My colleague, Professor W. M. Lindsay, invites, or challenges, me to reply to his note on ‘Ciris’ ; I can but take him at his word. Professor Lindsay seeks to identify the two birds Haliaetus and Ciris, and finds the task an easy one; he identifies Ciris with a Tern confidently and categorically. We learn ‘from Gallus' epyllium … that it was a sea-bird with red legs, so rapid in flight that it always evaded the swoop of the sea-eagle. What (...) can this be but a tern?’. (shrink)

My colleague, Professor W. M. Lindsay, invites, or challenges, me to reply to his note on ‘Ciris’ ; I can but take him at his word.Professor Lindsay seeks to identify the two birds Haliaetus and Ciris, and finds the task an easy one; he identifies Ciris with a Tern confidently and categorically. We learn ‘from Gallus' epyllium … that it was a sea-bird with red legs, so rapid in flight that it always evaded the swoop of the sea-eagle. What can (...) this be but a tern?’. (shrink)

Ethics support staff help others to deal with moral challenges. However, they themselves can also experience moral challenges such as issues regarding (breaching) confidentiality when practicing ethics support. Currently there is no insight in these confidentiality issues and also no professional guidance for dealing with them. To gain insight into moral challenges related to Moral Case Deliberation (MCD), we studied a) beliefs and experiences of MCD facilitators regarding breaching confidentiality, b) considerations for (not) breaching confidentiality, and c) needs for an (...) ethics support tool. Data collection consisted of qualitative research methods: six semi-structured interviews; analyses of a) two recorded MCD sessions, and b) a focus group with MCD facilitators. Findings: MCD facilitators mention different conceptions and interpretations of confidentiality and various moral challenges. Questions concerning confidentiality ultimately cause reflections on roles and responsibilities of facilitators. Needs for ethics support vary from seeking advice to procedural and sometimes normative guidance for MCD facilitators. Education for MCD facilitators should focus on developing a concrete tool that stimulates awareness and reflection(skills). (shrink)

In 385B-C of the Cratylus, Plato appears to be formulating a version of the correspondence theory of truth, in such a way that it applies not only to discourse, but to individual names as well. However commentators who have remarked on this passage, either take exception to the reasoning, or find it necessary to interpret the conclusion with qualifications that Plato never could have intended. Richard Robinson, for example, on p.328 of “A Criticism of Plato’s Cratylus”, sums up the argument (...) thus:... since statements have a truthvalue, their parts, including names, must have a truthvalue too. Therefore names are true or false.and criticises it for involving a fallacy of division. Lorenz and Mittelstrasse, by contrast, construe the argument as validly proceeding from the true-false distinction of sentences to a corresponding true-false distinction of their parts. (shrink)

Ordinairement les manuels de biologie débutent par une exposition des caractéristiques qui distinguent la nature organique de la nature anorganique. En définissant et en limitant aussi exactement que possible son sujet, la biologie, le biologue ne fait pas autre chose que le mathématicien. La présente étude nous montre les obstacles presque insurmontables auxquels se heurtent le biologue et le mathématicien. A les bien considérer, les anciennes distinctions entre l'organisme d'une part et la matière non-organisée ou un système statique matériel, comme (...) la machine, d'autre part, se basant sur la nutrition, la respiration, les échanges vitaux et le mouvement ne tiennent plus debout. L'auteur allègue les expériences récentes de W. M. Stanley (Rockefeller Institute à Princeton) d'où il appert qu'il peut y avoir aussi génération dans les substances qui se secrètent sous la forme de cristaux (cristaux vivants), et s'en rapporte aux fameuses expériences de Driesch sur la régénération. Il y rattache les conceptions de Jordan (Utrecht) -- rapports entre les enchaînements des causes "d'après leur caractère amboceptor"; "le dessein des causes". Les vitalistes portent surtout leur attention sur "la totalité", les mécanistes sur "les parties". Le naturaliste qui se propose uniquement la recherche des causes physico-chimiques des phénomènes physico-chimiques serait parfaitement en droit de se contenter d'une conception mécaniste de la nature. Mais cette conception mécaniste ne suffirait pas à celui qui, comme l'auteur, aspire à comprendre l'organisme dans son ensemble. (shrink)

In his pioneering work of moral phenomenology, K. E. Løgstrup offered a phenomenological articulation of a central moment of ethical life: the experience in which “one finds oneself with the life of another more-or-less in one’s hands”. In such circumstances we encounter what Løgstrup calls simply the ethical demand. Løgstrup’s preferred formulation of the content of that demand is taken from the Bible: Love thy neighbor. This neighborly love is expressed in the form of spontaneous, selfless care for the other. (...) We shall have occasion in what follows to return to the content that Løgstrup associates with the ethical demand, but my primary focus here is not its content but its distinctive modality. Løgstrup specifies that modality in a fourfold analysis: the ethical demand is radical, silent, one-sided, and unfulfillable. My concern in what follows will be with the fourth element in this analysis – or what I shall refer to simply as Løgstrup’s unfulfillability thesis. My discussion addresses three specific questions: Is it coherent to suppose that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? Why does Løgstrup hold that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? What kind of response is appropriate in the face of an unfulfillable ethical demand? (shrink)

Organic chemists have been able to develop a robust, theoretical understanding of the phenomena they study; however, the primary theoretical devices employed in this field are not mathematical equations or laws, as is the case in most other physical sciences. Instead it is diagrams, and in particular structural formulas and potential energy diagrams, that carry the explanatory weight in the discipline. To understand how this is so, it is necessary to investigate both the nature of the diagrams employed in organic (...) chemistry and how these diagrams are used in the explanations of the discipline. I will begin this paper by characterizing some of the major ways that structural formulas used in organic chemistry. Next I will present a model of the explanations in organic chemistry and describe how both structural formulas and potential energy diagrams contribute to these explanations. This will be followed by several examples that support my abstract account of the role of diagrams in the explanations of organic chemistry. In particular, I will consider both the appeal to ‘hyperconjugation’ in the explanation of alkene stability and how the idea of ‘ring strain’ was developed to explain the relative stability of cyclic compounds. (shrink)

This study compared the family characteristics, victimization histories, and number of perpetration offenses of juvenile offenders who admitted to having had sex with animals to juvenile offenders who did not. The study found that 96% of the juveniles who had engaged in sex with nonhuman animals also admitted to sex offenses against humans and reported more offenses against humans than other sex offenders their same age and race. Those juveniles who had engaged in sex with animals were similar to other (...) sex offenders in that they also came from families with less affirming and more incendiary communication, lower attachment, less adaptability, and less positive environments. Those juveniles who had engaged in sex with animals reported victimization histories with more emotional abuse and neglect and a higher number of victimization events than other offenders. This would seem to indicate that sex with animals may be an important indicator of potential or co-occurring sex offenses against humans and may be a sign of severe family dysfunction and abuse that should be addressed in the arenas of psychological intervention, juvenile justice programs, and public policy. (shrink)

W G M Elliott; Ideology and School Mathamatics: Reply to C. P. Ormell, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 3, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 55–64, https://.

Philosophy of science is the organized expression of a growing intent among philosophers and scientists to clarify, perhaps unify, the programs, methods and results of the disciplines of philosophy and of science. The examination of fundamental concepts and presuppositions in the light of the positive results of science, systematic doubt of the positive results, and a thorough-going analysis and critique of logic and of language, are typical projects for this joint effort. It is not necessary to be committed to a (...) belief that science and philosophy are or should be one, or else that “never the twain shall meet.” If anything, there is to be expected a wholesome regard for the value of established science in furnishing a foil for philosophy and a check on its old extravagances. This does not mean that even the best-established science may not be subject to most devastating criticism by analysis of its foundations. In fact, despairing of the philosophy of the schools, science has done it largely for itself. The theories of gravitation, atomicity, electro-magnetism, evolution, relativity and quanta have all arisen through drastic revisions of complacent fundamental “truths.”. (shrink)

Since Teuffel's Römische Literatur mentions s.v. Varius the famous entry in the Monte Cassino MS. incipit thvestes varii, but ignores its occurrence in a Benevento MS. , it may be well to give some account of the latter codex. For I read with amusement a recent article in this journal in which the writer severely censured Mr. Garrod's ignorance of the entry in Paris 7530, but revealed his own ignorance by assuming that it was the scribe of the Paris MS. (...) who had the lost tragedy of Varius before him. (shrink)