bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Modelling the response of floodplain aquatic assemblages across the lateral hydrological connectivity gradient
Authors: Gallardo B. , Gascón S. , González-Sanchís M. , Cabezas A. , Comín F. A.
Published: September 2009

Hydrological connectivity is one of the main controlling factors of habitats and aquatic assemblages on river floodplains. Nevertheless, the lack of universal measures of river–floodplain connectivity (i.e. the lateral hydrological connectivity, LHC) limits the comparison of the response of aquatic assemblages to hydrological connectivity and impedes the understanding of floodplain functioning across different systems. To address these needs, we tested the ability of six different LHC surrogates to model changes in richness, abundance and composition of aquatic assemblages across a Mediterranean floodplain (Ebro River, NE Spain). As shown by generalised additive models, LHC surrogates explained 15% to 65% of the richness and abundance of aquatic assemblages. Zooplankton, macroinvertebrates and phytoplankton showed overlapping peaks of richness at flood duration rates of 5, 15 and 30 days year–1 respectively. Redundancy analyses showed that LHC surrogates explained 17% to 37% of aquatic assemblage composition. Distance to the river and flood duration were the most important determinants of macroinvertebrate composition, whereas flood magnitude and water-level variability best accounted for the variance in zooplankton and phytoplankton compositions. Models based on LHC surrogates such as those presented here can help in predicting the consequences of restoration measures and may be useful in setting restoration goals for aquatic assemblages.
Treating causes not symptoms: restoration of surface - groundwater interactions in rivers
Authors: Kasahara Tamao , Datry Thibault , Mutz Michael , Boulton Andrew J.
Published: September 2009

Many river restoration projects seek to address issues associated with impaired hydrological and ecological connectivity in longitudinal (e.g. effects of dams, weirs) or lateral (e.g. alienated floodplain) dimensions. Efforts to restore the vertical dimension of impaired stream–groundwater exchange are rare, hampered by limited understanding of the factors controlling this linkage in natural alluvial rivers. We propose a simplified two-axis model of the ‘primary drivers’ (sediment structure and vertical hydraulic gradient) of stream–groundwater exchange that acknowledges their interaction and provides a practical template to help researchers and river managers pose hypothesis-driven solutions to restoration of damaged or lost vertical connectivity. Many human activities impact on one or both of these drivers, and we review some of the tools available for treating the causes (rather than symptoms) in impacted stream reaches. For example, creating riffle-pool sequences along stream reaches will enhance vertical hydraulic gradient, whereas flushing flows can remove clogging layers and sustain sediment permeability. Our model is a first step to specifying mechanisms for recovery of lost vertical connectivity. Assessing results of river restoration using this approach at reach to catchment scales will provide scientific insights into the interplay of hydrology, fluvial geomorphology and river ecosystem function at appropriately broad scales.
Monitoring post-fire regeneration in Mediterranean ecosystems by employing multitemporal satellite imagery
Authors: Hernández Clemente Rocío , Navarro Cerrillo Rafael María , Gitas Ioannis Z.
Published: September 2009

Fire-damaged ecosystems have often been monitored by applying a combination of field survey information and vegetation indices derived from remotely sensed data. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that remotely sensed data can be integrated as a useful tool in predicting the recovery of fire-damaged ecosystems over time. Using regression models, the present study analyzes the trend function described by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) 7 and 12 years after the fire. The method was performed through (i) permanent plot collection per plant community type and data reduction; (ii) comparison of the correlation established between FVC with different vegetation index contrasted with the NDVI; (iii) monitoring vegetation recovery; and (iv) a supervised classification of FVC. The NDVI was the one that correlated most with the FVC. In both the seventh and twelfth year after fire, the linear regression model was used to accurately quantify FVC based on the NDVI. Results show that 12 years after the fire, the recovery rate of the FVC associated with scrub was higher than that of the FVC of other forest classes. Although vegetation recovery is taking place, the continuing increase in the FVC associated with shrub land classes could create a state of successional stagnation.
Developing an Adaptive Management approach to prescribed burning: a long-term heathland conservation experiment in north-west Italy
Authors: Ascoli Davide , Beghin Rachele , Ceccato Riccardo , Gorlier Alessandra , Lombardi Giampiero , Lonati Michele , Marzano Raffaella , Bovio Giovanni , Cavallero Andrea
Published: September 2009

Calluna vulgaris-dominated heathlands are globally important habitats and extremely scarce outside of north-west Europe. Rotational fire, grazing and cutting by local farmers were dominant features of past heathland management throughout Europe but have been abandoned, altering the historical fire regime and habitat structure. We briefly review research on Calluna heathland conservation management and provide the background and methodology for a long-term research project that will be used to define prescribed fire regimes in combination with grazing and cutting, for management of Calluna heathlands in north-west Italy. We outline the ecological and research issues that drive the fire experiment, making explicit the experimental design and the hypotheses that will be tested. We demonstrate how Adaptive Management can be used to inform decisions about the nature of fire prescriptions where little formal knowledge exists. Experimental plots ranging from 600 to 2500 m2 are treated according to one of eight alternative treatments (various combinations of fire, grazing and cutting), each replicated four times. To date, all treatments have been applied for 4 years, from 2005 to 2008, and a continuation is planned. Detailed measurement of fire characteristics is made to help interpret ecological responses at a microplot scale. The results of the experiment will be fed back into the experimental design and used to inform heathland management practice in north-west Italy.
A typical reconstruction limit for compressed sensing based on
Lp-norm minimization
Authors: Kabashima Y , Wadayama T , Tanaka T
Published: September 2009

We consider the problem of reconstructing an
N-dimensional
continuous vector
x

from P
constraints which are generated from its linear transformation
under the assumption that the number of non-zero elements of

x
is typically
limited to ρN
(0≤ρ≤1). Problems of this type can be solved by minimizing a cost function with respect to the
L

p
-norm , subject to the constraints under an appropriate condition. For several values of
p, we assess a
typical case limit αc(ρ), which represents a critical relation between
α = P/N and
ρ
for successfully reconstructing the original vector by the minimization for typical situations
in the limit while keeping α finite, utilizing
the replica method. For p = 1, αc(ρ)
is considerably smaller than its worst case counterpart, which has been rigorously derived
in the existing literature on information theory.
Bioactive Markers Based Pharmacokinetic Evaluation of Extracts of a Traditional Medicinal Plant, Piper sarmentosum
Authors: Hussain Khalid , Ismail Zhari , Sadikun Amirin , Ibrahim Pazillah
Published: September 2009

In vitro assays are economical and easy to perform but to establish relevance of their results to real clinical outcome in animals or human, pharmacokinetics is prerequisite. Despite various in vitro pharmacological activities of extracts of Piper sarmentosum, there is no report of pharmacokinetics. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate ethanol extract of fruit of the plant in dose of 500 mg kg−1 orally for pharmacokinetics. Sprague‐Dawley rats were randomly divided into groups 1, 2, and 3 (each n = 6) to study absorption, distribution and excretion, respectively. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with ultraviolet detection was applied to quantify pellitorine, sarmentine and sarmentosine in plasma, tissues, feces and urine to calculate pharmacokinetic parameters. Pellitorine exhibited maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) 34.77 ng mL−1 ± 1.040, time to achieve Cmax (Tmax) 8 h, mean resident time (MRT) 26.00 ± 0.149 h and half life (t1/2) 18.64 ± 1.65 h. Sarmentine showed Cmax 191.50 ± 12.69 ng mL−1, Tmax 6 h, MRT 11.12 ± 0.44 h and t1/2 10.30 ± 1.98 h. Sarmentosine exhibited zero oral bioavailability because it was neither detected in plasma nor in tissues, and in urine. Pellitorine was found to be distributed in intestinal wall, liver, lungs, kidney, and heart, whereas sarmentine was found only in intestinal wall and heart. The cumulative excretion of pellitorine, sarmentine and sarmentosine in feces in 72 h was 0.0773, 0.976, and 0.438 μg, respectively. This study shows that pellitorine and sarmentine have good oral bioavailability while sarmentosine is not absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract.
Prehistory of Presocratic Philosophy in an Orientalizing Context
Authors: Burkert Walter
Published: September 2009

Philosophy up to now is bound to a chain of tradition that starts with Greek texts about 2,400 years ago: the works of Plato and Aristotle have been studied continuously since then; they were transmitted to Persians and Arabs and back to Europe and are still found in every philosophical library. Plato, in turn, was not an absolute beginning; he read and criticized Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Protagoras, and other sophists; Aristotle read and criticized Plato and everything else he could find, up to Anaximander. Even if philosophy is anything but certain about its own identity, the definition of philosophy is inseparably bound to the Greek fundaments. Nobody has been able to reinvent philosophy because it has always been there.
Two Problems in Pythagoreanism
Authors: Huffman Carl
Published: September 2009

Recently, the Pythagoreans have received rather more attention, both in their own right and as part of the developing picture of Presocratic thought, than they received for much of the twentieth century. Thanks to these studies, a new and more complicated picture is emerging. This article refines this picture critically examining Aristotle's claims about Pythagorean influence on Plato, along with the related question of who among early Greek thinkers actually counts as a Pythagorean. It provides a reminder that Aristotle's account of the history of earlier thought is always a history of just a part of the philosophy of his predecessors, and makes clear that the eagerness with which some present-day scholars find Pythagorean influence on later thought may be misplaced.
Leucippus's Atomism
Authors: Graham Daniel W.
Published: September 2009

The founder of atomic theory, according to Aristotle and Theophrastus, is Leucippus. His very existence has been called into question. Three of the best minds of nineteenth-century scholarship were embroiled in a vehement debate on this question, which thereupon became a cause célèbre, with scholars weighing in on both sides for the next half century. Ultimately this debate seems to have ended in stalemate and exhaustion rather than in any clear-cut decision. After briefly reviewing the debate, this article argues that there are indications of an atomic theory different from Democritus's that can plausibly be attributed to Leucippus. It considers indications that the atomic theory was known in the mid-fifth century, and then tentatively explores Leucippus's contributions to atomism in a way that will illuminate Democritus's contributions.
Classical Representations and Uses of the Presocratics
Authors: Palmer John
Published: September 2009

Anyone interested in the influence of Presocratic thought may be tempted to begin with Plato and Aristotle. There is, however, sufficient evidence of Presocratic influence among the sophists to make it clear that this temptation should be resisted. Some traces of this earlier influence may be found in Plato and Aristotle themselves, and this fact should serve as a reminder that their own involvement with Presocratic philosophy did not take place in a vacuum but will have been conditioned or mediated by previous developments. This article deals with classical thinkers (including Plato and Aristotle) who interpreted, wrote about, and preserved the Presocratics, pointing out that just as one must read the Presocratics through the filters of Plato and Aristotle and their successors and commentators, Plato and Aristotle were influenced by the already burgeoning tradition of historiography that developed in the late fifth and fourth centuries.
Material Culture
Authors: Kieschnick John
Published: September 2009

Attention to material culture reveals generally shared responses across cultures to size, light, and representations of the human form. Even without specific cultural knowledge, monumental sculpture tends to provoke a sense of awe and small dark spaces a sense of foreboding and mystery. For this reason, whether for small-scale studies of individual practices or events or for comparative religion on a grander scale, attention to material culture has great explanatory potential. Before returning to the value of an appreciation of objects for understanding emotion and religion, this article presents a brief introduction to the term “material culture” and problems specific to the study of the material culture of religion. It then looks at intense emotions in extraordinary contexts, including the ecstasy of a shaman in trance, the anger of a crowd driven to violence, the weeping of saints, and the wonder of devotees in the presence of the miraculous. The article also considers objects that play a role in more pedestrian, though not necessarily less important, feelings.
Hope
Authors: Miller W. Watts
Published: September 2009

Writing during the occupation of France in the 1940s, the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel sees the core authentic form of hope as “I hope in thee for us.” A strength of Marcel's account is that it drives home the importance of hope-in and hope-for, against preoccupation with hope-that. The trouble is that he then marginalizes hope-that, in a worry over its vulnerability to defeat and in a quest for an absolute hope. Marcel in fact emphasizes and interlinks two quite general hopes-that—rock-bottom hope that all is not lost, and transcendent hope of salvation. He also sees imprisonment—by illness, in a land under occupation, in an actual jail—as a paradigmatic case of hope's struggle against despair. Accordingly, there are important similarities with Emile Durkheim's classic account of the two main modern routes to suicide. One is the egoism of a cold intellectual atomistic world of the self, cut off from the warmth of social feelings. The other is the anomie of a raging bonfire of desires, impossible to dampen down and bring under conscious control.
Love
Authors: Martin Nancy M. , Runzo Joseph
Published: September 2009

Love lies at the heart of the religious life, as a principle mode of relationship between the human and the transcendent, as a guiding motivation for the moral life, and, for many, as a defining attribute of the transcendent. Among all the emotions, love is the most transformative. Yet the transformative power of love can be highly disruptive, contravening the careful conceptual apparatus of religion, undermining institutional religious authority, and upsetting social expectations and hierarchies. And if the power of the emotion of love is not harnessed for self-transformation, then rather than enhancing the other-regarding perspective prescribed by religion, this emotion can increase attachment, partiality, and self-centeredness. In theistic traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha'i, bhakti Hinduism, and Sikhism, love is considered an essential defining attribute of God and a definitive mode—if not the single definitive mode—of relationship between humans and the divine. This article discusses the nature of love and emotion, love as an attribute of the transcendent, and love as the response to the transcendent.
Religious Hatred
Authors: Corrigan John
Published: September 2009

Hate as an emotion, while not exactly the same in all instances, manifests in certain ways regardless of whether the context is religion, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, or other kinds of difference. Religious ideologies and institutions historically have served as backgrounds that condition the performance of hatred by individuals and groups. Some religious hatred arises from intellectual cultures characterized by an absolutizing worldview, in which reality is parsed into clearly bounded categories of holy and unholy, good and evil, saved and damned. Religion is a marker of group identity, and is frequently interwoven with other aspects of identity, including nationalistic, ethnic, and cultural elements. Religious hatred, accordingly, is sometimes mixed with hatred having to do with ethnicity or nationalistic fervor. Religious hatred is most easily observed in violence, and it is through violence that it is most effectively expressed. In the history of religious hatred in the West, Judaism shares the center stage with Christianity and Islam. Religious hatred is not limited to monotheistic religions.
Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolf Otto
Authors: Mariña Jacqueline
Published: September 2009

Two names often grouped together in the study of religion are Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1884) and Rudolf Otto (1869–1937). Central to their understanding of religion is the idea that religious experience, characterized in terms of feeling, lies at the heart of all genuine religion. In his book On Religion, Schleiermacher speaks of religion as a “sense and taste for the Infinite.” In The Christian Faith, Schleiermacher grounds religion in the immediate self-consciousness and the “feeling of absolute dependence.” Influenced by Schleiermacher, Otto also grounds religion in an original experience of what he calls “the numinous,” which can only be grasped through states of feeling. This article discusses the views of Otto and Schleiermacher on religion as feeling. It examines how both men conceived of feeling, the reasons they believed religion had to be understood in its terms, and the common threads linking their perspectives. It also considers Schleiermacher's interpretation of religious feeling as transcendental experience.
Constructionism and Its Critics
Authors: Kloos John
Published: September 2009

Since the 1970s, social scientists increasingly have cast human emotions in the arenas of culturally or linguistically constructed expression. A wide spectrum of theoretical terminology has been employed, including “constructionism” and “constructivist.” This essay reviews constructionist theories that bear on the study of religion and emotion. It analyzes constructionist theories as both determinist and relativist. It focuses on the recent historical ethnographic work of an important anthropologist of emotion, William M. Reddy. It also examines how religious emotions get constructed and what forms serve to give them expression. Generally, religious ritual is a form that can function in such a way so that the emotional lows of loss and grief are made less low. Conversely, ritual can heighten the feelings of joy and happiness at times of celebration. The construction of ritual form reflects specific religious traditions, yet cultures also share more broadly emotional forms for handling death, birth, marriage, and personal formation.
Introduction
Authors: Ruse Michael
Published: September 2009

This article is concerned with basic topics as well as new areas containing themes and problems that have significant implications for broader social issues. It studies the move from epistemological questions about the nature and structure of thinking in the life sciences to more social questions about the implications of the life sciences for living in society. There is a discussion about how biologists think about evolution which emerges from the varied lives of individual. There are topics by leading contributors that tackles to what extent chance factors play a significant role in the history and development of organisms, the problem of animal behavior, and many more. It seems students of science are realizing that the language of science is no trivial matter and that the words, can have significant effects and the extent to which it is accepted or rejected.
Origins of Life Studies
Authors: Griesemer James
Published: September 2009

This article provides insights on emerging discipline of origins of life studies. It answers various questions such as the logics behind scientific concepts and the scope and limit of biological science. It is now generally accepted that life existed around 3.5 billion years ago on earth. If life began elsewhere, then the time window for life's origin might be wide open. Narrowing the gap puts the idea that there is room for God to explain the gaps in nature left by scientific uncertainty. Some fundamental heuristic principles are discussed based on continuity, microreversibility, actualism. The origin of life appeared to be a problem, when it was realized how complex the interrelations between DNA as the carrier of genetic information and protein were. Origins of life researchers use biological, chemical, and physical laboratories to challenge how life might have emerged in the harsh conditions of early Earth.
Animal Behavior
Authors: Crowley Stephen J. , Allen Colin
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on comparative psychology, ethology, and cognitive ethology which explain animal behaviour. The same old questions raised by ancient Greek are discussed by scientists today. Morgan's pioneer work show that a quantitative approach to the physical features of animals and their behavioral products was not beyond imagination. He believed that a scientific understanding of the mental states of animals depends on a “double inductive” process, combining inductive inferences based on observation of animal behavior with knowledge of our own minds. The ethological work concentrated on non-mammalian species. Later “cognitive ethology” was used to describe the research program which combines both cognitive science and classical ethology. The fact that emotion plays a more significant role in animal behaviour was inferred. There have been various attempts to develop a fully integrative approach to animal behavior, but the study of behavior moves in different directions.
The Concept of Race in Medicine
Authors: Andreasen Robin O.
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on ethical issues of biomedical research. The ethical concerns raised maintain that potential benefits outweigh potential harms. The benefit is that collecting and reporting race data will help pharmacologists gain a better understanding of health, disease, and response to drug treatment. This, in turn, may help to eliminate many racial disparities in health outcomes. While there are some legitimate concerns associated with the use of race in medicine, these problems can be overcome. Answers to questions about the origins of racial variation in health outcomes are likely to vary from disease to disease and is likely to involve interactions among multiple environmental and social factors. The question of whether genetic factors are likely to play an important role in explaining race—associated health differences is largely unanswered—and can be answered only by future research.
Ecology and the Environment
Authors: Plutynski Anya
Published: September 2009

Ecology is the study of the interactions of organisms and their environments. The methods of ecology fall roughly into three categories: descriptive surveys of patterns of species and resource distribution and abundance, theoretical modeling, and experimental manipulations. Ecological systems are “open” systems, and patterns and processes are products of a huge number of interacting forces. Ecology and the environmental sciences have made enormous advances since the mid-twentieth century in the understanding of ecological systems, as well as in the human impact on the environment. Theory in ecology usually centers on the development of models. Environmental outcomes are uncertain and when making decisions under uncertainty, there are a variety of options available. One option is to carry out a cost benefit analysis based upon expected utilities and other is to adopt the precautionary principle. Uncertainty and under determination of theory by evidence is a fact of life in science.
Lyric
Authors: Stewart Susan
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the historical interrelation of philosophy and lyric poetry. It explains that philosophers and lyric poets are alike because they both convey intelligible statements, employ formal structures and incorporate a social view from the outset. Despite these shared materials and aims, philosophy and poetry have some important differences. Philosophy strives for clarity and singularity in reference while lyric is always overdetermined. In addition, philosophy should be paraphrasable and translatable if its truth claims are universal, but poetry has finality of form, and to paraphrase it is a heresy; to translate it, a betrayal.
Comedy
Authors: Gould Timothy
Published: September 2009

This article examines the literary genre of comedy. It suggests the possible roots of comedy in drama and argues that while the roots of the festive and the festival may account for some forms of comedy, not all forms of humor are festive and not all forms of the festive become embodied in forms of drama or the dramatic. It describes the works of Aristophanes and discusses Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts about comedy.
Autobiography and Biography
Authors: Mulhall Stephen
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the relevance of biography and autobiography to philosophy. It suggests that the key to understanding the philosophical nature of biography and autobiography is to acknowledge the distinctive way in which the human subject's presence takes the form of a certain kind of absence. It explains that in order to understand the reality of selfhood it is important to recognize that it is beyond the grasp of any narrative account that might be given of it. It also argues that if autobiographical and biographical exercises can be genuinely authoritative or authentic in the way they make present the self's absence, then biography and autobiography must be considered forms of spiritual exercise, and engaging in such exercises must be inherent to becoming a person.
Experimental Writing
Authors: Berry R. M.
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the relation of experimental writing to philosophy. It discusses Theodor Adorno's thoughts about experimental literature as contained in his Aesthetic Theory. It explains that Adorno believed that there is a deep bond between the topic of artistic experimentation, especially in literature, and the possibility of conducting philosophy. It suggests that if the modern tendency toward aesthetic nominalism is not an accidental result of historical misunderstandings but originates in a universal of art, then experimental writing would seem to mark conceptualization's limit. It also discusses György Lukács and Samuel Beckett's opinion about experimental literature.
Idealism
Authors: Moi Toril
Published: September 2009

This article examines the impact of idealism on the history of philosophy and literature. It considers idealism as a historically and culturally significant intersection of philosophy and literature, and as a set of ideas about art that profoundly affected both literature and the way people thought about literature in the nineteenth century. It shows the importance of idealism to nineteenth-century debates about art, literature, and culture and argues that when idealism is placed alongside realism and modernism it changes the meaning of these terms. The article also discusses the gender norms embedded in idealist aesthetics and suggests that the demise of idealism furthered the autonomization of art and literature. When idealism disappeared, ethical and religious claims on art lost their legitimacy.
Modernism
Authors: Weinstein Philip
Published: September 2009

This article examines the impact of modernism on philosophy and literature. It proposes two defining dimensions of modernist texts: their initial difficulty and their experimental departure from earlier conventions of thinking. It considers in some detail the practice of novelists Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, and William Faulkner with the aim of shedding light on central strategies and powers of modernism. It shows that the formal practices of my novelists enact a philosophic stance through their particular way of deploying materials.
Imagination
Authors: Pillow Kirk
Published: September 2009

This article considers the role of imagination in literary production. It explains that imagination allows us to make present through images what is absent from the present world before us and to reconfigure that world through the image-layering interpretive practice of seeing-as. In literature, imagination richly realizes its capacity to revise the present world by layering a transfiguring other world over it. This article also discusses the ethical imperatives of imagining and suggests that imagination in literature can be considered as a transgressive expression of freedom and as the cultivation of a double vision that not merely shapes fictional worlds but also reshapes our own.
Plot
Authors: Singer Alan
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the importance of plot in literature. It discusses Frank Kermode's expansive analysis of narrative plot making throughout human history, The Sense of an Ending, and twentieth-century narratologists' opinion on the specific arranging or rearranging of discrepant events that plot entails. It suggests that plot is ethos driven and that it is the means by which human agents negotiate the obstacles that time and worldliness put in the path of our desire to sustain purposeful action.
Literature and Politics
Authors: Rush Fred
Published: September 2009

This article considers the relationship between literature and politics. It focuses on the idea that literary form itself is political and investigates claims that literature can criticize and alter political belief by being experienced in terms of its form. It discusses the view of Theodor Adorno on this issue and suggests that the idea that there is an important connection between formal aesthetic properties of art and political belief merits further investigation and that the claim that art is uniquely political because it is useless deserves philosophical attention.
Plato on the Soul
Authors: Lorenz Hendrik
Published: September 2009

Plato's central contribution to psychology is his theory of the tripartite soul. This is at once a theory about the nature of the embodied human soul and a theory of human motivation. This article emphasizes on the importance and immortality of the soul. Plato does say that perceptible particulars derive their names from the forms they partake of their souls. One of his arguments against the harmonia theory of the soul, put forward by Simmias, relies on the occurrence of conflicts between desires and also of conflicts between how one decides to act and how anger or fear incline one to act. Among other things, he points out that people who are thirsty may nonetheless be averse to drinking.
Plato on Education and Art
Authors: Kamtekar Rachana
Published: September 2009

The article resonates Plato's ideas on education and art. In the Apology, Socrates describes his life's mission of practicing philosophy as aimed at getting the Athenians to care for virtue; in the Gorgias, Plato claims that happiness depends entirely on education and justice; in the Protagoras and the Meno, he puzzles about whether virtue is teachable or how else it might be acquired; in the Phaedrus, he explains that teaching and persuading require knowledge of the soul and its powers, which requires knowledge of what objects the soul may act on and be acted on by which, in turn, requires knowledge of nature. The article also looks at musical and gymnastic education's effects on the soul using images from metallurgy and dyeing wool, saying that prerational souls are “most malleable and take on any pattern one wishes to impress on them.”
ThePhilebus
Authors: Meinwald Constance C.
Published: September 2009

Plato's brainchild, the Philebus discusses the good human life and the claims of pleasure on the one hand and a cluster containing intelligence, wisdom, and right opinion on the other in connection with that life. The article talks about the notions of good human life and the pleasures surrounding it. Plato includes extended treatment of metaphysics and methodology: this is his typical supplement to the procedure of his own Socratic dialogues, which considered human questions in isolation from other issues. Despite several interpretations, the text remains largely elusive. After a long discourse, both Socrates and Philebus arrive at a conclusion that a mixed life, containing both reason and pleasure is what we all should desire and it is the best option for all.
The Problem of the Criterion
Authors: Fumerton Richard
Published: September 2009

This article examines the problem of the criterion in relation the issue of skepticism. It explains that the problem of the criterion in epistemology raises certain fundamental questions concerning the methods a philosopher ought to use in arriving at both analyses of epistemic concepts and conclusions concerning legitimate principles of reasoning and justification. It explores the connections between metaepistemological views and the approach one would most naturally take to the problem of the criterion and suggests that the implication of the positions one takes on skepticism is a complicated issue.
Skepticism about Induction
Authors: Weintraub Ruth
Published: September 2009

This article considers two arguments that purport to show that inductive reasoning is unjustified: the argument adduced by Sextus Empiricus and the (better known and more formidable) argument given by Hume in the Treatise. While Sextus’ argument can quite easily be rebutted, a close examination of the premises of Hume’s argument shows that they are seemingly cogent. Because the sceptical claim is very unintuitive, the sceptical argument constitutes a paradox. And since attributions of justification are theoretical, and the claim that they are never (or seldom) true isn’t preposterous, the correct response to the paradox may well be to admit that the sceptic has exposed our error in making them.
Moral Realism, Quasi Realism, and Skepticism
Authors: Cuneo Terence
Published: September 2009

This article describes the relationship of skepticism with moral and quasi realism. It discusses the main reason why quasi realists believe that they can explain and justify the realist-seeming appearances of ordinary moral thought and discourse. It explains the distinction among the three different varieties of quasi realism and argues that none of them provide a more satisfactory job of explaining the acquisition of moral knowledge than robust realism. It concludes that some varieties of quasi realism fail to comport with platitudes central to our ordinary understanding of knowledge, while others do comport but fail to explain the acquisition of moral knowledge in a way that is more illuminating than robust realism.
Religious Skepticism
Authors: Moser Paul K.
Published: September 2009

This article examines the philosophical validity of religious skepticism. The findings indicate that there is easily generalizable support for religious skepticism about the reality of God and that even if an individual were to lack adequate evidence for God's reality, this individual would have no ready way to generalize the truth of religious skepticism for people in general. It discusses volitional knowledge of God and argues that salient evidence of God's reality possessed by nonskeptics is not challenged at all by the fact that there is an individual (or even a group) lacking such evidence.
Reid's Response to the Skeptic
Authors: Van Cleve James
Published: September 2009

This article describes philosopher Thomas Reid's view against skepticism. According to Reid, a major source of skepticism about the external world is the theory of ideas or the view that the direct or immediate objects of perceptual acquaintance are not objects in the external world but only ideas, images, or representations in the perceiver's own mind. In his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man Reid portrays the theory of ideas as engendering epistemological skepticism and in In An Inquiry into the Human Mind he portrays the theory of ideas as engendering a different kind of skepticism that we might call semantic skepticism as opposed to epistemological skepticism, or skepticism about understanding as opposed to skepticism about knowledge.
Closure and Alternative Possibilities
Authors: Kvanvig Jonathan L.
Published: September 2009

This article examines the application of the closure principle in responding to skepticism. It discusses the nature of mathematical closure and its application in the context of contemporary epistemology and examines the dispute about the truth of closure principles in epistemology and the role alternative possibilities play in a proper understanding of the nature of knowledge. It also discusses the history of denials of closure and the defenses of closure in relevant-possibilities epistemology.
Integrating the Dynamics of Multiscale Economic Agency
Authors: Ross Don
Published: September 2009

This article is about the relationship between people, as modeled by the economist's concept of agency, and other entities modeled as agents in economics—in particular, sub-personal interests, as in models descended from Schelling (1978, 1980, 1984), and functional parts of people's brains, as modeled in neuroeconomics. This subject would not be very interesting if people and subpersonal interests reduced to or were simple additive functions of functional parts of their brains. However, for reasons that unfold here, it is thought that this common idea is untenable. The relationship between people, subpersonal interests, and brain systems is complicated, not simple. The objective of this article is to shed some light on it, on the basis of recent empirical research. It does not aim at stating a comprehensive theory of the relationship, which would be a premature ambition at this point in our collective knowledge.
Progress in Economics: Lessons from the Spectrum Auctions
Authors: Alexandrova Anna , Northcott Robert
Published: September 2009

This article begins by surveying existing work on scientific models, with an eye to the specific case of economics. It reviews four accounts in particular—the satisfaction-of-assumptions account, the capacities account, the credible-worlds account, and the partial-structures account. It tells the detailed story of the 1994 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spectrum auction in the United States, highlighting the crucial role of experiment as well as theory. In the light of this case study, this article presents its own open-formula account of economic models. It then turns to the issue of economic progress. Finally, it concludes that empirical progress in economic theory might not be discussed here, or at least that the success of the spectrum auction provides no warrant for doing so. Rather, progress is better seen as more akin to the worthy but piecemeal variety typical of engineering.
The Miracle of the Septuagint and the Promise of Data Mining in Economics
Authors: du Plessis Stan
Published: September 2009

Data mining could compromise the believability of econometric models. And yet there might not be an alternative to data mining if economics is going to be an empirical science practiced with the joint constraints of incomplete economic theory and non-experimental data. The organizing principle for this discussion of data mining is a philosophical spectrum that sorts the various econometric traditions according to their epistemological assumptions about the underlying data-generating process (DGP), starting with instrumentalism at one end and reaching claims of encompassing the DGP at the other; call it the DGP-spectrum. In the course of exploring this spectrum, this article discusses various Bayesian, specific to general (S–G) as well as general to specific (G–S) methods. A description of data mining and its potential dangers and a short section on potential institutional safeguards to these problems set the stage for this exploration.
Segmented Labor Market Models in Developing Countries
Authors: Fields Gary S.
Published: September 2009

This article is about labor-market models. Its aim is to construct models that are as simple as they can be but as complicated as they need to be. Such models, if carefully done, can contribute to an understanding of observed labor market phenomena and to the formulation of sound labor market policies. Some branches of economics work with models that assume that everybody who works participates in a single, undifferentiated labor market. This article regards such models as grossly unrealistic. The notion of labor market segmentation can be stylized most simply by maintaining that there are two labor market segments. In this article, labor markets should be thought of as consisting not only of wage and salaried employment but also of self-employment. All who work or seek to work in labor markets are termed workers.
The Sources of Knowledge
Authors: Audi Robert
Published: September 2009

This article identifies the sources from which one acquires knowledge or justified belief. It distinguishes the “four standard basic sources”: perception, memory, consciousness, and reason. A basic source yields knowledge or justified belief without positive dependence on another source. This article distinguishes each of the above as a basic source of knowledge, with the exception of memory. Memory, while a basic source of justification, plays a preservative rather than a generative role in knowledge. This article contrasts basic sources with nonbasic sources, concentrating on testimony. After clarifying the relationship between a source and a ground, or “what it is in virtue of which one knows or justifiedly believes,” this article evaluates the basic sources' individual and collective autonomy as well as their vulnerability to defeasibility. It examines the relationship of coherence to knowledge and justification, noting the distinction between a negative dependence on incoherence and a positive dependence on coherence.
Internalism and Externalism
Authors: Bonjour Laurence
Published: September 2009

This article suggests that the contemporary epistemological debate over internalism and externalism concerns the formulation of the justification or warrant condition in an account of knowledge. The internalist requires that for a belief to meet this condition all of the necessary elements must be cognitively accessible to the believer. The externalist, on the other hand, claims that at least some such elements do not need to be accessible to the believer. This article gives an overview of this dispute, beginning with internalism and then considering the main reasons offered by externalists for rejecting the more traditional epistemological approach. It investigates the externalist alternative by looking at the most popular version, reliabilism, and at the main objections that have been raised against reliabilism. This article suggests that the opposition between the two views is less straightforward than has usually been thought.
Tracking, Competence, and Knowledge
Authors: Sosa Ernest
Published: September 2009

This article notes that in attempting to account for the conditions for knowledge, externalists have proposed that the justification condition be replaced or supplemented by the requirement that a certain modal relation be obtained between a fact and a subject's belief concerning that fact. It assesses attempts to identify such a relation. It focuses on an account labeled “Cartesian-tracking.” This accounts for the relation in the form of two conditionals: If a person S believes a proposition P˃P; and if P˃S believes P. This article suggests that the second conditional should be abandoned as a requirement and that the first one, equipped with its modifications, can offer promising results in connection with skepticism. It argues that if the first conditional is modified and coupled with the requirement that S's belief be “virtuous”, it can illuminate the nature of propositional knowledge.
Scientific Knowledge
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: September 2009

This article offers an approach to scientific knowledge that is more systematic than many current approaches in the epistemology of science. It challenges arguments against the truth of the theoretical claims of science. In addition, it attempts to discover reasons for endorsing the truth of such claims. It tries to apply current “scientific method” to this end, but doubts that any context-independent method gives warrant to the theoretical claims of science. It suggests that the discovery of reasons might succeed if one asks why anyone thinks the theoretical claims one accepts are true and then looks for answers that reconstruct actual belief-generating processes. To this end, this article presents the “homely argument” for scientific truth. It entails that when a field of science is continually applied to yield precise predictions, then it is at least approximately true.
Decision Theory and Epistemology
Authors: Kaplan Mark
Published: September 2009

This article finds it characteristic of orthodox Bayesians to hold that for each person and each hypothesis it comprehends, there is a precise degree of confidence that person has in the truth of that proposition, and that no person can be counted as rational unless the degree of confidence assignment it thus harbors satisfies the axioms of the probability calculus. In focusing exclusively on degrees of confidence, the Bayesian approach tells nothing about the epistemic status of the doxastic states epistemologists have traditionally been concerned about—categorical beliefs. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it aims to show that, as powerful as many of such criticisms are against orthodox Bayesianism, there is a credible kind of Bayesianism. Second, it aims to show how this Bayesianism finds a foundation in considerations concerning rational preference.
Introduction
Authors: Bickle John
Published: September 2009

This introductory article explains the coverage of the book, which is about the connection between philosophy and neuroscience. It discusses the beginning of the philosophy and neuroscience movement in 1986 which coincided with the publication of Patricia Churchland's Neurophilosophy. The text in this book is designed to make direct appeal to data and evidence from some recognized field of current neuroscience. The topics covered by this volume include functional neuroimaging, neuropsychological assessment, and molecular neuroscience.