We have now celebrated the centenary of J. J. Thomson’s famous paper (1897) on the electron and have examined one hundred years of the history of our first fundamental particle. What should philosophers of science learn from this history? To some, the fundamental moral is already suggested by the rapid pace of this history. Thomson’s concern in 1897 was to demonstrate that cathode rays are electrified particles and not aetherial vibrations, the latter being the “almost unanimous opinion of German physicists” (...) (p. 293) But were these German physicists so easily vanquished? De Broglie proposed in 1923 that electrons are a wave phenomenon after all and his proposal was soon multiply vindicated, even by the detection of the diffraction of the electron waves. Should we not learn from such a reversal? Should we not dispense with the simple-minded idea that Thomson discovered our first fundamental particle and admit that the very notion of discovery might well be ill-suited to science? (shrink)

A popular belief sustains that being honest is not profitable. John Baines sustains that morality is a powerful tool for success in life. Morals for the 21st Century is not a simple reformulation of natural morals, but an absolutely new proposal of morals in which the author categorically asserts and presents experiments to the effect that morality is firmly set on scientific premises, for the first time breaking the ideological and theological bases which have always served as their support. (...) The morals proposed by John Baines are situated in the world of the laws of energy, that is, in the strict domain of physics. Every person that complies with this moral code, will be complying with himself: by respecting this moral code, he will be respecting himself: sowing the laws of this moral code in the earth of his being, he will harvest multiplying each grain, proving the benefits of complying with this eternal order of things, without need of fear or faith. "Genuine morals correspond to the harmonization guidelines of the Universe and Nature, so that those who carefully observe their laws will always be successful..." Also available in Spanish, Arabic. (shrink)

In this volume his object is to fully examine his friend's writings and characters and draws upon his own personal recollections to do so.

How do things come to stand for something other than themselves? An understanding of the ontology of relations allows for a compelling account of the action of signs. The Primacy of Semiosis is concerned with the ontology of relations and semiosis, the action of signs. Drawing upon the work of Gilles Deleuze, John Deely, and John Poinsot, Paul Bains focuses on the claim that relations are 'external' to their terms, and seeks to give an ontological account of this (...) purported externality of relations. Bains develops the proposition, first made in 1632 by John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas), that, ontologically, signs are relations whose whole being is in esse ad ('being-toward'). Furthermore, relations are found to be univocal in their being as relations. This univocity of being is antecedent to the division between 'ens rationis' and 'ens reale'. The ontology of relations Bains presents is thus neither mind-dependent nor mind-independent insofar as the rationale of the relation is concerned. The book includes chapters on Deleuze and Deely on relations, Jacob von Uexkull and Heidegger on Umwelten (self-worlds), Maturana and Varela on Autopoiesis. It provides a form of vicarious causality, by way of the scholastic doctrine of the 'species', that complements the emerging school of 'object oriented ontology'. The Primacy of Semiosis provides a semiotic that subverts the opposition between realism and idealism; one in which what have been called 'nature' and 'culture' interpenetrate in an expanding collective of human and non-human. Bains' work promises to be a touchstone for semiotic discussion for years to come. (shrink)

There are good reasons for wanting to adopt an intentionalist account of experiences generally, an account according to which having an experience is a matter of representing the world as being some way or other—according to which, that is, such mental episodes have intrinsic, conceptual, representational content. Such an approach promises, for example, to provide a satisfying conception of experiences’ subjectivity, their phenomenal character, and their crucial role in constituting reasons for our judgements about the world. It promises this, moreover, (...) without incurring the difficulties that face the adverbialist and the friends of such items as qualia and “private objects”. Still, even many of those who have been persuaded of that much are inclined to make an exception of the bodily sensations, since pains and the rest have traditionally been taken to be peculiarly “blank”—instances of brute, non-conceptual feeling. In this study, I reject that tradition and argue that sensation experiences are indeed representational, and hence not in that respect exceptional. The idea that they are nevertheless distinctive in other ways vis-à-vis ordinary perceptual experiences has led intentionalists such as John McDowell to adopt an account of their content that is both mentalist and radically subjectivist: an account, in other words, that takes the items represented by such experiences to be mental and constitutively dependent on their being represented. To my mind, such subjectivism is both viciously circular—like the parallel view of colours—and at odds with the admirably intentionalist aspirations of these views. Hence I turn to consider objectivist versions of intentionalism, views that assimilate sensations to somatosensory perceptual experiences such as those that inform us of, for example, the position of our own limbs. Admittedly, these views not only risk losing the “interiority” of sensations, but I argue that they also cannot be combined with mentalism and that this generates considerable difficulties—difficulties that have either been ignored or underestimated by those working with less demanding conceptions of content. Nonetheless, I make a number of preliminary moves to show how such difficulties might be dealt with, and how the objectivist can register even the distinctively “inner” character of sensations—by, amongst other things, focussing on the peculiarities of somatosensory content. So the prospects for intentionalism about sensations are, I argue, good. (shrink)

Perceptualists say that having a pain in a body part consists in perceiving the part as instantiating some property. I argue that perceptualism makes better sense of the connections between pain location and the experiences undergone by people in pain than three alternative accounts that dispense with perception. Turning to fellow perceptualists, I also reject ways in which David Armstrong and Michael Tye understand and motivate perceptualism, and I propose an alternative interpretation, one that vitiates a pair of objections—due to (...) John Hyman—concerning the meaning of ‘Amy has a pain in her foot’ and the idea of bodily sensitivity. Perceptualism, I conclude, remains our best account of the location of pains. (shrink)

In response to scholarship which has shown that seventeenth-century Scottish scholasticism was influenced by John Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308), Jean-Pascal Anfray has argued that Scottish scholasticism was only indirectly influenced by Scotism, especially by Jesuit thinkers like Francisco Suárez (1548–1618), using the Aberdeen Doctor James Sibbald (1595–1647) and his theory of the body-soul composite as a litmus test. In reply to Anfray’s claims, this article undertakes three interconnected tasks. First, it renews calls for philosophical Scotism to be defined according to (...) a principles-based approach focusing on Scotus’s metaphysics of essence in contrast to a quasi-falsificationist approach. Second, it shows how Sibbald adopts the Scotist metaphysics of essence over the very different Suárezian metaphysics of essence. Third, it demonstrates how Sibbald endorses Scotus’s qualified pluralism in accounting for the body-soul composite. Sibbald thus turns out to be more directly Scotist (and less Suárezian) than first thought. (shrink)

Psychoanalysis is often divided into two parts: the clinical theory and the metapsychology. Recent historical and philosophical work has led some psychoanalysts to argue that the metapsychology is a cryptic biology and not a psychological theory at all. Evidence for this view is largely that metapsychological concepts can be traced to Freud's "Project for a Scientific Psychology", in which he seems to argue that systems of neurons perform both psychological and neuro-physiological functions. The conclusion these writers have drawn is that (...) Freud's metapsychology represents an attempt to unify two putatively incommensurable conceptual frameworks: the psychological and the physiological. ;In the first chapter I review the dispute between Wernicke and Freud on the issue of aphasia and place it in the context of 19th century psychological explanatory traditions. One of these traditions, developed by Franz Joseph Gall, predominates in Wernicke's work. The other tradition, associationism as developed by John Stuart Mill and Alexander Bain, predominates in Freud's critique of Wernicke. I suggest that Wernicke's cerebral localization strategy amounts to a type-type identity theory, and that Freud presented both empirical and conceptual reasons for rejecting this commitment. ;In the second chapter I explicate Freud's "Project" and chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams. In the latter, I argue, Freud develops a version of functionalism. His break with his neurological background is exemplified by his insistence that psychology is autonomous. ;In the third chapter I evaluate critically the arguments presented by Merton Gill, George Klein, and Roy Schaffer that purport to show Freud's metapsychology is not a psychology at all, but a neuro-biology. Against this view I suggest that Freud describes mental structures that serve various design functions. These structures, attributed to persons by the metapsychology of infantile wishes and regression, are cognitively impenetiable. The notion that the design or functional architecture of a system is cognitively impenetiable is used to account for the protracted nature, perhaps interminability, of psychoanalytic therapy. Freud's therapeutic pessimism has its roots in theory rather than therapeutic failure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PLOTINUS AND THE APEIRON OF PLATO'S PARMENIDES JOHN H. HEISER Niagara Unwersity Niagara University, New York WE USE THE TERM "infinite" so freely to designate what supposedly transcends something called ' the finite " that one might imagine the concept to be entirely unproblematic. Greek philosophy's difficulty even entertaining such an idea then appears as a sort of myopia, which we in our superior enlightenment have escaped. I (...) propose to examine the way in which one Greek mind, that of Hotinus, came to entertain rthe idea. There may be no better wiay to bring out the difficulties, as well as the possibilities, inherent in a concept than to observe a first class philosophical mind wrestling with it. I also hope rto show that we have a lot to learn from Plotinus. Plotinus's doctrine of the infinite has of course been examined before, on more than one occasion.1 But those who have done so, judging from what they say or do not say, appear to find nothing puzzling in the concept of " infinite perfection " or" infinite being." "We" have come to understand exactly what it means (or at least we bandy the term about 1 For instance: A. H. Armstrong, "Plotinus' Doctrine of the Infinite and its Significance for Christian Thought," Downside Review 73 (1955) : 47-58; Leo J. Sweeney, S.J., "Infinity in Plotinus," Gregorianum 38 (1957) : 515535 ; 713-732; W. Norris Clarke, S.J., "Infinity in Plotinus: a Reply,'' Gregorianum 40 (1959): 75-98; John Whittaker, "Philological Comments on the Neoplatonic Notion of Infinity,'' in The Significance of Neoplatonism, ed. R. Baine Harris (Norfolk, Va.: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1976), pp. 155-172. John M. Rist devotes the third chapter, "The Plotinian One," of his Plotinus: The Road to Reality (New York: Cambridge Uninrsity Press, 1967) largely to the infinity of the One. 58 54 JOHN H. HEISER as if we did). Greek difficulties are understandable (ailthough it is hal'd not to be patronizing about them), but once we have taken note of these difficulties the only question of interest would seem to be whether Plotinus learned to discount them and to talk as we do. In my view, the only way to appreciate Plotinus's aichievement, and to learn from him, is to take these difficulties with great seriousness and to stmggle through them with Plotinus. Another point most commentators overlook is something I take to be both a frucit and a clue to much of what Plotinus says about the Infinite Source of the universe. This is that, in explaining why the One should be called " infinite," Plotinu!! is presenting his e:xiegesis of a perplexing passage in Plato's Parmenides.2 Rather than following his own 1ine of thought to the conc1usion that the One must be infinite, we see Plotinus casting about for some meaning he can assign to a term he is confronted with. I happen to think that his exegesis of Plato is mistaken. This raises the interesting possibility that Plotinus 's breakthrough, if it is a breakthrough and not an aberration, resulted by accident from a mis.take. Before examining Greek views on the infinite, I should like to play Socrates for a moment and examine the concept itself of " infinite perfection." A bit of dialectic might help dispel some of the complacency that surrounds it. As it stands, "infinitely perfect" is at least verbally self-contradictory, as if one were to say " endlessly finished." This may explain why even Plotinus never put it quite thaJt way. But even if we can get around that, what could it mean for something to be 2 :M:ost commentators simply ignore the point, but Professor Armstrong, who is usually so alert to sources, makes the surprising statement that "there is no clear evidence that Plato ever thought or spoke of the One or Good as in any sense apeiron" ("Doctrine of the Infinite," p. 48). Professor Rist goes further and claims that "the 'beyond Being' of Plato must mean a finite Being in some way beyond other finite beings" (Road to Reality, p. 24). But Rist appears to assume he and his readers share a common understanding of what it... (shrink)

We propose the Selfish Goal model, which holds that a person's behavior is driven by psychological processes called goals that guide his or her behavior, at times in contradictory directions. Goals can operate both consciously and unconsciously, and when activated they can trigger downstream effects on a person's information processing and behavioral possibilities that promote only the attainment of goal end-states (and not necessarily the overall interests of the individual). Hence, goals influence a person as if the goals themselves were (...) selfish and interested only in their own completion. We argue that there is an evolutionary basis to believe that conscious goals evolved from unconscious and selfish forms of pursuit. This theoretical framework predicts the existence of unconscious goal processes capable of guiding behavior in the absence of conscious awareness and control (theautomaticity principle), the ability of the most motivating or active goal to constrain a person's information processing and behavior toward successful completion of that goal (thereconfiguration principle), structural similarities between conscious and unconscious goal pursuit (thesimilarity principle), and goal influences that produce apparent inconsistencies or counterintuitive behaviors in a person's behavior extended over time (theinconsistency principle). Thus, we argue that a person's behaviors are indirectly selected at the goal level but expressed (and comprehended) at the individual level. (shrink)

The scarcity of vital organs has prompted several calls to either modify the dead donor rule or interpret it more broadly. Given its symbolic importance, however, the rule should be changed only cautiously.

How far has the Darwinian revolution come? To what extent have evolutionary ideas penetrated into the social sciences and humanities? Are the “science wars” over? Or do whole blocs of disciplines face off over an unbridgeable epistemic gap? To answer questions like these, contributors to top journals in 22 disciplines were surveyed on their beliefs about human nature, culture, and science. More than 600 respondents completed the survey. Scoring patterns divided into two main sets of disciplines. Genetic influences were emphasized (...) in the evolutionary social sciences, evolutionary humanities, psychology, empirical study of the arts, philosophy, economics, and political science. Environmental influences were emphasized in most of the humanities disciplines and in anthropology, sociology, education, and women's or gender studies. Confidence in scientific explanation correlated positively with emphasizing genetic influences on behavior, and negatively with emphasizing environmental influences. Knowing the current actual landscape of belief should help scholars avoid sterile debates and ease the way toward fruitful collaborations with neighboring disciplines. (shrink)

By stipulating the existence of a system 1 and a system 2, dual-process theories raise questions about how these systems function. De Neys identifies several such questions for which no plausible answers have ever been offered. What makes the nature of systems 1 and 2 so difficult to ascertain? The answer is simple: The systems do not exist.

At Pliny, Ep. 5. 18 we read that Macer, the recipient of that letter, has a villa which Pliny says must be lovely, because in qua [sc. villa] se composuerat homo felicior, antequam felicissimus fieret. The identity of this homo felicior is undoubtedly of some interest, but the latest commentary on Pliny's Letters has nothing to say on the matter. However, B. Radice in her two translations of the Letters says that the person in question is Nerva, but adds as (...) a second possibility ‘the dictator Sulla’. In this ambivalence she is at one with many of the older commentators on the Letters. Alone among the commentators examined by us, M. Gesner elects to give preference to Sulla over Nerva. We believe Sulla is certainly the owner in question, but since the ambiguity persists in the scholarly tradition, a fresh look should be taken at the problem and the case against Nerva and for Sulla be put more fully than hitherto. In using the phrase homo felicior, antequam felicissimus fieret without actually naming the person, it is clear that Pliny takes it for granted that the individual in question will be immediately recognizable to Macer, the recipient of the letter, by this description. It follows, therefore, that the phrase had become well established as a commonplace, inevitably and unambiguously linked to one person only. All of our evidence suggests that it cannot be applied to Nerva. First of all it is likely that such a phrase would need time to become accepted into the tradition so as to become readily identifiable, whereas Pliny was writing only a relatively short time after Nerva's reign. (shrink)

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobb’s case has given rise to confusion in the medical community, mostly concerning the specific definition of an abortion and what procedures are acceptable. Catholic bioethics has a long history of examining the ethical issues surrounding procedures used in vital conflict situations and other instances where direct or indirect abortion may be the preferred treatment. This article lays out the important points and ethical dimensions surrounding some of the most common pregnancy related interventions and (...) provides guidance to physicians seeking to treat both patients in a manner that acknowledges their value as human beings. (shrink)

Pursuing the Forms: Equality and Excellence in Plato's Republic and Symposium -- Equality and Excellence in the Education of Cyrus -- Splendid Equality in the Nicomachean Ethics: Munificence -- How Excellence Bows to Equality in Aristotle's Politics -- First Among Equals: Philosophers, Statesmen, and Citizens in Spinoza's Democracy -- Excellence and Equality in Fénelon's Telemachus -- The Seductive Danger of Equality and Excellence: The Moderating Wisdom of Montesquieu's Science of Ovidian Metamorphosis -- Equality and Excellence in Rousseau's Emile, Book III (...) -- Hegel's Evaluation of Liberalism: Equality of Rights without Human Excellence -- Democracy, Nobility, and Freedom: The Political and Moral Aesthetics of Tocqueville -- Does Kierkegaard Have a Concept of Excellence? -- Nietzsche: The Indignity of Equality -- The Good and the Excellent: John Rawls's Egalitarian Liberalism. (shrink)

This volume brings together this new knowledge in a single, concise source, covering most if not all of the basic questions regarding human action: What are the ...

To evoke the impression of movement in the “immobile” image is one of the central motivations of the visual art, and the activating effect of images has been discussed in art psychology already some hundred years ago. However, this topic has up to now been largely neglected by the researchers in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. This study investigates – from an interdisciplinary perspective – the formation of lateralised instances of motion when an observer perceives movement in an image. A first (...) step was to identify images that evoke a perception of movement in a certain direction and to give this a rating. Reaction times leading to the engagement of a joystick following the presentation of images are used to evidence the postulated movement occasioned by the perception of movement in an image. Where the required direction of joystick moves matched the expected perception of movement direction in the image, considerably shorter reaction times were recorded. The experiment was able to prove a “movement-image compatibility effect” in observers of images. Based on this, the paper revisits and brings up to date the theses on motor sensory response to images which were developed in art psychology at the beginning of the 20th century. It furthermore contributes an embodiment theory interpretation to the prevalent representational explanation of compatibility effects. (shrink)

The double membrane of the nuclear envelope is a formidable barrier separating the nucleus and cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells. However, movement of specific macromolecules across the nuclear envelope is critical for embryonic development, cell growth and differentiation. Transfer of molecules between the nucleus and cytoplasm occurs through the aqueous channel formed by the nuclear pore complex (NPC)Abbreviations: NPC, nuclear pore complex; GlcNac, N‐acetylglucosamine; WGA, wheat germ agglutinin. Although small molecules may simply diffuse across the NPC, transport of large proteins and (...) RNA requires specific transport signals and is energy dependent. A family of pore glycoproteins modified by O‐linked N‐acetylglucosamine moieties are essential for transport through the NPC. Recent evidence suggests that the regulation of nuclear transport may also involve the inteaction of RNA and nuclear proteins with specific binding proteins that recognize these transport signals. Are these nuclear pore glycoproteins and signal binding proteins the ‘gatekeepers’ that control access to the genetic material? Recent evidence obtained from a combination of biochemical and genetic approaches suggests – perhaps. (shrink)

Dictionary of Paradox is a fascinating reference work for scholars, students, and the general public. It describes those paradoxes that are either especially interesting today or that have a continuing interest from the historical point of view.

Os mais importantes paradoxos de decisáo social, ou seja, de votaçáo sáo apresentados. A apresentaçáo indica tanto a origem dos paradoxos discutidos quanto uma breve discussáo das mais importantes tentativas de os resolver. Sáo considerados paradoxos em que a regra de votaçáo preve ruma igualdade de peso entre os eleitores, bem como paradoxos com regras altemativas de votaçáo. A democracia tem se firmado entre a grande maioria dos povos como a maneira mais justa de organizaçáo social e , especialmente em (...) se tratando da esco lha das autoridades de uma democracia representativa, em quase axiomático 0 uso da regra da igualdade de peso de cada eleitor, embora outras regras tambem sejam usadas em clubes, instituições finançeiras e outros bastante conhecido, porem que tanto o proprio conceito de democracia quanto a referida a regra de escolh sáo isentas de problemas e, em especial, geram certos paradoxos. Assim passa-se em revista aqui alguns dos mais importantesparadoxos eleitorais, sem a pretensáo de resoIve-los", mas com o intuito de ampliar a discussao critica e portanto, fortalecer praticas politicas desejaveis. (shrink)

Responding to volatile criticisms frequently leveled at Leo Strauss and those he influenced, the prominent contributors to this volume demonstrate the profound influence that Strauss and his students have exerted on American liberal democracy and contemporary political thought. By stressing the enduring vitality of classic books and by articulating the theoretical and practical flaws of relativism and historicism, the contributors argue that Strauss and the Straussians have identified fundamental crises of modernity and liberal democracy.