Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Historians of antiquity are trained to be suspicious of accounts that may retroject onto the early years of figures, who were later dominant, positive traits that plausibly were exhibited only later, in essence the creation of a mythology. In the case of the Emperor Augustus, who exercised a firm control on the Roman world for over forty years after the defeat of his rival M. Antonius and introduced a new form of government, the probability that the years of his ascent (...) to supreme power were subjected to careful recasting is very high. Here I examine an argument that was presented in 2004 on the very beginning of Octavian's public life, which, if correct, reveals a stuttering start by a young man inexperienced in the realities of Roman politics at a tumultuous moment in Roman history. (shrink)

Some scholars have seen in ‘fulminat’ an allusion to Callimachus' βροντν οκ μν, λλ Διc , and that is reasonable enough, since Virgil contrasts the warlike fulminations of Octavian with mocking disparagement of his own very different lifestyle . But it may have escaped attention that Virgil seems to be imitating some lines by another Hellenistic poet, Rhianus ; the parallel has thought-provoking implications.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading After Actium: Vergil's Georgics, Octavian, and RomeSergio CasaliChristopher Nappa. Reading After Actium: Vergil's Georgics, Octavian, and Rome. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. xii + 293 pp. Cloth, $75.Nappa's reading of the Georgics is a linear one: in his own words, his book is "a literary commentary that moves sequentially through the text from beginning to end" (3). After the introduction, the book is (...) divided into four chapters, each one devoted to a single book of the poem. This is how Nappa presents his work: "It is my contention that the Georgics can be profitably understood as a post-Actium 'reading,' or rather a set of them, of the situation in which Octavian found himself in the early 20s b.c.e., after the battle of Actium and before the assumption of the title Augustus. Perhaps more importantly, the Georgics represents an attempt to engage in a constructive dialogue with Octavian on the potential courses available to him and on the potential interpretations of his character, achievements, and motives, which would have been a central concern to the Roman and Italian elite"; Nappa wants to read the Georgics "as a didactic work addressed to Octavian, one that invites him (and any other reader) to react to specific problems, puzzles, and challenges" (1–3).From these proemial declarations I was expecting a linear reading of the poem constantly focused on Octavian as the model reader of the text, a consistent attempt to imagine his reactions as the "disciple" of Vergil. In fact, Nappa does not do that, at least not in a fully consistent way. Octavian as the ideal disciple and the poem as a series of "lessons" to the princeps are only a part of Nappa's actual reading of Vergil's text. I must confess that this discovery has been a bit disappointing, especially since the first chapter does in fact rather brilliantly begin with a lesson to Augustus; but this is due to the fact that the poem, of course, opens with an invocation to the princeps. Unfortunately, after that Octavian will not always be the center of attention, as I was hoping. But this does not mean that Nappa does not have interesting things to say about Vergil's poem.The introduction (1–22) clarifies Nappa's avowedly reader-oriented approach to Vergil's text: he proposes to confront the poem's difficulties and contradictions as, in a sense, the real meaning of the text: "the lessons of the [End Page 611] Georgics do not consist of the transmission of information but of the experience of confronting the often chimerical world presented by the poet.... the Georgics emphasizes the fact that in our quest for a meaning various audiences will construct (or discover) different, and even mutually exclusive meanings" (3). After a defense of intentionality as a heuristic tool for reading the Georgics, Nappa discusses the complex status of Octavian in the poem. First of all, he is the poem's addressee, "the most important audience Vergil has ever had," to whom to poet address even harsh lessons ("Octavian must understand the nature of the world he is trying to govern and the way the world sees him," 6); but he is also one of the topics of discussion, and at the same time one of the gods who are asked to favor the poet's undertaking. For Nappa, "the poem does not express a view of the princeps or his achievements so much as it invites the audience, Octavian as well as us, to consider the theme from multiple points of view" (8). Vergil's famous "mistakes" also "serve a didactic purpose: by inviting his readers to consider agricultural advice that is either obviously erroneous or presented in a highly selective and nonsequential way, the teaching poet compels them to search for deeper meaning, a term I use with some reluctance. The meaning each reader finds will, of course, depend on that reader" (11). In the last section of the introduction, Nappa locates the position of his reading within recent scholarship on the Georgics: his aporetic stance recalls above all Christine Perkell, The Poet's Truth (Berkeley... (shrink)

The compact formed between Antonius, Lepidus and Octavian near Bononia in November 43 b.c., commonly named the second triumvirate, was characterized by civil conflict. The major battles at Philippi, Perusia and Naulochus led to the presence of many legions in Italy. In addition, a large number of time-served soldiers were settled throughout the peninsula. The requirement of land for the veterans meant conflicting interests arose with landowners who were dispossessed to make way for them. The impact of the army (...) on Rome itself and on the population of the Italian countryside was great during the late first century b.c. (shrink)

The authors present a case study involving truth telling responsibilities in the setting of nonepileptic seizures. Specifically, over the course of several suspected nonepileptic seizures, a patient’s seizures stopped after he received a saline flush meant to precede the administration of anti-seizure medication. The patient and his surrogate believed he had received the medication each time, and the team wondered whether they should disclose the truth. Some worried that disclosure would reinforce the suspected psychogenic behavior, exacerbating the patient’s condition. In (...) this way, the case study presents a twist on the traditional truth telling archetype. While most truth telling cases center on navigating cultural differences or worries about emotional harm, this case presented concerns about medical harm in the form of exacerbating the patient’s condition. The authors describe the complex patient-family-team dynamic that preceded this ethical dilemma, describe the case, analyze the ethical issue, and describe the outcome. (shrink)

Postcolonial science studies entails ostensibly contradictory critical and empirical commitments. Science studies scholars influenced by Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers embrace forms of realist, radical empiricism, while postcolonial studies scholars influenced by Jacques Derrida trace the limits of the knowable. This essay takes their common use of the term cosmopolitics as an unexpected point of departure for reconciling Derrida’s program with Stengers’s and Latour’s. I read Derrida’s critique of hospitality and Stengers’s and Latour’s ontological politics as necessary complements for conceiving (...) a care-oriented subalternist cosmopolitics, a process of composing common worlds that remains attentive to the limits of representation. (shrink)

THE first Epode provides no clear indication of date. We learn only that Maecenas is about to join Octavian on a dangerous expedition and has suggested that Horace should not accompany him, while Horace retorts that he will be unable to enjoy himself in the absence of his patron and would be ready to follow him to the ends of the earth, whatever the danger, in the hope of earning his gratitude. The Epodes were published about 30 B.C. and, (...) perhaps for that reason, the scholiast Pseudo-Acron confidently assigns the poem to the period immediately before the battle of Actium with the comment: ‘Maecenatem prosequitur euntem ad bellum navale cum Augusto adversum Antonium et Cleopatram.’ It is curious that in referring to the activities of Octavian in 31 the author uses the title Augustus, which was not conferred on him before 27,: but the substance of his comment accords with the known facts. In the spring of 31 Octavian asked all Romans of influence to meet him at Brundisium, thereby to demonstrate their willingness to take part in the war against Antony and Cleopatra, and more than seven hundred senators are known to have offered their services. (shrink)

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a robust (...) argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

In ancient China, a revered Taoist sage named Zhuangzi told many parables. In Existential Psychology and the Way of the Tao, a selection of these parables will be featured. Following each parable, an eminent existential psychologist will share a personal and scholarly reflection on the meaning and relevance of the parable for psychotherapy and contemporary life. The major tenets of Zhuangzi's philosophy are featured. Taoist concepts of emptiness, stillness, Wu Wei (i.e. intentional non-intentionality), epistemology, dreams and the nature of reality, (...) character building in the midst of pain, meaning and the centrality of relationships, authenticity, self-care, the freedom that can come from one's willingness to confront death, spiritual freedom, and gradations of therapeutic care are topics highlighted in this book. (shrink)

Aeneas' stopover at Actium has struck most readers as an Augustan interlude in the odyssey of Aeneid 3. The scene is conspicuous among the other episodes in the trip for its brevity and for the fact that it does not advance the action toward the Trojan exiles' Italian goal. Instead the accent falls on prefiguring actions of Aeneas' distinguished descendant, Octavian, after he achieved victory over Antony at the same site in 31 B.C. Where the future Augustus dedicated spoils (...) from the battle to Actian Apollo and instituted a festival called the Actian Games, the Trojans celebrate athletic games at Actium and their leader affixes an enemy trophy to the temple of Apollo there. This last act, however, Aeneas' dedicatio, points allusively to the mythical past as well as to the Augustan future. To appreciate the full force of that complex reference, which enriches the thematics of the entire scene, hinges on our recognition of a mythological figure whose identity has been long in doubt. The narrator Aeneas reports that he hung up on Apollo's shrine ‘the bronze shield worn by great Abas’. Who is this Abas, and why is his mention here significant? (shrink)

This tenth volume of Collected Papers includes 86 papers in English and Spanish languages comprising 972 pages, written between 2014-2022 by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 105 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 26 countries: Abu Sufian, Ali Hassan, Ali Safaa Sadiq, Anirudha Ghosh, Assia Bakali, Atiqe Ur Rahman, Laura Bogdan, Willem K.M. Brauers, Erick González Caballero, Fausto Cavallaro, Gavrilă Calefariu, T. Chalapathi, Victor Christianto, Mihaela Colhon, Sergiu Boris Cononovici, Mamoni Dhar, Irfan Deli, Rebeca Escobar-Jara, Alexandru Gal, N. (...) Gandotra, Sudipta Gayen, Vassilis C. Gerogiannis, Noel Batista Hernández, Hongnian Yu, Hongbo Wang, Mihaiela Iliescu, F. Nirmala Irudayam, Sripati Jha, Darjan Karabašević, T. Katican, Bakhtawar Ali Khan, Hina Khan, Volodymyr Krasnoholovets, R. Kiran Kumar, Manoranjan Kumar Singh, Ranjan Kumar, M. Lathamaheswari, Yasar Mahmood, Nivetha Martin, Adrian Mărgean, Octavian Melinte, Mingcong Deng, Marcel Migdalovici, Monika Moga, Sana Moin, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Elhoseny, Rehab Mohamed, Mohamed Talea, Kalyan Mondal, Muhammad Aslam, Muhammad Aslam Malik, Muhammad Ihsan, Muhammad Naveed Jafar, Muhammad Rayees Ahmad, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Saqlain, Muhammad Shabir, Mujahid Abbas, Mumtaz Ali, Radu I. Munteanu, Ghulam Murtaza, Munazza Naz, Tahsin Oner, ‪Gabrijela Popović‬‬‬‬‬, Surapati Pramanik, R. Priya, S.P. Priyadharshini, Midha Qayyum, Quang-Thinh Bui, Shazia Rana, Akbara Rezaei, Jesús Estupiñán Ricardo, Rıdvan Sahin, Saeeda Mirvakili, Said Broumi, A. A. Salama, Flavius Aurelian Sârbu, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Javid Shabbir, Shio Gai Quek, Son Hoang Le, Florentin Smarandache, Dragiša Stanujkić, S. Sudha, Taha Yasin Ozturk, Zaigham Tahir, The Houw Iong, Ayse Topal, Alptekin Ulutaș, Maikel Yelandi Leyva Vázquez, Rizha Vitania, Luige Vlădăreanu, Victor Vlădăreanu, Ștefan Vlăduțescu, J. Vimala, Dan Valeriu Voinea, Adem Yolcu, Yongfei Feng, Abd El-Nasser H. Zaied, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas.‬‬. (shrink)

A calm has succeeded the clamour of the Virgilian Bimillenary, to be shattered all too soon by the commemoration of Augustus. In this brief interval there may be leisure to examine a question touching the career of Asinius Pollio and the history of the years 42·39 B.C. The Virgilian celebrations evoked two outstanding studies of the Fourth Eclogue, a poem dedicated to Pollio and written during—or perhaps just after—the consulate of Pollio . Carcopino restated and sought to reinforce an opinion (...) widely held in late antiquity among commentators of Virgil—the miraculous child of the poem was Saloninus, a son of Asinius Pollio: the child was born, he suggests, soon after the conclusion of the Pact of Brundisium, and shortly before the end of the year 40, while Pollio was still consul. At the time Pollio was at Salonae, on the coast of Dalmatia, which city his son's name commemorates. Tarn, however, adopting and reinforcing the theory put forward by Slater in 1912, argued that the Fourth Eclogue shows traces of being an epithalamium in form, designed to celebrate the wedding of Antony and Octavia, the seal and bond of the Pact of Brundisium which was concluded in the autumn of the year 40 between the dynasts Antony and Octavian; Pollio, a friend and a partisan of Antony, acted as his plenipotentiary in the negotiations; the new epoch was thus introduced under the auspices of Pollio, ‘te duce’; the child was the child to be expected from the marriage of Antony and Octavia; it turned out in fact to be a girl. (shrink)

This classic and controversial book examines the roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in modern life, and proposes a path for its recovery.

What is post-truth? -- Science denial as a road map for understanding post-truth -- The roots of cognitive bias -- The decline of traditional media -- The rise of social media and the problem of fake news -- Did post-modernism lead to post-truth? -- Fighting post-truth.

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

The civil war which ended in the victory of Octavian and the suicide of Antony and Cleopatra is one of the most exciting but most obscure periods of Roman history, obscure mainly because the victor succeeded in imposing bis version of affairs upon his countrymen and through them on posterity. That is not to say that his version is necessarily completely false: the danger that threatened Rome was a real one, the national feeling that resulted in the coniuratio totius (...) Italiae of 32 B.C. and that inspired Virgil and Horace later was not an artificial growth, though it was carefully tended. But in kindling the requisite war-feeling and in rousing the necessary enthusiasm both sides had to propagand for themselves, and in ancient times propaganda often became a matter of personal abuse and mud-slinging. In this Octavian's agents were perhaps more successful, though few nowadays would accept the conventional portraits of Antony and Cleopatra as anywhere near the truth. But Antony's propaganda, though not so effective, was not obliterated by Octavian's victory; indeed a great deal of it is still preserved and masquerades as fact in histories of the period, where Octavian's personal character suffers badly. (shrink)

The eight essays and three responses collected in Rethinking Borders were commissioned from an exciting range of leading younger writers, artists and intellectuals whose work has raised significant questions about the border cultures in ...

In this paper I want to do the following things. First I want to show that in the part of the Theaetetus where the relationship between knowledge and perception is examined, the concept of knowledge that is in question is very clearly characterized. We are left in no doubt as to what is to count as knowing. Secondly I want to unravel in some detail the case that Socrates puts on Protagoras’ behalf where he draws on what Protagoras actually wrote (...) ; as opposed to what he may have taught secretly to his pupils. Thirdly I wish to argue that if we let the dialogue speak for itself, it is manifest that this case put up on Protagoras’ behalf at 151 E-152C is not overthrown; it is not even shaken.In that part of the dialogue where the question is under examination whether or not knowledge and perception are the same, Socrates uses an idealized concept of knowledge. That is, he restricts the use of the word by setting down what he will consider to be the essential characteristics of knowledge, the sufficient and necessary conditions of its being instantiated. An excellent piece of philosophical procedure. (shrink)

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events; Negative Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

In our papers on the rationality of magic, we distinghuished, for purposes of analysis, three levels of rationality. First and lowest (rationalitYl) the goal directed action of an agent with given aims and circumstances, where among his circumstances we included his knowledge and opinions. On this level the magician's treatment of illness by incantation is as rational as any traditional doctor's blood-letting or any modern one's use of anti-biotics. At the second level (rationalitY2) we add the element of rational thinking (...) or thinking which obeys some set of explicit rules, a level which is not found in magic in general, though it is sometimes given to specific details of magical thinking within the magical thought-system. It was the late Sir Edward E. Evans-Pritchard who observed that when considering magic in detail the magician may be as consistent or critical as anyone else; but when considering magic in general, or any system of thought in general, the magician could not be critical or even comprehend the criticism. Evans-Pritchard went even further: he was sceptical as to whether it could be done in a truly consistent manner: one cannot be critical of one's own system, he thought. On this level (rationalitY2) of discussion we have explained (earlier) why we prefer to wed Evans Pritchard's view of the magician's capacity for piece-meal rationality to Sir James Frazer's view that magic in general is pseudo-rational because it lacks standards of rational thinking. (shrink)

At Aen. 6.562–627 the Sibyl gives Aeneas a description of the criminals in Tartarus and the punishments to which they are condemned. The criminals are presented to us in several groups. The first consists of mythical figures, the Titans , the sons of Aloeus , Salmoneus , Tityos and Ixion and Pirithous . Next Virgil turns away from mythical figures to particular categories of criminal. He mentions those who hated their brothers, who assaulted a parent, who cheated a cliens, who (...) gloated over wealth they had acquired without setting aside a part for their family, who were put to death for adultery, and those who, breaking their masters' trust, made war on their country . The reference to the contemporary scene is unmistakable. The mention of a cliens indicates that we have moved from Greece to Rome. Moreover, ‘quique ob adulterium caesi’ brings to mind Augustus' concern over moral standards, the subject of legislation in 28 B.c., 18 B.c. and A.d. 9; the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis gave to fathers of adulteresses the right to put to death both guilty parties. Thirdly, ‘arma...impia’ is an obvious reference to civil war , which as Servius argues is more narrowly defined by ‘nee veriti dominorum fallere dextras’ so as to exclude Caesar and Octavian: undoubtedly the allusion is to the war against Sextus Pompeius, which Augustan propaganda chose to represent as a war against runaway slaves. Virgil continues by sketching the penalties paid in Tartarus by such men . While doing so, however, he retreats once again into the realm of mythology: the punishments he describes are those more normally associated with Sisyphus and Ixion . This reversion is completed at 617–20 where, confusingly, Virgil denies that he has been alluding to events of contemporary significance by naming two mythical personages, Theseus and Phlegyas . Virgil therefore implies, but then denies, contemporary relevance. It is this kind of protean elusiveness which makes the contemporary allusions in Virgil so difficult to pin down. (shrink)

The civil war which ended in the victory of Octavian and the suicide of Antony and Cleopatra is one of the most exciting but most obscure periods of Roman history, obscure mainly because the victor succeeded in imposing bis version of affairs upon his countrymen and through them on posterity. That is not to say that his version is necessarily completely false: the danger that threatened Rome was a real one, the national feeling that resulted in the coniuratio totius (...) Italiae of 32 B.C. and that inspired Virgil and Horace later was not an artificial growth, though it was carefully tended. But in kindling the requisite war-feeling and in rousing the necessary enthusiasm both sides had to propagand for themselves, and in ancient times propaganda often became a matter of personal abuse and mud-slinging. In this Octavian's agents were perhaps more successful, though few nowadays would accept the conventional portraits of Antony and Cleopatra as anywhere near the truth. But Antony's propaganda, though not so effective, was not obliterated by Octavian's victory; indeed a great deal of it is still preserved and masquerades as fact in histories of the period, where Octavian's personal character suffers badly. (shrink)

Civilium ofnciorum rudimentis regern Archelaum Trallianos et Thessalos, varia quosque de causa, Augusto cognoscente defendit; pro Laodicenis Thyatirenis Chiis terrae motu afflictis opemque implorantibus senatum deprecatus est; Fannium Caepionem, qui cum Varrone Murena in Augustum conspiraverat, reum maiestatis apud iudices fecit et condemnavit. interque haec duplicem curam administravit, annonae quae artior inciderat, et repurgandorum tota Italia ergastulorum … The trials of Archelaus, the Trallians, and the Thessalians are usually assigned to the period 27–23 B.C.: their position in Suetonius' account of (...) Tiberius' early career seems to offer support to this view, though Stein connected the trial of Archelaus with Octavian's settlement of the East after Actium. Tiberius had been born only in November 42, and Gelzer more plausibly suggested that the trials occurred in Spain, where Tiberius was serving as tribunus militum during the Cantabrian war. The earthquake that Suetonius mentions in the following sentence took place in 27, and Tralles, which had been affected along with Laodicea, Thyatira, and Chios, sent an embassy to Augustus in Spain to ask for help. (shrink)

Aeneas' stopover at Actium has struck most readers as an Augustan interlude in the odyssey of Aeneid 3. The scene is conspicuous among the other episodes in the trip for its brevity and for the fact that it does not advance the action toward the Trojan exiles' Italian goal. Instead the accent falls on prefiguring actions of Aeneas' distinguished descendant, Octavian, after he achieved victory over Antony at the same site in 31 B.C. Where the future Augustus dedicated spoils (...) from the battle to Actian Apollo and instituted a festival called the Actian Games, the Trojans celebrate athletic games at Actium and their leader affixes an enemy trophy to the temple of Apollo there. This last act, however, Aeneas' dedicatio, points allusively to the mythical past as well as to the Augustan future. To appreciate the full force of that complex reference, which enriches the thematics of the entire scene, hinges on our recognition of a mythological figure whose identity has been long in doubt. The narrator Aeneas reports that he hung up on Apollo's shrine ‘the bronze shield worn by great Abas’ . Who is this Abas, and why is his mention here significant? (shrink)

THE first Epode provides no clear indication of date. We learn only that Maecenas is about to join Octavian on a dangerous expedition and has suggested that Horace should not accompany him, while Horace retorts that he will be unable to enjoy himself in the absence of his patron and would be ready to follow him to the ends of the earth, whatever the danger, in the hope of earning his gratitude. The Epodes were published about 30 B.C. and, (...) perhaps for that reason, the scholiast Pseudo-Acron confidently assigns the poem to the period immediately before the battle of Actium with the comment: ‘Maecenatem prosequitur euntem ad bellum navale cum Augusto adversum Antonium et Cleopatram.’ It is curious that in referring to the activities of Octavian in 31 the author uses the title Augustus, which was not conferred on him before 27,: but the substance of his comment accords with the known facts. In the spring of 31 Octavian asked all Romans of influence to meet him at Brundisium, thereby to demonstrate their willingness to take part in the war against Antony and Cleopatra, and more than seven hundred senators are known to have offered their services. (shrink)

The flowering of creative and speculative philosophy that emerged in modern Europe--particularly in Germany--is a thrilling adventure story as well as an essential chapter in the history of philosophy. In this integrative narrative, Solomon provides an accessible introduction to the major authors and movements of modern European philosophy, including the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Rousseau, German Idealism, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and the Romantics, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Max Brentano, Meinong, Frege, Dilthey, Bergson, Nietzsche, Husserl, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, hermeneutics, Sartre, Postmodernism, Structuralism, (...) Foucault, and Derrida. (shrink)

Investigates the resolution of contradictions and ambiguous derogations in a code, by means of the imposition of partial orderings. Although formulated as a study in the logic of norms, it provided the initial ideas for work on the logic of theory (or belief) change, developed by the authors in a series of papers by the authors and Peter Gardenfors beginning in 1985.

Intertheoretic reduction in physics aspires to be both to be explanatory and perfectly general: it endeavors to explain why an older, simpler theory continues to be as successful as it is in terms of a newer, more sophisticated theory, and it aims to relate or otherwise account for as many features of the two theories as possible. Despite often being introduced as straightforward cases of intertheoretic reduction, candidate accounts of the reduction of general relativity to Newtonian gravitation have either been (...) insufficiently general or rigorous, or have not clearly been able to explain the empirical success of Newtonian gravitation. Building on work by Ehlers and others, I propose a different account of the reduction relation that is perfectly general and meets the explanatory demand one would make of it. In doing so, I highlight the role that a topology on the collection of all spacetimes plays in defining the relation, and how the selection of the topology corresponds with broader or narrower classes of observables that one demands be well-approximated in the limit. (shrink)

This book critically assesses arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism, develops an innovative account of objects’ persistence, and defends new arguments against classical theism. The authors engage the following classical theistic proofs: Aquinas’s First Way, Aquinas’s De Ente argument, and Feser’s Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Augustinian, Thomistic, and Rationalist proofs. The authors also provide the first systematic treatment of the ‘existential inertia thesis’. By connecting the thesis to relativity theory and recent developments in the philosophy of physics, and (...) by developing a variety of novel existential-inertia-friendly explanations of persistence, they mount a formidable new case against classical theistic proofs. Finally, they defend new arguments against classical theism based on abstract objects and changing divine knowledge. The text appeals to students, researchers, and others interested in classical theistic proofs, the existence and nature of God, and the ultimate explanations of persistence, change, and contingency. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as natural knowledge of God? C. Stephen Evans presents the case for understanding theistic arguments as expressions of natural signs in order to gain a new perspective both on their strengths and weaknesses. Three classical, much-discussed theistic arguments - cosmological, teleological, and moral - are examined for the natural signs they embody. At the heart of this book lie several relatively simple ideas. One is that if there is a God of the kind accepted by (...) Christians, Jews, and Muslims, then it is likely that a 'natural' knowledge of God is possible. Another is that this knowledge will have two characteristics: it will be both widely available to humans and yet easy to resist. If these principles are right, a new perspective on many of the classical arguments for God's existence becomes possible. We understand why these arguments have for many people a continued appeal but also why they do not constitute conclusive 'proofs' that settle the debate once and for all. Touching on the interplay between these ideas and contemporary scientific theories about the origins of religious belief, particularly the role of natural selection in predisposing humans to form beliefs in God or gods, Evans concludes that these scientific accounts of religious belief are fully consistent, even supportive, of the truth of religious convictions. (shrink)

"A rich collection. Since it holds a number of introductory pieces along with advanced essays and review articles, the volume will be accessible to a broad audience and will work well in philosophy of science courses....Essential."--Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan.

Sex differences in reproductive strategy and the sexual division of labor resulted in selection for and maintenance of sexual dimorphism across a wide range of characteristics, including body size, hormonal physiology, behavior, and perhaps spatial abilities. In laboratory tasks among undergraduates there is a general male advantage for navigational and mental-rotation tasks, whereas studies find female advantage for remembering item locations in complex arrays and the locations of plant foods. Adaptive explanations of sex differences in these spatial abilities have focused (...) on patterns of differential mate search and routine participation in distinct subsistence behaviors. The few studies to date of spatial ability in nonindustrial populations practicing subsistence lifestyles, or across a wider age range, find inconsistent results. Here we examine sex- and age-based variation in one kind of spatial ability related to navigation, dead-reckoning, among Tsimane forager horticulturalists living in lowland Bolivia. Seventy-three participants (38 male) aged 6–82 years pointed a handheld global positioning system (GPS) unit toward the two nearest communities and the more distant market town. We find no evidence of sex differences in dead reckoning (p = 0.47), nor do we find any evidence of age-related decline in dead-reckoning accuracy (p = 0.28). Participants were significantly more accurate at pointing toward the market town than toward the two nearest villages despite its being significantly farther away than the two nearest communities. Although Tsimane do show sexual dimorphism in foraging tasks, Tsimane women have extensive daily and lifetime travel, and the local environment lacks directional cues that typically enhance male navigation. This study raises the possibility that greater similarity in mobility patterns because of overlapping subsistence strategies and activities may result in convergence of some male and female navigation abilities. (shrink)