Originally published in 1940, this book by famous Plotinus scholar Arthur Hilary Armstrong assesses how the philosopher's hierarchy of reality fits into the wider universal order, and how the historical and philosophical tradition gave rise to Plotinus' own philosophies. Armstrong also supplies a bibliography broken down by topic for those who wish to pursue any aspect of the text in greater depth. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Plotinus, Neoplatonism and in the pagan roots (...) of Christian philosophy. (shrink)

The libertarian attribute of Thaler and Sunstein’s nudge theory (Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008) is one of the most important features for its candidature as a new model for public policy-making. It relies on the reversibility of choices made under the influence of nudging. Since the mind is articulated into two systems, the choice taken by System 1 is always reversible because it can be overridden by the deliberative and corrective role (...) of System 2. This article does not aim to criticise the whole theory of nudge and neither to assess its practical efficacy as a policy-making tool. Rather it intends to show that there are doubts that the specific claim of reversibility is correct for a subset of nudges called “System 1 nudges” (Sunstein in The ethics of influence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016). And that therefore, in this case, the libertarian claim seems little justified. The thrust of my argument contests the truth of the main pillar of the libertarian claim, namely the dual-process theory of mind. I will show that even the minimal version of dual reasoning, namely the Type 1 and Type 2 processes proposed by Evans and Stanovich (Perspect Psychol Sci 8(3):223–241, 2013), is weakened by psychological and neural data. (shrink)

The universe, of which our domicile the planet Earth forms but a minuscule part, has an architecture that changes and has been changing in time. In other words, it has a history of evolution. Lack of experimental evidence denies us the knowledge of what the universe was like “at the time of its origin,” as discussed by Hubert Reeves in the preceding chapter. Neither do we know much about its geometry, simply because our observatories are concentrated, for (...) all practical purposes, vanishingly close to a single point in an immensity whose size can only be measured by the billions of years required by light to go from one extremity to another! (shrink)

Drawing on struggles within academe between faculty that promote critical education and advocates of New Public Management (NPM) who endorse instrumental learning, I reimagine the university as a counter-space that positions it as a counter-power to informational capitalism. Initially, I outline its twin threats: ethical, as self-entrepreneurial academics are valorised by NPM; and political, with informationalisation conflating spaces of thinking. I then detail Scott Lash’s specific account of how the info-comm society negates critique. However, his monistic understanding of informationalisation means (...) Lash’s alternative of Informationskritik risks subsumption by it. I therefore defer to Jacques Derrida’s idea of the university. To ensure the autonomy of the principle of reason in a world of info-comm flows, the university is a supplementary body to society, yet intimately linked to it by its critical reflexivity, which is on behalf of society. Because Derrida does not elaborate the requisite institutional architecture, I conclude with Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a quasi-illicit site that is different and other. Such an institutional design enables the university as a counter-space that is a bank of reason and an archive of its manifestation in social practices. It also upholds a space for thinking, which in the form of nominalist critical history proffers a counter-power to society as an informational homotopia. (shrink)

The universe, of which our domicile the planet Earth forms but a minuscule part, has an architecture that changes and has been changing in time. In other words, it has a history of evolution. Lack of experimental evidence denies us the knowledge of what the universe was like “at the time of its origin,” as discussed by Hubert Reeves in the preceding chapter. Neither do we know much about its geometry, simply because our observatories are concentrated, for (...) all practical purposes, vanishingly close to a single point in an immensity whose size can only be measured by the billions of years required by light to go from one extremity to another! (shrink)

The notion of measurement plays a central role in human cognition. We measure people’s height, the weight of physical objects, the length of stretches of time, or the size of various collections of individuals. Measurements of height, weight, and the like are commonly thought of as mappings between objects and dense scales, while measurements of collections of individuals, as implemented for instance in counting, are assumed to involve discrete scales. It is also commonly assumed that natural language makes use of (...) both types of scales and subsequently distinguishes between two types of measurements. This paper argues against the latter assumption. It argues that natural language semantics treats all measurements uniformly as mappings from objects (individuals or collections of individuals) to dense scales, hence the Universal Density of Measurement (UDM). If the arguments are successful, there are a variety of consequences for semantics and pragmatics, and more generally for the place of the linguistic system within an overall architecture of cognition. (shrink)

Book Information The Architecture of Reason. By Robert Audi. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2001. Pp. xvi + 286. Hardback, £26.50.

This pioneering book presents a reconstitution of Charles Sanders Peirce philosophical system as a coherent architecture of concepts that form a unified theory of reality. Historically, the majority of Peircean scholars adopted a thematic approach to study isolated topics such as semiotics and pragmatism without taking into account the author’s broader philosophical framework, which led to a poor and fragmented understanding of Peirce’s work. In this volume, professor Ivo Assad Ibri, past president of The Charles Sanders Peirce Society and (...) a leading figure in the Brazilian community of Peircean scholars, adopts a systemic approach to Peirce’s thought and presents Peirce’s scientific metaphysics as a deep ontological architecture based on a semiotic logic and on pragmatism as criteria of meaning. Originally published in Portuguese, this book became a classic among Brazilian Peircean scholars by presenting a conceptual matrix capable of providing a clear reference system to ground the thematic studies into the broader Peircean system. Now translated to English, this reviewed, amplified and updated edition aims to make this contributions available to the international community of Peircean scholars and to serve as a tool to understand Peirce’s work in a more systemic way by integrating concepts such as experience, phenomenon, existence and reality, as well as theories such as Chance, Continuity, Objective Idealism, Cosmology and Pragmatism, in a coherent system that reveals Peirce’s complex metaphysical architecture. "As the philosophical reputation of Charles S. Peirce continues to rise to first-tier prominence in the history of American philosophy, Ivo Ibri’s Kósmos Noetós assumes a unique status in both a pioneering and a magisterial work of transcontinental Peirce scholarship. This original work of this internationally renowned scholar and editor, and Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of San Paulo, penetrates to the heart of Peirce’s architectonic system of phenomenological, metaphysical, and semiotic categories which heuristically characterize our world as “a universe perfused with signs.” Ibri’s own synergistic commentary on the radiating registers of Peirce’s cosmogonically and pragmatistically conceived “one intelligible theory of the universe” also instructively contributes to the illumination of significant nodes of interface with a range of relevant theoretical trends in the contemporary academy; as well, it places Peirce in the company of such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, and Schelling who preceded Peirce in providing a legacy of first-tier reasoning on our intelligibly developing world. Kosmos Noetos impresses as Ibri’s pure, lucid, passionately thought-loving, philosophical articulation of his own and as the indispensable prolegomena to all future Peirce studies." David Dilworth, State University of New York at Stone Brook – USA "Ivo Ibri has offered us in this exquisite work a framing of the inner logic of Charles S. Peirce's core metaphysical vision and its existential implications. It is a deep and nuanced exploration of the internal dynamics of Peirce’s central metaphysical categories, developed through rigorous and detailed attention to the evolution of Peirce’s thought on the ‘vitally important topics’ of the appearing, the reality, and the intelligibility of the world. The two-leveled format of the book, an intricate weaving of Peirce’s texts and discursive elaboration and linkage by Ibri, gives it a distinctive feel and is the bedrock of its value. The book is a remarkable combination of presentation and analysis. It is informed by Ibri’s deep philosophical culture and is a gentle and convincing argument for the centrality of metaphysics in understanding Peirce’s thought. It offers in a new way indispensable suggestions for our own attempts to think about our places in an evolving universe with the aid of Peirce and offers threads of thought to be followed up by others." Robert E. Innis, University of Massachusetts Lowell – USA. (shrink)

The paper examines the bond between architecture and history on the premise that everybody is familiar with both architecture and history. The paper views architecture as a profession that is satiated with imaginative and creative thinking; and contends that architecture extends, historically, into wherever human beings live their life. The author opines that architecture easily extends its influence, as a vivid universal metaphor into every sphere of human activity as a synonym, in building either concrete (...) or abstract forms. Thus, the paper proceeds to demonstrate that architecture chronicles the achievements of peoples in creatively constructed concrete forms, which it infuses with the histories of abstract concepts in time and space. Conversely, the paper points out that history, which highlights the living memories of humanity, chronicles the antecedences, precedence, sequences, and consequences of man’s concrete achievements incogent abstract forms. Consequently, the paper concludes that while architecture builds conceptualized concrete forms from and for history; history builds its concrete abstract forms from and for architecture. Thus, the paper concludes that The Architecture of History and The History of Architecture ultimately coincides in their complementarity, as mutual witnesses to the activities of man in time and space. (shrink)

The paper examines the bond between architecture and history on the premise that everybody is familiar with both architecture and history. The paper views architecture as a profession that is satiated with imaginative and creative thinking; and contends that architecture extends, historically, into wherever human beings live their life. The author opines that architecture easily extends its influence, as a vivid universal metaphor into every sphere of human activity as a synonym, in building either concrete (...) or abstract forms. Thus, the paper proceeds to demonstrate that architecture chronicles the achievements of peoples in creatively constructed concrete forms, which it infuses with the histories of abstract concepts in time and space. Conversely, the paper points out that history, which highlights the living memories of humanity, chronicles the antecedences, precedence, sequences, and consequences of man’s concrete achievements incogent abstract forms. Consequently, the paper concludes that while architecture builds conceptualized concrete forms from and for history; history builds its concrete abstract forms from and for architecture. Thus, the paper concludes that The Architecture of History and The History of Architecture ultimately coincides in their complementarity, as mutual witnesses to the activities of man in time and space. (shrink)

Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), composer, architect, engineer and media artist, designed together with Le Corbusier the Philips-pavilion for the 1958 Brussels World Fair. This pavilion is an early example of (“hybrid”) combined media and architectural space as it contained a Poème Électronique, an electronic synthesis of visual projections (conceived by Le Corbusier ) and acoustic events (composed by Varèse). The pavilion's architecture with its hyperbolic-paraboloid shells had a dynamic expression. Xenakis continued this research into complex material architectural forms. He also (...) worked on the complex ephemeral architectures of light and sound events. What is specific to Xenakis is the way he used forms in different fields and transferred them from one field to another, from engineering to music, from music to architecture and visual events. This experience of working simultaneously and applying the same (mental) structures in different fields opened him the way (partly supported by the universal computer instrument) for the practice of transferring mathematical-scientific structures into artistic production. In this context Xenakis pleads for the development of a “General Morphology”, a research concerned with the understanding of form and its generation. Xenakis's ‘material’ architectural work is to be seen in continuity with his architectures of music and light. (shrink)

The quality of doctoral-level biochemistry (N=139), botany (N=83), cellular/molecular biology (N=89), microbiology (N=134), physiology (N=101), and zoology (N=70) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: (1) program size; (2) characteristics of graduates; (3) reputational factors (scholarly quality of faculty, effectiveness of programs in educating research scholars/scientists, improvement in program quality during the last 5 years); (4) university library size; (5) research support; and (6) publication records. Chapter I discusses prior attempts (...) to assess quality in graduate education, development of the study plans, and the selection of disciplines and programs to be evaluated. Chapter II discusses the methodology used, focusing on each of the assessment measures. Chapters III to VIII present, respectively, findings from the analyses of the biochemistry, botany, cellular/molecular biology, microbiology, physiology, and zoology programs. Chapter IX includes a summary of results, correlations among measures, several additional analyses, and suggestions for future studies. Among the findings reported are those indicating that cellular/molecular biology programs had, on the average, the largest number of faculty and that students in cellular/molecular biology, biology, biochemistry, microbiology, and physiology received a relatively high fraction of financial support. (Survey instruments and supporting documentation are included in appendices.) (JN). (shrink)

The quality of doctoral-level chemistry (N=145), computer science (N=58), geoscience (N=91), mathematics (N=115), physics (N=123), and statistics/biostatistics (N=64) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: program size; characteristics of graduates; reputational factors (scholarly quality of faculty, effectiveness of programs in educating research scholars/scientists, improvement in program quality during the last 5 years); university library size; research support; and publication records. Chapter I discusses prior attempts to assess quality in graduate education, (...) development of the study plans, and the selection of disciplines and programs to be evaluated. Chapter II discusses the methodology used, focusing on each of the assessment measures. Chapters III to VIII present, respectively, findings from the analyses of the chemistry, computer science, geoscience, mathematics, physics, and statistics/biostatistics programs. Chapter IX includes a summary of results, correlations among measures, several additional analyses, and suggestions for future studies. Among the findings reported are those indicating that mathematics programs had, on the average, the largest number of faculty (N=33) in December 1980 followed closely by physics (N=28) and chemistry (N=23), and that 80 percent of computer science students had job commitments by graduation. (Survey instruments and supporting documentation are included in appendices.) (JN). (shrink)

This volume addresses foundational issues of context-dependence and indexicality, which are at the center of the current debate within the philosophy of language. Topics include the scope of context-dependency, the nature of content and the character of input data of cognitive processes relevant for the interpretation of utterances. There's also coverage of the role of beliefs and intentions as contextual factors, as well as the validity of arguments in context-sensitive languages. The contributions consider foundational issues regarding context-sensitivity from three different, (...) yet related, perspectives on the phenomenon of context-dependence: representational, structural, and functional. The contributors not only address the representational, structural and/or functional problems separately but also study their mutual connections, thus furthering the debate and bringing competing approaches closer to unification and consensus. This text appeals to students and researchers within the field. This is a very useful collection of essays devoted to the roles of context in the study of language. Its essays provide a useful overview of the current debates on this topic, and they put forth novel contributions that will undoubtedly be of relevance for the development of all areas in philosophy and linguistics interested in the notion of context. Stefano Predelli Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK. (shrink)

Aureli advances a fresh, spirited and combative account of the idea of ‘autonomy’, connecting Italian architectural debates from the 1960s with the politics of class-autonomy that was being developed and advanced by workerist theorists such as Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti and Toni Negri. Aureli’s account focuses on Aldo Rossi’s architectural ideas and the project of the No-Stop City proposed by the young avant-garde group Archizoom. The Project of Autonomy is not simply envisaged as an historical exploration of the 1960s; primarily, (...) it is conceived as an intervention in current architectural theory, drawing on the author’s interest in Tronti’s politics to challenge the contemporary popularity of a broadly post-Negrian ‘autonomism’. This review questions aspects of Aureli’s reading of Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri. Furthermore, although Aureli’s discussion of Red Vienna opens up onto vital questions of strategies for social change, which remain pertinent to contemporary arguments over ‘enclaves’ or ‘zones’ of resistance, his antagonism towards Tafuri prevents his argument from either exploring or advancing the debate which he has initiated. (shrink)

The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe (1946) by Glenn Clark is a work of biography and philosophy, exploring the life and ideas of the versatile artist, writer, and philosopher Walter Russell. New Thought writer and professor Glenn Clark (b. 1882, d. 1956) was a fervent believer in the power of prayer and the Light of God to reveal the secrets of the universe. As he explains in Chapter One: We Go Seeking, he had been searching (...) "...for a man who has discovered the universal law which lies back of the Sermon on the Mount, and who consciously uses that law with full awareness of its meaning, and full obedience to its principles." He believed that he had found that man in Walter Russell. Walter Russell (b. 1871, d. 1963) was a man who seemed preternaturally adept at everything he wished to try. After being removed from school at the age of nine and sent to work at a dry goods store, he worked a number of low-paying jobs. But he had "absolute faith...that anything can come to one who trusts to the unlimited help of the Universal Intelligence that is within so long as one works within the law and always gives more to others than they expect, and does it cheerfully and courteously." Throughout his life, he found success as a musician, painter, sculptor, writer, ice skater, philosopher, and lecturer. He was commissioned to sculpt a 28-figure Mark Twain Memorial just a few years after he began sculpting. And in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked him to sculpt the Four Freedoms Monument. He designed several buildings in New York City and invented the cooperative ownership model (aka the co-op). And most of these pursuits were undertaken with no formal education. By the time Clark met with Russell, he had achieved success in his artistic, literary, architectural, physical, and even scientific pursuits. So when Clark was searching for a man who knew the secrets of the universe and was referred to Russell on more than one occasion, he knew that he had to meet him. Large portions of the book, particularly in the chapters We Meet the Man, We Meet the Man of Action, and The Five Laws of Success, are presented as an interview with Russell, giving us insight into his beliefs straight from the source. "Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common," he says. "The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue. And the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men's lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man's life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws." At the heart of Russell's philosophy is a belief that every man "has consummate genius within him. Some appear to have it more than others only because they are aware of it more than others are, and the awareness or unawareness of it is what makes each one of them into masters or holds them down to mediocrity..." To know that we have genius inside of us, and to have absolute faith in our inner voice and in the Universe, is to unlock that genius. Through the story of Russell's brilliant life and his Five Personal Laws of Success (humility, reverence, inspiration, deep purpose, and joy), the reader gets a plain-language example of genius-in-action. He demonstrated his great energy, lack of fatigue, and "ever-flowing fountain" of genius throughout his long life, maintaining his creativity until his death in 1963 at the age of 92. (shrink)

The built environments of universities are useful for telling stories about their development. Exteriors – walls, windows, doorways, the relative positioning of different facilities – are particularly suited to broad institutional narratives: the rise and decline of scientific disciplines, for instance, or the institution’s changing relationship with benefactors and the wider public. Exteriors are also conveniently accessible to public audiences.This paper explores the possibilities through the case of the University of Manchester. The approach is in a sense the converse of (...) industrial archaeology, which seeks to understand the functioning of a site from what survives of its material form: here, we have begun with knowledge gained largely from document sources, and aim to bring it to life for visitors by pointing to the material consequences. Connecting doors and architectural symmetries illustrate founding unifications and alliances; infilling and glassing-over, constrained expansion; grand but obscured frontages, displaced priorities.Populating the site with accounts of its lived existence is a powerful tool to communicate history, but it is important not to create an ‘official’ memorialisation: audiences often know the site at first hand, and may question any received version. I conclude by calling for a reflexive treatment, mapping the histories of the stories themselves. (shrink)

In (Béziau 2001), Béziau provides a means by which Gentzen’s sequent calculus can be combined with the general semantic theory of bivaluations. In doing so, according to Béziau, it is possible to construe the abstract "core" of logics in general, where logical syntax and semantics are "two sides of the same coin". Thecentral suggestion there is that, by way of a modification of the notion of maximal consistency, it is possible to prove the soundness and completeness for any normal logic (...) (without invoking the role of classical negation in the completeness proof). However, the reduction to bivaluation may be a side effect of the architecture of ordinary sequents, which is both overly restrictive, and entails certain expressive restrictions over the language. This paper provides an expansion of Béziau’s completeness results for logics, by showing that there is a natural extension of that line of thinking to n-sided sequent constructions. Through analogical techniques to Béziau’s construction, it is possible, in this setting, to construct abstract soundness and completeness results for n-valued logics.En (Béziau 2001), Béziau ofrece un recurso para combinar el cálculo de secuentes de Gentzen con la teoría semántica general de bivaluaciones. Al hacer esto, según Béziau, es posible construir el “núcleo” abstracto de la lógica en general, donde sintaxis y semántica son las dos caras de una misma moneda. La sugerencia clave es que, mediante una modificación de la noción de consistencia máxima, es posible probar la corrección y completud de cualquier lógica normal (sin invocar la función de la negación clásica en la prueba de completud). Sin embargo, la reducción a bivaluaciones puede ser un efecto colateral de la arquitectura de los secuentes ordinarios, que es abiertamente restrictiva y entraña determinadas restricciones expresivas sobre el lenguaje. Este artículo ofrece una expansión de los resultados de completud de Béziau para la lógica, mostrando que existe una extensión natural de esta línea de pensamiento a construcciones de secuentes de n lados. Mediante técnicas análogas a la construcción de Béziau, en este marco es posible construir resultados abstractos decorrección y completud para la lógica n-valuada. (shrink)

The Lancashire Independent College in Whalley Range, Manchester, was built to train Congregational ministers. As the first of a number of Nonconformist educational institutions in the area, it illustrates Manchester‘s importance as a centre of higher education generally and Nonconformist education in particular. The building was designed by John Gould Irwin in Gothic style, mediated through references to All Souls College in Oxford by Nicholas Hawksmoor, whose architecture also inspired Irwins Theatre Royal in Manchester. The College was later extended (...) by Alfred Waterhouse, reflecting the growing success of the institution, which forged links with Owens College and went on to contribute, with other ministerial training colleges, to the Universitys Faculty of Theology established in 1904. The building illustrates an interesting strand in early nineteenth-century architectural style by a little-known architect, and has an important place in the history of higher education in north-west England. (shrink)