Metaphors abound in both the arts and in science. Due to the traditional division between these enterprises as one concerned with aesthetic values and the other with epistemic values there has unfortunately been very little work on the relation between metaphors in the arts and sciences. In this paper, we aim to remedy this omission by defending a continuity thesis regarding the function of metaphor across both domains, that is, metaphors fulfill any of the same functions in science as they (...) do in the arts. Importantly, this involves the claim that metaphors in arts as well as science have both epistemic and aesthetic functions. (shrink)

t. 1. Comte, Masaryk, Husserl -- t. 2. Masaryk et l'action.

They envisioned a brave new world, and what they got was fascism. As vibrant as its counterparts in Paris, Munich, and Milan, the avant-garde of Florence rose on a wave of artistic, political, and social idealism that swept the world with the arrival of the twentieth century. How the movement flourished in its first heady years, only to flounder in the bloody wake of World War I, is a fascinating story, told here for the first time. It is the (...) history of a whole generation's extraordinary promise--and equally extraordinary failure. The "decadentism" of D'Annunzio, the philosophical ideals of Croce and Gentile, the politics of Italian socialism: all these strains flowed together to buoy the emerging avant-garde in Florence. Walter Adamson shows us the young artists and writers caught up in the intellectual ferment of their time, among them the poet Giovanni Papini, the painter Ardengo Soffici, and the cultural critic Giuseppe Prezzolini. He depicts a generation rejecting provincialism, seeking spiritual freedom in Paris, and ultimately blending the modernist style found there with their own sense of toscanità or "being Tuscan." In their journals--Leonardo, La Voce, Lacerba, and l'Italia futurista--and in their cafe life at the Giubbe Rosse, we see the avant-garde of Florence as citizens of an intellectual world peopled by the likes of Picasso, Bergson, Sorel, Unamuno, Pareto, Weininger, and William James. We witness their mounting commitment to the ideals of regenerative violence and watch their existence become increasingly frenzied as war approaches. Finally, Adamson shows us the ultimate betrayal of the movement's aspirations as its cultural politics help catapult Italy into war and prepare the way for Mussolini's rise to power. (shrink)

Ernst Schröder, Parafrasi Schröderiane. Ovvero: Ernst Schröder, Leoperazioni del Calcolo Logico. Original German text with Italian translation, commentary and annotations by Davide Bondoni, LED Edizioni, Milan, 2010, pp. 208, 15,5 × 22 cm, ISBN 978-88-7916-474-0.

Origin of the German Trauerspiel was Walter Benjamin's first full, historically oriented analysis of modernity. Readers of English know it as "The Origin of German Tragic Drama," but in fact the subject is something else--the play of mourning. Howard Eiland's completely new English translation, the first since 1977, is closer to the German text and more consistent with Benjamin's philosophical idiom. Focusing on the extravagant seventeenth-century theatrical genre of the trauerspiel, precursor of the opera, Benjamin identifies allegory as the (...) constitutive trope of the Baroque and of modernity itself. Allegorical perception bespeaks a world of mutability and equivocation, a melancholy sense of eternal transience without access to the transcendentals of the medieval mystery plays--though no less haunted and bedeviled. History as trauerspiel is the condition as well as subject of modern allegory in its inscription of the abyssal. Benjamin's investigation of the trauerspiel includes German texts and late Renaissance European drama such as Hamlet and Calderón's Life Is a Dream. The prologue is one of his most important and difficult pieces of writing. It lays out his method of indirection and his idea of the "constellation" as a key means of grasping the world, making dynamic unities out of the myriad bits of daily life. Thoroughly annotated with a philological and historical introduction and other explanatory and supplementary material, this rigorous and elegant new translation brings fresh understanding to a cardinal work by one of the twentieth century's greatest literary critics.--. (shrink)

Arguing for controversial readings of many of the canonical figures, the book also focuses on lesser-known writers such as Pierre-Sylvain Regis, Nicolas ...

Heintz & Scott-Phillips provide a useful synthesis for constructing a bridge between work by both cognitive scientists and evolutionary biologists studying the diversity of human communication. Here, we aim to strengthen their bridge from the side of evolutionary biology, to argue that we can best understand ostensive communication as a scaffold for more complex forms of intentional expressions.

Huemer [33] argues against the killing of animals. I offer a critical libertarian analysis of his claim.

We outline an argument favoring voluntary moral bioenhancement as a response to existential risks humanity exposes itself to. We consider this type of enhancement a solution to the antithesis between the extinction of humanity and the imperative of humanity to survive at any cost. By opting for voluntary moral bioenhancement; we refrain from advocating illiberal or even totalitarian strategies that would allegedly help humanity preserve itself. We argue that such strategies; by encroaching upon the freedom of individuals; already inflict a (...) degree of existential harm on human beings. We also give some pointers as to the desirable direction for morally enhanced post-personhood. (shrink)

In a recent contribution to this journal, Andrew Fenton and Sheri Alpert have argued that the so-called “extended mind hypothesis” allows us to understand why Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to change the self of patients suffering from Locked-in syndrome (LIS) by extending their minds beyond their bodies. I deny that this can shed any light on the theoretical, or philosophical, underpinnings of BCIs as a tool for enabling communication with, or bodily action by, patients with LIS: BCIs (...) are not a case of cognitive extension. I argue that Fenton and Alpert’s claim to the contrary is the result of a widespread confusion about some related, but significantly different, approaches to cognition that all fall under the heading of “situated cognition.” I first provide a short taxonomy of various situated approaches to cognition, highlighting (some of) their important commonalities and differences, which should dissolve some of the confusions surrounding them. Then I show why the extended mind hypothesis is unsuitable as a model of BCI enhancements of LIS patients’ capacity to interact with their surroundings, and I argue that the situated approach with obvious bearings on the sort of questions that were driving Fenton and Alpert is not the idea that cognition is extended , but the idea that cognition is enacted. (shrink)

This study investigated the understanding of underinformative sentences like “Some elephants have trunks” by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The scalar term ‘some’ can be interpreted pragmatically, ‘Not all elephants have trunks’, or logically, ‘Some and possibly all elephants have trunks’. Literature indicates that adults with ASD show no real difficulty in interpreting scalar implicatures, i.e., they often interpret them pragmatically, as controls do. This contrasts with the traditional claim of difficulties of people with ASD in other pragmatic domains, (...) and is more in line with the idea that pragmatic problems are not universal. The aim of this study was to: a) gain insight in the ability of children with ASD to derive scalar implicatures, and b) do this by assessing not only sensitivity to underinformativeness, but also different degrees of tolerance to violations of informativeness. We employed a classic statement-evaluation task, presenting optimal, logical false, and underinformative utterances. In Experiment 1, children had to express their judgment on a binary option ‘I agree’ vs ‘I disagree’. In Experiment 2, a ternary middle answer option ‘I agree a bit’ was also available. Sixty-six Flemish-speaking 10-year-old children were tested: 22 children with ASD, an IQ-matched group, and an age-matched group. In the binary judgment task, the ASD-group gave more pragmatic answers than the other groups, which was significant in the mixed effects logistic regression analysis, although not in the non-parametric analysis. In the ternary judgment task, the children with ASD showed a dichotomized attitude towards the speaker’s meaning, by tending to either fully agree or fully disagree with underinformative statements, in contrast with TD children, who preferred the middle option. Remarkably, the IQ-matched group exhibited the same pattern of results as the ASD group. Thanks to a fine-grained measure such as the ternary judgment task, this study highlighted a neglected aspect of the pragmatic profile of ASD, whose struggle with social communication seems to affect also the domain of informativeness. We discuss the implications of the dichotomized reaction towards violations of informativeness of these two groups in terms of the potential role of ASD and of cognitive and verbal abilities. (shrink)

Neuroimaging, psychosurgery, deep-brain stimulation, and psychopharmacology hold considerable promise for more accurate prediction and diagnosis and more effective treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Some forms of psychopharmacology may even be able to enhance normal cognitive and affective capacities. But the brain remains the most complex and least understood of all the organs in the human body. Mapping the neural correlates of the mind through brain scans, and altering these correlates through surgery, stimulation, or pharmacological interventions can affect us in (...) both positive and negative ways. We need to carefully weigh the potential benefit against the potential harm of such techniques. This paper examines some of these techniques and explores the emerging ethical issues in clinical neuroscience. (shrink)

In the late eighteenth century, Adam Smith significantly shaped the modern world by claiming that when people individually pursue their own interests, they are together led towards achieving the common good. But can a population of selfish people achieve the economic common good in the absence of moral constraints on their behavior? If not, then what are the moral conditions of market interaction which lead to economically efficient outcomes of trade? Answers to these questions profoundly affect basic concepts and principles (...) of economic theory, legal theory, moral philosophy, political theory, and even judicial decisions at the appellate level. Walter Schultz illustrates the deficiencies of theories which purport to show that markets alone can provide the basis for efficiency. He demonstrates that efficient outcomes of market interaction cannot be achieved without moral normative constraints and then goes on to specify a set of normative conditions which make these positive outcomes possible. (shrink)

There is a puzzle in reconciling the widespread presence of puritanical norms condemning harmless pleasures with the theory that morality evolved to reap the benefits of cooperation. Here, we draw on the work of several philosophers to support the argument by Fitouchi et al. that these norms evolved to facilitate and scaffold self-control for the sake of cooperation.

The goal of this paper is to explore the significance of Montague’s paradox—that is, any arithmetical theory $T\supseteq Q$ over a language containing a predicate $P$ satisfying $P\rightarrow \varphi $ and $T\vdash \varphi \,\therefore\,T\vdash P$ is inconsistent—as a limitative result pertaining to the notions of formal, informal, and constructive provability, in their respective historical contexts. To this end, the paradox is reconstructed in a quantified extension $\mathcal {QLP}$ of Artemov’s logic of proofs. $\mathcal {QLP}$ contains both explicit modalities $t:\varphi $ (...) and also proof quantifiers $x:\varphi $. In this system, the basis for the rule NEC is decomposed into a number of distinct principles governing how various modes of reasoning about proofs and provability can be internalized within the system itself. A conceptually motivated resolution to the paradox is proposed in the form of an argument for rejecting the unrestricted rule NEC on the basis of its subsumption of an intuitively invalid principle pertaining to the interaction of proof quantifiers and the proof-theorem relation expressed by explicit modalities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:At St. Isidore’s Franciscan College in Rome, the following maxim attributed to St. Patrick is inscribed above the door-way of the church: Si quae difficiles quaestiones in hac insula oriantur ad Sedem Apostolicam referantur; ut Christiani ita et Romani sitis.1 The college was founded in 1625 by Luke Wadding, O.F.M. and, under his direction, became a major seat of theological learning and political influence for the Irish in Rome.2 (...) In the nineteenth century, the Friars Minor of the Province of Ireland assigned many documents from St. Isidore’s for use in their Irish friaries. In 1872, amid the unrest caused by the Risorgimento, medieval and early-modern Irish Franciscan manuscripts were transferred to Dublin.3 At the Merchants’ Quay Convent, the librarians T.A. O’Reilly, O.F.M. and E.B. Fitzmaurice, O.F.M. divided the manuscripts into sections with alphabetically ordered shelf-marks.4 This practical approach followed the long-established system used at Italian libraries and archives in Franciscan custody.5 From 1947 until 2000, the manuscripts of the Irish Friars Minor were kept at the Franciscans’ Dún Mhuire House of Studies in Killiney, County Dublin, before their transfer to the Archives, University College Dublin.The ‘D’ collection is preserved in twenty-six sets of volumes, folders and boxed papers. The greater part consists of Luke Wadding’s correspondence, relating to his activities as theologian, historian, Irish agent in Rome and consultor to several congregations and commissions at the papal secretariat.6 In the 1920s, Paul Grosjean, S.J. included four manuscripts then housed at Merchants’ Quay in a catalogue of hagiographical works.7 Clement Schmitt, O.F.M. treated of a collection of the Franciscan documents kept in Dublin in 1964.8Letters to and from Luke Wadding are also preserved at the Vatican Library; the Archivo Generale at the General Curia of Friars Minor, Rome; the Biblioteca Landiana, Piacenza; the Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples; the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan; the Archives of the Bollandists, Brussels; the Archives Générales de Royaume, Brussels; the Von Harrach Archive, Vienna; and the Franciscan friary of St. Jerome in Vienna.9Compared to some six hundred that Luke Wadding received, “the text of approximately one hundred of his letters, in whole or in part, has survived.”10 Nearly all Wadding’s extant correspondence dates from the three decades after the publication of his Acta legationis on the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1624. Most of his letters were sent from St. Isidore, some from the friaries of Aracoeli and San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, and a few from Naples.11Luke Wadding was born in Waterford on October 16, 1588, the eleventh of fourteen children.12 He was baptized two days later on the Feast of St. Luke. His father Walter was a well-established Waterford merchant and his mother Anastasia a kinswoman of the prominent Lombard family of Waterford. After the death of his parents, Luke left Ireland with his elder brother, Matthew, who enrolled him at the Irish Jesuits’ College in Lisbon. At seventeen years of age, Wadding made his way to Matozinhos in northern Portugal, near Oporto, where he entered the Franciscan Order. On completion of his novitiate, Wadding’s superiors sent him to the University of Coimbra and from there, to Salamanca. At Easter 1613, Luke Wadding was ordained to the priesthood after his studies. He was then appointed as a professor of theology at the Franciscan College of León and later at his own alma mater, Salamanca.13Called to the Spanish capital, Luke Wadding stayed at the Convent of Jesus and Mary in the south-east of Madrid where “lived not only the heads of the Franciscan Order in Spain but also the principal preachers.”14 Such was the distinction Wadding achieved that he was chosen by Philip III for the office of theologian in the embassy sent to defend the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in Rome.15 He lived there for almost forty years, in which time he founded St. Isidore Franciscan College, the.. (shrink)

This thought-provoking book initiates a dialogue among scholars in rhetoric and hermeneutics in many areas of the humanities. Twenty leading thinkers explore the ways these two powerful disciplines inform each other and influence a wide variety of intellectual fields. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde organize pivotal topics in rhetoric and hermeneutics with originality and coherence, dividing their book into four sections: Locating the Disciplines; Inventions and Applications; Arguments and Narratives; and Civic Discourse and Critical Theory. Contributors to this (...) volume include Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Gerald L. Bruns, Charles Altieri, Richard E. Palmer, Calvin O. Schrag,.Victoria Kahn, Eugene Garver, Michael Leff, Nancy S. Streuver, Wendy Olmsted, David Tracy, Donald G. Marshall, Allen Scult, Rita Copeland, William Rehg, and Steven Mailloux. For readers across the humanities, the book demonstrates the usefulness of rhetorical and hermeneutic approaches in literary, philosophical, legal, religious, and political thinking. With its stimulating new perspectives on the revival and interrelation of both rhetoric and hermeneutics, this collection is sure to serve as a benchmark for years to come. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview over the debate about so-called “situated approaches to cognition” that depart from the intracranialism associated with traditional cognitivism insofar as they stress the importance of body, world, and interaction for cognitive processing. It sketches the outlines of an overarching framework that reveals the differences, commonalities, and interdependencies between the various claims and positions of second-generation cognitive science, and identifies a number of apparently unresolved conceptual and ontological issues.

A non-inferiority design accepts the possibility of some efficacy loss, as part of a “successful”, statistically significant result. That loss may be excessive when the non-inferiority threshold is lenient. However, even stringent significance thresholds and safety monitoring may fail to adequately protect study participants when the primary outcome is death. The OPTIMAAL trial, a large randomized clinical trial performed in high-risk patients, is discussed as an example, using the Belmont Report principles as an ethical frame of reference. OPTIMAAL compared losartan, (...) a new drug, to captopril, a drug known to reduce the risk of death in patients with heart failure after a myocardial infarction. Serious ethical challenges occurred in that study. Firstly, subjects had to tolerate captopril to participate, meaning that participation implied the possibility of higher risk of death if randomized to the losartan arm, as compared to the standard of care. Additionally, the stopping rules had to ensure enough powe... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HERMENEUTIC OF AQUINAS'S TEXTS: NOTES ON THE INDEX THOMISTICUS PAOLO GurnTTI Universita Cattolica Augustinianum Milan, Italy I. Introduction: First Impressions of the Index Thomisticus UPON ENTERING an excellent library of philosophy, one cannot help but notice the 56 volumes of the Inde:c Thomisticus.1 Anyone with a scholarly interest in Saint 1 Index Thomisticus: Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Operum omnium Indices et concordantiae... (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974-1980). Reference to this work (...) in notes takes the form: IT [section]-[vol.], [p.]. References to Aquinas's works will follow the conventions established by Busa in the Index Thomisticus (e.g., STl=Summa theologiae, prima pars) and unless otherwise indicated are from the same texts processed in the Index Thomisticus. References to Roberto Busa's works will have the following abbreviations: Clavis Indicis Thomistici: Clavis Indicis Thomistici (Stuttgart: FrommannHoltzboog, 1979). Fond. informatica linguistica: Fondamenti di informatica linguistica (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1987), (contains a bibliography of Busa's works through 1987). Per San Tommaso 'ratio seminalis ': "Per San Tommaso 'ratio seminalis' significa 'codice genetico '. Problemi e metodi di lessicologia e lessicografia tomistiche," in Atti dell'VIII congresso tomistico internazionale (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1981), vol. 1. L'Index Thomisticus: "L'Index Thomisticus," in Stitdi medievali, III serie, XXI, I, 1980. Informatica e filologia: " Informatica e nuova filologia," in G. Savoca ed., Lessicologia, filologia e critica (Florence: Olschki, 1986), pp. 17-25. L'originalite linguistique: "L'originalite linguistique de S. Thomas d'Aquin," in Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin du Cange), Tome XLIV-XLV, fascicule double, 1985, pp. 65-90. ORDO dans les ouevres: "ORDO dans les ouevres de St. Thomas d'Aquin," in M. Fattori and M. Bianchi, eds., ORDO II Colloquia internazionale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo e Bizzarri, 1979), pp. 59-184. Voces REALIS-REALITER: "Voces REALIS-REALITER in S. Thoma Aq. Cum appendice de voce 'resrei," in M. Fattori and M. Bianchi eds., RES. III Colloquia internazionale del Lessico intellettuale Europea (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1982), pp. 104667 668 PAOLO GUIETTI Thomas Aquinas will be drawn to employ the Index Thomisticus as a powerful concordance. But any reasonable scholar can recognize the disproportion between a desirable concordance and this hyperbolic system of about 70,000 pages. The Index Thomisticus is the second largest written work of this century, surpassed only by the Enrcyclopedia Britannica. The Index Thomisticus is a mountain of pages that classifies with a precision never before realized everything that came from Aquinas's pen in twenty-five years.2 Is it not awkwardly disproportionate and too pedantically analytical for scholarly research? Moreover, what would Aquinas think if, in a return to this life, he could see the electronic digestion of his work? A neoscholastic Jesuit who devoted thirty-four years of his life to chopping and classifying even the most insignificant things, like " et " and " est," could seem to St. Thomas a modern computernut, i.e., a person who has lost his good sense in front of a screen.3 Everyone understands the usefulness of a concordance; even St. Thomas wanted and used concordances.4 But the Index Thomis136. De voce SPIRITUS: "De voce SPIRITUS in operibus S. Thomae Aquinatis," in M. Fattori and M. Bianchi, eds., SPIRITUS. IV Colloquia lnternazionale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1983), pp. 191-222. Thomistische H ermeneutik: " Das Problem der thomistischen Hermeneutik nach der Veroeffentlichung des Index Thomisticus," in A. Zimmermann, ed., ~Miscellanea Medievalia, Bd 19: Thomas von Aquin (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), pp. 359-364. L'Indez Thomisticus per la filoso fia: " L'Index Thomisticus per la filosofia e la teologia," in Teologia 5, 1980, pp. 258-265. Il logos Principia di dialogo: "Il logos principio di ogni dialogo tra persone secondo San Tommaso,'' in Portare Cristo all'Uomo. Congresso del Ventennio dal Concilio Vaticano II (Vatican City: Urbaniana University Press, 1985), pp. 577-584. 2 I. e., 8,767,854 words. The lnde:i: Thomisticus classifies everything St. Thomas has probably written, everything St. Thomas erased (Autographi deleta: Inde:i: Thomisticus: 006 ADL) and even works of other chosen authors for comparison with St. Thomas. a Roberto Busa, S.J., was born in Vicenza, Italy in 1913... (shrink)

I argue that a compulsive seeking for just one sense of consistency is hazardous to rationality, and that observing the subtle distinctions of reasonableness between individual and groups may suggest wider, structuralistic notions of consistency, even relevant to re-assessing Gödei's Second Incompleteness Theorem and to science as a whole.

Introduction to Special Issue on ‘Reclaiming Cognition: The Primacy of Action, Intention and Emotion’. Making sense of the mind is the human odyssey. Today, the cognitive sciences provide the vehicles and equipage. As do all culturally shaped activities, they manifest crystallized generalizations and ideological legacies, many of which go unquestioned for centuries. From time to time, these ideologies are successfully challenged, generating revisions and new forms of understanding. We believe that the cognitive sciences have reached a situation in which they (...) have been frozen into one narrow form by the machine metaphor. There is a need to thaw that form and move from a reductionist, atemporal, disembodied, static, rationalist, emotion- and culture-free view, to fundamentally richer understandings that include the primacy of action, intention, emotion, culture, real-time constraints, real-world opportunities, and the peculiarities of living bodies. These essays constitute an array of moves in that direction. (shrink)

After an eloquent and moving analysis of what he sees as the disillusion of themodern age, Lippmann posits as the central dilemma of liberalism its inability to find an appropriate substitute for the older forms of authority-- church, state, class, family, law, custom--that it has denied. Lippmann attempts to find a way out of this chaos through the acceptance of a higher humanism and a way of life inspired by the ideal of "disinterestedness" in all things. In his new introduction (...) to the Transaction edition, John Patrick Diggins marks "A Preface "to "Morals, "originally published in 1929, as a critical turning point in Lippmann's intellectual career. He also provides an excellent discussion of the enduring value of this major twentieth-century work by situating it within the context of other intellectual movements. (shrink)

A pioneering study that illuminates the connection of music, poetry, mystical praxis and social history underlying the ceremony of the Mevlevi Dervishes. Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, whose life and mystical poetry provided the inspiration for the Mevlevi Sufi order, is one of the world's best-known poets, yet the centuries-long musical tradition cultivated by the Mevleviye remains much less known. In this deeply researched book, renowned scholar Walter Feldman traces the historical development of Mevlevi music and brings to light the remarkable (...) musical and mystical aesthetics of the Mevlevi ayin - the instrumental and vocal accompaniment to the sublime ceremony of the 'Whirling' Dervishes. (shrink)

Although there are suggestions that the environmental attitudes of men and of women differ, there have been few studies that study and evaluate these differences at the workplace. Given the claim of Ecofeminist writers about the environmental superiority of women's environmental attitudes, and the proclaimed need of business to change attitudes and behaviour with regard to the environment, this is a surprise. The paper is based on 1022 (37% from women) questionnaires which were collected in a U.K. pharmaceutical company, and (...) it compares the empirical results with environmental attitude archetypes, such as those prescribed by O'Riordan. However, the attitude clusters that were found do not correspond greatly with such theoretical modes of environmental ethics. Instead, it appears that women were more likely to be actively involved in environmental behaviour, and showed greater scepticism towards the role of technology in the search for solutions to environmental problems. In addition, men sought to a much greater extent a consistency between an environmental rationality and their behaviour. Men's attitudes were also much more influenced by their position in the organisational hierarchy. There were few significant differences across age groups. (shrink)

Are there aspects of human intelligence that artificial intelligence cannot emulate? Harry Collins uses a distinction between tacit aspects of knowing, which cannot be digitized, and explicit aspects, which can be, to formulate an answer to this question. He postulates three purported areas of the tacit and argues that only “collective tacit knowing” cannot be adequately digitized. I argue, first, that Collins’s approach rests upon problematic Cartesian assumptions—particularly his claim that animal knowing is strictly deterministic and, thus, radically different from (...) human knowing. I offer evidence that human linguistic intelligence depends upon embodied forms of animal intelligence. Second, I suggest the development of deep-learning algorithms means that Collins’s mimesis assumption is no longer appropriate; equivalent accomplishment of goals is what counts. However, persons must realize and integrate many goals and also deal with failures; a general-purpose AI capable of integrating all the needs and goals of human existence resists development. Third, I explain how Michael Polanyi’s understanding of tacit knowing, quite different than Collins’s concept of the tacit, exemplifies features that are missing in contemporary AI. I make use of evolutionary theory, studies of animal intelligence, biological insights, individual construction of meaning, and notions of human responsibility to argue for the existence of three categories that distinguish human from artificial intelligence. (shrink)

A unifing theory of spatiotemporal brain dynamics should incorporate multiple spatial and temporal scales. Between the microscopic (local) and macroscopic (global) components proposed by Nunez, mesoscopic (intermediate-range) elements should be integral parts of models. The corresponding mathematical formalism requires tools of nonlinear dynamics and the use of aperiodic (chaotic) attractors. Some relations between local-mesoscopic and mesoscopic-global components are outlined.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AN IMPORTANT NEW STUDY OF THOMAS AQUINAS: JEAN-PIERRE TORRELL'S INITIATION A SAINT THOMAS D'AQUIN WALTER H. PRINCIPE, C.S.B. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Toronto, Canada BEFORE BECOMING professor of theology at the Universite de Fribourg, Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., was a member of the Leonine Commission. This editorial experience, together with his continuing association with members of the commission, enables him in his new work, Initiation a saint Thomas (...) d'Aquin: Sa personne et son oeuvre, to clarify and frequently modify previous research conclusions about the life and work of Thomas Aquinas.1 Thus other recent studies in this area, e.g., those of James A. Weisheipl and Simon Tugwell, will have to be reassessed in the light of Torrell's findings in this important volume.2 Torrell, however, does more than examine the dates and places of Thomas's career and writing: as the book's subtitle and introduction make clear, his aim is to present the person of Thomas Aquinas in his context. This he does in a warm but measured fashion, situating Aquinas in his times, following Thomas's journeys about France and Italy on his intellectual apostolatea true ministry in the Dominican tradition-portraying him as 1 In the series Vestigia: Pensee antique et medievale 13 (Fribourg Suisse: Editions Universitaires; Paris: Cerf, 1993), pp. xviii, 592. 2 See Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1983), and Tugwell, trans., ed., introd., Albert & Thomas: Selected Writings, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York-Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1988), introd. [to Thomas Aquinas], pp. 201-351. 489 490 WALTER H. PRINCIPE, C.S.B. often nearly overwhelmed by the duties of this apostolate, yet vigorous and lively in defense of the faith and of the legitimate role of reason, a warm friend to many con,freres and others, a loyal and sometimes deeply involved member of his family. Torrell is especially adept at linking Thomas's apostolic activity with his profound and distinctive spirituality; this augurs well for Torrell 's promised companion volume, which will deal far more thoroughly with Thomas's spirituality than was possible within the editorial constraints of his earlier article in the Dictionnaire de spiritualite.3 New conclusions about the place and dating of Thomas's works Here, first, will be given a summary, with occasional comment, of this study's significant new conclusions about the place and dating of Thomas's works. Torrell accepts Weisheipl's view that Aquinas did his initial biblical commentary at Cologne before coming to Paris in 1252 and spent the years 1252-1256 working on the Scriptum super Sententiis. The "bref catalogue" at the end, prepared by G. Emery, O.P., states that this work is the "fruit of his teaching as bachelor of the Sentences at the begin;.. ning of his first stay in Paris ( 1252-54) ; its redaction had not yet been completed when he began his activity as Master ( 1256)" (485; emphasis mine). Weisheipl, with whom Torrell agrees as to Thomas's having done his cursory teaching of the Bible at Cologne, holds that Thomas lectured on the Senten:ces for the four years, 1252-1256 (71, 358); Tugwell seems to hold the same position when he speaks of Thomas "writing [his lectures on the Sentences] up for publication as he went" (211). Torrell's limitation of the teaching of the Sentences to 1252-1254 is based on the university statutes prescribing that this teaching be completed in two years (66), after which the candidate for the mastership would be a " formed bachelor " (baccalaureus formatus) whose main task would be to assist the master of 3 See his "Thomas d'Aquin," Dictionnaire de Spiritualite 15 (1991), cols. 718-73. INITIATION A SAINT THOMAS D1 AQUIN 491 theology with his disputed questions (58). This would mean that Thomas spent two whole years, 1254-1256, carrying out this rather minimal duty, redacting the Sentences (a task not completed until the beginning of his period as a master of theology), and composing two small works, the De ente et essentia and the De principiis naturae. Although the Scriptum is a... (shrink)

Ecological theory is built upon assumptions about the fundamental nature of organism-environment interactions. We argue that two mutually exclusive sets of such assumptions are available and that they have given rise to alternative approaches to studying ecology. The fundamentally different premises of these approaches render them irreconcilable with one another. In this paper, we present the first logical formalisation of these two paradigms.The more widely-accepted approach - which we label the demographic paradigm - includes both population ecology and community ecology (...) (synecology). Demographic ecology assumes that the environment is relatively stable and that biotic processes, governed predominantly by resource availability, are the most important of ecological and evolutionary influences. Moreover, ecological processes are assumed to translate into directional selection pressures that drive significant evolutionary change on a local scale through the process of optimisation. (shrink)