Ed. Daniel Greenberger, 750pp May 1995 164.95.

Examines the philosophical, scientific, and theological aspects of the character of the human mind.

1857. After the fire of mutiny has swept through British India, young Lieutenant Victor Narraway arrives at a battered military base at Cawnpore. It is just two weeks before Christmas, but no one is able to celebrate: they have been betrayed. A soldier under arrest for dereliction of duty has killed a guard and escaped to join the rebels, taking crucial information that led to the massacre of nine men on patrol. Someone must have helped him, and medical orderly (...) class='Hi'>John Tallis is the only man unaccounted for at the time. He is now on trial for his life, and Narraway is commanded to defend him. Narraway knows that his is an impossible task. The British Army needs justice to be carried out in full, and there seems no doubt of Tallis's guilt. But Narraway cannot see any motive for his actions. Will an innocent man hang before Christmas? (shrink)

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

We describe an experiment that investigated levels-of-processing effects in recognition memory for famous faces. The degree of conscious control over the recognition decisions was manipulated by using a response deadline procedure, and memory awareness associated with those decisions was assessed using a standard remember-know paradigm. Levels-of-processing effects were found at both short and long response deadlines, and at both deadlines those effects occurred only in remembering. Moreover, knowing, as well as remembering, increased with the greater opportunity for conscious control over (...) recognition decisions at the long deadline. These results have implications for dual-process theories that distinguish between a slower, more controlled recollection process, reflected in remembering, and a faster, more automatic familiarity process, reflected in knowing. (shrink)

This report reviews what quantum physics and information theory have to tell us about the age-old question, How come existence? No escape is evident from four conclusions: (1) The world cannot be a giant machine, ruled by any preestablished continuum physical law. (2) There is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum. (3) The familiar probability function or functional, and wave equation or functional wave equation, of standard quantum theory provide mere continuum idealizations (...) and by reason of this circumstance conceal the information-theoretic source from which they derive. (4) No element in the description of physics shows itself as closer to primordial than the elementary quantum phenomenon, that is, the elementary device-intermediated act of posing a yes-no physical question and eliciting an answer or, in brief, the elementary act of observer-participancy. Otherwise stated, every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit. (shrink)

Mindsets are shifting where the work areas of the students vary. The class furniture will vary from size and shape of tables, to couches, to a variety of chairs. Students must have the freedom to make choices to take ownership of their learning. This means that mistakes will happen. The classroom should be a comfortable learning environment.

Sheehan and coworkers have claimed [D. P. Sheehan et al., Found. Phys. 30, 1227 ; 32, 441 ; D. P. Sheehan, in Quantum Limits to the Second Law, AIP Conference Proceedings 643, p. 391] that a dilute gas trapped between an external shell and a gravitator can support a steady state in which energy flux by particles in one direction is balanced by energy flux by radiation in the opposite direction, and in which work can be extracted from an isothermal (...) heat reservoir, thereby violating the second law of thermodynamics. In this paper, we identify a fundamental error in their simulation and analysis of their model system that vitiates their conclusions. We analyze a simpler, exactly soluble, three-dimensional model of a very dilute gas in a gravitational field between two thermal reservoirs, and show that their conclusions are not supported for the simple model. We show that their method of simulation, when applied to either the simple model or their more complex model under simpler conditions where the answers are known, leads to unphysical results. We also show that, when appropriate sampling is done, their model gives results in accord with the second law and detailed balance. (shrink)

The rubric “The Late Derrida,” with all puns and ambiguities cheerfully intended, points to the late work of Jacques Derrida, the vast outpouring of new writing by and about him in the period roughly from 1994 to 2004. In this period Derrida published more than he had produced during his entire career up to that point. At the same time, this volume deconstructs the whole question of lateness and the usefulness of periodization. It calls into question the “fact” of his (...) turn to politics, law, and ethics and highlights continuities throughout his oeuvre. The scholars included here write of their understandings of Derrida’s newest work and how it impacts their earlier understandings of such classic texts as Glas and Of Grammatology . Some have been closely associated with Derrida since the beginning—both in France and in the United States—but none are Derrideans. That is, this volume is a work of critique and a deep and continued engagement with the thought of one of the most significant philosophers of our time. It represents a recognition that Derrida’s work has yet to be addressed—and perhaps can never be addressed—in its totality. (shrink)

Ever since Darwin, scholars have noted that cultural entities such as languages, laws and theories seem to evolve through variation, selection and replication. These essays consider whether this comparison is just a metaphor.

Am 4. November 1915 legte EINSTEIN seine beriihmte Arbeit "Zur allgemeinen Relativitatstheorie" der PreuBischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin vor. 50 Jahre spater organisierte die Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften im Andenken daran eine dreitagige Konferenz, in deren Verlauf auch eine Gedenkfeier abgehalten wurde. Ich hatte die Ehre, eine Gedenkrede iiber EINSTEIN und sein Werk zu halten. In der Zwischenzeit wurde unser Wissen urn viele wichtige neue Zusatze erweitert. Wir sehen nun, daB die Dynamik der Einsteinschen Theorie in einem Superraum ablauft. (...) Seine Struktur und seine Eigenschaften sind von graBter Bedeutung. Infolgedessen habe ich jenen Teil meines Berichtes von 1965, der iiber die Quantengeometrodynamik handelt, geandert und erweitert, urn vom § 12 an unser Wissen iiber den Super­ raum zusammenzufassen. Einige Teile des hier enthaltenen Materials sind schon friiher in anderer Form erschienen. Der Autor dankt fiir die Erlaubnis, dieses Material wieder ab­ drucken zu lassen, den folgenden Verlagen: Akademie-Verlag, Berlin; W. A. Benjamin, Inc., New York; Gordon and Breach, New York; und Springer-Verlag, New York und Heidelberg, sowie den Organisatoren jener Konferenzen, auf denen diese Beitrage vorgelegt wurden: Einstein-Symposium aus Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1965; International School of Non-Linear Mathematics and Physics, Miinchen, J uli 1966; Academie Internationale de Philo sophie des Sciences, Oberwolfach/Freiburg i. Br., Juli 1966; Society of Engineering Science, Raleigh, North Carolina, Oktober 1966; Colloque Internationale sur Fluides et Champ Gravitationel en Relativite Generale, Paris, J uni 1967; und Battelle Ren­ contres in Mathematics and Physics, Seattle, Juli 1967. (shrink)

The geometry of lattice universes in general is reviewed, and particular attention is given to the 3-geometry of a 5-black hole model universe at the momentarily static phase of maximum expansion as an illustration of the insights to be won by considering symmetries and reflections. Three models for the black holes in this lattice universe are compared and contrasted. Reasons are given for working with Misner's “flange backup” model. The geometry interior to the individual tetrahedral cell of this lattice is (...) compared and contrasted with the electrostatic field produced by a point charge located in the center of a cavity of the same shape that has perfectly conducting walls. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic UniversityIra HarkavyThinking begins in... a forked-road situation, a situation that is ambiguous, that presents a dilemma, that poses alternatives.—John Dewey (How We Think 122)The social philosopher, dwelling in the region of his concepts, “solves” problems by showing the relationship of ideas, instead of helping men solve problems in the concrete by supplying them hypotheses to be used and tested in projects (...) of reform.—John Dewey (Reconstruction in Philosophy 192)Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.—John Dewey (The Public and Its Problems 213)democracy, as we all know, is seriously threatened throughout the world (Fisher). In the United States, the chasm-like inequities laid bare by COVID-19, the ongoing killing of black Americans, the violent insurrection at the Capitol, and the continuing attempt to subvert the electoral process are powerful indicators of a system under severe strain (Guardian Staff; Rubin). These developments are also a sign of deep and chronic problems, including the following:1. Increasing economic, political, social, educational, and health inequalities2. Increasing racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia3. Increasing attacks on science, knowledge, and democracy itself4. Declining trust in nearly all major institutionsMany things, obviously, contribute to the present situation. Among them is the failure of universities to successfully do what they are supposed to do: educate students to be ethical, empathetic, engaged, democratic citizens, and [End Page 49] advance knowledge for the continuous betterment of the human condition (Benson et al., Knowledge). To use a Marxian framework, but to reject its economic determinism, universities, in my judgment, are not a part of society’s superstructure. They are, to the contrary, a core component of its base (Marx, “Preface”). What they do matters enormously, significantly determining the kind of society we have now and will have in the future.Universities, as former Harvard president Derek Bok and others have emphasized, have become the central societal institutions in the world (Bok, Universities and the Future 3). Research universities, in my judgment, are the most central. They develop new ideas and technologies, incubate businesses, serve as cultural and artistic centers, and are engines of local, national, and global economies. As anchor institutions, they often engage in partnerships with government, the private sector, and community-based organizations to revitalize local neighborhoods and schools (“Anchor Institutions Task Force”). It is the university’s role as an educational institution, however, that is most important.The schooling system increasingly functions as the core subsystem—the strategic subsystem—of modern information societies. Schooling, more than any other subsystem, as John Dewey claimed, influences the functioning of the societal system as a whole. Viewed systemically, it has on balance the greatest “multiplier” effects, direct and indirect, short-term and long-term. Restating these points somewhat differently, I strongly agree with the Chilean sociologist Eugenio Tironi that the answer to the question “What kind of education do we need?” is to be found in the answer to the question “What kind of society do we want?” (Tironi). Education and society are dynamically interactive and interdependent. If human beings hope to maintain and develop a particular type of society, they must develop and maintain the particular type of education system conducive to it. As Dewey in effect argued: No effective democratic schooling system, no democratic society.1For William Rainey Harper, who, as the first president of the University of Chicago, brought Dewey to Chicago, universities are the primary shapers of the American schooling system. In an 1899 speech at the University of California, he perceptively observed that “[t]he school system, the character of which, in spite of itself, the university determines and in a large measure controls.... [T]hrough the school system every family in this entire broad land of ours is brought into touch with the university; for from it proceed the teachers or the teachers’ teachers” (Harper 25). Agreeing with Harper, I contend that higher education institutions powerfully shape the learning, values, and aspirations of students from kindergarten through graduate school. [End Page 50]Given the university’s societal role and influence, creating and sustaining an inclusive, just democratic society requires a... (shrink)

Focused correlation compares the degree of association within an evidence set to the degree of association in that evidence set given that some hypothesis is true. Wheeler and Scheines have shown that a difference in incremental confirmation of two evidence sets is robustly tracked by a difference in their focus correlation. In this essay, we generalize that tracking result by allowing for evidence having unequal relevance to the hypothesis. Our result is robust as well, and we retain conditions for (...) bidirectional tracking between incremental confirmation measures and focused correlation. (shrink)

The following quotations describe in “nutshells” a few highlights of John Archibald Wheeler's contributions to physics. The contributions are arranged in roughly the following order: (i) concrete research results, (ii) innovative ideas that have become foundations for the research of others, (iii) insights that give guidance for the development of physics over the coming decades. Since most of Wheeler's work contains strong elements of two or even all three of these characteristics, the editors have not attempted to (...) delineate the dividing lines between the three categories. (shrink)

David Widerker, long an opponent of Harry Frankfurt’s attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, has recently come up with his own Frankfurt-style scenario which he claims might well be a counterexample to PAP. Carlos Moya has argued that this new scenario is not a counterexample to PAP, because in it the agent is not really blameworthy, since he lacks weak reasons-responsiveness, a property that John Fischer has argued is a necessary condition of practical rationality, and hence of moral (...) responsibility. I argue that in Widerker’s scenario the agent is indeed blameworthy, even though he lacks WRR; and that therefore this scenario is a counterexample not only to PAP, but also to Fischer’s claim that WRR is necessary for blameworthiness. (shrink)

Recent advances in philosophy, artificial intelligence, mathematical psychology, and the decision sciences have brought a renewed focus to the role and interpretation of probability in theories of uncertain reasoning. Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. has long resisted the now dominate Bayesian approach to the role of probability in scientific inference and practical decision. The sharp contrasts between the Bayesian approach and Kyburg's program offer a uniquely powerful framework within which to study several issues at the heart of scientific inference, decision, and (...) reasoning under uncertainty. The commissioned essays for this volume take measure of the scope and impact of Kyburg's views on probability and scientific inference, and include several new and important contributions to the field. Contributors: Gert de Cooman, Clark Glymour, William Harper, Isaac Levi, Ron Loui, Enrique Miranda, John Pollock, Teddy Seidenfeld, Choh Man Teng, Mariam Thalos, Gregory Wheeler, Jon Williamson, and Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen's Direct Argument (DA) purports to establish the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility, without appealing to the notion of avoidability, a notion on whose analysis compatibilists and incompatibilists disagree. Van Inwagen intended DA to refute compatibilism, or at least to shift the burden of proof onto the compatibilist. In this paper, we offer a critical assessment of DA. We examine a variety of objections to DA due to John Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Ishtiyaque Haji, Seth Shabo, (...) Michael McKenna, and David Widerker. We divide these objections into those based on dialectical considerations (section 1), and objections in the form of counterexamples to a central principle which the Direct Argument employs (sec 2). The conclusion we reach is that the proponent of DA can deal plausibly with these objections, thus establishing DA as a powerful argument in favor of incompatibilism. (shrink)

David Widerker, long an opponent of Harry Frankfurt's attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), has recently come up with his own Frankfurt-style scenario which he claims might well be a counterexample to PAP. Carlos Moya has argued that this new scenario is not a counterexample to PAP, because in it the agent is not really blameworthy, since he lacks weak reasonsresponsiveness (WRR), a property that John Fischer has argued is a necessary condition of practical rationality, and hence (...) of moral responsibility. I argue that in Widerker's scenario the agent is indeed blameworthy, even though he lacks WRR; and that therefore this scenario is a counterexample not only to PAP, but also to Fischer's claim that WRR is necessary for blameworthiness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hume and Hume’s Connexions ed. by M. A. Stewart, John P. WrightIra SingerM. A. Stewart and John P. Wright, eds. Hume and Hume’s Connexions. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1995. Pp. xvi + 266. Cloth, $40.00. Paper, $18.95.This collection is organized around the theme of Hume’s connections with his philosophical predecessors, contemporaries, and successors.In a historical prelude, Roger Emerson meticulously describes the factions that supported (...) and opposed Hume’s efforts to gain a professorship. Emerson attributes Hume’s failure not only to the charges of impiety leveled against him, but also to the intricate workings of a political patronage system.Four essays about moral theory follow. James Moore attacks the conventional view that Hume’s moral theory is deeply similar to Hutcheson’s. In fact, Moore argues, surface similarities here mask systematic disagreements about justice, self-interest, teleology, theology, reason’s role within a sentimentalist framework, and about whether morality is, fundamentally, justified approbation for benevolence (Hutcheson) or sympathy’s merely natural tendency to generate feelings of approbation (Hume). These differences make sense, Moore notes, in light of Hutcheson’s debts to Stoicism, and Hume’s debts to Epicureanism. Stephen Darwall argues that, by parting company with Hutcheson on one crucial point, Hume opens up a logical space for Bentham’s Utilitarianism. Hutcheson explains the goodness of natural [End Page 141] goods, such as happiness, in terms of our distinctively moral approval of benevolence: happiness is good because a benevolent person wills general happiness. Hume instead explains our moral approval of qualities of character in terms of natural goods and the psychological mechanism of sympathy: a benevolent person receives moral approval because she produces happiness for herself and others, including sympathetic spectators. Darwall claims that Hume thus foreshadows Bentham’s efforts to set our moral judgments on an uncontroversial nonmoral foundation. Pauline C. Westerman discusses the relation between Hume and the natural lawyers. Hume shares some of their characteristic concerns, such as accounting for the origin of private property, and employs some of their terminology. Still, Westerman argues, while Grotius and Pufendorff wanted to justify morality, Hume wants only to explain it. Finally, John P. Wright invokes Butler’s account of habit to illuminate Hume’s notion of a calm passion. Butler argues that, as a habit develops, repetition weakens feelings while strengthening the tendency to act: distress will seldom shock someone habituated into generosity, who will reliably act to relieve that distress. Citing this psychological dynamic, Wright argues, helps to explain what a calm passion is, and how it can prevail over a violent passion.Two essays concern philosophy of mind and epistemology. P. B. Wood uses Thomas Kuhn’s concept of texts that are “exemplars” for working scientists to illuminate the “science of mind” as Hume and Reid practiced it. David Owen puts “inductive skepticism” into historical context, arguing that in that context, Hume appears as neither the victim nor the opponent of deductivism about rationality. Instead, Hume’s focus is Locke’s account of probable reasoning, according to which such reasoning involves a chain of associated ideas (not a formal structure of propositions). Hume’s argument is that our causal thinking proceeds differently than Locke requires, because in it we do not follow an unbroken series of associated perceptions, but rather leap over the gap between our impressions up to now and the general causal idea.The book’s centerpiece is a fragmentary Hume manuscript, discovered in 1993, about the problem of evil. The manuscript appears in both facsimile and transcription. In introducing the manuscript, M. A. Stewart argues plausibly that it is one of the “nobler parts” that Hume cut from the Treatise to avoid offending Bishop Butler.Four essays discuss philosophy of religion. Reflecting on miracles, Stewart traces a tradition of critically examining religious testimony back to the Port-Royal Logic and to Locke; moreover, Stewart emphasizes that Hume’s method in “Of Miracles” is similar to his method in debunking the Ossian poems. Michel Malherbe, taking as his point of departure those remarks by “Pamphilus” that preface the Dialogues, and reviewing in detail Shaftesbury’s pronouncements about the art of philosophical dialogue, discusses... (shrink)

Polyphenic differences between individuals arise not through differences at the genome level but as a result of specific cues received during development. Polyphenisms often involve entire suites of characters, as shown dramatically by the polyphenic castes found in many social insect colonies. An understanding of the genetic architecture behind polyphenisms provides a novel means of studying the interplay between genomes, gene expression and phenotypes. Here we discuss polyphenisms and molecular genetic tools now available to unravel their developmental bases in insects. (...) We focus on several recent studies that have tracked gene-expression patterns during social insect caste determination. BioEssays 23:62–68, 2001. Published 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)