This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This book explains, in simple but accurate terms, how orthodox quantum mechanics works. The author, a distinguished theoretical physicist, shows how this theory, realistically interpreted, assigns an important role to our conscious free choices. Stapp claims that mainstream biology and neuroscience, despite nearly a century of quantum physics, still stick essentially to failed classical precepts in which mental intentions have no effect upon our bodily actions. He shows how quantum mechanics provides a rational basis for a better understanding of this (...) connection, even allowing an explanation of certain phenomena currently held to be "paranormal". These ideas have major implications for our understanding of ourselves and our mental processes, and thus also for the meaningfulness of our lives. (shrink)

In his new book the eminent Kant scholar Henry Allison provides an innovative and comprehensive interpretation of Kant's concept of freedom. The author analyzes the concept and discusses the role it plays in Kant's moral philosophy and psychology. He also considers in full detail the critical literature on the subject from Kant's own time to the present day. In the first part Professor Allison argues that at the centre of the Critique of Pure Reason there is the foundation for (...) a coherent general theory of rational agency. The second part employs this account of rational agency as a key to understanding Kant's concept of moral agency and associated moral psychology. The third part focuses on Kant's attempt to ground both moral law and freedom in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. This is a major contribution to the interpretation of Kant which will be of special interest to scholars and graduate students of Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

Henry E. Allison presents an analytical and historical commentary on Kant`s transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason. He argues that, rather than providing a new solution to an old problem, it addresses a new problem, and he traces the line of thought that led Kant to the recognition of the significance of this problem in his 'pre-critical' period. In addition to the developmental nature of the account of Kant`s views presented (...) here, two distinctive features of Allison's reading of the deduction are a defense of Kant`s oft criticized claim that the conformity of appearances to the categories must be unconditionally rather than merely conditionally necessary and an insistence that the argument cannot be separated from Kant`s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Henry Allison is one of the foremost interpreters of the philosophy of Kant. This new volume collects all his recent essays on Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. All the essays postdate Allison's two major books on Kant, and together they constitute an attempt to respond to critics and to clarify, develop and apply some of the central theses of those books. Two are published here for the first time. Special features of the collection are: a detailed defence of the (...) author's interpretation of transcendental idealism; a consideration of the Transcendental Deduction and some other recent interpretations thereof; further elaborations of the tensions between various aspects of Kant's conception of freedom and of the complex role of this conception within Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

Henry E. Allison presents a comprehensive commentary on Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Allison pays special attention to the structure of the work and its historical and intellectual context. He argues that, despite its relative brevity, the Groundwork is the single most important work in modern moral philosophy.

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant’s _Paralogisms, _and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant’s theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic. _Praise for the earlier edition: _ “Probably the most comprehensive and substantial study of the Critique of Pure Reason written by (...) any American philosopher.... This is a splendid book.”—Lewis White Beck “This masterful study... will most certainly join the canon of required reading for future interpreters of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Superbly organized and lucidly written.”—Garrett Green, _Journal of Religion_. (shrink)

Big data refers to extremely large data generated at high volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. The nurse scientist is uniquely positioned to leverage big data to suggest novel hypotheses on patient care and the healthcare system. The purpose of this paper is to provide an introductory guide to understanding the use and capability of big data for nurse scientists. Herein, we discuss the practical, ethical, social, and educational implications of using big data in nursing research. Some practical challenges with the (...) use of big data include data accessibility, data quality, missing data, variable data standards, fragmentation of health data, and software considerations. Opposing ethical positions arise with the use of big data, and arguments for and against the use of big data are underpinned by concerns about confidentiality, anonymity, and autonomy. The use of big data has health equity dimensions and addressing equity in data is an ethical imperative. There is a need to incorporate competencies needed to leverage big data for nursing research into advanced nursing educational curricula. Nursing science has a great opportunity to evolve and embrace the potential of big data. Nurse scientists should not be spectators but collaborators and drivers of policy change to better leverage and harness the potential of big data. (shrink)

How are causes and laws related? Some attempt to analyze causal relations in terms of laws, others view causal explanation as quite distinct from explanation using laws. My analysis of the relations between causes and laws focuses on cases such as the simple pendulum law where asymmetries in causal relations between quantities are not reflected in the functional dependencies in the law equations. The asymmetry puzzle has elicited a variety of accounts which reflect quite different views on the relation between (...) causes and laws and their roles in scientific explanation. Finding none of the usual accounts satisfying, I offer an explication based on some distinctions in the analysis of the relevant causes that are not commonly heeded. I criticize the very notion of causal law and examine some implications of my account forceteris paribusproblems which arise in attempts to give realist interpretations of scientific theories. (shrink)

The \-substitution method is a technique for giving consistency proofs for theories of arithmetic. We use this technique to give a proof of the consistency of the impredicative theory \ using a variant of the cut-elimination formalism introduced by Mints.

This chapter recounts the rise, eminence, and rapid fall in the philosophical standing of Sir William Hamilton. It sets out the philosophical resources that Hamilton called upon to amend and sustain the ‘common sense’ philosophy of Thomas Reid, responding especially to the criticisms of Thomas Brown. It examines in detail the criticisms that were brought against his philosophy from both sympathizers and opponents. Special attention is given to books on Hamilton published in the nineteenth by Henry Calderwood, Hutchison (...) Stirling, and most notably J. S. Mill’s hugely influential ‘Examination’ of Hamilton. The chapter aims to explain both the high regard in which Hamilton was widely held and the reasons for his speedy relegation to the status of a minor philosopher. It also aims at a ‘Re-examination’ by assessing the cogency of Mill’s criticisms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment by Gordon GrahamDeborah BoyleGRAHAM, Gordon. Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. xvii + 254 pp. Cloth, $110.00Histories of Scottish philosophy typically focus on the school of "common sense" from the eighteenth century, beginning with Francis Hutcheson and ending with Dugald Stewart. As Gordon Graham notes in the preface to this volume, nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy is "an area of the (...) history of philosophy that has generally gone almost entirely unexplored." His collection of eleven standalone essays (only one of which has been previously published) argues that something recognizable as "Scottish philosophy" continued into the nineteenth century—although Graham thinks it ended, then, too—and suggests conceptions of Scottish philosophy that go beyond the old trope of "common sense."Unusually for a work in the history of philosophy, the first chapter is autobiographical. Graham recalls that as an undergraduate studying moral philosophy at St. Andrews in 1968, the only Scottish philosopher he was assigned to read was Hume, whose work was taught in the ahistorical manner that dominated philosophy at that time, and that upon his appointment to the Regius Chair of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen in 1995 he found little appreciation for the university's most famous former professor, Thomas Reid. Thus began Graham's establishment of the Reid Project at the University of Aberdeen (later the Centre for the Study of Scottish Philosophy and now the Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy), the founding of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, and his editorship of several book series on Scottish philosophy. The story of Graham's scholarship over the years is really the story of the recovery of the history of Scottish philosophy after its near-total neglect in the twentieth century.Graham seems wary of the contextualist turn that historians of philosophy have embraced since around the 1980s, which he likens to "antiquarianism," but at the same time he notes that our current philosophical interests are "not an infallible or even an especially reliable guide to what is intellectually significant" from the past. His solution is to look for intellectual "trajectories" in the history of philosophy—although not with the Whiggish view that these culminate in the present—and to locate particular figures within those trajectories. Thus he is especially interested in identifying the various themes—not just "common sense"— [End Page 551] that can unite the work of different philosophers born and working in Scotland in order to provide a more expansive account of Scottish philosophy.Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment provides a close look at the lives and work of major figures of this period, with a chapter devoted to each: William Hamilton (chapter 2), James Frederick Ferrier (chapter 3), Alexander Bain (chapter 4), Thomas Carlyle (chapter 5), Alexander Campbell Fraser (chapter 9), and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (chapter 10). Although Graham argues that Pringle-Pattison's work marks the culmination and end of distinctively Scottish philosophy, he devotes the final chapter to the work of twentieth-century philosopher John McMurray on the grounds that McMurray's conception of human agency is rooted in Scottish debates from the previous two centuries over realism and idealism (chapter 11). Along the way, the book helpfully introduces other thinkers currently much less well known, such as Edward Caird, Henry Calderwood, Henry Jones, James Hutchison Stirling, John Tulloch, and John Veitch.Instead of thinking of Scottish philosophy as simply equivalent to common sense philosophy, Graham offers various alternative conceptions of Scottish philosophy, characterized as various "trajectories" that can be seen as originating in the eighteenth century and developing through the nineteenth: as a concern with realism and idealism that developed in the nineteenth century into responses (whether critical or favorable) to Hegelianism (chapter 6); as a prolonged conversation about the relationship between science and philosophy and the possibility of progress in the scientific study of the mind (chapter 7); and as the continuation of eighteenth-century post-Humean Scottish philosophers' aim of defending theism, even in the face of Darwin's findings (chapters 8 and 9). Presenting Scottish philosophy through these different lenses is highly illuminating and makes a persuasive case for the need for further... (shrink)

Although a good deal has been written about Kant's conception of free will in recent years, there has been no serious attempt to examine in detail the development of his views on the topic. This book endeavours to remedy the situation by tracing Kant's thoughts on free will from his earliest discussions of it in the 1750s through to his last accounts in the 1790s. This developmental approach is of interest for at least two reasons. First, it shows that the (...) path that led Kant to view freedom as a transcendental power that is both radically distinct from and compatible with the causality of nature was a winding one. Second, it indicates that, despite the variety of views of free will that Kant held at various times, the concept occupied a central place in his thought, because it was the point of union between his theoretical and practical philosophy. (shrink)

The system presented by the author in The Logical Foundations of Statistical Inference suffered from certain technical difficulties, and from a major practical difficulty; it was hard to be sure, in discussing examples and applications, when you had got hold of the right reference class. The present paper, concerned mainly with the characterization of randomness, resolves the technical difficulties and provides a well structured framework for the choice of a reference class. The definition of randomness that leads to this framework (...) is simplified and clarified in a number of respects. It resolves certain puzzles raised by S. Spielman and W. Harper in their contributions to Profiles: Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. and Isaac Levi 1982). (shrink)

Short biographies of twenty world famous philosophers.

A picture of the world as chiefly one of discrete objects, distributed in space and time, has sometimes seemed compelling. It is however one of the main targets of Henry Laycock's book; for it is seriously incomplete. The picture, he argues, leaves no space for "stuff" like air and water. With discrete objects, we may always ask "how many?," but with stuff the question has to be "how much?" Laycock's fascinating exploration also addresses key logical and linguistic questions about (...) the way we categorize the many and the much. (shrink)

It is strange to note so little discussion of the exclusion principle in the philosophical literature. Philosophers, largely engrossed in their perennial problems, are hardly aware of the fact that, during the last two decades, there has been introduced into physical methodology a principle of utmost philosophical importance, easily rivaling that of relativity and, in some respects, indeed that of causality. Discovered by Pauli in 1925, it immediately elucidated a whole realm of physical facts and was accepted by physicists with (...) wide acclaim. Called the exclusion principle—or Pauli principle, or principle of anti-symmetry—it was embodied in the axiomatics of quantum mechanics; its peculiar methodological significance passed out of view. (shrink)

First, a comment on a pessimistic note: Salmon says we can't be sure there is any such thing as inductive inference: in demanding that some explanations have the form of correct inductive inferences, “we may be laying down a requirement which cannot be fulfilled.” To doubt that we can fulfill that requirement is to doubt that we can formalize inductive logic. It may be true, but why begin the fight by throwing in the sponge? It is also true that there (...) are difficulties involved in formalizing acceptance rules for inductive conclusions, but these difficulties may be overcome. It is false to claim that we ‘cannot claim to know exactly’ what these acceptance rules are. Only two years ago I did just that. It was true that my claim was shown to be erroneous a year later, but that fate can befall almost any worthwhile claim. (shrink)

Experimental observations are often taken in order to assist in making a choice between relevant hypotheses ~H and H. The power of observations in this decision is here metrically defined by information-theoretic concepts and Bayes' theorem. The exact of a new observation to increase or decrease Pr the prior probability that H is true; the power of that observation to modify the total amount of uncertainty involved in the choice between ~H and H: the power of a new observation to (...) reduce uncertainty toward the ideal amount, zero; all these powers are systematically shown to be exact metrical functions ofwhere the numerator is the likelihood of the new observation given H, and the denominator is the “expectedness” of the observation. (shrink)

There has recently been a considerable amount of research into the influence of 18th century British philosophy--particularly into the thinking of David Hume on Continental philosophy and Kant. The aim of this collection is to provide some of the key texts which illustrate the impact of Kant's thought together with two important 20th century monographs on aspects of Kant's early reception and his influence on philosophical thought. Contents: Immanuel Kant in England 1793-1838 [1931] Rene Wellek 328 pp The Early Reception (...) of Kant's Thought in England 1785-1805 [1990] Giuseppe Micheli 114 pp A General and Introductory view of Professor Kant's Principles [1796] F. A. Nitsch 234 pp Text-Book to Kant [1881] (with a biographical sketch) James Hutchison Stirling 576 pp The Development from Kant to Hegel [1882] Andrew Seth 178 pp Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant [1890] Thomas Hill Green 155 pp On the Philosophy of Kant [1879] Robert Adamson 270pp A Sketch of Kant's Life and Writings [1854] H. G. Henderson 80 pp Inquisitio Philosophica [1866], An Examination on the Principles of Kant and Hamilton M. P. W. Bolton 286 pp Philosophy of the Unconditioned [1829] William Hamilton 38 pp On the Philosophy of Kant [1856] Henry L. Mansel 45 pp The aim of this collection is to provide some of the key texts which illustrate the impact of Kant's thought together with two important 20th century monographs on aspects of Kant's early reception and his influence on philosophical thought. (shrink)

Financial and prosocial biases in favor of attractive adults have been documented in the labor market, in social transactions in everyday life, and in studies involving experimental economic games. According to the taste-based discrimination model developed by economists, attractiveness-related financial and prosocial biases are the result of preferences or prejudices similar to those displayed toward members of a particular sex, racial, ethnic, or religious group. Other explanations proposed by economists and social psychologists maintain that attractiveness is a marker of personality, (...) intelligence, trustworthiness, professional competence, or productivity. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that attractive adults are favored because they are preferred sexual partners. Evidence that stereotypes about attractive people are causally related to financial or prosocial biases toward them is weak or nonexistent. Consistent with evolutionary explanations, biases in favor of attractive women appear to be more consistent or stronger than those in favor of attractive men, and biases are more consistently reported in interactions between opposite-sex than same-sex individuals. Evolutionary explanations also account for increased prosocial behavior in situations in which attractive individuals are simply bystanders. Finally, evolutionary explanations are consistent with the psychological, physiological, and behavioral changes that occur when individuals are exposed to potential mates, which facilitate the expression of courtship behavior and increase the probability of occurrence of mating. Therefore, multiple lines of evidence suggest that mating motives play a more important role in driving financial and prosocial biases toward attractive adults than previously recognized. (shrink)