bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Slippery Slope Arguments
Authors: Walton Douglas
Published: November 2023

A `slippery slope argument' is a kind of argument which warns you that, if you take a first step, you will find yourself caught up in a sequence of consequences from which you will be unable to extricate yourself, and that eventually you will end up speeding ever faster towards some disastrous outcome. Many textbooks on informal logic and critical thinking treat the slippery slope argument as a fallacy. Douglas Walton argues that slippery slope arguments can be used correctly in some cases as a reasonable type of argument to shift a burden of proof in a critical discussion, while in other cases they are used incorrectly. In the four central chapters he identifies and analyses four types of slippery slope argument. In each chapter he presents guidelines that show how each type of slippery slope argument can be used correctly or incorrectly, using over fifty case studies of argumentation on controversial issues. These include abortion, medical research on human embryos, euthanasia, the decriminalization of marijuana, pornography and censorship, and whether or not the burning of the American flag should be banned.
The Causal Slippery Slope Argument
Authors: Walton Douglas
Published: November 2023

The causal type of argumentation identified by so many logic textbooks with the slippery slope fallacy appears to be quite different from the sorites argument. Instead of proceeding by comparing pairs of closely similar (or indistinguishable) instances of a property, it proceeds by predicting a series of distinct events, each one of which, it is claimed, will cause the next one. But, in general outline, both are slippery slope arguments. In a pattern of use similar to the sorites argument, the causal version claims that an initial step or action will lead, through the sequence, to some dangerous or otherwise bad ultimate outcome. Both arguments are used to try to dissuade a respondent from taking the initial step.
Abilities, Concepts, and Externalism
Authors: Sosa Ernest
Published: November 2023

Traditionally the mind and its contents are thought internal to the subject. Thoughts, feelings, and experiences are considered entirely disparate and independent from the concrete, contingent surroundings external to the subject. Such internalism is presupposed in the Cartesian meditations that founded modern philosophy. According to this view, one’s mind (with its contents) neither involves nor depends upon anything external. Consider the states constitutive of having a mind with certain contents, constitutive of one’s experiencing, feeling, and thinking in certain ways at a given time. According to internalism no such state is constituted essentially by anything external, and every such state depends simply on the intrinsic properties of the subject whose state it is, and is determined wholly by these.
Coherent Belief
Authors: Logue James
Published: November 2023

This chapter concerns itself with the statics of the version of personalism which I am advocating: strong coherentist subjectivism (SCS). Questions of dynamics—about changes in belief-states—will be deferred until Chapter 2.
Some Applications of the Projectivist Theory
Authors: Logue James
Published: November 2023

THIS chapter considers some of the implications, for some wider issues, of a projectivist theory of probability. The first two sections advocate caution as to the scope of the theory’s application. § 4.1 looks at, and rejects, the claim that Bayesian convergence mechanisms alone dispose of the problems of induction; to focus the discussion, I consider those claims principally as exemplified by Dorling in a [1981] symposium with Miller. §4.2 looks at, and rejects, the claims of zealously Bayesian philoso phers of science that strong subjectivism is adequate of itself to account for theory choice or, indeed, scientific method generally: a position most recently exemplified in Howson and Urbach [1989]. The last two sections deal with areas where the theory can, I believe, be applied to resolve outstanding problems. §4.3 explores the links between probability, explanation, and conditionals; I advocate a refined version of a statistical-relevance contrast-class account of explanation, argue that many conditionals are best seen as condensed explanations, show how these claims permit the resolution of various parallel difficulties for adequate accounts of explanations and of conditionals, and point up the role of probability within these accounts.
Time, History, Man, and Nature
Authors: Mohanty Jitendra Nath
Published: November 2023

How is thought of being related to thought on time? It seems undeniable that, generally speaking, no Indian philosopher accorded to time that central place in ontology which modern Western philosophy has. But there were certain tendencies which could have led in that direction.
Reading the Laws
Authors: Bobonich Christopher
Published: November 2023

The Laws has often been thought to be one of the most arid and, from a literary point of view, least sophisticated of Plato’s dialogues. Aristotle dismissively notes that ‘it is for the most part a collection of laws’ and in Lucian’s Icaromenippus Zeus complains that the increasing popularity of other gods has left his own altars ‘more frigid than the Laws of Plato or the Syllogisms of Chrysippus’ .1 In this century, the Laws has fared little better. Ernest Barker thought that its style ‘suggests the declining years of the writer. There is something of garrulity ... there is less artistic power. Plato preserves the form, but not the spirit of the dialogue.... [T]he defects of the Laws seem to me to be largely defects of literary form.’
Linguistic Variation And Varieties In The Grand Duchy Of Luxembourg
Authors: Hoffmann Fernand
Published: November 2023

The inner divisions of Lëtzebuergesch still show a great amount of diversity. In this, the situation with Lëtzebuergesch differs greatly from that of minor local and regional dialects on the other side of our eastern river boundaries, in Germany. There the dialects have been receding in favour of the major regional varieties since at least the early part of this century in a way which would suggest that all the dialects of Germany will ultimately be fused into wide-spread regional colloquials showing only slight local colouring. Lëtzebuergesch on the other hand has differences not only from north to south and from east to west, but also at the local level.
Imagination and the Highest Good
Authors: Gibbons Sarah L
Published: November 2023

In the preceding chapters, we have considered the ways in which reason and imagination interact to make possible the exhibition of ideas which are themselves at least partially the deliverances of reason. Thus, the aesthetic ideas presented in fine art through genius are grounded in subjective rational principles and sensibly exhibit ideas which cannot be known through determinant judgement. Similarly, judgements of sublimity involve the imaginative expression of the idea of infinity, or totality, and the supersensible transcendence of man’s rational nature over phenomonal nature. Finally, the idea of purposiveness, which discursively rational beings employ to discover the systematicity and necessity of objects and laws in the natural world, is an idea which guides speculation through practices of reflective judgement.
Intellectual Autobiography
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: November 2023

There have been three major influences on my thinking. In order both of increasing time and of decreasing importance, they are the Christian religion, Western philosophy, and theoretical science. As far back as my memory stretches, I recall having thought in Christian terms. Since neither of my parents was a religious believer, any human contribution to this process must be attributed to my earliest schooling at a time I can no longer recall. By the time I had passed through a British public school (spending most of my time learning Latin and Greek), done my military service (becoming a Russian interpreter), and come up as an undergraduate to Oxford University in 1954, being a Christian was, I claimed to myself, the most important thing in my life.
The Nature of Reason: Locke, Swinburne, and Edwards
Authors: Kretzmann Norman
Published: November 2023

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke defines reason as ‘the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths, which the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, which it has got by the use of its natural faculties; viz. by sensation or reflection’ (iv. 18. 2).1Rational belief is proportionate to the strength of the evidence at one’s disposal. ‘The mind, if it will proceed rationally, ought to examine all the grounds of probability, and see how they make more or less for or against any proposition, before it assents to or dissents from it; and upon a due balancing of the whole, reject or receive it, with more or less firm assent, proportionally to the preponderancy of the greater grounds of probability on one side or the other’ (iv. 15. 5). What is true of beliefs in general is true of religious beliefs in particular. They are rational only if (1) they are properly basic (immediately grounded in the mind’s intuitive awareness of its own ideas), or (2) inferred from those ideas by sound deductive or inductive standards, or (3) are the content of a revelation whose credentials are certified by beliefs meeting the first or second condition. While modem intellectuals may doubt whether religious beliefs meet these standards, Locke did not. God’s existence can be demonstrated, and the evidence at our disposal makes it probable that the Bible is God’s revelation.
Did Revelation Cease?
Authors: Brown David
Published: November 2023

In the second work of his tetralogy devoted to philosophical issues raised by Christian doctrine, Richard Swinburne has written persuasively on the theme of revelation.1 The middle section of this book considers what evidence we might use to justify belief in such a revelation, while its two outer sections concentrate on rules governing its interpretation. Thus part I is devoted to general issues of meaning, and in particular draws our attention to the way in which truth conditions are affected not only by how the language is employed (literal, metaphorical, analogical, and so on), but also by its wider context, the genre to which it belongs, the presuppositions of the audience or society, and so forth. This implies, he argues, that poetic licence should not be seen as undermining truth (different standards apply), nor should false cultural assumptions. The latter sounds more controversial, but in support Swinburne invites us to consider the case of a man drinking sherry, of whom we declare ‘That man drinking a Martini seems very cheerful’. Russell would have declared the sentence false, Strawson neither true nor false, whereas Swinburne argues plausibly (following Donnellan) that the sentence should be taken as true, provided the context makes it clear to whom we wished to refer.2 The relevance of this to the Bible, which seeks to convey truth through long-discarded scientific presuppositions, should be obvious.
Reflections on the Atonement
Authors: Lucas J R
Published: November 2023

The cross claims to speak to everyone, but different people have different needs, and therefore different ideas of salvation, and hence different understandings of what Jesus’ death signifies. As they try to explain what happened at Calvary they naturally make sense of it in accordance with their own needs and own idea of what was effected for them by Jesus’ coming down for us and our salvation and dying a criminal’s death. The Doctrine of the Atonement is therefore articulated in many various ways, which to some Christians seem profoundly true, but often are reckoned deeply unsatisfactory by others, also moved by the cross, but to whom it speaks in some very different way, answering to different needs, and offering a different sort of salvation.
Body And Soul: Physical Properties and Cartesian Mind
Authors: é Rom Harr
Published: November 2023

It is a special pleasure to contribute to a volume honouring the work of Richard Swinburne. As our most recent joint venture, we gave a university class in which we explored a wide variety of very fundamental concepts, fundamental to any physical theory. These included the concepts involved in space, time, causality, thinghood, and property. Though we are poles apart over the question of the viability of the notion of the Cartesian mind (soul), we are generally of similar opinions about many of the concepts involved in the physical sciences, in particular about the necessity to treat the physical properties of material things and substances as grounded dispositions, and thus as powers and liabilities. This idea has been around since the time of Aristotle. It was the dominant doctrine during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Revived by a number of authors, including Madden and myself in 1977, it has since been taken up by both Shoemaker and Cartwright.1 Heisenberg and Popper have used something akin to a causal powers notion to explicate their interpretations of quantum mechanics.2 In this chapter I want to situate the discussion in a sequence of proposals, beginning with that of Locke, for treating physical properties as powers.
Ammonius on Future Contingent Propositions
Authors: Mignucci Mario
Published: November 2023

Aristotle‘s De interpretatione chapter 9 is a crucial text well known to scholars, and I would not like to be trapped in a discussion of its complexities. My aim is more modest and commensurate with my capacities: to consider, on its own, Ammonius’ solution to the problem of future contingent propositions, without feeling commit ted to evaluate his view as an interpretation of Aristotle. The problems raised by future contingent propositions are many and some of them have to do with the question of determinism. If it is now true that a sea-battle will take place tomorrow, it cannot be the case that the sea-battle does not occur tomorrow, otherwise it would not be true today that there will be a sea-battle tomorrow. That there will be a sea-battle tomorrow has for ever been fixed and determined. The future in this way appears to be un preventable and necessary.
John Locke and the Greek Intellectual Tradition: An Episode in Locke’s Reception in South-East Europe
Authors: Kitromilides Paschalis M
Published: November 2023

John Locke’s first teaching appointment in 1661 at Christ Olurch, Ox¬ ford was to a lectureship in Greek. Although the meticulous care with which he preserved his papers has not brought down to us any evidence that he ever attempted to compose anything in Greek or-like Hobbes¬ to translate from Greek sources, his intimate familiarity with the language of classical philosophy and literature is attested in many ways. It is first of all reflected in the standard practice of quoting from Greek authors in his writings such as the quotations from Aristotle in the Essays on the Law of Nature. It is also illustrated by the extensive allusions to Greek literary sources in the same text and in other works, including the Two Treatises of Government. A special dimension of Locke’s Greek scholarship was his application of the terms 4>txnK’1l, llpamK’1}, and I11µewmK’ft in designating the three branches of knowledge in his threefold typology of the sciences in the Essay concerning Human Understanding. Locke’s sensitivity to the Greek language was not exhausted with these rather formal expressions. His surviving papers include one piece of evidence-unfortunately not in his own hand-which indicates that at least at some stage in his life he possessed an interest in the structure and diversity of Greek, its
Introduction: Plus una vice agendum: Cartesian Metaphysics Three and a Half Centuries On
Authors: Cottingham John
Published: November 2023

It has often been observed that the relationship of philosophy to its history is uniquely problematic. Some subjects, notably the scientific disciplines, are what could be termed ‘progress driven’; they regard the systems of the past largely as curiosities. The ideas of previous ages, however great and original, are thought of as having held pride of place only until they were refuted or superseded, and the original texts in which they appeared are certainly not regarded as essential reading for modem practitioners.
Descartes’s Modernity
Authors: Sorell Tom
Published: November 2023

This chapter can be understood as a defence of the clich é that Descartes is the father of modern philosophy. The clich é needs defending, because a growing body of revisionist commentary on seventeenth-century philosophy and science in general, and on Descartes in particular, suggests that the sharp break with the past conveyed by the phrase ‘modern philosophy’ is probably not to be found in seventeenth-century thought, and that Descartes, notwithstanding his modernist rhetoric, was significantly influenced by traditional philosophy, that is, significantly influenced by Aristotle, by Augustine, and by the authors of scholastic textbooks, particularly those used at La Flèche.
Descartes’s Denial of the Autonomy of Reason
Authors: Wickes Howard
Published: November 2023

There is always a temptation to treat the texts of the philosophical canon as complete historical entities in their own right. Celebrating the anniversary of the publication of the Meditationes invites a reading of this work as representing a definitive, self-contained, and fixed position. Yet we know that Descartes had engaged in metaphysical speculations long before 1641 and even before the familiar discussions in the fourth part of the Discours de la méthode (1637). The correspondence refers more than once (letters to Mersenne of 25 November 1630: AT I 182; 15 April 1630: AT I 144, etc) to a ‘Traitte de Metaphysique’ composed during the first months of Descartes’s residence in the United Provinces in 1629.1 Although the ‘Traitte’ is lost, the 1630 letters on the ‘eternal truths of mathematics’ and the natural philosophy of Le Monde (1629-33?) clearly reveal something of Descartes’s metaphysical concerns. Scholarly discussions of these early writings have generally assimilated them into the ‘mature’ metaphysics of the Meditationes, as ‘rough drafts’ or telling ‘anticipations’.
Descartes on Sense and ‘Resemblance’
Authors: Wilson Margaret D
Published: November 2023

Descartes begins the Meditations with the stated purpose of over throwing those of his ‘former beliefs’ that allow of doubt, in the hope of erecting in their place a ‘firm and permanent’ scientific structure. His first step is to withdraw his ‘trust’ from the senses, on the grounds that they have sometimes ‘deceived’ him. ‘Whatever I have up to now accepted as most true, I have received either from the senses or through the senses; however, I have sometimes found these to deceive; and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once’ (AT VII 18).’ In the Sixth Meditation, tracing his progress from naive ‘faith’ in the senses to scepticism concerning their deliverances, he writes: afterwards many experiences gradually destroyed all the faith that I had in my senses; for I from time to time observed that towers which from a distance looked round, appeared square from close up, and that enormous statues standing on their pediments did not seem large when viewed from the ground; and in these and countless other such cases I found that judgements of the external senses were mistaken.
The Reconfiguration of Sensory Experience
Authors: Mackenzie Ann Wilbur
Published: November 2023

There is no question that Descartes’s philosophy makes provision for the intellectual apprehension of the object of geometry, and, given the identification (in his mature writings) of this object with the object studied by physics, none that Descartes’s philosophy makes provision for the intellectual apprehension of the geometrical structure of physical reality. There is question, however, about what provision it makes for sense perception of determinate geometrical properties of middle-sized local portions of matter: their determinate size and shape, their spatial location with respect to the perceiver and each other, and their change in location (i.e. motion). The project here is to ascertain how Descartes construes sense perception of primary properties.
Names
Authors: Hughes Christopher
Published: November 2023

If names simply refer to their referents, it would seem, then names directly refer to their referents. In particular, names do not refer to their referents by specifying a condition which their referent uniquely satisfies. By contrast, if definite descriptions refer, they refer to their referents indirectly, by specifying a condition which their referent uniquely satisfies. If, for example, ‘the man who saved Venice from the Genoese’ refers to Vettore Pisani, it does so by specifying a condition (saving Venice from the Genoese) that only Vettore Pisani satisfies. If some other man had saved Venice from the Genoese, then ‘the man who saved Venice from the Genoese’ would not have referred to Pisani.
Vowel Patterns in Mind and Sound
Authors: Harris John , Lindsey Geoff
Published: November 2023

The sound aspect of a linguistic sign provides the information that enables listeners and speakers to access the sign’s lexical and grammatical meaning. The channel for this information is the speech signal, through which speakers transmit and monitor the information and listeners receive it. On the basis of this rather obvious point, it would be natural to conclude that phonological features—the code in terms of which the information is compiled—should be defined in terms of auditory imagery.

Yet for a generation the most influential brand of feature theory has been centred almost wholly on articulation. This is surprising; for, while articulations constitute a delivery system for linguistic information, they are not of themselves information-bearing. To echo Sapir: the perceptible form of a linguistic sign is essential and primary, the means by which it is produced secondary.
Introduction
Authors: Schulte Joachim
Published: November 2023

Apart from his Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (better known under the title of its English translation, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) the only philosophical writings by Wittgenstein which appeared during his lifetime were a brief review, which he wrote as a student, and the article ‘Some Remarks on Logical Form’ of 1929. All the other philosophical writings which have been published under his name are posthumous. They are taken from the vast body of material which he left to his literary executors, who edited them in the years since Wittgenstein’s death in 1951.
Transcendental Arguments Against Physicalism
Authors: Walker Ralph
Published: November 2023

Kant believed transcendental arguments cannot establish the immateriality of the soul. He may have been right. But at least transcendental arguments can help us establish certain things which are incompatible with a thoroughgoing materialism. One of these is that there are in the universe certain objective laws, which cannot themselves be material (in any plausible sense of that word) or reducible to anything material. Another is that there are persons, beings who are capable of following these laws or of failing to follow them. Such persons may be material entities in the sense that they are made of matter, but their behaviour in following laws cannot adequately be accounted for in materialistic terms.
The Metaphysics Of Quantum Theory
Authors: Krips Henry
Published: November 2023

This book outlines the contours of the various debates on quantum theory, and presents an interpretation of it which, while metaphysically realist, resolves most of the paradoxes that have arisen. It aims to make these issues of interest not only to the specialist philosopher and physicist but also to readers who do not have a background in physics. A set of technical appendices provides a graduated series of proofs which introduce the quantum theory of continuous-valued quantities.
Realism
Authors: Krips Henry
Published: November 2023

Already in this book one substantial issue has been discussed under the rubric of’realism’ in connection with QT, viz. the issue of whether the state-vectors and density operators of QT represent ‘real’ properties of q-systems. For the purposes of this chapter I take this particular issue to have been settled in favour of realism. But more generally what does it mean to adopt a ‘realist interpretation’of QT? I shall take it to mean accepting that QT is true, that the objects QT refers to (electrons, protons, etc.) exist, that the properties it refers to are ‘real’, and in particular that the physical quantities it refers to are ‘real’; in short it also means that we can interpret QT ‘literally’ in the sense that we can take all its referential terms as genuinely referring and not just as convenient fictions or metaphors for the real.
Stapp and Eberhard
Authors: Krips Henry
Published: November 2023

How do we explain the results of measurement in QT? Two ways suggest themselves within a broadly realist framework. We could assume determinate possessed values for the q-quantities, which are then reflected by (an implicitly idealized) measurement process. In other words we have the traditional ‘hard’ realist position consisting of the combination of (Det Q) and (Pass Q). In addition it is usually assumed that these possessed values do not just come into existence when the measurements are made (contra Feyerabend’s explication of Bohr), but are independent features of an otherwise hidden level of reality which are displayed whenever measurements happen to take place.
Realism and Divine Philosophy
Authors: Clark Stephen R L
Published: November 2023

Truth, to begin at the beginning, may either be that real world which ‘loves to hide’, or else the sum of what ‘we’ seriously say. True science and true religion, so I think, require us to follow ‘where nature leads’, to consent-cordially, perhaps to Being. But there is this much truth in recent insistence on the second sort of ‘truth’ that even the real world is only known to us through reasoned speech, through what ‘we’ properly endorse. It is easy to conclude, with anti-realists of many kinds, that ‘true’ can only mean ‘what we endorse’ (as ‘good’ means, so moderns often say, ‘what we approve’). When we find ourselves half-inclined to believe things inconsistent with the central truths or axioms that define reality for us, we must either endure the shattering of the world we live in, or purge ourselves of inconsistency. To be thought ‘true’ at all is indeed to be consistent with-or, better still, required by-those world-defining dogmas which are themselves not subject to further authority or test. The chains that bind us are those that tie our tongues, and few of us can turn to look the master of those chains in the face: obviously not, since to do so would be to recognize the possibility of other gods, and of some radical dismemberment. To walk away from Plato’s shadow-show, or to be transformed into a shaman’s animal-self, or to break free from the God of this world are all ways of seeking freedom from the web of language, a freedom that cannot last if it is to bear fruit. Every successful rebellion reconstitutes authority.
In Praise of Folly
Authors: Clark Stephen R L
Published: November 2023

In devising the twenty-four separate lectures, now revised and published in three volumes, I have been constantly aware of the depths of my ignorance, and my presumption in seeking to define society, the soul, and everything in ways, as I suppose, more true to the perennial tradition of philosophy, and to Christian orthodoxy. The price of my attempt is that I have been wandering off the beaten track, and in constant danger of stepping into the abyss. I am sure that I have often repeated myself; I fear that I may sometimes have contradicted myself; sometimes—especially in the political sections of the work—I have found myself overtaken by events. I did not have the nerve to predict so speedy a collapse of empires, though I did affirm the rise of pious-and dangerous-nationalism, and insist that ‘history’, so far from coming to a fashionable end, was likely to be occupied in new religious wars.
Hyperplane-dependent quantized Fields and Lorentz Invariance
Authors: Fleming Gordon N
Published: November 2023

The central concept that is used in a novel way in this investigation is that of a space-like hyperplane. A spacelike hyperplane is a three dimensional, metrically flat section of’the flat Minkowski space-time continuum, such that any two points in the hyperplane are separated by a spacelike interval. For any such hyperplane, there is an inertial frame of reference in which all the points of the hyperplane are simultaneous, and all points simultaneous with any point of the hyperplane are in the hyperplane. The hyperplane is then said to be an instantaneous hyperplane for that inertial frame. However, it is the notion of a spacelike hyperplane as an invariant oeometrical construct, with different descriptions from the standpoint of different intertial frames, that I wish to emphasize.
The Algebraic Approach to Quantum Field Theory
Authors: Saunders Simon
Published: November 2023

The fundamental entity in the algebraic approach to quantum theory is an abstract C*-algebra 𝒜 together with its set of states ℱ, that is, the set of all positive linear functionals on 𝒜. I shall call such a pair an (abstract) quantum system. The theory of C*-algebras and their representations provides the most powerful abstract approach to quantum theory; unlike the propositional lattice approach it also has direct applications in mainstream physics, and in a certain sense is even forced upon us in quantum field theory (OFT) (sec sections (2.11), (2.16)-(2.18)). Mathematically, the subject is a complex of analysis and algebra; it is a rather wild area involving high degrees of infinity. Philosophically it is most strongly associated with opera tionalism; in part this rellects the predilections of its originators, and in part the continuing philosophical appeal of positivism within the mathematics community. (I do not know why this is so.)
Turing’s Test
Authors: Davidson Donald
Published: November 2023

In the October 1950 issue of Mind A. M. Turing predicted that by the year 2000 it will be possible to build a computer that will have at least a 30 per cent chance of fooling an average inter rogator into thinking it is a person (Turing 1950). Given that Turing allowed his interrogator only a five-minute interview, and given the further conditions he placed on the test, he was probably right. But the interest of the article lies not in this pre diction: it lies in the test itself, for the test is designed to throw light on the nature of thought. I propose in this paper to consider how good Turing’s test (or Turing’s Test, as I shall call it) is. Some, but not all, of the issues to be raised were discussed by Turing.
A Mechanistic Approach to Perception and the Human Mind
Authors: Blakemore Colin
Published: November 2023

I doubt whether any previous development in science has aroused, interested, and divided philosophers as rapidly as has the birth of the discipline of Artificial Intelligence. This new scientific endeavour has a history, strictly speaking, of little more than thirty years (McCorduck .1979) but already its objectives and achievements are increasingly the subjects of philosophical discussion. The idea that undeniably inanimate chunks of silicon and copper might be able to pass for people (when judged by their ability to solve problems, answer questions, and generally act intelligently) seems to have thrown philosophy into disarray. I wonder why several centuries of scientific research on real brains failed to engage the interest of many philosophers (with some notable exceptions, of course) when a few decades of work on artificial thinking machines has stirred up such a philosophical storm. I suppose that it must be because computers are so obviously mechanistic devices with out any magic in them: or if they do behave magically, the magic must come spontaneously out of the complexity of their material structure, rather than being added to the recipe as a kind of spiritual spice. However much computers are to be admired or feared, they are clearly not mysterious in the way that some people think people to be.
Religion and Morals
Authors: Hare R M
Published: November 2023

The recent history of moral philosophy has been the history of the impact upon it of that philosophical movement which is usually referred to loosely as Logical Empiricism or Logical Positivism. From the point of view of moral philosophy the most challenging thing the Logical Empiricists did was this: they directed their attention to a certain type of language, namely to those sentences which express ‘scientific propositions’ and other statements of fact, in the narrow sense; and they examined the conditions under which we are prepared to allow that such sentences are meaningful. They claimed that the criterion which we employ is this: to know the meaning of such a sentence is to know what would have to be the case for the statement which it expresses to be called true, or false. There are various ways of formulating this criterion; but I will not here discuss their relative merits, nor whether the criterion can be formulated in a satisfactory way. It is enough to say that this criterion, when it was first propounded, aroused much enthusiasm among empiricist philosophers. For here, they thought, was a way of eliminating from the pages of philosophy, once for all, those sentences (of which there are, it must be confessed, too many) that do not carry any weight of meaning. Philosophical books, it was said, are full of statements or so-called statements to which, when we examine them in the light of this criterion, we cannot assign any significance at all; we cannot think what would have to be the case for us to call them true, or false. Such books the empiricists, following Hume’s prescription ( 1748, sect. 12, pt. 3), were prepared to commit to the flames as containing nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Euthanasia: A Christian View
Authors: Hare R M
Published: November 2023

I have called this paper ‘Euthanasia: A Christian View’. I almost decided to be provocative and call it ‘Euthanasia: The Christian View’, because, so far as I can see, it is the direct application of the only injunctions of Christ (discussed in the preceding paper) that bear immediately on the subject of euthanasia. But I have refrained, because these injunctions, if so applied, lead to a view of the matter which is so contrary to what is generally thought to be the Christian view, that I should be taken to be merely perverse if I advocated it as the Christian view. I will therefore call it a Christian view—thereby amicably leaving a place among Christian views, beside that which I say is immediately derivable from Christ’s words, for the very different views which are commonly maintained by the representatives of the Christian Church. I shall, however, be bold enough to go on, in the latter part of the paper, to try to explain why the Church has, typically, advocated a view so much at variance with what I take to be the implication of Christ’s own teaching. We shall see that it is readily explained by the exigencies of the human situation, and in particular the situation of any human institution which, like the Church, assumes the task of teaching people how they ought to behave.
Adolescents into Adults
Authors: Hare R M
Published: November 2023

Since I am going to en t1c1ze Mr Wilson ( 1964) in some respects, I must start by saying that I am, in all essentials, on the same side as he is. I believe in a distinction between education and indoctrination; and I believe that indoctrination is a bad thing. But I also believe that he stated his case somewhat too extremely; and I think that by so doing he exposed himself to some possible attacks from the propagandists of indoctrination. It is of the highest importance to safeguard Wilson’s liberal views against such attacks; for otherwise advocates of the closed mind and the closed society may find it easier to enlist the support of moderates against Wilson; and that would be a pity. I need to make clear, therefore, that my criticisms of Wilson will bulk large in this paper only because, to avoid repetition, I have left out all those many points on which I should agree with him.
Opportunity for What? Some Remarks on Current Disputes about Equality in Education
Authors: Hare R M
Published: November 2023

In the past few years a great many heads have been broken in many places in disputes about equal rights; and of these disputes that about equality in education has been one of the most violent in some countries. It is my belief that at least some of these heads would not have been broken if some clearer thinking had been going on inside them. Not that everything can be achieved by clear thinking; firmness of purpose and other moral qualities are also required. But if more clarity were introduced into these disputes, some of the violence might be replaced by co-operation, when the disputants discovered that there were principles (perhaps a bit less simple than the slogans on their placards) upon which they could agree. That, at any rate, is the hope with which I, as a philosopher, approach this question.
Kant’s Theory of Contract
Authors: Byrd Sharon
Published: November 2023

For the modern legal mind, one of the oddest constructions in Kant’s contract doctrine is his fourfold acts-of-choice requirement for the dosing of a contract. For Kant every contract consists of two preparatory and two constitutive acts of choice having legal effect. The first two are the offer and the approval of what has been offered. The second two are the promise and the acceptance of that promise. This approach seems odd today, because modern contract law requires only an offer and an acceptance, but not an additional preceding set of legally effective declarations of will.
Foes of Formalism
Authors: Kivy Peter
Published: November 2023

Absolute music presents an apparently stark contrast with the two most powerful and pervasive traditions in Western art: visual representation and narrative fiction. The distinction between visual representation and narrative fiction is not, I must add by way of clarification, a clear one. Both movies and plays, as opposed to novels, short stories, and narrative poems, employ visual representation as well as language to tell their stories. And the visual arts of painting and sculpture can, in a limited way, be narrative, as well as, of course, represent fictional characters. That being said, I shall, nevertheless, throughout this chapter, treat the arts of visual representation and narrative fiction as separate and distinct. It will be easier, that way, for present purposes.
First the Words; Then the Music
Authors: Kivy Peter
Published: November 2023

I have had occasion to remark previously that music without words —music for instruments alone-forms but a very small part of the music people ordinarily listen to now, as well as what they listened to in past times. Yet it has, so far, occupied us exclusively in this book. That is because it raises the most distinctively philosophical problems; and this book. after all, is an introduction to a philosophy of music and not anything else. Nevertheless, the combination of words with music cannot be totally ignored by the philosopher of music attempting to introduce his subject. It does raise philosophical issues, and now, in this chapter and the next, is the time to consider them, as well as some related issues.
Reply to Clark
Authors: Dennett Daniel
Published: November 2023

I pretty much agree with Clark’s comments, and I just want to confirm some of his suspicions. I’m particularly glad he pointed to the places where I contrasted, say, having beliefs about beliefs with thinking about thinking, and started talking about florid representation as being a different sort of thing or a special sort of thing, because I think that’s where this workshop is heading most interestingly and fruitfully.
Reply to Cummins on Representation and Intentionality
Authors: Haugeland John
Published: November 2023

Cummins and I agree on a lot of things-including some that we’ve come to agree on only since I read his comments for this workshop. Among other things, we agree that the difference, and also the relations, between targets and representations ought to be closer to the forefront of my thoughts-starting today. (I even acknowledge that there’s a lot of transcendental philosophy in my veins, but I’m loath to accept the insinuation that there’s too much.)
The Scope of Objectivity
Authors: Sacks Mark
Published: November 2023

The significance of the apparent demise of the egological subject can be estimated properly only when seen in the larger setting, since it constitutes only one source of pressure on our ideal of the universality of reason. Moves against the egological subject in principle leave open other routes by which the objectivity of reason and rationality might be established.1 If the subject is essentially indexed to, because structured by, the social and material fabric of the world in which it is located, its normative structures stand to inherit whatever stability or instability that environment has to offer. At issue, then, is whether external nesting can make good the loss consequent upon the demise of the egological subject. The question before us thus shifts to the objectivity that can be sustained, not about reason narrowly, or the individual’s normative structures, but about the experienced object-world within which reasoning subjects and other objects are located. This is the concern of the present chapter.
The Principle of Double Effect
Authors: Kenny Anthony
Published: November 2023

St Thomas Aquinas, in discussing killing in self-defence, remarks that one and the same action may have two effects, one of them intended, and the other beside the intention. Later Catholic theologians developed from this a doctrine of double effect, stated as follows by John of St Thomas. If an act, not evil in itself, has both good and bad effects, then it may be permissible if (1) the evil effect is not intended; (2) the good effect is not produced by means of the bad; (3) on balance, the good done outweighs the harm.
Body, Soul, and Intellect in Aquinas
Authors: Kenny Anthony
Published: November 2023

St Thomas Aquinas, who in the twentieth century has been considered an official spokesman for Roman Catholic orthodoxy, was in his own day an adventurous philosopher whose teaching was regarded by many theologians with suspicion. Just three years after his death the congregation of Oxford university, following the lead of colleagues in Paris, condemned, without naming him, a number of propositions which he had maintained. Those who taught these Thomist theses were to be allowed forty days to recant; if they continued to hold them they were to lose their MAs. The part of Aquinas’ s teaching which got him into trouble at Oxford was his application of the Aristotelian theory of form and matter to the nature of the human soul. For Aristotle material substances like a bit of wood consisted of matter possessing certain forms.
Knowing What to Do, Seeing What to Do
Authors: Gibbard Allan
Published: November 2023

‘Normative’ concepts, we can say, are concepts ‘fraught with ought’-the phrase is Wilfrid Sellars’. Here is a broad hypothesis on how these concepts work: Normative concepts get their character from their place in a broad kind of planning we do, in our thinking how to live. Roughly, questions of what we ought to do are questions of what to do.
Vertical Velocity Structure and Eddy Scale Distribution in the Water Column of the Stratified Lake of Geneva
Authors: Lemmin U , Jiang R
Published: November 2023

An acoustic Doppler velocity profiler is used to study vertical velocity dynamics in the stratified lake. Profiles were taken by lowering the instrument combined with a CTD at constant speed from a boat. The vertical velocity fluctuation amplitude is directly linked to the mean stratification in the water column. It is largest in the epilimnion, strongly reduced in the thermocline and homogeneous below the thermocline in the constant N layer. In the thermocline a strong correlation between vertical velocity, stratification, light transmissivity and acoustic backscattering is found. Turbulence scales which have been calculated from the vertical velocity data and the corresponding N-profile are about 0.5 to 1 m. An active layer is observed around 40 m where these scales correspond well with the Thorpe displacements.
Stably Stratified Flow in a Rectangular Container: Cell Pattern Formation and Anomalous Diffusion
Authors: Heijst* G J F van , Clercx* H J H , Maassen* S R , ór** J B Fl
Published: November 2023

In contrast to three-dimensional (3D) turbulence, two-dimensional (2D) turbulence is characterised by an inverse energy cascade, i.e. a spectral transfer of kinetic energy to larger scales of motion. This process may lead to self organisation of the 2D flow, as can be observed from the formation of coherent vortex structures. This process has been demonstrated in numerical simulations [1, 2], and also by laboratory experiments in soap films [3], in rotating fluids [4, 5] and in density-stratified fluids [6, 7, 8]. Strictly speaking, the flow in these experiments was not exactly 2D, owing to boundary effects (tank bottom) and other disturbing features. In the stratified flow experiments, for example, the vortices take on the appearance of thin pancake-shaped structures, in which the motion is planar. Because of vertical gradients in the planar flow, the motion is not purely 2D. Notwithstanding these “mild” 3D effects, the flow evolution shows the emergence of coherent vortex structures as in purely 2D flows, and is hence referred to as quasi-2D.
Sylow theory
Authors: Wilson John S
Published: November 2023

The Sylow theory of finite groups is concerned with the existence and properties of Sylow subgroups and other subgroups of specified orders. Many of the concepts and results can be transferred directly to profinite groups. Because the emphasis in this chapter is on the passage from finite groups to profinite groups, the results from finite group theory will for the most part be assumed. Their proofs can be found in elementary books on group theory.
Diophantine approximation
Authors: Harman Glyn
Published: November 2023

Dirichlet’s theorem. Khintchine’s theorem. The Duffin-Schaeffer results and conjecture. The Erdoős--Vaaler theorem. The zero-one laws of Cassels and Gallagher. CasselsΣ,-sequences. A crucial lemma ( Lemma 2.3). Overlap estimates. Reduction to GCD sums. Lacunary sequences.
Diophantine approximation with restricted numerator and denominator
Authors: Harman Glyn
Published: November 2023

The convergence case. Failure of the zero-one law. General criteria. Sequences of number-theoretic interest. A fundamental lemma for non periodic problems.
Formation and chemistry of radicals involved in amino acid, peptide, and protein oxidation
Authors: Davies Michael J , Dean Roger T
Published: November 2023

Radicals can be generated in both chemical and biological systems by a multitude of different pathways. In the first part of this chapter we will outline how radicals which may be important in protein oxidation can be formed, before discussing the types of reactions that each of these species can participate in. In neither case will the discussion and examples given be exhaustive, as the intention is to pick out what seem to be the key species, some of the mechanisms by which they can be formed, and examples of the major reaction processes which they undergo. These areas are covered in much greater detail in a number of books to which the reader is referred for further information (Pryor 1966; Huyser 1970; Kochi 1973; Nonhebel et al. 1977; Bensasson et al. 1983, 1993; Giese 1986; von Sonntag 1987; Halliwell and Gutteridge 1989; Motherwell and Crich 1992; Fossey et al. 1995). In the section following these, we will discuss in more detail the reactions of these different types of radicals with free amino acids, peptides and proteins.