indicators. Lastly, we uncover multiple micro-to-macro level pathways, including those exhibiting evidence of self-organized criticality. (shrink)

Henry More argues that materialism cannot account for cases where a single subject or perceiver has multiple perceptions simultaneously. Since we clearly do have multiple perceptions at the same time--for example, when we see, hear, and smell simultaneously--More concludes that we are not wholly material. In response to More's argument, Margaret Cavendish adopts a two-fold strategy. First, she argues that there is no general obstacle to mental unification in her version of materialism. Second, Cavendish appeals to the mind or rational (...) matter--terms she often uses interchangeably—to explain the integration of sensory input from multiple senses. When the mind integrates perceptions across modalities, the different parts of rational matter share their knowledge so that they all come to perceive alike. When rational parts successfully communicate their knowledge, each part knows what all the others know. They pool their knowledge; they perceive alike. Thus, when someone hears, sees, and tastes, each part of her mind hears, sees, and tastes alike, in parallel and in unison. The Cavendishian mind, in short, approximates simplicity by achieving uniformity or homogeneity of perceptions across its parts. (shrink)

Sometimes we love and hate the same thing at the same time. Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673)—the maverick early modern materialist—appeals to this type of passionate conflict to argue that the mind is a material thing. When our passions conflict, the mind or reason conflicts with itself. From this Cavendish infers that the mind has parts and, therefore, is material. Cavendish says this argument is among the best proofs of the mind’s materiality. And yet, the existing scholarship on Cavendish lacks the kind (...) of detailed reconstruction required to evaluate this argument’s merits. In this paper, I provide just such a reconstruction. I also show that Cavendish’s argument is an effective intervention in her dispute with René Descartes and Henry More about the (im)materiality of the mind. (shrink)

Henry Lord Brougham (1778-1868) belongs with Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann in the United States and Egerton Ryerson in Canada as one of the great promoters and founders of public education in the English-speaking world. His most famous phrase is The schoolmaster is abroad and this quote symbolizes his belief that the fate of the modern, liberal society depends on free access to education for the population at large. It is not that Brougham any more than Jefferson failed to draw (...) a distinction between the education that was fitted for the gifted few and that suited to the general public whose lives would lack the leisure for intellectual pursuits of the highest difficulty and training. Rather it is that Brougham adheres to a philosophy of enlightenment which sees the interests of science and society as ultimately indistinguishable and which insists that the spread of knowledge about both the natural and social worlds carries with it no price in terms of individual or social morality. This paper gives an overview of Brougham's philosophy of public enlightenment including his views on the example of Benjamin Franklin. It then reviews the attacks on this philosophy from the Anglican point of view in the form of the Reverend E.W. Grinfield's A Reply to Mr. Brougham's Practical Observations upon the Education of the People and from the Roman Catholic point of view in Cardinal Newman's famous Tamworth Reading Room and Discourse on University Education. (shrink)

In an issue of Common Knowledge given over to experiments in scholarly form and to the discussion of them, this piece is one of three on the genre of microhistory. The other two argue the merits and demerits of the genre, while this piece seeks to exemplify both its virtues and its risks. To show how microhistory offers intense deliberation on a narrowly defined topic, yet also a kind of hastiness — an impatience with demands for broader scope — (...) class='Hi'>Colin Richmond examines one limited facet of the relationship between two Americans resident in England at the turn of the last century: the novelist Henry James and the painter Edwin Austin Abbey. Detailed evidence is mustered to document James's love of fresh hens' eggs and of the undignified lengths he would go to obtain them through the agency of Abbey and his wife. This short piece is written as if a parable, and while its moral goes unstated, the reader's attention is drawn to the unsettled question of whether James exerted maximal effort for minimal results, or whether he knew something about the value of freshness undreamed of by those more patient and dignified in pursuing their desires. (shrink)

This article attempts to assess the claim that the unum necessarium in our time is the general dissemination of scientific knowledge because liberal civilization or the “good society” cannot be had in the presence of traditional religion and “metaphysics.” The paper attempts to place this claim in the context of continuing globalization and related questions such as 9/11, Fundamentalist Islam, Sino-Western relations, “pop” atheism and the prospect of a “post-human” future. The paper describes the continuance of pre-Enlightenment traditions and beliefs (...) even as constant globalizing influences with their attendant secularism, atheism and technologism make their presence felt. The paper canvasses the views of Chet Raymo, C.S. Lewis, Bryan Appleyard, Werner Heisenberg, Stanley Rosen, Henry Adams, Friedrich Nietzsche Martin Heidegger and Francis Fukuyama as a means of assessing the claim that an education rooted in a simple commitment to scientific progressivism will be inadequate to the demands of the 21 st Century. (shrink)

This paper attempts to present a 'time line' of the increasing levels of doubt and anxiety about the path of 'Progressive Civilization' from the heyday of Victorian liberalism in the early 19th Century to the rise of postmodernism in our day. It does so by tracking a line of thought through John Stuart Mill, Lord Bryce, Matthew Arnold, Henry Adams, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Walter Lippmann. It uses the quip coined by the Yippie leader Abbie Hoffmann in the 1960's (...) as a symbolic phrase for the terminus to which the "Idea of Progess" has led us in the 21st Century. The argument is that over the time period covered the most serious observers became increasingly aware of the disappearance from modern society's horizon of any idea of a transcendent meaning within which it could explain and justify to itself its own deepest purposes. The necessity for a persuasive 'metaphysics' which could show why the modern western experiment is a good thing became increasingly evident in inverse proportion to its philosophical availability. Note: This paper was delivered at the University of Maine on April 27, 2009 under the auspices of the Program in Western Civilization and American Liberty directed by Michael J.Palmer the Abraham Lincoln Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Maine. (shrink)

The claim of neutrality made on behalf of “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” has been re-enforced by Kay Mathiesen’s creation of “TheAltruist’s Dilemma.” That this represents a neutral variation on “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” is compromised, however, by the failure of “The Altruist’s Dilemma” to deal with altruism in a full sense. The difference illustrates how, in contrast to its professed neutrality, “ThePrisoner’s Dilemma” involves very definite views of humanity and the nature of life itself. This is confirmed by Mathiesen’s misreading of O. (...) Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.”. (shrink)

The claim of neutrality made on behalf of “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” has been re-enforced by Kay Mathiesen’s creation of “TheAltruist’s Dilemma.” That this represents a neutral variation on “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” is compromised, however, by the failure of “The Altruist’s Dilemma” to deal with altruism in a full sense. The difference illustrates how, in contrast to its professed neutrality, “ThePrisoner’s Dilemma” involves very definite views of humanity and the nature of life itself. This is confirmed by Mathiesen’s misreading of O. (...) Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.”. (shrink)

To commemorate the five hundreth anniversary of the accession of Henry VIII to the English throne, this guest column reviews the inventories made, upon his death, of the king's possessions at Hampton Court, the Tower, and other locations. Focusing on extensive equipment for royal-games playing, especially for “tennys,” this paper is essentially a list of possessions that evidence the blend of frivolity and cruelty characteristic of Henry's self-indulgent reign.

Only one volume has reached us to mark the centenary of Bergson's birth. Is this significant? If a writer lives to an advanced age his centenary usually falls at a time when fashion has turned against him, and the consequent attitudes are perhaps more interestingly gleaned from comparitively informal assessments than from carefully timed publications. In the Nouvelles Littéraires of October 22,1959, there appeared, almost a hundred years to the day after Bergson's birth, a reported discussion on his philosophy between (...) Gaston Berger, Gabriel Marcel, Henri Gouhier, Jean Brun and a young “normalien” Dominique Janicaud.The talk, presumably more or less spontaneous, was naturally desultory. The older participants could always compensate for implicit misgivings by falling back on affectionate personal recollections, and the youngest would perhaps have preferred not to have to say anything at all. The most cogent general estimate was probably M. Jean Brun's, when he described Bergson as in effect making a stand against the danger of specialist appropriation of the dismembered fragments of philosophy by the various branches of science. We have seen this very nearly come about in England, where a fairly narrow linguistic and logical sector alone has been held with any feeling of conviction. What is here exemplified is the difference of outlook on any question that the English Channel makes. I once heard an English professor of English literature say that when reading Emile Legouis' History of English Literature he had some difficulty in persuading himself that his own professional speciality was being dealt with. It is not difficult to see how this comes about. What one nation takes for granted appears to another as excitingly significant. (shrink)

Only one volume has reached us to mark the centenary of Bergson's birth. Is this significant? If a writer lives to an advanced age his centenary usually falls at a time when fashion has turned against him, and the consequent attitudes are perhaps more interestingly gleaned from comparitively informal assessments than from carefully timed publications. In the Nouvelles Littéraires of October 22,1959, there appeared, almost a hundred years to the day after Bergson's birth, a reported discussion on his philosophy between (...) Gaston Berger, Gabriel Marcel, Henri Gouhier, Jean Brun and a young “normalien” Dominique Janicaud.The talk, presumably more or less spontaneous, was naturally desultory. The older participants could always compensate for implicit misgivings by falling back on affectionate personal recollections, and the youngest would perhaps have preferred not to have to say anything at all. The most cogent general estimate was probably M. Jean Brun's, when he described Bergson as in effect making a stand against the danger of specialist appropriation of the dismembered fragments of philosophy by the various branches of science. We have seen this very nearly come about in England, where a fairly narrow linguistic and logical sector alone has been held with any feeling of conviction. What is here exemplified is the difference of outlook on any question that the English Channel makes. I once heard an English professor of English literature say that when reading Emile Legouis' History of English Literature he had some difficulty in persuading himself that his own professional speciality was being dealt with. It is not difficult to see how this comes about. What one nation takes for granted appears to another as excitingly significant. (shrink)

In this previously unpublished essay, Edward Caird attacks Spencer's Transfigured Realism, before defending an absolute idealist theory of the formation of self-consciousness. Along the way, Caird also considered the writings of Bishop George Berkeley, David Hume, Sir William Hamilton, J.S. Mill and Henry Sidgwick. Yet the primary foci of the essay were Herbert Spencer's writings, particularly First Principles, the second edition of Principles of Psychology and the third volume of Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative . It appears to follow from (...) Caird's 1874 review of the third volume of Spencer's Essays, a piece which concluded with the observation that: 'There are some other points of interest in Mr. Spencer's 'Replies,' particularly his strange representation of Kant's meaning , but it would take too much space to discuss the subject here.'. (shrink)

In the place of an introduction to part 5 of the Common Knowledge symposium on forms of quietism, the journal's editor and one of its longtime columnists discuss, in dialogue format, the case of Thomas More. Could he have evaded martyrdom at the hands of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell? One discussant argues that More could not have done so without contemptibly abandoning his principles and surrendering fully to despotism. The other discussant disagrees, suggesting that More had to abandon some (...) of his principles one way or the other—in resisting despotism, however quietly, More did serious harm to his wife and daughter, to the European humanist movement, and to the cause of English Catholics. (shrink)

Alexandre Grothendieck foi um dos maiores matemáticos do século 20 e um dos mais atípicos. Nascido na Alemanha a um pai anarquista de origem russa, sua infância foi marcada pela militância política dos seus pais, assim passando por revoluções, guerras e sobrevivência. Descoberto por sua precocidade matemática por Henri Cartan, Grothendieck fez seu doutorado sob orientação de Laurent Schwartz e Jean Dieudonné. As principais contribuições dele são na área da topologia e na geometria algébrica, assim como na teoria das (...) categorias. No final dos anos de 1960, ele se dedicou à militância política e ecológica, organizando a revista Survivre durante três anos. Em 1986, publicou um manuscrito autobiográfico de 1000 páginas, Récoltes et semailles, em que ele descreve sua experiência e sua prática da matemática, assim suas contribuições à comunidade matemática francesa. Pouco comentado na filosofia, as implicações dos seus descobrimentos fora mais recentemente discutidas por Alain Badiou na sua "fenômeno-lógica", em Logiques des mondes e Arkady Plonitsky, Mathgematics, Science and postclassical Theory, pesquisa trata da semelhança entre os aspectos formais da filosofia de Gilles Deleuze e da topologia de Grothendieck. (shrink)

Ce texte est paru originellement dans le n° 56 de la revue Langue française, Paris, Armand Colin, 1982. Il constitue l'introduction d'un dossier tout à fait remarquable intitulé « le rythme et le discours » et comprenant, outre un article de Meschonnic lui-même, un entretien avec Antoine Vitez et des textes de Pierre David, Jacques Réda, Michel Deguy, Michel de Fornel, Christian Hervé et Paul (...) - Linguistique et théorie du langage.

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la revue Langue française, n° 56, Paris, Armand Colin, 1982, p. 6-23. L'oralité devient à la mode. Ainsi, soudain, en apparence, des convergences précipitent, cristallisent. Il y a vingt ans c'était le structuralisme. Aujourd'hui, c'est l'oralité. C'est aussi, même si le rapprochement paraît incongru, le judaïsme. Le rapprochement n'est pas incongru. On le verra. Posez à la première personne que vous rencontrez la question : qu'est-ce que pour vous les te‛amim ? Vous réussirez (...) (...) - Linguistique et théorie du langage. (shrink)

The Bayesian view of inference has become popular in philosophy in recent years. Scientific Reasoning: a Bayesian Approach, by Colin Howson and Peter Urbach, represents an articulate and persuasive defense of the Bayesian view. We focus on the theme of that book, and argue that there are difficulties with Bayesianism, and alternatives worth considering. One of the most serious drawbacks to Bayesianism is the subjectivity that pervades most versions of it. We argue that this is an instance of a (...) more general contemporary tendency to move away from claims of objectivity, and toward frankly subjective views. This results from a desire to find a deductive, incorrigible, basis for scientific inference. We claim that such a desire is doomed to frustration, but that does not spell the end of efforts to formalize inductive reasoning. (shrink)

Topology uses simple geometric and algebraic ideas, but its huge success and vast ramifications make it a tough nut for historians of twentieth‐century mathematics. Two books have addressed it well: Dieudonné chronicles about one thousand key definitions and theorems, and essays in James focus on forty central themes. Both assume considerable mathematics, but neither offers a historical synthesis of the simplest core ideas. Now, Alain Herreman uses semiotics to watch these leading ideas develop through the founding works of Henri (...) Poincaré, Oswald Veblen, James Alexander, and Solomon Lefschetz. Herreman states outright that semiotics will not exhaust these meanings, but he makes it a revealing tool.The method is especially suited to Poincaré, who will define one technical term repeatedly in a single work, each time differently, as if it was the first, and perhaps no definition will match any use of the term in proofs. For Poincaré no term gets meaning from a definition. Each functions in relation to the others—that is, specifically in relation to other terms in Poincaré's work. It is no use invoking standards of rigor current in Poincaré's time and place or then‐current definitions. Poincaré was well known at the time for using neither: Poincaré's meanings must be derived from his writing, as Herreman does.Herreman bases his semiotics on Hjelmslev yet refutes Hjelmslev's concern that mathematics may be “monoplanar,” with no content beyond the signs themselves . The book depicts four levels of content at work in these authors: algebraic, geometric, arithmetic, and set theoretic. Herreman says a sign has algebraic content if its use depends on its written expression, the way polynomials are formal expressions added and multiplied by formal rules. Early topologists—here especially Alexander—sought purely combinatorial methods. Thus a “cube” is a set of six “faces,” twelve “edges,” and eight “vertices,” each taken as primitive and described only by a short table showing which ones meet which. Combinatorics typifies arithmetic content for Herreman. Yet a cube is also an infinite set of points. Herreman speaks of geometric content when a sign indicates both a set of parts and a set of points. Today we might use different notations for the set of points and the set of parts—Poincaré et al. did not. Herreman will not reconstruct their works or restate them in other words; rather, he uses these levels of content to organize extensive quotations and analyze the relations in each text as they move toward deeper union of the algebraic and geometric.The chapter on Lefschetz makes a great finale. Lefschetz is arguably Poincaré's closest and greatest student, though the two never met. Like Poincaré's, his work is at once compelling and baffling, decisive for the future of mathematics yet brutally difficult to absorb. Semiotics serves well in presenting this mathematician who “never stated a false theorem or gave a correct proof,” as his friends joked.The book does not go far into theorems. Yet it requires some background. A beginner might enjoy it with Alexandroff , a gem itself, written with unusually strong historic sense. Specialists will enjoy reading it with the original works for its fresh viewpoints and novel connections. It is a fine way to analyze the works, to see how they create their own meanings. (shrink)

William Sweet gathers responses to the major writings of the leading figures of the British idealist movement, including contributions by Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Sir Ernest Barker, Sir Henry Jones, R.F.A. Hoernle, J.S. MacKenzie, Brand Blanshard and others.

In the mid-eighteenth century David Hume argued that successful prediction tells us nothing about the truth of the predicting theory. But physical theory routinely predicts the values of observable magnitudes within very small ranges of error. The chance of this sort of predictive success without a true theory suggests that Hume's argument is flawed. However, Colin Howson argues that there is no flaw and examines the implications of this disturbing conclusion; he also offers a solution to one of the (...) central problems of Western philosophy, the problem of induction. (shrink)

"L'oeuvre d'art est une tentative vers l'unique, elle s'affirme comme un tout, comme un absolu et, en même temps, elle appartient à un système de relations complexes [...]. Elle est matière et elle est esprit, elle est forme et elle est contenu [...]. Elle est créatrice de l'homme, créatrice du monde et elle installe dans l'histoire un ordre qui ne se réduit à rien d'autre." Un Eloge de la main complète ce texte. "La main arrache le toucher à sa passivité (...) réceptive, elle l'organise pour l'expérience et pour l'action [...]. Elle se mesure avec la matière qu'elle métamorphose, avec la forme qu'elle transfigure. Educatrice de l'homme, elle le multiplie dans l'espace et dans le temps." [Source : 4e de couv.]. (shrink)

McGinn's latest brings together moral philosophy and literary analysis in a way that illuminates both. Setting out to enrich the domain of moral reflection by showing the value of literary texts as sources of moral illumination, McGinn starts by setting out an uncompromisingly realist ethical theory, arguing that morality is an area of objective truth and genuine knowledge. He goes on to address such subjects as the nature of goodness, evil character, and the meaning of monstrosity in the context of (...) an aesthetic theory of virtue, which maintains that goodness of character is the same thing as beauty of soul. Looking at such literary works as Billy Budd, Lolita, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Frankenstein, as well as examples from film and painting, Ethics, Evil, and Fiction is an original and compelling book by a leading philosopher who is also a critic and novelist. (shrink)

In the past two decades, much work on Kant has aimed to delimit and evaluate the bedrock assumptions of Kant's mature Critical philosophy. This volume brings together leading Kant scholars to address this issue in conversation with each other, articulating and interrogating Kant's critical assumptions.

Many weaknesses of game theory are cured by new models that embody simple cognitive principles, while maintaining the formalism and generality that makes game theory useful. Social preference models can generate team reasoning by combining reciprocation and correlated equilibrium. Models of limited iterated thinking explain data better than equilibrium models do; and they self-repair problems of implausibility and multiplicity of equilibria.

This Hackett edition, first published in 1981, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the seventh edition as published by Macmillan and Company, Limited. From the forward by John Rawls: In the utilitarian tradition Henry Sidgwick has an important place. His fundamental work, The Methods of Ethics, is the clearest and most accessible formulation of what we may call 'the classical utilitarian doctorine.' This classical doctrine holds that the ultimate moral end of social and individual action is the greatest net (...) sum of the happiness of all sentient beings. Happinesss is specified by the net balance of pleasure over pain, or, as Sidgwick preferred to say, as the net balance of agreeable over disagreeable consciousness.... (shrink)

The Oxford-educated philosopher serves up his trenchant survey of his academic discipline, offering his commentary on Descartes, Anselm Bertrand Russell, Sartre ...

Consider the distinctive qualitative property grass visually appears to have when it visually appears to be green. This property is an example of what I call sensuous color. Whereas early modern mechanists typically argue that bodies are not sensuously colored, Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) disagrees. In cases of veridical perception, she holds that grass is green in precisely the way it visually appears to be. In defense of her realist approach to sensuous colors, Cavendish argues that (i) it is impossible to (...) conceive of colorless bodies, (ii) the very possibility of color experience requires that bodies are sensuously colored, and (iii) the attribution of sensuous colors to bodies provides the best explanation of color constancy. Although some passages might suggest that Cavendish endorses a reductive account of sensuous color, according to which sensuous color reduces to a body's microscopic surface texture (or some other mechanistically respectable property), I argue that she accepts a nonreductive account, on which sensuous color is not thus reducible. (shrink)

The heart of this book is the reciprocal relationship between philosophical theories of mind and empirical studies of animal cognition.

Many, including Marx, Rawls, and the contemporary 'Black Lives Matter' movement, embrace the ambition to secure terms of co-existence in which the worth of people's lives becomes a lived reality rather than an empty boast. This book asks whether, as some believe, the philosophical idea of human dignity can help achieve that ambition. Offering a new fourfold typology of dignity concepts, Colin Bird argues that human dignity can perform this role only if certain traditional ways of conceiving it are (...) abandoned. Accordingly, Bird rejects the idea that human dignity refers to the inherent worth or status of individuals, and instead reinterprets it as a social relation, constituted by affects of respect and the modes of mutual attention which they generate. What emerges is a new vision of human dignity as a vital political value, and an arresting vindication of its role as an agent of critical reflection on politics. (shrink)

"With its signal distinction between 'intuition' and 'analysis' and its exploration of the different levels of Duration, _An Introduction to Metaphysics_ has had a significant impact on subsequent twentieth century thought. The arts, from post-impressionist painting to the stream of consciousness novel, and philosophies as diverse as pragmatism, process philosophy, and existentialism bear its imprint. Consigned for a while to the margins of philosophy, Bergson’s thought is making its way back to the mainstream. The reissue of this important work comes (...) at an opportune time, and will be welcomed by teachers and scholars alike." --Peter A. Y. Gunter, University of North Texas. (shrink)

Should cognitive scientists be any more embarrassed about their lack of a discipline-fixing definition of cognition than biologists are about their inability to define “life”? My answer is “no”. Philosophers seeking a unique “mark of the cognitive” or less onerous but nevertheless categorical characterizations of cognition are working at a level of analysis upon which hangs nothing that either cognitive scientists or philosophers of cognitive science should care about. In contrast, I advocate a pluralistic stance towards uses of the term (...) ‘cognition’ that eschews the urge to treat cognition as a metaphysically well-defined “natural” kind. (shrink)