"Clear and coherent... One of the most exciting aspects of the book is the author's account of how the consequences and implications of the breakthroughs in quantum mechanics challenged the mechanistic, deterministic philosophy fostered by classical science."-- The Science Teacher. Written by a respected Harvard physicist, this introductory account of the evolution of quantum physics also explores the subject's philosophical implications. The opening chapters trace the development of physics from antiquity onward, chronicling the origins of quantum mechanics and the ways (...) in which quantum theory was used to address previously unsolved problems and to interpret observable atomic phenomena. Succeeding chapters are devoted to matters at the forefront of research pertaining to elementary particles, and the text concludes with a look at the old and new concepts of physical science and their relationship to issues of philosophy and religion--including considerations of causality, determinism, and free will. 1968 ed. 36 black-and-white figures. 12 halftones. (shrink)

Humans are moral creatures. Among all life on Earth, we alone experience rich moral emotions, follow complex rules governing how we treat one another, and engage in moral dialogue. But how did human morality evolve? And can humans become morally evolved? -/- In A Better Ape, Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell draw on the latest research in the biological and social sciences to explain the key role that morality has played in human evolution. They explore the moral traits that (...) humans share with chimpanzees; how a more complex moral mind enabled Homo sapiens to arise and out-compete other human species; and the place of morality alongside historic revolutions in technology and social organization. Throughout the book, Kumar and Campbell argue that morality co-evolved with intelligence and complex sociality. Morality prevents societal collapse and enables complex knowledge. -/- After unearthing the ancient origins of human morality, Kumar and Campbell use evolutionary theory to deliver profound insights about how to advance moral progress and resist moral regress, such as reducing animal suffering on industrial farms; capitalizing on the recent revolution in gay rights to foster a nascent revolution in transgender rights; opposing intersectional inequality that impacts women and people of color in lower socioeconomic classes; and addressing major problems of global inequality, especially impending crises of injustice caused by anthropogenic climate change. Understanding how we evolved--and how we continue to evolve--can help us become a better ape. (shrink)

The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication.

Arguments attempting to debunk moral beliefs, by showing they are unjustified, have tended to be global, targeting all moral beliefs or a large set of them. Popular debunking arguments point to various factors purportedly influencing moral beliefs, from evolutionary pressures, to automatic and emotionally-driven processes, to framing effects. We show that these sweeping arguments face a debunker’s dilemma: either the relevant factor is not a main basis for belief or it does not render the relevant beliefs unjustified. Empirical debunking arguments (...) in ethics can avoid this predicament, but only if they are refocused on highly selective classes of moral belief. Experimental data can combine with familiar consistency reasoning to reveal that like cases are not being treated alike. Selective debunking arguments are unlikely to yield sweeping sceptical conclusions, but they can lead to rational moral change. (shrink)

Excerpt from Les Sceptiques Grecs Enfin le doute lui-meme n'est pas le scepticisme. C'est du doute seulement qu'on pourrait dire qu'il est a peu pres contem porain de la pensee humaine; car, pour un esprit qui reflechit, la decouverte de la premiere erreur suffit a inspirer une certaine defiance de soi; et combien de temps a-t-il fallu a des esprits un peu attentifs pour s'apercevoir qu'ils s'etaient plus d'une fois trompee? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of (...) rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Two hundred and twenty-six state employees completed a structured questionnaire that investigated their ethical values and training needs. Top management were more likely to have attitudes against cronyism and giving advantage to others. Individuals higher in the organizational hierarchy, and female employees were more likely to believe that discriminatory practices were an ethical concern. In addition, employees with a larger number of clients outside of the organization were more supportive of the need to maintain strict confidentiality in business dealings. Employees'' (...) awareness and use of the organization''s code of conduct generally proved to be poor predictors of ethical values. Other analyses revealed that a variety of sociodemographic factors, job characteristics and ethical values predicted specific areas of training needs in ethics. (shrink)

Consider the Unshareability View, namely, the view that first person thought or self-thought—thought as typically expressed via the first person pronoun—is not shareable from subject to subject. In this article, I show that a significant number of Fregean and non-Fregean commentators of Frege have taken the Unshareability View to be the default Fregean position, rehearse Frege’s chief claims about self-thought and suggest that their combination entails the Unshareability View only on the assumption that there is a one-to-one correspondence between way (...) of thinking and thought-individuating cognitive value, outline an account of self-thought that rejects the assumption and keeps intact all of Frege’s chief claims, and respond to a number of worries to the effect that this proposal yields undesirable results from the point of view of the individuation of self-thought at the level of cognitive value. (shrink)

Der Wiener Kreis war Ausgangspunkt fA1/4r eine internationale philosophische Bewegung, die eine Erneuerung und Reformierung der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts zur Folge hatte. Der Neopositivismus dieser Gruppe ist die wohl wichtigste philosophische Erscheinung der Zwischenkriegszeit. Da gerade im deutschsprachigen Raum diese Philosophie Ablehnung erfahren hat, ihre ReprAsentanten von den faschistischen Machthabern verfolgt und vertrieben wurden, ist die Bedeutung dieser Gesamtdarstellung A1/4ber den Wiener Kreis von Victor Kraft, die erstmals 1946 publiziert wurde, kaum zu ermessen. Kraft, selbst GrA1/4ndungsmitglied des Zirkels, (...) geht nicht nur auf die Positionen seiner verschiedenen Vertreter ein, sondern erarbeitet ausfA1/4hrlich den metaphysikkritischen Ansatz des logischen Empirismus, die Wechselwirkungen und VerAnderungen, die dieses Denken durch den EinfluA Wittgensteins und spAter dann durch die Kritik Poppers erhalten hat. (shrink)

the three topics named in the title of this book: Christianity, antiquity, and Enlightenment, are not meant merely to describe the contents of the various chapters it contains. a narrative is implied in their selection and arrangement, and embedded ...

Elizabeth Anscombe’s classic paper Causality and Determination claims that causation can be perceived. It also defends causal singularism, the idea that the causal relation is fundamentally between the particular cause and effect, and does not depend on regularities holding elsewhere in the universe. But does the former furnish an argument for the latter? The present paper analyses a special type of causal experience involving emotional reactions to present stimuli; for instance, being frightened by a spider. It argues that such experiences (...) are strongly local, in the sense that they justify belief in a local causal relation independently of our knowledge about events elsewhere in the universe. If this analysis is correct, Humean regularity theories of causation are false; and all other non-singularist theories of causation face a difficult explanatory challenge. This means that the case for causal singularism comes out considerably strengthened. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Heidegger’s phenomenological investigation of boredom offers important clues for better understanding the notoriously difficult notion of non-objectifying intentionality (Längsintentionalität). I begin by examining Husserl’s account of the aporetic nature of self-temporalization and I claim that a discussion of moods can further clarify the relation between Längsintentionalität and the absolute time-constituting consciousness. Although Husserl himself broached the problem of the intentionality of moods, it was Heidegger who gave us a full-blown account of it. I point (...) out the correspondences between Heidegger’s morphology of boredom and Husserl’s analysis of temporal syntheses and I argue that the concept of absolute consciousness has much to gain from being confronted with the idea of ‘genuine boredom’. (shrink)

Recent interest in the idea that there can be scientific understanding without explanation lends new relevance to Duhem's notion of natural classification. According to Duhem, a classification that is natural teaches us something about nature without being explanatory. However, Duhem's conception of naturalness leaves much to be desired. In this paper, I argue that we can measure the naturalness of classification by using an amended version of the notion of unification as defined by Schurz and Lambert. If this thesis is (...) correct, it both leads to a better conceptual understanding of scientific understanding, and also gives the nascent literature on this topic some much-needed precision. (shrink)

KANT HELD THAT NEWTON AND ROUSSEAU HAD REVEALED the ways of Providence: “After Newton and Rousseau, God is justified, and Pope’s thesis is henceforth true.”.

Tratou-se de pesquisa de revisão crítica da literatura no campo da epistemologia. Partiu-se da hipótese das paixões “tóxicas”, isto é, de que existe uma analogia funcional entre as paixões e as toxicomanias devido à função do excesso narcísico, semelhante, mas não idêntica, em ambas. O objetivo foi introduzir os fundamentos teóricos dos métodos de pesquisa qualitativa desta hipótese, partindo-se do raciocínio por analogia na direção da semiologia psicanalítica. Mais precisamente, pretendeu-se discutir, em nível introdutório, alguns fundamentos teóricos destes métodos vistos (...) como análogos, com dupla finalidade: equacionar uma formulação da hipótese das paixões “tóxicas” de acordo com estes métodos; e estruturar um plano de estudo teórico de caráter psicanalítico, em debate interdisciplinar, adequado a esta formulação, a ser executado em outras investigações a partir da aplicação destes métodos na pesquisa desta hipótese. (shrink)

The eighth-century Latin manuscript Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, L 99 Sup. contains fifteen palimpsest leaves previously used for three Greek scientific texts: a text of unknown authorship on mathematical mechanics and catoptrics, known as the Fragmentum Mathematicum Bobiense (three leaves), Ptolemy's Analemma (six leaves), and an astronomical text that has hitherto remained unidentified and almost entirely unread (six leaves). We report here on the current state of our research on this last text, based on multispectral images. The text, incompletely preserved, (...) is a treatise on the construction and uses of a nine-ringed armillary instrument, identifiable as the “meteoroscope” invented by Ptolemy and known to us from passages in Ptolemy's Geography and in writings of Pappus and Proclus. We further argue that the author of our text was Ptolemy himself. (shrink)

We prove that WRP and saturation of the ideal NSω1together imply$\left\{ {a \in [\lambda ]^{\omega _1 } :{\text{cof}}\left( {{\text{sup}}\left( a \right)} \right) = \omega _1 } \right\}$, for every cardinalλwith cof(λ)≥ω2.

A physical theory is a construction of thought which is founded on experience so as to constitute knowledge of the natural world. Propositions in physics are constituted of concepts which express the properties and processes of the physical world. For purposes of record and communication concepts are designated by the terms of a language, such as mathematical symbols, and philosophical discussion may be based on linguistic forms. In this essay, however, the element of discussion will be the concept as a (...) mode of thought through which are grasped the attributes of physical things and the relations exemplified in physical processes. The present philosophical analysis of a physical theory, quantum mechanics, is to be carried out by critical analysis of its basic concepts. In particular, the program is to show that in quantum mechanics the concept of physical objects exhibits the characters of discontinuity, complementarity, and relativity. (shrink)

The present work contains an axiomatic treatment of some parts of the restricted version of intuitionistic mathematics advocated by G. F. C. Griss, also known as negationless intuitionistic mathematics.Formal systems NPC, NA, and FIMN for negationless predicate logic, arithmetic, and analysis are proposed. Our Theorem 4 in Section 2 asserts the translatability of Heyting's arithmetic HAinto NA. The result can in fact be extended to a large class of intuitionistic theories based on HAand their negationless counterparts. For instance, in Section (...) 3 this is shown for Kleene's system of intuitionistic analysis FIMand our FIMN. (shrink)

This paper presents an intuitionistic proof of a statement which under a classical reading is logically equivalent to Gödel's completeness theorem for classical predicate logic.

This paper proposes a transversal lecture of the Phenomenology of Mind from Hegel by following in the text the idea of death. To show the different figures of the death in the book, the author uses three lecture`s key: a) the death as natural end of the life, b) the fear of the death as regulative idea by the constitution the society, c) overcoming death through one kind of rational way of survival.

Germán Cano Gedisa Barcelona, 2023 149 páginas ISBN: 978-8419406002.

Whitehead's Philosophy of Science By VICTOR LOWE BOTH AS AN INVESTIGATOR of the foundations of mathematics and as a philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead ...