This is a thorough treatment of first-order modal logic. The book covers such issues as quantification, equality (including a treatment of Frege's morning star/evening star puzzle), the notion of existence, non-rigid constants and function symbols, predicate abstraction, the distinction between nonexistence and nondesignation, and definite descriptions, borrowing from both Fregean and Russellian paradigms.

_The Undiscovered Dewey_ explores the profound influence of evolution and its corresponding ideas of contingency and uncertainty on John Dewey's philosophy of action, particularly its argument that inquiry proceeds from the uncertainty of human activity. Dewey separated the meaningfulness of inquiry from a larger metaphysical story concerning the certainty of human progress. He then connected this thread to the way in which our reflective capacities aid us in improving our lives. Dewey therefore launched a new understanding of the modern self (...) that encouraged intervention in social and natural environments but which nonetheless demanded courage and humility because of the intimate relationship between action and uncertainty. Melvin L. Rogers explicitly connects Dewey's theory of inquiry to his religious, moral, and political philosophy. He argues that, contrary to common belief, Dewey sought a place for religious commitment within a democratic society sensitive to modern pluralism. Against those who regard Dewey as indifferent to moral conflict, Rogers points to Dewey's appreciation for the incommensurability of our ethical commitments. His deep respect for modern pluralism, argues Rogers, led Dewey to articulate a negotiation between experts and the public so that power did not lapse into domination. Exhibiting an abiding faith in the reflective and contestable character of inquiry, Dewey strongly engaged with the complexity of our religious, moral, and political lives. (shrink)

This book contains new essays in honor of Melvin J. Lerner, a pioneer in the psychological study of justice. The contributors to this volume are internationally renowned scholars from psychology, business, and law. They examine the role of justice motivation in a wide variety of contexts, including workplace violence, affirmative action programs, helping or harming innocent victims and how people react to their own fate. Contributors explore fundamental issues such as whether people's interest in justice is motivated by self-interest (...) or a genuine concern for the welfare of others, when and why people feel a need to punish transgressors, how a concern for justice emerges during the development of societies and individuals, and the relation of justice motivation to moral motivation. How an understanding of justice motivation can contribute to the amelioration of major social problems is also examined. (shrink)

In Black Bodies, White Gazes, George Yancy investigates how the experiences of blacks both come into view and are simultaneously distorted by the racialized gaze of whites. In the process of distortion by whites, often unbeknownst to themselves, they are continually implicated in the oppression of blacks that reflexively reinvests "whiteness as the transcendental norm" (xxiii). Precisely because whiteness is tied to socially embedded historical power and privilege that functions on multiple levels of social life, undoing its ill effects, to (...) borrow from James Baldwin, is an ongoing process of entering "into battle with the historical creation, Oneself, and attempt[ing] to re[-]create oneself according to a .. (shrink)

A history of disease theory, from Classical Antiquity to modern times, discussing the various supposed causes to which people of different eras attributed disease.

Investigations with electrometers in the 1770s led Volta to envision mobile charge in electrical conductors as a compressible fluid. A pressure-like condition in this fluid, which Volta described as the fluid’s “effort to push itself out” of its conducting container, was the causal agent that makes the fluid move. In this paper I discuss Volta’s use of analogy and imagery in model building, and compare with a successful contemporary conceptual approach to introducing ideas about electric potential in instruction. The concept (...) that today is called “electric potential” was defined mathematically by Poisson in 1811. It was understood after about 1850 to predict the same results in conducting matter as Volta’s pressure-like concept—and to predict electrostatic effects in the exterior space where Volta’s concept had nothing to say. Complete quantification in addition to greater generality made the mathematical concept a superior research tool for scientists. However, its spreading use in instruction has marginalized approaches to model building based on the analogy and imagery resources that students bring into the classroom. Data from pre and post testing in high schools show greater conceptual and confidence gains using the new conceptual approach than using conventional instruction. This provides evidence for reviving Volta’s compressible fluid model as an intuitive foundation which can then be modified to include electrostatic distant action. Volta tried to modify his compressible fluid model to include distant action, using imagery borrowed from distant heating by a flame. This project remained incomplete, because he did not envision an external field mediating the heating. However, pursuing Volta’s strategy of model modification to completion now enables students taught with the new conceptual approach to add distant action to an initial compressible fluid model. I suggest that a partial correspondence to the evolving model sequence that works for beginning students can help illuminate Volta’s use of intermediate explanatory models. (shrink)

First it will be necessary to examine the argument, and the meaning of the argument, by which Mr. Ingram-Pearson is led to uphold such an unusual position. Using the statement, "fairies do not exist," as his example, he observes: "In order to achieve its obvious status as a denial this statement must have some object of reference for its subject term; for denials which are denials of nothing are not denials in any sense at all." What, then, is the designate (...) of the term "fairies"? It is, we are told, "an existent [italics mine] which at least one person believes to be present in the world and which another person at the same time and in the same context believes is not there." To say that "fairies do not exist" is therefore to say that "certain entities, designated by the term 'fairies,' are not present in the world," or "specific entities, designated by the term 'fairies,' are really absent from the world." The latter statement is positive, and Mr. Ingram-Pearson tells us explicitly that positive statements cannot "succeed in making intelligible" something made intelligible by negative statements about non-existents; but he has in mind such "ordinary" positive statements as "fairies are imagined beings." In other words, it is not that negative statements about. (shrink)

David Walker’s famous 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World expresses a puzzle at the very outset. What are we to make of the use of “Citizens” in the title given the denial of political rights to African Americans? This essay argues that the pamphlet relies on the cultural and linguistic norms associated with the term appeal in order to call into existence the political standing of black folks. Walker’s use of citizen does not need to rely on (...) a recognitive legal relationship precisely because it is the practice of judging that illuminates one’s political, indeed, citizenly standing. Properly understood, the Appeal aspires to transform blacks and whites, and when it informs the prophetic dimension of the text, it tilts the entire pamphlet in a democratic direction. This is the political power of the pamphlet; it exemplifies the call-and-response logic of democratic self-governance. (shrink)

The revival of interest in pragmatism and its practical relevance for democracy has prompted a reconsideration of John Dewey’s political philosophy. Dewey’s _The Public and Its Problems _ constitutes his richest and most systematic meditation on the future of democracy in an age of mass communication, governmental bureaucracy, social complexity, and pluralism. Drawing on his previous writings and prefiguring his later thinking, Dewey argues for the importance of civic participation and clarifies the meaning and role of the state, the proper (...) relationship between the public and experts, and the source of democracy’s legitimacy. These themes remain as important today as they were when Dewey first engaged them, and this is the work to which scholars consistently turn when assessing Dewey’s conception of democracy and what might be imagined for democracy in our own time. In this carefully annotated edition, Melvin L. Rogers provides an introductory essay that elucidates the philosophical and historical background of _The Public and Its Problems_ while explaining the key ideas of the book. He also provides a biographical outline of Dewey’s life and bibliographical notes to assist student and scholar alike. (shrink)

The first step in planning a lexicon of European political and legal concepts is to decide upon how it is to be organised. Among the principal alternatives are the formats of three German reference works on the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) and the methods associated with John Pocock and Quentin Skinner. Although these German and Anglophone styles are often regarded as incompatible, on closer inspection, they turn out to be in many respects complementary, as Skinner has recently acknowledged. What would (...) such a format look like? Is it possible to overcome the difficulties inherent in attempting a lexicon combining continental and Anglophone political and legal concepts? (shrink)

A survey is given of the concepts of interaction (force) and matter, i.e., of process and substance. The development of these concepts, first in antiquity, then in early modern times, and finally in the contemporary system of quantum field theory is described. After a summary of the basic phenomenological attributes (coupling strengths, symmetry quantities, charges), the common ground of concepts of quantum field theory for both interactions and matter entities is discussed. Then attention is focused on the gauge principle which (...) has been developed to describe all interaction fields in the same way, and hopefully to unite them all into one unified field. While a similar unification of all fundamental types of matter fields (quarks and leptons) into one family may be possible (SU 5), there still remains at this level a duality between interaction quanta (bosons with spin 1) and matter particles (fermions with spin 1/2). Whether this duality may be removed in some future supersymmetric theory is not discussed in this paper. Nor is Quantum Gravitation discussed, though the analogy of the gauge principle for the three fundamental non-gravitational interactions (hadronic, electromagnetic and weak) to Einstein's principle of equivalence for gravitation in spacetime is noted. However, the equivalence concept is applied not to spacetime but to the internal spaces for the matter (or charge) fields which are the sources between which the fundamental interactions operate. The gauge principle states that a change in the measures of the internal space charge of gauge or phases of the matter fields is equivalent to, and can be compensated by, suitably introduced interaction fields. From such an interaction field, the gauge potential field in the internal space, one may derive a gauge force field by exterior differentiation.Geometrically, the collection of all internal spaces, one over each point of spacetime, constitutes a fiber bundle. The gauge potential field represents a connection on the fiber bundle, and the gauge force field is the curvature (calculated by taking the exterior derivative of the connection and adding to it the exterior product of the connection with itself). Thus, just as gravitational force is interpreted as spacetime curvature, so the three other fundamental forces are interpretable as internal space curvature. The Standard Model which unites the three non-gravitational fields into an SU c 3 ×SU 2×U 1 structure, and the grand unified model, SU 5, are discussed briefly, and difficulties are noted. Finally it is suggested that a composite model, based on more subtle structure, may be needed to remove the present obscurities and difficulties that stand in the way of a unified theory. (shrink)