This is a description of an avian-shaped feature that rests below a network of cellular structures found on a mound within the Argyre Basin of Mars in Mars Global Surveyor image M14-02185, acquired on April 30, 2000, and released to the public on April 4, 2001. The area examined is located near 48.0° South, 55.1° West. The formation is approximately 2,400 meters long from the tip of its beak to the tip of its farthest tail feather. There is a minimum (...) of six different variations in appearance of the surface material over this small area. Utilizing the public targeting request form provided on the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) website, co-author Miller secured a second image of the area that was obtained on July 3, 2006, showing this feature under different conditions S20-00165. The new image was then released to the public on August 11, 2006. A third image of the formation identified as MGS S13-01480 was acquired on December 15, 2005, and although officially processed on June 20, 2006, it was not made available to the public until August 22, 2009, on NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS) website. All three of the MGS images reveal defining aspects of this avian feature, including a head, beak, body, eye, leg, foot, toes, wing, and feathers. When taken together, these components induce the visual impression of an avian-shaped formation that exhibits a unique set of proportional features. Adjoining this formation is a composite of complex cellular features that form a compartmentalized infrastructure. The three authors who are veterinarians provide a critical analysis of the avian features, and the geologist and geoscientist authors examine natural mechanisms that could contribute to the formation of this feature. An extensive search of comparable regions within and beyond the area of the Argyre Basin was conducted. A list of these sites is provided, and terrestrial comparisons are also offered. (shrink)

In this chapter, we compare Kant and James’ accounts of freedom. Despite both thinkers’ rejecting compatibilism for the sake of practical reason, there are two striking differences in their stances. The first concerns whether or not freedom requires the possibility of an open future. James holds that morality hinges on the real possibility that the future can be affected by our actions. Kant, on the other hand, seems to maintain that we can still be free in the crucial sense, even (...) if none of our actions can have any effect on the future. The second difference between them is related, and concerns the location of freedom. Kant views experience as determined by natural necessity, and locates freedom outside of it, in things-in-themselves. James, on the other hand, has a richer conception of experience than Kant, and holds that we can locate our freedom within experience alone. In the end, we contend that James has a better account of how freedom relates to our experience, but this comes at a cost. For while Kant's account struggles with the relationship between freedom and experience, it has the advantage of insulating our freedom from potential empirical challenges. (shrink)

The recent debates concerning divine action in the context of quantum mechanics are examined with particular reference to the work of William Pollard, Robert J. Russell, Thomas Tracy, Nancey Murphy, and Keith Ward. The concept of a quantum mechanical “event” is elucidated and shown to be at the center of this debate. An attempt is made to clarify the claims made by the protagonists of quantum mechanical divine action by considering the measurement process of quantum mechanics in detail. Four (...) possibilities for divine influence on quantum mechanics are identified and the theological and scientific implications of each discussed. The conclusion reached is that quantum mechanics is not easily reconciled with the doctrine of divine action. (shrink)

The logical properties of the 'if-then' connective of ordinary English differ markedly from the logical properties of the material conditional of classical, two-valued logic. This becomes apparent upon examination of arguments in conversational English which involve (noncounterfactual) usages of if-then'. A nonclassical system of propositional logic is presented, whose conditional connective has logical properties approximating those of 'if-then'. This proposed system reduces, in a sense, to the classical logic. Moreover, because it is equivalent to a certain nonstandard three-valued logic, its (...) decision procedure is almost as efficient as that of the classical logic. It therefore provides a rational and convenient system in which to formalize English arguments. (shrink)

The formal systems of logic have ordinarily been regarded as independent of biology, but recent developments in evolutionary theory suggest that biology and logic may be intimately interrelated. In this book, William Cooper outlines a theory of rationality in which logical law emerges as an intrinsic aspect of evolutionary biology. This biological perspective on logic, though at present unorthodox, could change traditional ideas about the reasoning process. Cooper examines the connections between logic and evolutionary biology and illustrates how logical (...) rules are derived directly from evolutionary principles, and therefore have no independent status of their own. Laws of decision theory, utility theory, induction, and deduction are reinterpreted as natural consequences of evolutionary processes. Cooper's connection of logical law to evolutionary theory ultimately results in a unified foundation for an evolutionary science of reason. It will be of interest to professionals and students of philosophy of science, logic, evolutionary theory, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Critics of SRI have said little about the integrity of corporate representations resulting in screening inclusion or exclusion. This is surprising given social and environmental accounting research that finds corporate posturing and deception in the absence of external verification, and a parallel body of literature describing corporate "greenwashing" and other forms of corporate disinformation. In this paper I argue that the problems and challenges of ensuring fair and accurate corporate social reporting mirror those accompanying corporate compliance with law. Similarities and (...) points of convergence between social reporting and corporate compliance are discussed, along with proposals for reform. (shrink)

This paper traces the intellectual development of the workplace privacy construct in the course of American thinking. The role of technological development in this process is examined, particularly in regard to the information gathering/dissemination dilemmas faced by employers and employees alike. The paper concludes with some preliminary considerations toward a theory of workplace privacy.

Plato's Sophist provides a careful translation of the Sophist, one of Plato's most complex and difficult dialogues, and includes materials designed to facilitate its usefulness as a text in college courses. The translation employs a minimum of interpretative paraphrasing while being presented in clear, readable English. Special attention has been given to consistency in translating key Greek terms. The book presents a special list of these terms and discusses them in the endnotes. The result is a translation that enables the (...) reader who lacks a knowledge of Greek to get much closer than usual to the original text. Cobb's introduction contains a detailed summary of the entire dialogue, clarifying the main themes and the general structure. He offers a fresh interpretation of the dialogue that shows how each theme contributes to the exploration of the nature of, and the relation between, philosophy and sophistry. The introduction is particularly useful to first readers of the Sophist. (shrink)

In the interval between the time of the Reformation and today, large numbers of Christians seem quietly to have shifted their allegiance from one God to another, leaving themselves with the doctrine of the Trinity but no longer retaining the God whom it adumbrates.

In this essay I will examine the development of the notion of transcendence in Blanchot's early critical writings. Doing so indicates the radical way that Blanchot reconfigures this central ontological and theological term by way of his readings of the literary use of language. In turn this exposes the essential relation between finitude and literature, something which the second part of the essay will examine by way of Heidegger's study of the myth of Er.

Consideration of the work of Sade in relation to Adorno usually refers to the much-discussed chapter from Dialektik der Aufklärung. But Adorno made a number of other remarks across his career that suggest a very different reading. I will discuss the three most significant of these remarks and show how they develop an approach to the libidinal aspect of aesthetic experience that challenges our understanding of the relation of thought and language. In doing so, Sade’s works indicate an extraordinary liberation (...) of the dialectic of natural-history through a mimesis of desire, which is made apparent in what Sade’s texts literally present; in their contingency and also their facticity. (shrink)

Unlike his other fictional works Blanchot’s 1953 narrative Celui qui ne m’accompagnait pas has received comparatively little attention. The reasons for this would seem to lie in the intense abstraction of his writing in this work, which is forbidding even by his own standards, but as I will show, this intensity can be understood as comprising a singular topography of the experience of writing. Blanchot’s narrative thereby becomes a very precise and concrete form of aesthetics, which can be usefully compared (...) to the understandings of melancholy developed by Benjamin and Adorno, but transposed into a more stringent modernist context. (shrink)

Against the Manichees, Augustine argued that sin must involve a free exercise of will. Otherwise it will not count as the agent's own act for which the agent is morally responsible. In the 390's, however, Augustine became convinced that only the first humans sinned by free exercise of will. This view faced him with the question: how is it that unambiguously good agents come to will the evil? Augustine found no satisfactory solution, and the first evil will appears, on his (...) reckoning, to be either a random outcome or due to a withholding of grace. Despite his best efforts, his account of moral agency in evil remains flawed. (shrink)

Examines poetic language in the work of Heidegger, Hölderlin, and Blanchot.

O SET THE STAGE for the discussion[1], I will rehearse and clarify a well-known dispute between A. J. Ayer and J. L. Austin concerning whether perceptual judgments are inferences. Both in his Sense and Sensibilia[2] and in his "Other Minds,"[3] Austin carefully distinguishes recognizing that p from inferring that p. For the purpose of comparing his position to Ayer's, we might put his basic claim in this way: given the way words such as "recognize" and "infer" are used outside philosophical (...) discussions, one clearly distinguishes instances of recognizing from instances of inferring. Yet Ayer does not dispute that, but replies that while non-philosophers do make a sharp distinction between the two, it is arbitrary for philosophical purposes.[4] Claims based upon one's having recognized something are sufficiently like claims based upon one's having inferred, Ayer supposes, that it is useful to treat them as instances of a common category. So the issue is not whether the distinction is recognized outside philosophical circles, but whether it is a defensible and useful one to make. Clearly, Austin insists upon the distinction because he supposes that failing to make it will promote philosophical confusion; indeed, he argues that one traditional problem of skepticism is largely due to this confusion.[5] In his "Other Minds," Austin tries to suggest how recognizing differs from inferring by showing how the sorts of questions or challenges brought to bear differ between the two sorts of claim:[6] for inferences, one wants a rehearsal of the pieces of evidence and an account of their connections to the judgment; for perceptual claims of recognition, one explores whether the observer had the opportunity to see what he claimed to have seen, whether he had acquired the expertise to recognize the sort of thing he claimed to have seen, and whether the circumstances were free of evident distraction and defect. But his readers' appreciation of these things depends. (shrink)

In his recent second supplement to his invaluable catalogue of manuscripts of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Munari reports two manuscripts from the Bibliotheca Vallicelliana in Rome. The second of these, number 405 in his cumulative list, is Bibl. Vallicelliana F 25. According to the description supplied to Munari and so quoted, the manuscript is a miscellany, 23Ox 142 mm., membr. fourteenth century, and the Ovidian material is the last or number 7 of the miscellaneous pieces, fols. 117–34. So far, the information is (...) correct. However, on a crucial point, namely the exact contents of the Ovidian poem preserved, the data are in error. (shrink)

Efforts to institutionalize ethics in corporations have been discussed without first addressing the desirability of norm conformity or the possibility that the means used to elicit conformity will be coercive. This article presents a theoretical context, grounded in models of social control, within which ethics initiatives may be evaluated. Ethics initiatives are discussed in relation to variables that already exert control in the workplace, such as environmental controls, organizational controls, and personal controls.

Persius places these words in the mouth of his interlocutor, who states one of the traditional arguments against satire in the contrived manner typical of our poet. The passage may be translated: ‘What need is there to rasp upon tender little ears with biting truth? Be careful that the thresholds of the great do not perhaps grow cold towards you; here there is the nasal sound of the canine letter.’.

Malcolm;[1] but the sharp attacks in the last decade on Malcolm's assumptions have led some philosophers to suppose that Descartes' dreaming problem is a cogent support for scepticism. [2] In this paper, I hope to dispose of the problem without using controversial assumptions of the sort used by Malcolm.

Le Dernier Homme is Blanchot’s last narrative or récit. Afterwards, he would begin to write in a more fragmentary mode, which suggests that he may have felt that the narrative form had been pushed as far it could in this work. This point of extremity is marked in particular by the monotonous style for which he has become notorious. This essay examines why this style arises, and how it leads to an extreme that can be usefully contrasted with Barthes’s notion (...) of écriture blanche. It becomes apparent that the blankness of this writing is not innocent but arises as noise for Blanchot, which not only manifests the material attenuation of the narrative but also its relation with the dead. (shrink)

In his recent second supplement to his invaluable catalogue of manuscripts of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Munari reports two manuscripts from the Bibliotheca Vallicelliana in Rome. The second of these, number 405 in his cumulative list, is Bibl. Vallicelliana F 25. According to the description supplied to Munari and so quoted, the manuscript is a miscellany, 23Ox 142 mm., membr. fourteenth century, and the Ovidian material is the last or number 7 of the miscellaneous pieces, fols. 117–34. So far, the information is (...) correct. However, on a crucial point, namely the exact contents of the Ovidian poem preserved, the data are in error. (shrink)