In this double-volume work, a great modern philosopher propounds a system of thought in which Einstein's theory of relativity represents only the latest (albeit the most radical) fulfillment of the motives inherent to mathematics and the physical sciences. In the course of its exposition, it touches upon such topics as the concept of number, space and time, geometry, and energy; Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry; traditional logic and scientific method; mechanism and motion; Mayer's methodology of natural science; Richter's definite proportions; relational (...) concepts and the activity of the ego; Einstein's relativity and "reality"; and the philosophical concept of truth and its role in relativity theory. 1923 edition. (shrink)

The Nature of Shamanism: Substance and Function of. Religious Metaphor. Michael Ripinsky‐Naxon. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. xi. 289 pp. $19.95 (paper). $59.50 (cloth).

The purpose of this article is to reconstruct Aristotle’s distinction between primary substances and their homonyms. It is shown that the Stagirite regards both body parts and artefacts as mere homonyms of primary substances when they are no longer capable of performing their function (ergon) and actualizing their end (telos). In the course of the present discussion, Aristotle’s approach is confronted with his famous doctrine of the four causes, whilst an analysis of the examples given by the Stagirite serves (...) the purpose of determining the ontic status of homonyms. Subsequently, this paper argues that Aristotle’s hylomorphism not only defies the functionalist assumption of the irrelevance of matter but also precludes the possibility of equating artefacts with living organisms. The discussion concludes with an observation that primary substances which are truly (alēthōs) and things which are only homonymously (plēn homōnymōs) require different definitions. (shrink)

Unlike other kinds of theories of justice, reparatory justice can only be negatively defined, in non-ideal contexts in which initial wrongs had already been committed. For one, what counts and what does not count as wrongdoing or as an unjust state of affairs resulted from that wrongdoing depends on the normative framework upon which a theorist relies. Furthermore, the measures undertaken for alleviating historical injustices can be assessed only from the vantage point of other, independent normative considerations. In the present (...) paper I argue that this lack of substance is a feature that, far from being problematic, is what makes reparatory justice attractive. The specific example that I put forward is that of a reparatory justice account which seeks to instantiate the desiderata of a sufficientarian theory of justice. At first, distributive justice fills the content of reparatory justice, specifying up to what level reparations in-kind or compensatory measure should go. Afterwards, reparatory justice clarifies and provides epistemic inputs for distributive justice. Reparatory justice thus becomes an epistemic source for distributive justice, in that it provides the means for assessing whether someone’s level of well-being can be traced to her choice or to a wider, historically-sensitive operationalization of her “circumstances”. (shrink)

Substance ontologists claim that substances are ontologically primary because the category of substance enjoys unique explanatory potential. Unless it can be shown that "only" substances fulfill the central explanatory tasks in ontology, this inference from explanatory success to ontological primacy amounts to a fallacy akin to the error Whitehead called 'the fallacy of misplaced concreteness'. I investigate recent prototypical arguments for substance metaphysics and try to show that some explanatory functions of substance can also be fulfilled (...) by other ontological categories. In particular, I argue against M. Ayers that there is no reason to think that all and only substances are discrete individuals, natural wholes, and logical units. I conclude that the category of substance does not provide us with a uniquely powerful explanans for the notion of logical and physical unity. (shrink)

On the one hand, Aristotle claims that the matter of a material thing is not part of its form. On the other hand, he suggests that the proper account of a natural thing must include a specification of the kind of matter in which it is realized. There are three possible strategies for dealing with this apparent tension. First, there may be two kinds of definition, so that the definition of the form of a thing does not include any specification (...) of its matter, whereas the definition of a compound does. Second, the definition of a substance may not include a specification of its matter at all, but still reveal in what kinds of matter its form can be realized. Third, there may be a special kind of matter, functional matter, which belongs to the form of certain things. I will show that the functional matter of a thing does not belong to its form (in a strict sense of “form”), but that an adequate account of natural substances and their functions must nonetheless involve a reference to their functional matter. This means that the function of a natural thing is not the same as its form and that its adequate account as a natural thing is not a definition (in a strict sense of “form” and “definition”). (shrink)

My objective is a better comprehension of two theoretically fundamental concepts. One, the concept of a substance in an ordinary (non-Aristotelian) sense, ranging over such things as salt, carbon, copper, iron, water, and methane – kinds of stuff that now count as (chemical) elements and compounds. The other I’ll call the object-concept in the abstract sense of Russell, Wittgenstein, and Frege in their logico-semantical enquiries. The material object-concept constitutes the heart of our received logico / ontic system, still massively (...) influenced by Aristotle after almost 2.5 millennia. On such an account, the fundamentality of material objects and their attributes are the metaphysical basis of the cosmos, as reflected in our received logic, Quine’s ‘canonical notation’ – derived via the empiricism of Russell from Frege’s function-based Begriffschrifft, and consisting of concrete singular terms and variables, quantifiers and predicate-expressions. The inadequacy of Frege’s approach to understanding concepts is reflected in his initial question. Frege enquires of ‘what it is that we are calling an object’, remarking that he regards a regular definition as impossible: “we have here something too simple to admit of logical analysis”. The imagined ultimacy or simplicity of the idea of a single object (arithmetically, just a unit – one as against two, three, four, etc.) as foundational to the calculus is just that – imagined. It is also guaranteed to block the comprehension of the substance-concept. (shrink)

Parental substance use is a major risk factor for child development, heightening the risk of drug problems in adolescence and young adulthood, and exposing offspring to several types of traumatic event. First, prenatal drug exposure can be considered a form of trauma itself, with subtle but long-lasting sequalae at the neuro-behavioural level. Second, parents’ addiction often entails a childrearing environment characterised by poor parenting skills, disadvantaged contexts and adverse childhood experiences, leading to dysfunctional outcomes. Young adults born from/raised by (...) parents with drug problems and who develop a Substance Used Disorder (SUD) themselves might display a particularly severe condition in terms of cognitive deficits and impaired personality function. This preliminary study aims to investigate the role of early exposure to drugs as a traumatic event, capable of affecting the psychological status of young drug addicts. In particular, it intends to examine the neuropsychological functioning and personality profile of young adults with severe SUDs who were exposed to drugs early in their family context. The research involved 3 groups each consisting of 15 young adults (aged 18-24): a group of inpatients diagnosed with SUDs and exposed to drugs early, a comparison group of non-exposed inpatients and a group of non-exposed youth without SUDs. A neuropsychological battery (Esame Neuropsicologico Breve-2), an assessment procedure for personality disorders (Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-200) and the Symptom CheckList-90-Revised were administered. According to present preliminary results, young drug addicts exposed to drugs during their developmental age were characterised by elevated rates of neuropsychological impairments, especially at the expense of attentive and executive functions; personality disorders were also common but did not differentiate them from non-exposed young people with SUDs. Alternative multi-focused prevention and intervention programs are needed for children of drug-misusing parents, addressing executive functions and adopting a trauma-focused approach. (shrink)

The Qur’an and Pancasila are two sources of Indonesian values that are existentially different from each other. Despite the difference, they both factually could walk in harmony, and it is important to seek the similarities and differences between them. This article presents the systematic, substantive, and functional reasons for how they could work altogether by looking at the similarities and differences in anatomy, taxonomy, substance, and function of each component of the Qur’an and Pancasila. Utilizing a naturalistic approach (...) with content analysis genre, the writers collected the data from various documents, including; manuscripts of the Qur’an, Pancasila, speeches of the founding fathers of Indonesia, and the previous research results using document recording sheets. The collected data were analyzed through content analysis techniques and displayed in pictures and tables. The results showed: (1) the anatomy of the Qur’an consists of four components, namely: divinity, law, history, and story, while the anatomy of Pancasila only consists of a law component; (2) the taxonomy of the Qur’an is intersected with one another, while the taxonomy of Pancasila is stratified. The values in all components are generally the same, and the divine value is the primary value. The taxonomy of values in Pancasila is degraded and systemic, with the divine value as the main value / encompassing other values (prima causa); (3) the Qur’an’s substance covers all life dimensions while the dimensions of Pancasila are limited to law. One of the essential points in this section is that Pancasila makes the Qur’an a source of value; (4) the Qur’an is partially or holistically functional while Pancasila is holistically functional. Therefore, componential and substantial, the Qur’an and Pancasila have similarities, while structurally and functionally, they are different. Contribution: The results of this study described a systematic sequence, substantive relationships and functional pattern between the Qur’an and Pancasila. These research findings are expected to reduce misunderstandings among the Indonesian people about the Qur’an and Pancasila. (shrink)

Leibniz's views on divine concurrence have presented interpreters with great difficulty. On the one hand, Leibniz thought that creatures have genuine causal powers, causing their own states. But he also believed that God is immediately involved in every aspect of the world by endorsing the 'conservation is but continuous creation' thesis . Accordingly, when faced with the question of how divine and creaturely causality relate, Leibniz held that God and creatures concur. It is not obvious, however, how this 'concurrence' is (...) supposed to work or even whether these two commitments can be consistently maintained. ;The key challenge comes from Malebranche who argues, rather persuasively, that occasionalism follows from CCC. Leibniz, thus, needs to avoid this inference if he is to maintain real forces in creatures. In chapter two, I show how he avoids the inference by holding a restricted version of CCC. I go on to propose that Leibniz's account of concurrence is basically a cooperation model, in which God produces the modifications of creatures in accordance with the reasons presented within each creature's nature. Though God is the sole efficient cause, the creature contributes and acts in the form of rational determination, i.e., it determines which particular modification God is to produce. ;This proposal raises the worry that Leibnizian reasons are uncomfortably similar to Malebranchean occasions. In chapter three, I examine Leibniz's own attempts to distance himself from occasionalism but argue that whatever the merits of these arguments are they fall short of addressing this problem. ;Chapter four concentrates on this issue of distinguishing reasons and occasions. I argue that their core difference lies in that Leibnizian reasons demand, unlike Malebranchean occasions. This demand consists in the creature's states having an intrinsic value and this inherent goodness accounts for why they function as reasons behind God's decision to act. Furthermore, reasons as such motivate but do not necessitate and this motivating power of the goodness of reasons is a genuine power for Leibniz. For Malebranche, however, that which does not necessitate is not a cause and I conclude that this is the core difference between Leibniz and Malebranche. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to present a new theory of synaptic function in the nervous system. The basis for this theory is the experimental demonstration that a nerve impulse assumes five different forms as it advances through the synaptic region, and that five basic mathematical operations have been identified as being involved in the transformation of one form into another form. As a result of these data, the synaptic region is regarded as a functional unit where information (...) coming to it is unpacked, processed, stored, and retrieved for transit to another synaptic region or effector site. The data also suggests that a nerve impulse is a bolus of energy, therefore, without substance; that it contains information coded in its shape or form; that it is precisely described mathematically. Furthermore, the data suggests synaptic regions process these nerve impulses by applying mathematical operations to them; that function in the synaptic region is highly stereotyped (programmed); that chemical substances are associated with the mathematical operations. The basic approach of this theory is to regard a significant portion of the nervous system as an interface between the external universe and man himself. As an interface, the nervous system receives and processes information from both the external universe and man himself in a programmed manner. The interface functions by converting the information it receives into a bolus of energy, the nerve impulse, then processes the bolus by converting it into numbers or functions and applying mathematical operation to it. (shrink)

Written by one of today's most creative and innovative philosophers, Ruth Garrett Millikan, this book examines basic empirical concepts; how they are acquired, how they function, and how they have been misrepresented in the traditional philosophical literature. Millikan places cognitive psychology in an evolutionary context where human cognition is assumed to be an outgrowth of primitive forms of mentality, and assumed to have 'functions' in the biological sense. Of particular interest are her discussions of the nature of abilities as (...) different from dispositions, her detailed analysis of the psychological act of reidentifying substances, and her critique of the language of thought for mental representation. In a radical departure from current philosophical and psychological theories of concepts, this book provides the first in-depth discussion on the psychological act of reidentification. (shrink)

Corporate sustainability is an important strategy and value orientation for marketing, but scarce research addresses the organizational drivers and barriers to including it in companies’ marketing strategies and processes. The purpose of this study is to determine levels of commitment to corporate sustainability in marketing, processes associated with sustainability marketing commitment, drivers of sustainability marketing at the functional level of marketing, and its organizational context. Using survey data from 269 managers in marketing, covering a broad range of industries in Sweden (...) and Denmark, we took a structural modelling approach to examine construct relationships, mediation, and moderation effects. Overall, the findings show that marketing capabilities associated with the innovation of new products, services, and business models constitute a strong driver to leverage sustainability marketing commitment. In conjunction with insights into processes related to the enactment of sustainability marketing, this result indicates that companies’ marketing departments have a propensity to drive corporate sustainability. The study provides substance to the idea of aligning substantive marketing capabilities closer to dynamic capabilities. Accordingly, the study reveals that reliance on market orientation alone does not lead to greater sustainability commitment. (shrink)

According to one argument for Animalism about personal identity, animal , but not person , is a Wigginsian substance concept—a concept that tells us what we are essentially. Person supposedly fails to be a substance concept because it is a functional concept that answers the question “what do we do?” without telling us what we are. Since person is not a substance concept, it cannot provide the criteria for our coming into or going out of existence; animal (...) , on the other hand, can provide such criteria. This argument has been defended by Eric Olson, among others. I argue that this line of reasoning fails to show Animalism to be superior to the Psychological Approach, for the following two reasons: (1) human animal , animal , and organism are all functional concepts, and (2) the distinction between what something is and what it does is illegitimate on the reading that the argument needs. (shrink)

In his ground-breaking series of films The Decalogue , Krzysztof Kieslowski creates an enigmatic character who appears in nine of the ten otherwise-disconnected films. Kieslowski neither names this mysterious man nor allows him one word of dialogue. In several of the films, the man is seen by other characters; in others he remains invisible to them. Sometimes he seems to influence the decisions of the protagonists; other times, he seems to remain a passive observer of their problems. Many scholars who (...) write on The Decalogue either do not note the «silent witness», or limit themselves to peripheral comments of little substance; others comment only briefly, and superficially on his enigmatic presence in one or other of the films. The present article offers a detailed analysis of the «silent witness» in each of the Decalogue films and develops a comprehensive synthesis of his critical moral significance in the series, proposing that the witness is an effective metaphor of the providential presence of the loving God for the protagonists; while respecting their liberty, he moves in their often-troubled lives, guides their moral decisions, gives them hope and brings them to higher levels of freedom and Christian responsibility. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMaterialism is the view that everything that is real is material or is the product of material processes. It tends to take either a ‘cosmological’ form, as a claim about the ultimate nature of the world, or a more specific ‘psychological’ form, detailing how mental processes are brain processes. I focus on the second, psychological or cerebral form of materialism. In the mid-to-late eighteenth century, the French materialist philosopher Denis Diderot was one of the first to notice that any self-respecting (...) materialist had to address the question of the status and functional role of the brain, and its relation to our mental life. After this the topic grew stale, with knee-jerk reiterations of ‘psychophysical identity’ in the nineteenth-century, and equally rigid assertions of anti-materialism. In 1960s philosophy of mind, brain–mind materialism reemerged as ‘identity theory’, focusing on the identity between mental processes and cerebral processes. In contrast, Diderot’s cerebral materialism allows... (shrink)

We examine the relation between worker substance abuse and workplace fraud in a sample of medical doctors. Relative to their peers, we observe that doctors engaging in substance abuse are between 50 and 100 times more likely to commit fraud in a given year. This result is consistent with research suggesting that substance abuse both creates financial pressures and impairs the functioning of cognitive self-regulatory mechanisms. Our results are robust in within-subject tests and between-subject tests, as well (...) as in tests using instrumental variables that exploit exogenous variation in the state-level availability of opioids, a commonly abused substance. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMaterialism is the view that everything that is real is material or is the product of material processes. It tends to take either a ‘cosmological’ form, as a claim about the ultimate nature of the world, or a more specific ‘psychological’ form, detailing how mental processes are brain processes. I focus on the second, psychological or cerebral form of materialism. In the mid-to-late eighteenth century, the French materialist philosopher Denis Diderot was one of the first to notice that any self-respecting (...) materialist had to address the question of the status and functional role of the brain, and its relation to our mental life. After this the topic grew stale, with knee-jerk reiterations of ‘psychophysical identity’ in the nineteenth-century, and equally rigid assertions of anti-materialism. In 1960s philosophy of mind, brain–mind materialism reemerged as ‘identity theory’, focusing on the identity between mental processes and cerebral processes. In contrast, Diderot’s cerebral materialism allows for a more culturally sedimented sense of the brain, which he described in his late Elements of Physiology as a ‘book – except it is a book which reads itself’. Diderot thus provides a lesson for materialism as it reflects on the status of the brain, science and culture. (shrink)

Mothers with prenatal substance use disorder often show broad deficits in their reflective functioning, implying severe risk for the relationship with their baby. Two different types of prenatal maternal RF may be important for parenting: adult attachment-focused-RF, regarding parent's own childhood experiences, and parenting-focused RF regarding their own current process of becoming a parent. However, their inter-relations and potentially different roles for parenting intervention outcomes are not clear. This study examined the associations between mothers' prenatal AAI-RF and pre- and (...) post-natal PRF, and their role in mother-infant interaction and substance use as treatment outcomes. The participants were 57 treatment-enrolled pregnant mothers with SUD and 50 low-risk comparison mothers. AAI-RF was measured with the Adult Attachment Interview. For a subsample of 30 mothers with SUD, PRF was measured with Pregnancy Interview, and with Parent Development Interview at 4 months. Mother-infant interaction was measured with Emotional Availability Scales at 4 and 12 months, and maternal substance use by post-natal substance relapses. Prenatal AAI-RF and pre- and post-natal PRF were highly associated with each other. Only higher prenatal PRF predicted better mother-infant interaction quality at 4 months and less substance use during the child's first year. Interestingly, prenatal PRF and AAI-RF predicted opposite changes in mother-infant interaction: lower prenatal PRF, but higher AAI-RF predicting more positive change. AAI-RF was especially associated with a change in maternal intrusiveness and hostility, indicating that it represents a more general regulatory tendency. Further studies are needed in larger and lower-risk samples. Our results suggest, however, that AAI-RF and PRF are partially distinct and should be uniquely targeted in perinatal interventions. (shrink)

이 논문의 목표는 정밀과학에 대한 카시러의 철학을 해명하고 평가하려는 것이다. 나는 먼저 『실체와 기능』에 드러난 카시러의 철학적 문제의식을 검토하고, 그의 다양한 ‘기능’개념을 논한다. 그런 뒤 수학에 대한 카시러의 철학을 크게 기능 관점과 역사적 발전주의라는 두 가지 견해로 나누어 분석하고 평가한다. 나는 두 견해 모두 현대수학에 대한 타당한 해석이라고 주장한다. 자연과학에 대한 카시러의 견해는 거의 전적으로 수학적 인식을 모범으로 형성되었다. 따라서 나는 자연과학에 대한 카시러의 견해도 마찬가지로 기능 관점과 역사적 발전주의로 나누어 분석하고 평가한다. 나는 카시러의 기능 관점은 자연과학에 대해서도 타당하지만, 그의 (...) 역사적 발전주의는 양자역학의 발전에 비추어 타당하지 않다고 주장한다. 마지막으로 나는 카시러의 선험 개념에 대한 최근의 학술적 논쟁을 비판적으로 검토한다. (shrink)

There are two possible ways to understand form and substance in legal reasoning. The first refers to the distinction between concepts and their applications, whereas the second concentrates on the difference between authoritative and non-authoritative reasons. These approaches refer to the formalistic and positivistic conceptions of the law, the latter being the author's point of departure. Nevertheless, they are both helpful means of analysis in legal interpretation. Interpretation is divided into formal and substantive justification. They have certain functions and (...) they are utilized in interaction. Authoritative reasons and formal reasoning constitute the necessary point of departure. However, substantive reasons are also necessary in order to justify choices included in interpretation. In addition to formal and substantive reasoning, the role of legal concepts is analysed. (shrink)

Major neurocognitive changes occur during adolescence, making this phase as one of the most critical developmental period of life. Furthermore, this phase in life is also the time in youth substance use has its onset. Several studies demonstrated the differential associations of alcohol and cannabis use concerning the neurocognitive functioning of both males and females. Past and contemporary literature on gender-specific effects in neuroscience of addiction is predominantly based on cross-sectional datasets and data that is limited in terms of (...) measurement variability. Given the importance of gender-specific effects in addiction studies, and in order to address the two above-mentioned gaps in the literature, the present study aimed to compare neurocognitive functioning of male and female adolescents in the context of cannabis and alcohol use, while employing a longitudinal design with multiple repeated measurements. Participants were 3,826 high school students (47% female; mean age, 12.7), which were recruited from 31 high schools in the greater Montreal area. Participants were requested to complete annual surveys for five consequent years, from 7th to 11th grade, assessing their alcohol/cannabis use and neurocognitive functioning (working memory, delayed recall memory, perceptual reasoning, and inhibition control). The analytical strategy was focused on the longitudinal association between each predictor (female, male) and each of the outcomes (domains of neurocognitive functioning). Multilevel linear models assessed the association of alcohol and cannabis consumption and the four domains of neurocognitive functioning. Results revealed a gender by within-subject interaction, suggesting a weaker effect of yearly fluctuation of cannabis use on working memory among males compared to females. Our findings suggest a different pattern of neurocognitive impairment of female and male working memory after using cannabis over the course of adolescence. Early initiation of cannabis use potentially results in more spatial working memory deficits in female adolescents. This may negatively influence young females’ capacity in academic settings and lead to significant impairment in adulthood, which critically decreases the individual’s quality of life. (shrink)

G.W.F. Hegel focuses his treatment of Sophocles' drama, Antigone , in the Phenomenology of Spirit, on the ideal of mutual recognition. Antigone was punished with death for performing the burial ritual honoring her brother, Polyneices, to whose irreplaceability she attests in her well-known speech of defiance. Hegel argues that Antigone's loss of Polyneices was the irreparable loss of reciprocal recognition. Only in the brother sister relation, Hegel thought, could there be equality in mutual recognition. I argue that this equality cannot (...) be found in a marriage union with a husband or in the public sphere of civil society. Situating Hegel's account of marriage in the Philosophy of Right within the history of marriage and historical literature on the emerging market economy of Hegel's time, I demonstrate that Hegel's perception of equality in the reciprocal recognition of the brother sister relation was a function of both economic realities and his relationship with his sister, Christiane. I show desire in the Phenomenology to be the desire for dominance, and I show the brother sister relation to be free of desire. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 437-438 [Access article in PDF] Michael V. Wedin. Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Oxford Aristotle Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 482. Cloth, $55.00. Michael Wedin has written the equivalent for Aristotle of what biblical scholars would call a "harmony of the gospels." It is a wonderfully rich and argumentatively dense reconstruction (...) of Aristotle's two most important treatises on substance, the Categories and Metaphysics Zeta, works that many of our most able Aristotle scholars have declared irreconcilable.The first chapter, on "the plan" of the Categories, includes a sensible account of the role in that work of the "onymies," as Wedin calls homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy. The second chapter, which focuses on "nonsubstantial individuals" in the Categories, gives the most philosophically sophisticated reconstruction known to me of how Aristotle might have conceived this white in Socrates to be a nonrecurrent particular. Having myself contributed to the glut of recent scholarship on nonsubstantial individuals in the Categories, I have personal, as well as professional, reasons to praise the rigor and insight of this chapter.In Chapter 3 Wedin tries to pin down the ontological commitment of Aristotle's Categories. Since, if there were no primary substances there would not be anything else, the fundamental ontological commitment of the Categories is a commitment to primary substances. Individual nonsubstances exist just in case there are primary substances in which they inhere. As for species and genera of substances and species and genera of the nonsubstantial individuals that inhere in them, Wedin finds Aristotle curiously indifferent to their existence.Chapter 4, a transitional chapter, takes up a range of possible views on the relation between the Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Incompatibilism is argued against, yet the arguments for compatibilism in recent commentaries are found to be insufficient. In the next chapter Wedin moves on to his own statement of, and justification for, compatibilism.The key to Wedin's compatibilist interpretation is the distinction he draws between being a substance and being the "substance-of" something. Zeta can then be seen to be supplementing, rather than revising, let alone contradicting, the Categories, if Zeta can be understood to be about the substance-of the primary substances of the Categories (157-8).Aristotle proposes in Z3 three candidates for what the substance of, say, Socrates, is, namely, his matter, his form, and the compound of the two. Aristotle settles on form and discusses form as essence in Z4 and Z5, which discussion Wedin takes up in his own [End Page 437] Chapter 6. Then in Chapter 7 Wedin takes on the enigmatic claim of Z6, "In the case of things that are primary and spoken of per se, it is clear that the thing and the essence of the thing are the same" (1032a4-6).Wedin makes Chapter 8, which is primarily a treatment of Z10 and Z11, a discussion of Aristotle on "compositional plasticity," that is, on whether, say, the form of human being might be realized in something other than flesh and bones. "[O]ne could grant," Wedin writes, that to be a human being is just to be a member of a determinate biological species and so to have a very specific material nature, and yet insist that the form of such creatures be realizable in quite different sorts of matter. Creatures so constituted would not be human beings but they would be entities with similar functional capacities and states... From the point of view of philosophy of mind, for example, what matters are the psychological capacities, functions, and states characteristic of persons. Just what these are is determined by a form—the form that happens to be realized in human matter. (340-41) In Chapter 9 Wedin turns to Z13, which, as he acknowledges, has often been thought to be the most confounding chapter in Zeta. Wedin draws on Z16 to help resolve the aporia with which Z13 ends (roughly this... (shrink)

Famously, Galilei made the ontological claim that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. Probably, if only implicitly, most contemporary natural scientists share his view. This paper, in contradistinction, argues that nature is only partly written in the language of mathematics; partly, it is written in the language of functions and partly in a very simple purely qualitative language, too. During the argumentation, three more specific but in themselves interesting theses are put forward: first (in Section (...) 3), there are more shapes than real numbers; second (in Section 4), the metrological notion ‘amount of substance’ can profitably be exchanged for ‘number of entities’; third (in Section 5), prototypical concepts will always be scientifically important. (shrink)

There are indications that the interpersonal affective factor and the social deviation factor, both of which are underlying dimensions of psychopathy, have a positive and a negative relationship, respectively, with executive functioning. However, this is seldom taken into consideration in the research on the relationship between executive functioning and psychopathy, which may be an explanation for the many inconsistent results in this area as reported in the literature (e.g., Rogers, 2006). In the present study, executive functioning was studied using the (...) Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) in 53 inpatients of a Dutch forensic psychiatric clinic who were classified by means of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Special attention was given to the relationship between the two separate factors and executive functioning. Age, educational level, and substance abuse were controlled for in the analysis. No difference was found between psychopathic (N = 17) and nonpsychopathic (N = 36) patients in the WCST scoring categories, nor was there a significant difference in the four diagnostic subgroups defined by the two factors. However, the trends observed do justify further study in this direction. (shrink)

The paper takes off from the problem of finding a proper content for the relation of identity as it holds or fails to hold among ordinary things or substances. The necessary conditions of identity are familiar, the sufficient conditions less so. The search is for conditions at once better usable than the Leibnizian Identity of Indiscernibles (independently suspect) and strong enough to underwrite all the formal properties of the relation.It is contended that the key to this problem rests at the (...) level of metaphysics and epistemology alike with a sortalist position. Sortalism is the position which insists that, if the question is whether a and b are the same, it has to be asked what are they? Any sufficiently specific answer to that question will bring with it a principle of activity or functioning and a mode of behaviour characteristic of some particular kind of thing by reference to which questions of persistence or non-persistence through change can be adjudicated.These contentions are illustrated by reference to familiar examples such as the human zygote, the Ship of Theseus and Shoemaker's Brown-Brownson. The first example is hostage for a mass of unproblematical cases. The problems presented by the second and third sort of examples arise chiefly (it is claimed) from an incompleteness in our conceptions of the relevant sort—the what the thing in question is. That incompleteness need not prevent us from knowing perfectly well which thing we are referring to. In the concluding section, sortalism is defended against various accusations of anthropocentrism.The paper touches on the interpretation of Heraclitus, Leibniz's theory of clear indistinct ideas, the difficulties of David Lewis's ‘perdurantist’ or stroboscopic view of persistence, four-dimensionalism, and the relation of personal identity both to experiential memory and to the particular bodily physiognomy of a subject. At some points—as in connection with the so-called Only a and b rule—the paper corrects, supplements or extends certain theses or formulations proposed in the author's Sameness and Substance Renewed (2001). (shrink)