Olympiodorus' Commentary on Plato's Phaedo I.3-6 has been the linchpin of the reconstructions of the supposed Orphic doctrine of original sin. While Olympiodorus links the Titans' dismemberment of Dionysus and anthropogony, he does not include any element of inherited guilt, either in his narration of the myth or in his interpretation. Moreover, his telling of the myth, which makes the anthropogony the sequel to the dismemberment of Dionysus, is an innovation made for the purposes of his own argument. Rather than (...) preserving in fossilized form a sacred myth more than a millennium old, Olympiodorus concocts an innovative tale of his own. (shrink)

https://doi.org/10.14195/2183-4105_19_5.

https://doi.org/10.14195/2183-4105_19_5.

Plato and the Power of Images addresses ways Plato has used images and the ways to understand their status as images, particularly how an image resembles what it represents and how to avoid mistaking that image for what it represents.

The fragments of a hexameter poem about Dionysus recently discovered in a palimpsest (Sin. Ar. NF 66) reveal some different faces of Dionysus, including an Adonis-figure at the heart of a dispute between two goddesses (Persephone and Aphrodite), and a personified wine-god, Oinos, threatened by the machinations of his enemies in the court of Zeus. These palimpsest texts help to illuminate some of the allusions to the early life of the god that have long puzzled scholars, especially in some of (...) the early Christian apologists and the collection of OrphicHymns. (shrink)

This book was first published in 2004. Plato, Aristophanes and the creators of the 'Orphic' gold tablets employ the traditional tale of a journey to the realm of the dead to redefine, within the mythic narrative, the boundaries of their societies. Rather than being the relics of a faded ritual tradition or the products of Orphic influence, these myths can only reveal their meanings through a close analysis of the specific ways in which each author makes use of the tradition. (...) For these authors, myth is an agonistic discourse, neither a kind of sacred dogma nor a mere literary diversion, but rather a flexible tool that serves the wide variety of uses to which it is put. The traditional tale of the journey to the Underworld in Greek mythology is neither simple nor single, but each telling reveals a perspective on the cosmos, a reflection of the order of this world through the image of the other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ IntroductionElizabeth S. Radcliffe and Mark G. SpencerThis issue opens with the winning essay in the Third Annual Hume Studies Essay Prize competition: “Hume beyond Theism and Atheism” by Dr. Ariel Peckel. Dr. Peckel’s essay was chosen as the winner from among papers submitted by emerging scholars from August 2022 through July 2023. Please see the full prize announcement with information about this talented Hume scholar elsewhere in (...) this issue. Our Call for Papers for the Fourth Essay Prize competition is printed in the back of this issue and on-line at the Hume Studies website. The contest is open to authors ten or fewer years from the Ph.D. and closes on August 1, 2024. If you are eligible, please consult our “Call” for further details!In other Hume Studies news, we have once again acquired a new printer. Christensen Printing (Lincoln, Nebraska), whose work for us was excellent, suddenly closed its business when its owner retired this past year and had no one to succeed him. We received the news just when our November issue was ready to go to press. With the assistance of our friends at the Philosophy Documentation Center, we obtained estimates from three printers and have now engaged Bailey Printing in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our November issue was published on-line by November 1 (at the Philosophy Documentation Center website, the Project Muse website, and the Hume Society website), but the print issue took longer to get to subscribers.For a second time, we want to bring to the attention of our readers that Hume Studies will be marking its 50th year of publication in 2025. As we have previously noted, we are planning an anniversary issue for 50:1 (April 2025). We hope to include among the special features of that issue paragraphs or statements from our readers in answer to this query: “Of all of the articles that have been published in [End Page 7] Hume Studies over the past 50 years, which one is most noteworthy to you? Why so?” Please see the “Call for Entries” in the back of this issue or on the Hume Studies website (https://www.humesociety.org/ojs/index.php/hs), which includes details on where to send your response. The due date is October 15, 2024, but we encourage you to send your entries as soon as possible! [End Page 8]Copyright © 2024 Hume Studies... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ IntroductionElizabeth S. Radcliffe and Mark G. SpencerThis issue opens with the winning essay in the Second Annual Hume Studies Essay Prize competition: “Hume’s Passion-Based Account of Moral Responsibility,” by Taro Okamura. Dr. Okamura’s essay was chosen as the 2022 winner from among papers submitted by emerging scholars from August 2021 through July 2022. Dr. Okamura received his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in 2022. He is (...) currently a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo.The competition for the Third Prize closed on August 1, 2023, and the winner will be announced in our next issue. Please see the Call for Papers for the fourth competition in the back of this issue. The competition is open to authors ten or fewer years from the Ph.D.A special aspect of our current issue is its spotlight on Hume’s Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Renowned Dutch Enlightenment scholar, Frederic L. van Holthoon, presents his analysis of some of Hume’s essays, which he argues constitute Hume’s project of writing on political, or public, issues—a goal he did not get to complete with the Treatise. Also, established Hume scholar Lorne Falkenstein offers an extended review of the newly published Clarendon edition of Hume’s essays, in two volumes (edited by Tom L. Beauchamp and Mark A. Box, with Michael Silverthorne, J. A. W. Gunn, and F. David Harvey).Finally, we want to bring to the attention of our readers that, in fewer than two years, Hume Studies will be marking the 50th anniversary of its first publication. For this event, we are planning a special jubilee issue, 50:1 (April 2025). We hope to include among the unique features of that issue paragraphs or statements from our readers in answer to this query: “Of all of the articles that have been published in Hume Studies over the past 50 years, which one is most noteworthy to you? Why so?” Please see the “Call for Entries” in the back of this issue and on the Hume Studies website. We invite your responses! [End Page 193]Copyright © 2023 Hume Studies... (shrink)

This is our initial issue as co-editors of Hume Studies. We thank our predecessors, Ann Levey, Karl Schafer, and Amy M. Schmitter, for their years of editorial oversight and for their assistance in the transition. Some of the papers they began shepherding through the editorial process will be appearing in our issues.Regular readers of the journal will notice that volume 46 is dated 2020, while this first issue of volume 47 is dated April 2022. The journal has been behind the (...) calendar for many years and catching up is essential. So, the Hume Society Executive Committee and the Hume Studies Editorial Board approved a proposal to advance the publication cover date to the current date. Subscribers will of course be... (shrink)

This issue of Hume Studies opens with the winner of the inaugural Hume Studies Essay Prize, Aaron Alexander Zubia’s excellent essay, “Hume’s Transformation of Academic Skepticism.” The Prize was awarded this past year in a competition among contending papers submitted from January 1 through August 1, 2021.The Hume Studies Essay Prize is an annual award in the amount of $1,000 US made possible by the support of the Hume Society. The Essay Prize is an ongoing competition for those who submit (...) papers to Hume Studies and are ten or fewer years from receiving the Ph.D., including current graduate students. Entries for the second prize closed on August 1, 2022. Papers submitted before that date are undergoing the usual... (shrink)

We are pleased to say that Hume Studies has awarded its second annual Essay Prize, with an announcement featured in this issue. The winning paper will be published in November 2023 (Hume Studies 48:2). We thank the members of the 2022–23 Prize Committee, who are acknowledged in the announcement. Please see the Call for Papers for the Third Annual Essay Prize on page 189 of this issue.Along with five original articles and three book reviews, our current issue features a symposium (...) on Margaret Watkins’s book, The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays” (Cambridge University Press, 2019). The symposium is a development from an Author-Meets-Critics panel that was held at the 47th Hume Society Conference, sponsored by... Read More. (shrink)

The AGI alignment problem has a bimodal distribution of outcomes with most outcomes clustering around the poles of total success and existential, catastrophic failure. Consequently, attempts to solve AGI alignment should, all else equal, prefer false negatives (ignoring research programs that would have been successful) to false positives (pursuing research programs that will unexpectedly fail). Thus, we propose adopting a policy of responding to points of philosophical and practical uncertainty associated with the alignment problem by limiting and choosing necessary assumptions (...) to reduce the risk of false positives. Herein we explore in detail two relevant points of uncertainty that AGI alignment research hinges on---meta-ethical uncertainty and uncertainty about mental phenomena---and show how to reduce false positives in response to them. (shrink)

Dans un passage de Physique iii (7, 207b15-21), Aristote s’exprime d’une manière qui suppose valide l’implication suivante : « Si une grandeur peut être infinie en puissance, une telle grandeur peut aussi être infinie en acte ». Cette implication a intrigué les commentateurs tant anciens et médiévaux que modernes. Ces derniers se sont en général bornés à constater que l’implication n’est pas logiquement valide, sans expliquer comment et en quel sens Aristote avait pu la tenir pour telle. En rapprochant le (...) passage précité d’un autre passage de Physique iii (6, 206b16-27), le présent article en propose une interprétation qui semble lever toutes les difficultés. Au Moyen Age, le sens de l’implication a été très discuté, et l’interprétation proposée ici a été vue et soutenue par plusieurs commentateurs : on l’étudie chez quelques-uns de ceux-ci en situant leur position dans le cadre du débat médiéval sur la question, notamment en référence aux deux interprétations alors fameuses proposées par Averroès. (shrink)

A growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, use, and (...) understand places, whether as accidents, instruments, or fields of care. (shrink)

From an Indirect Realist point of view, the Knowledge Argument in the philosophy of perception has been misdirected by its very title. If it can be argued that sense-fields are at their basis no more than evidence, indeed, a part of existence as brute as what is usually termed the 'external', then, if 'knowing' is not essential to sensing, that argument has to be radically reconstructed. Resistance to there being an non-epistemic or 'raw feel' basis for sensing is very fashionable (...) at the moment (e.g. in Davidson, McDowell, Harman), but the present article aims at breaking through it. Scientific facts are adduced to show that sensing can exist without perceiving. It is argued that the part played by motivation in the gathering of knowledge in a feedback system, enhanced by intersubjective linguistic correction in the human case, allows for a ready evolutionary adaptation. One can advance from this to a fresh view of knowledge and rationality which see them at base as part of a folk-psychological method of allowing for continuing disambiguation of what are identified within that method as 'entities' and 'properties'. (shrink)

This is a survey of the development of the philosophy of perception over the past twelve years. There are four sections. Part I deals largely with arguments for the propositionalizing of perception and for those types of externally founded realism that eschew inner representation. Part ii is devoted to three books that put the case for sense-Data (pennycuick, Jackson, Ginet) and some of the arguments against (pitcher). Part iii outlines james j gibson's psychological theory. Part iv takes up the arguments (...) for a theory of 'dual coding', Combining a non-Epistemic inner presentation as a first stage with epistemic selection as an independent module. The mental-Image argument (kosslyn, Pylyshyn) and wittgenstein's remarks on psychology, Recently published, Are brought in as relevant to this issue. (edited). (shrink)

White on White/Black on Black is a unique contribution to the philosophy of race. The text explores how 14 philosophers, 7 white and 7 black, philosophically understand the dynamics of the process of racialization.

The formal properties of orbits in a plane are explored by elementary topology. The notions developed from first principles include: convex and polygonal orbits; convexity; orientation, winding number and interior; convex and star-shaped regions. It is shown that an orbit that is convex with respect to each of its interior points bounds a convex region. Also, an orbit that is convex with respect to a fixed point bounds a star-shaped region.Biological considerations that directed interest to these patterns are indicated, and (...) the implications of the prospect of higher orders of star-shapedness mentioned. (shrink)

The central topic for this book is the ethics of treating individuals as though they are members of groups. The book raises many interesting questions, including: Why do we feel so much more strongly about discrimination on certain grounds – e.g. of race and sex - than discrimination on other grounds? Are we right to think that discrimination based on these characteristics is especially invidious? What should we think about ‘rational discrimination’ – ‘discrimination’ which is based on sound statistics? To (...) take just one of dozens of examples from the book. Suppose a landlord turns away a prospective tenant, because this prospective tenant is of a particular ethnicity – arguing that statistics show that one in four of this group have been shown in the past to default on their rent. That seems clearly unfair to people of this ethnicity. But we are routinely being judged in this way – not just on the basis of our ethnicity, but assumptions are made about us and decisions taken about us based on our gender, religion, job, post-code, hobbies, blood-group, nationality, etc. Now suppose that another landlord turns away a convicted criminal, arguing that one in four of convicted criminals have been shown to be unreliable rent payers. Is our intuition the same as before? Should it be? This book is suitable for all students of philosophy, especially those with an interest in applied ethics. (shrink)

Introduction: Vulnerability is a poorly understood concept in research ethics, often aligned to autonomy and consent. A recent addition to the literature represents a taxonomy of vulnerability developed by Kipnis, but this refers to the conduct of clinical trials rather than qualitative research, which may raise different issues. Aim: To examine issues of vulnerability in cancer and palliative care research obtained through qualitative interviews. Method: Secondary analysis of qualitative data from 26 black Caribbean and 19 white British patients with advanced (...) cancer. Results: Four domains of vulnerability derived from Kipnis’s taxonomy were identified and included: (i) communicative vulnerability, represented by participants impaired in their ability to communicate because of distressing symptoms; (ii) institutional vulnerability, which referred to participants who existed under the authority of others—for example, in hospital; (iii) deferential vulnerability, which included participants who were subject to the informal authority or the independent interests of others; (iv) medical vulnerability, which referred to participants with distressing medical conditions; and (v) social vulnerability, which included participants considered to belong to an undervalued social group. Participants from both ethnic groups populated all these domains, but those who were black Caribbean were more present among the socially vulnerable. Conclusions: Current classifications of vulnerability require reinterpretation when applied to qualitative research at the end of life. We recommend that researchers and research ethics committees reconceptualise vulnerability using the domains identified in this study and consider the research context and interviewers’ skills. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:506 BOOK REVIEWS signified by bread and wine (39). Schoot sums up the concept of mysterium operative here by saying that it is "something hidden, voiced truly but inadequately, spiritually signified by the Old Testament and now fulfilled in Christ and the sacrament of the eucharist" (38). Despite the meticulous scholarship displayed in this work, students of Aquinas's theological epistemology and christology may well be struck by what seem (...) to be gratuitous harmonizations between theology and christology (the parallel between the analogy of being and the communicationem idiomatum, making the hypostatic union paradigmatic in the naming of God), the overwhelming weight given to the signification/supposition distinction, and the seeming reduction of the principles of christology to linguistic rules. In addition, the complex and often turgid style serves to obfuscate certain important questions, such as Aquinas's understanding of Christ's esse. Is Aquinas being forced into a theological mold that he himself would not recognize? Dominican School ofPhilosophy and Theology Berkeley, California EDWARD L. KRASEVAC, 0.P An Introduction to the History of Exegesis, vol. III: St. Augustine. By BERTRAND DE MARGERIE, S.J. Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1993. Pp. xi+ 169 (paper). Unfortunately, today many scholars and general readers neglect the work of the Fathers of the Church. One often hears that the writings of the Fathers have become less relevant or less important because there has been so much progress in Scripture studies and because the Fathers did not really try to find out what the inspired writer meant to say-for they relied on allegory. St. Augustine's exegesis poses a particular difficulty in terms of its reliance on allegory. Augustine was strongly influenced by the allegorical exegesis of bishop Ambrose and recounts in his Confession.5 (VI, iv, 6) how he used to hear Ambrose teaching in his sermons, as though he were most diligently teaching a rule: "The letter kills, but the spirit gives life." Father de Margerie admits that Augustine did indeed suffer from "excessive allegorism" (126), but he insists that this is no reason to give up entirely on Augustine. Instead, with keen scholarly analysis he shows that, in spite of some defects, Augustine did in fact give us some really fine work in Scripture study. Father de Margerie stresses that according to Augustine the purpose of all Scripture is to teach love: "... the plenitude and the end of the Law and of BOOK REVIEWS 507 all the sacred Scriptures is the love... of a Being which is to be enjoyed and of a being that can share that enjoyment with us" (20; from De Doctrina Christiana, I, xxv, 39). This love is taught even at the beginning of Scripture: "... on a subjective level, Moses wrote for the love of all men" (30). But how could this be? "It seems to us nowadays that Augustine failed to perceive adequately the progressive nature of the disclosure of religious truths by the God who revealed them" (30). Father de Margerie responds to this objection by pointing out that given the belief that Moses had been given a transient, "face to face vision of the Divine being... and that this experience was granted him precisely in favor of the universal Church," it makes sense to assume that "the prophet and maker of the old Law received knowledge, during this vision and through divine revelation, of how future interpretation of the Law he was issuing-like that which Jesus was to issuewould extend even to enemies the love of one's neighbor" (31). Augustine was led to this view in the light of the varied interpretations being proposed in his own time for Genesis (48). Father de Margerie admits that "Augustine himself limits the scope of his theory concerning the plurality of literal meaning to a few rather exceptional verses of scripture" (65). Augustine believed, however, that Moses had received most remarkable gifts: I cannot think that Moses Your most faithful servant was given by you lesser gifts than I should have wished and longed to have for myself if I had been born at the same time as he.... I should have wished that you would grant me such a skill in... (shrink)

The Turing Test (TT), as originally specified, centres on theability to perform a social role. The TT can be seen as a test of anability to enter into normal human social dynamics. In this light itseems unlikely that such an entity can be wholly designed in an off-line mode; rather a considerable period of training insitu would be required. The argument that since we can pass the TT,and our cognitive processes might be implemented as a Turing Machine(TM), that consequently a (...) TM that could pass the TT could be built, isattacked on the grounds that not all TMs are constructible in a plannedway. This observation points towards the importance of developmentalprocesses that use random elements (e.g., evolution), but in these casesit becomes problematic to call the result artificial. This hasimplications for the means by which intelligent agents could bedeveloped. (shrink)