The doctrine of simple individuals has its equal and opposite reaction in the view that an individual is simply a bundle of properties, that the identity of an individual is entirely dependent on the identity of its properties. This view also seems to me to be in some sense wrong and I shall attack it in passing. If all my remarks have seemed excessively polemical it is because I have been anxious to make it as clear as possible what the (...) motivation behind this paper is. I am mainly concerned with the problem concerning the "it" which underlies or has properties and I shall want to argue that the identity of an individual--what it is that makes an individual that individual--does not depend merely on its being that individual or having that piece of substratum, but it depends partially and in a complicated way on the identity of its properties. The analysis will have to exhibit the nature of that dependence. Most of the discussion will revolve around proper names and their function since it is through linguistic considerations, I think, that we get the clearest illumination. The result, in case any one is interested, will be Absolute Idealism, or something like it. (shrink)

We demonstrate in two experiments that real and imagined body movements appropriate to metaphorical phrases facilitate people's immediate comprehension of these phrases. Participants first learned to make different body movements given specific cues. In two reading time studies, people were faster to understand a metaphorical phrase, such as push the argument, when they had previously just made an appropriate body action (e.g., a push movement) (Experiment 1), or imagined making a specific body movement (Experiment 2), than when they first made (...) a mismatching body action (e.g., a chewing movement) or no movement. These findings support the idea that appropriate body action, or even imagined action, enhances people's embodied, metaphorical construal of abstract concepts that are referred to in metaphorical phrases. (shrink)

Editor’s NoteThanks to the initiative of Alan Norrie, we are pleased to present here a symposium on Nick Wilson’s book The Space that Separates: A Realist Theory of Art. Several authors have contri...

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

In this article, we draw upon the philosophy of critical realism to reflect upon issues concerning discovery processes and opportunity development. First, paradoxes in the relationship between opportunity discovery and creativity are identified and explained. Second, the question of how to investigate opportunities is discussed and a solution informed by critical realism presented whereby three new types of discovery are identified and defined for empirical investigation. Using critical realism to augment entrepreneurial opportunity theory, we propose that discovery processes have significance (...) beyond discovery theory and can be considered revealing for theories of opportunity development more generally. We conclude with conceptual and practical comment on the importance of ontological theorising for entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Despite its central focus on human freedom and individual and social emancipation, critical realism has remained surprisingly quiet on the subject of authenticity. Drawing on a review of critical realist metatheory, and a study of authentic performance in the illuminating cultural context of Early Music, this paper seeks to address this gap by exploring the significance of authenticity in today's morphogenetic society. Real authenticity is introduced as the universal human capacity to reflexively manage the inherent contradictions that arise between and (...) across our intra- and interpersonal relationships at different levels of reality. It is this dialectical, phronetic capacity that determines whether acting in line with our ultimate concerns is both good for us as individuals and the organization of better futures for all. Managing real authenticity, therefore, must be considered at the core of any possible transition theory for human flourishing. (shrink)

The question to be discussed in this paper can be put in simple terms: at what date were the collections of scholia on classical Greek authors compiled? Scholars have given two conflicting answers. The first was put forward by J. W. White in his edition of the scholia to Aristophanes' Birds. Developing an opinion of Dindorf, he suggested that the archetype of the scholia was a large parchment codex of the fourth or fifth century, which contained in the margins a (...) commentary drawn from several sources. A very similar view has been expressed about the scholia to Apollonius Rhodius and Pindar. (shrink)

The question to be discussed in this paper can be put in simple terms: at what date were the collections of scholia on classical Greek authors compiled? Scholars have given two conflicting answers. The first was put forward by J. W. White in his edition of the scholia to Aristophanes' Birds. Developing an opinion of Dindorf, he suggested that the archetype of the scholia was a large parchment codex of the fourth or fifth century, which contained in the margins a (...) commentary drawn from several sources. A very similar view has been expressed about the scholia to Apollonius Rhodius and Pindar. (shrink)

Human civilisation faces a range of existential risks, including nuclear war, runaway climate change and superintelligent artificial intelligence run amok. As we show here with calculations for the New Zealand setting, large numbers of currently living and, especially, future people are potentially threatened by existential risks. A just process for resource allocation demands that we consider future generations but also account for solidarity with the present. Here we consider the various ethical and policy issues involved and make a case for (...) further engagement with the New Zealand public to determine societal values towards future lives and their protection. (shrink)

The goal of this research is to explore implicit and explicit processes in shaping an individual’s characteristic behavioral patterns, that is, personality. The questions addressed are how psychological processes may be separated into implicit and explicit types, and how such a separation figures into personality. In particular, it focuses on the role of instinct and intuition in determining personality. This paper argues that personality may be fundamentally based on instincts resulting from basic human motivation, along with related processes, within a (...) comprehensive cognitive architecture. This approach is implemented as a computational model. Various tests and simulations show that this model captures major personality traits and accounts for empirical data. The work shows how a cognitive architecture with the implicit–explicit distinction may capture instinct, intuition, and personality. (shrink)

Rightly or, wrongly I am going to take it that the doctrine of simple qualities says three things. First, that yellow, for example, is a simple unanalyzable quality. I don’t really believe this to be true, except in what it denies, but I have no immediate quarrel with it. Second, a simple quality, such as yellow, is what it is quite independently of its pattern of exemplification. Third, yellow is somehow ineffable, the sheer dazzling yellowishness of yellow things cannot be (...) conveyed in words. In the third case, I do not mean the commonplace that words are different from things, that the word ‘yellow’ is not itself yellow. I mean the view that there is something about color qualities as immediately apprehended by us that eludes description. Now all these views are somewhat old-fashioned. The third is hardly mentioned nowadays. Yet I am not so sure that we are not still very much in their grip. In any case, philosophical hemlil)eS oscillate almost as frequently as do those of high fashion so it should not surprise anyone if these views were to come back into vogue, especially if phenomenology becomes important in this country. Now it may be more a matter of convenience than of historical accuracy that I am lumping these three doctrines together as “the doctrine of simple qualities”. Perhaps “doctrine of atomistic qualities” would be better. I am reasonably certain that the second and third doctrines mutually entail each other, although it has to be conceded that the situation is fairly complicated. I shall have something to say about the third doctrine–the doctrine of ineffability, but I shall be mostly concerned to refute the second doctrine–the doctrine that the identity of a quality is independent of its extension–and to put something else in its place. I shall be concerned incidentally to examine certain puzzling statements like ‘Red is a color’, ‘Red is between orange and purple’ and ‘Whatever is green is extended’, which seem to be necessary but don’t seem to be analytic. (shrink)

After forty years of legalized abortion in the United States, the results are starting to come in on the impact this “freedom” has had on women. Bearing an immense burden of blood guilt (shared by the men who support abortion), they have grown hardened and even hostile toward motherhood, domesticity, and children. This has in turn put enormous cultural pressure on those women who “choose” to stay at home to bring up their children, creating a war on women from both (...) directions. (shrink)

The specialist field of intellectual disability nursing has been subjected to a number of changes since the move towards deinstitutionalisation from the 1970s. Government policies sought to change the nature of the disability workforce from what was labelled as a medicalised approach, towards a more socially oriented model of support. Decades on however, many nurses who specialise in the care of people with intellectual disability are still employed. In Australia, the advent of the National Disability Insurance Scheme offers an apt (...) moment to reflect upon these decades of specialised nursing care as the context of this nursing care will continue to evolve. A review of the published literature was conducted to explore what has shaped the field in the past and how this might inform the future of this speciality area under new policy and service contexts. People with intellectual disability have specific health and support needs that require a specialised workforce. Specialist nurses continue to be needed for people with intellectual disability. (shrink)

Let me begin by repeating two well-known features of critical realism. First, the core objective of the human species – it’s moral truth, is a sustainable, diversified global society in which the f...

At the beginning of the dog's trial the prosecution state the charge and the penalty they propose. It seems to me that there may be a more complicated joke here than is generally realized. The penalty of a collar is appropriate for a dog and in real life was sometimes imposed on a slave or a prisoner . The epithet applied to the collar is usually translated ‘of figwood’ and taken to be a pun on . Commentators see the same (...) pun earlier in the play at 145, although in that passage the sense may be adequate without the pun; the adjective does not necessarily constitute a joke in itself but is perhaps chosen deliberately to lead into the joke. (shrink)

At the beginning of the dog's trial the prosecution state the charge and the penalty they propose. It seems to me that there may be a more complicated joke here than is generally realized. The penalty of a collar is appropriate for a dog and in real life was sometimes imposed on a slave or a prisoner. The epithet applied to the collar is usually translated ‘of figwood’ and taken to be a pun on. Commentators see the same pun earlier (...) in the play at 145, although in that passage the sense may be adequate without the pun; the adjective does not necessarily constitute a joke in itself but is perhaps chosen deliberately to lead into the joke. (shrink)