bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Calculating Machines or Leaky Jars? The Moral Psychology of Plato’s Gorgias
Authors: Carone Gabriela Roxana
Published: November 2023

In this essay I propose to address a putative tension in the Gorgias between what has sometimes been called ‘ Socratic intellectualism’ on the one hand, and the concession that the soul may have irrational motivations on the other. Common interpretations of this phenomenon have consisted in taking the Gorgias as a transitional dialogue, the ‘Socratic intellectualism’ part of it portraying the views of the historical Socrates (and/or Plato’s earlier views, as expounded e.g. in the Apology and Prntagoras), and the, so to speak, ‘irrationalist’ part of it portraying views that Plato himself (as opposed to Socrates) is starting to consider in a way that anticipates the further developments of the Republic (with its recognition of sou1 division, psychic conflict, and allegedly, the possibility of akmsia).
Non-Substantial Individuals In Aristotle’S Categories
Authors: Erginel Mehmet M
Published: November 2023

Aristotleistotle ‘s C’ategories1 classifies entities by using two predication relations, being ‘said of’ a subject and being ‘in’ a subject.2 Four kinds of entity emerge from this classification: (i) things that are neither ‘said of nor ‘in’ a subject; (ii) things that are ‘said of a subject but not ‘in’ a subject; (iii) things that are both ‘said of’ a subject and ‘in’ a subject; and (iv) things that are ‘in’ a subject but not ‘said of’ a subject.3
From Republic to Laws’.
Authors: Kahn Charlesk
Published: November 2023

No reader of Plato’s Laws can miss the striking contrast, in both form and content, between this dialogue and the Republic. But different readers evaluate the contrast in different ways. Lord Acton, for example, seems to have preferred the later work; he reported that the books from which he learnt ‘the most about the principles of politics’ were the Laws of Plato and the Politics of Aristotle. 2 And several passages in the Laws might well serve as the source for Acton’s famous observation that a11 power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In these passages Plato argues for the rule of laws rather than men, on the grounds that human nature is too weak to bear political authority that is unbridled and uncontrolled by law.
What and About What is Internalism?
Authors: Fumerton Richard
Published: November 2023

Internalism/externalism controversies rage on in both epistemology and the philosophy of mind. Obviously, it is critical to any satisfactory discussion of these issues that we get clear about just exactly what constitutes an internal state and what constitute the targets of one‘s internalist/externalist analyses. So, for example, Conee and Feldman (2004) often identify their epistemic internalism with the thesis that all evidence is identical with the mental states of a believer—they call this thesis mentalism. But in an afterword to ‘Internalism Defended ‘ they acknowledge that the existence of the internalism/externalism debate in the philosophy of mind might require a more subtle characterization of their epistemological internalism.
Externally Enhanced Internalism
Authors: Conee Earl
Published: November 2023

Refinements aside, epistemic internalism holds that justification is wholly determined inside of us. Refinements aside, content externalism holds that the contents of some mental states are partially determined outside of us. Content externalism can seem to threaten epistemic internalism. The justification of attitudes toward propositional contents is a main topic of internalism. According to content externalism, some attitude contents are differentiated externally. Those contents might appear to be too remote from internal factors for justification to be determined internally. In short, since content externalism seems to imply that we cannot always distinguish on a purely internal basis which proposition we have in mind, it can seem doubtful that the appropriate attitude toward a proposition is always determined internally.
Entitlement, Opacity, and Connection
Authors: Majors Brad , Sawyer Sarah
Published: November 2023

Central to debate over the nature of representational content is the question whether such content can be individuated without essential reference to nonintentional relations between the thinker and the objects or properties represented. Semantic externalism is the view that it cannot be so individuated. Its proponents hold that part of what it is to be a perceptual representation is to bear causal or other sorts of nonrepresentational relations to the relevant subject matter.1 Semantic internalism denies this claim, and thus insists that a thinker‘s representational properties, states, and events supervene upon the intrinsic nature of the thinker. Physically type-identical subjects, on this view, necessarily share all the same semantic or representational attributes.
If you Know what is Best, you Do it: Socratic Intellectualism in Xenophon and Plato
Authors: Seel Gerhard
Published: November 2023

In the following, I shall do something most scholars consider senseless: putting the question of Socrates again. This question is exactly the opposite of the other great question of ancient scholarship, i.e. the question of Homer. What the latter is about is best expressed in the following joke: Someone in Oxford has discovered that it was not Homer who wrote the Iliad; it was somebody else who happened to have the same name. Obviously such a story could not be told about Socrates at all. In the case of Homer, we are familiar with the work; what we do not know is the identity of the author. In the case of Socrates, it is the other way around.
Socrates and Hedonism
Authors: Kahn Charles H
Published: November 2023

The Protagoras is a puzzling dialogue in many respects, but none more puzzling than the apparent endorsement of hedonism by Socrates in the Final refutation of Protagoras. Since Aristotle clearly takes some of the views expressed by Socrates in this dialogue to be the views of the historical Socrates (notably the denial of akrasia), some scholars have been tempted to see the identification pleasure as the good as in fact a view defended by the historical character Socrates, and not just by Socrates in the dialogue. But most of us Find it difficult to believe that the Socrates we know from the Apology and the Crito—the Socrates who claimed that the only consideration for a good man is whether a proposed action is or is not just—could ever have identified the good with the pleasant.
Socrates and Euthyphro: The Argument and its Revival
Authors: Irwin Terence
Published: November 2023

In the Euthyphro (10a–11b) Socrates argues against Euthyphro’s suggestion that piety is what all the gods love. His argument, sometimes known simply as ‘the Euthyphro Argument’, is the source of a long sequence of philosophical reXexions on definition, and on related issues in met ethics . The continuing prominence of these issues in contemporary philosophy demonstrates the depth and breadth of the questions raised by the Euthyphro Argument.
Sharing a Property
Authors: Scaltsas Theodore
Published: November 2023

The Socratic discussion in the Hippias Major 300–303, is not a passing comment on plural reference; it is a theory of plural subject hood. It has escaped attention because it is a small part of a larger complex argument on the topic of which pleasures are fine. Socrates’ theory is further concealed by the fact that it is presented as an antithesis between Hippias and himself, whereas in fact Hippias’ position shares much with Socrates’ theory.
The Early Christian Reception of Socrates
Authors: Frede Michael
Published: November 2023

This book commemorates Socrates’ death some 2,400 years ago. Socrates plays a pivotal role in the history of philosophy. This role is reXected by the fact that scholars have come to distinguish between the Presocratics, as we now call them, on the one hand, and Socrates and the philosophers who followed him, on the other. This distinction is not as clear cut as one might wish when it comes to the details, but it does capture the enormous diVerence in character between the sort of philosophy we Find in the Presocratics and philosophy as it emerges in the fourth century under the inXuence of Socrates and his immediate followers.
Desire And Reason In Plato’S Republic
Authors: Lorenz Hendrik
Published: November 2023

In book 4 of Plato’s Republic,as is well known, Socrates offers a complicated and somewhat problematic argument for the conclusion that the human soul, in its embodied state, has three parts. One question is what Socrates commits himself to in arguing, in the way he does, that the soul is composed of parts—never mind the further questions how many parts there are, and how they are to be characterized. Might it be that his commitment is just to the position that human motivation comes in a number of distinct and specifiable kinds or forms? There are, moreover, questions about how Plato conceives of the various parts of the soul that the argument is designed to bring to light. For instance, it has seemed to several commentators that even the lowest part of the soul, as Plato thinks of it, is equipped with cognitive resources that we, at least, regard as rational, such as the capacity for means—ends reasoning. Closely related, as it turns out, is the further question whether Plato’s argument succeeds in establishing precisely the three parts that it is meant to establish, rather than generating indefinitely more parts than three. The worry that I want to focus on in this connection is whether Plato’s argument requires not only a partition of the soul into a rational part (or reason), a spirited part (or spirit), and an (intensely) desiderative part (or desire), but also a subpartition of at least one of these parts.
Cartesian Dualism
Authors: Hawthorne John
Published: November 2023

In this short paper, I shall examine some key structural features of Descartes’s metaphysics, as it relates to mind–body dualism. The style of presentation will partly be one of rational reconstruction, designed to present the Cartesian system in a way that will be of maximal interest to contemporary metaphysicians. Section 1 focuses on five key Cartesian theses about principal attributes. Sections 2 and 3 examine how those theses play themselves out in Descartes’s discussion of mind–body dualism.
Editions and Translations of the Text
Authors: Mccabe Anne
Published: November 2023

The Hippiatrica First appeared in print in a Latin translation by Jean Ruel (Ruellius), published in Paris by Simon de Colines in 1530.1 Ruel (1474– 1537), a native of Soissons, was dean of the faculty of medicine in Paris and personal physician to King François I. He had previously made a Latin translation of the De materia medica of Dioscorides (Paris, H. Estienne, 1516), an edition that was reprinted many times: the Hellenist Guillaume Budé called him’ ‘aigle des interprétes’. Ruel also produced editions of Celsus and John Actuarius; the plant genus Ruellia is named after him.
Studies of the Hippiatrica
Authors: Mccabe Anne
Published: November 2023

The Hippiatrica has been in print for more than four and a half centuries, but has attracted relatively little scholarly attention in this time. That is not to say the text has languished unread. Isaac Casaubon’s copy of Grynaeus’ edition bears copious annotations in his hand, including the deduction that Hierocles was not the compiler of the Hippiatrica. Nicolas Rigault (Rigaltius), Casaubon’s successor as one of the keepers of the royal library in Paris, pointed out in the introduction to his edition of the Greek works on falconry that the Hippiatrica is also an anonymous compilation.
Hierocles
Authors: Mccabe Anne
Published: November 2023

Moreover, there was a long tradition in Greek literature of amateurs writing practical handbooks with other amateurs in mind, usually by putting someone else’s material into more attractive literary form. The best-known examples are the Phaenomena of Aratus and the Theriaca and Alexipharmaca of Nicander, paraphrases of the manuals of Eudoxus and Apollodorus of Alexandria, respectively, into hexameter verse. Varro, too, put his compilation on agriculture into the form of a dialogue, and Columella’s De re rustica is not without rhetorical Xourishes. The Latin veterinary treatise of Vegetius, which consists of a reworking of Columella, the Mulomedicina Chironis, and Pelagonius, provides an analogy to Hierocles’ work.
Conclusions
Authors: Mccabe Anne
Published: November 2023

A number of tendencies may be discerned in the evolution of what we may call the major recensions of the Hippiatrica, M, B, C, and L. The First is in the presentation of the excerpts. In M, the identities of the authors are distinct and prominent: indeed, the text is arranged according to their names. Excerpts from the source treatises are transcribed, as far as one can tell, without alteration, and no anonymous excerpts figure in the compilation. In B, the reordering of the compilation gives more weight to the subjects of the excerpts. Many excerpts have lost their identifying lemmata, and anonymous sources are also introduced. In C, the individual source- treatises are no longer treated as sovereign entities, and excerpts from different authors are run together without scruple.
Philosophical Background
Authors: Hampshire Stuart
Published: November 2023

‘I do not presume to have discovered the best philosophy’, Spinoza wrote (Letter LXXVI), ‘but I know that I understand the true one.’ Spinoza is the most ambitious and uncompromising of all modem philosophers, and it is partly for this reason that he is supremely worth studying. He exhibits the metaphysical mind and temperament at its purest and most intense; he is the perfect example of the pure philosopher. No other modern philosopher of equal stature has made such exalted claims for philosophy, or had such a clear vision of the scope and range of pure philosophical thinking.
Ramsey’s Legacy
Authors: Lillehammer Hallvard , Mellor D H
Published: November 2023

The Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) died tragically young, but had already established himself as one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. Besides groundbreaking work in philosophy, particularly in logic, language, and metaphysics, he created modern decision theory and made substantial contributions to mathematics and economics. In these original essays, written to commemorate the centenary of Ramsey's birth, a distinguished international team of contributors offer fresh perspectives on his work and show how relevant it is to present-day concerns. Each of the ten essays addresses fundamental and contentious issues, including success semantics, propositions, infinity, conditionals, conceptual analysis, decision theory, and intergenerational justice. They also shed light on the intellectual context in which Ramsey developed his thought, including his relationship with such leading thinkers as John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The volume will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the recent history of philosophy and economics, as well as for practitioners and students of logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, decision theory, and welfare economics.
Spinoza’s Axiology
Authors: Miller Jon
Published: November 2023

After experience had taught me that all the things which regularly occur in ordinary life are empty and futile, and I saw that all the things which were the cause or object of my fear had nothing of good or bad in themselves, except insofar as [my] mind was moved by them, I resolved at last to try to find out whether there was anything which would be the true good, capable of communicating itself, and which alone would affect the mind, all others being rejected—whether there was something which, once found and acquired, would continuously give me the greatest joy, to eternity.
Heraclitus And Material Flux In Stoic Psychology
Authors: Colvin Matthew
Published: November 2023

Among the ancient Stoics, Cleanthes is pre-eminent for his use of Heraclitus. There is evidence that this tendency informed his analytic writings no less than his poetic Hymn to Zeus. One prime example, from Arius Didymus, is a famous source for Heraclitus’ river-saying, but has not been well understood in its own right:
Fine’S Plato: A Discussion Of Gail Fine, Plato On Knowledge And Forms
Authors: Vaneck Job
Published: November 2023

Readers who are acquainted with work by Gail Fine, especially her monumental On Ideas,2 will eagerly welcome this volume, a collection of some fifteen articles she has published over the past twenty-five years. Preceded by a comprehensive introductory overview that binds them together, they offer a coherent and re markable picture of Plato’s epistemology and metaphysics, by a scholar who does not need an introduction here as one of the prominent authors in the field. The result is a book that is extremely rich in content: it deals with a wide range of subjects, offers many fresh interpretations, but, above all, it contains a wealth of arguments which find their origin in a broad systematic-philosophic approach manifesting great philosophical skill.
The Dematerialization of the Object
Authors: Matravers Derek
Published: November 2023

In general, interest in conceptual art among Anglo-American philosophers springs from the challenge it poses to some claims that seem to lie at or near the centre of the traditional concept of art. A rough characterization of such claims might go as follows. Works of art are (1) objects, (2) which we appreciate through direct experiential encounter and (3) such an experiential encounter is non-instrumentally valuable. The challenge was, famously, articulated by Lucy Lippard and John Chandler who, in 1968, wrote:
Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Learning from Imagination
Authors: Stock Kathleen
Published: November 2023

A well-documented aim of conceptual art is the undermining of the traditional idea of an artwork as a single physically present object. A common method of achieving this is to present to the viewer a prompt designed to make her think of some absent thing. This may take the form of a written description, a title, a map or set of instructions; the absent entity may be a situation, an event, a process, or an object. To take some examples: Laurence Weiner’s Statements, consisting of descriptions of objects or processes, such as ‘One quart exterior green enamel thrown on a brick wall’.
Abductive Knowledge and Holmesian Inference
Authors: Bird Alexander
Published: November 2023

The usual, comparative, conception of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) takes it to be ampliative. In this paper I propose a conception of IBE (‘Holmesian inference’) that takes it to be a species of eliminative induction and hence not ampliative. This avoids several problems for comparative IBE (e.g. how could it be reliable enough to generate knowledge?). My account of Holmesian inference raises the suspicion that it could never be applied, on the grounds that scientific hypotheses are inevitably underdetermined by the evidence (i.e. are inevitably ampliative). I argue that this concern may be resisted by acknowledging, as Timothy Williamson has shown, that all knowledge is evidence. This suggests an approach to resisting scepticism different from those (e.g. the reliabilist approach) that embrace fallibilism.
Contrastive Knowledge
Authors: Schaffer Jonathan
Published: November 2023

Does G. E. Moore know that he has hands? Yes, says the dogmatist: Moore’s hands are right before his eyes. No, says the skeptic: for all Moore knows he could be a brain-in-a-vat. Yes and no,says the con- trastivist: yes, Moore knows that he has hands rather than stumps; but no, Moore does not know that he has hands rather than vat-images of hands.
The Will to Power and the Ethics of Creativity
Authors: Reginster Bernard
Published: November 2023

Few of Nietzsche’s ideas have been more maligned than his concept of the will to power. Among the various objections it has invited, the deepest and most enduring remains rooted in a tempting interpretation of power in terms of control or domination: to will power is to seek to control or dominate. The implications of this interpretation (for example, that Hitler’s Nazism is a paradigmatic embodiment of the will to power) have proved deeply embarrassing to scholars otherwise favorably disposed toward Nietzsche’s ideas.²
English and Continental Sources
Authors: Ravelhofer Barbara
Published: November 2023

Choreographic sources produced before 1700 rarely included floor patterns or iconographic dance notation. Dances were described verbally, in a linear stepby-step, beat-after-beat manner. Steps were represented as text, either in shorthand as a sequence of letters (for instance, r, b, and s stood for révérence, branle , and simple in fifteenth-century Burgundian basses danses ), or as a full prose account (in the way Ramsey wrote down his ‘Spanioletta’). Some preliminary experiments aside, an iconic standard to indicate steps, arm movements, and spatial directions appeared in France towards the end of the seventeenth century.
Costume Conventions for Male and Female Masquers
Authors: Ravelhofer Barbara
Published: November 2023

In her survey of early modern costume, Anne Hollander distinguishes between ‘theatrical’ and ‘dramatic’ outfit: the former expands the performer’s own self, the latter transforms the performer into a character other than himself. Antimasque costumes were ‘dramatic’ devices: they came in a multiplicity of styles and shapes, representing exotic nationalities, animals, abstract concepts, and even objects such as bottles. Since they did not express a person’s ‘self ‘ they were open to professional dancers and actors, and, towards the Caroline period, even high-ranking aristocrats.
Historical Costume, Historical Dancing: Coelum Britannicum
Authors: Ravelhofer Barbara
Published: November 2023

While the Thirty Years War raged on the Continent, Thomas Carew’s court masque Coelum Britannicum (1634) extolled domestic peace under Charles I and Henrietta Maria. The enmities with France and Spain had ended; between 1629 and 1635, England experienced a period of prosperity. Within the smaller circle of the court, Charles took the opportunity to establish a rigid protocol and initiate household reforms. An expression of ‘Pax Carolana’ and in line with Charles’s crusade against loose manners and sloppy administration, Carew’s masque expressed a specifically Caroline revival of courtly values based on historical example.
Sympathy, Commitment, and Preference
Authors: Hausman Daniel M
Published: November 2023

The recent opportunity to reread Amartya Sen’s many writings on preference and choice as a unit increased my appreciation of their depth and intricacy and of the wit and humanity of their author. It also made me realize that I had persistently misread them, mistakenly substituting my own notion of “preference” for Sen’s. While still very much in Sen’s camp in rejecting revealed preference theory and emphasizing the complexity, incompleteness, and context dependence of preference and the intellectual costs of supposing that all the factors influencing choice can be captured by a single notion of preference, I shall contest his view that economists should recognize multiple notions of preference.
Rationality and Commitment in Voluntary Cooperation: Insights from Experimental Economics
Authors: Gächter Simon , Thoöni Christian
Published: November 2023

Cooperation problems arise when individual incentives and social optimality diverge. This tension has intrigued social scientists and philosophers for decades. In this chapter we look at the cooperation problem from the viewpoint of experimental economics, a subfield of economics which studies decision-making under controlled laboratory conditions and under real monetary incentives. Years of careful experimentation have led to a body of results, which may shed new light on old philosophical questions, and on the foundations of the behavioural sciences.
Shame, Pleasure, and The Divided Soul
Authors: Moss Jessica
Published: November 2023

Thumos—spirit, the middle part of the soul in Plato’s Republic— has a bad reputation. In one of the most sustained attacks on its integrity, Terry Penner writes:Plato’s true view [in the Republic] is … that there are only two parts of the soul, a rational part and an irrational part, and he allows himself thumos (spirit) for irrelevant political or moral reasons only … Plato had no logical or psychological arguments for going beyond two parts of the soul.
Aristotle On Why Plants Cannot Perceive
Authors: Murphy Damian
Published: November 2023

This paper pertains to the debate between literalists and spiritualists concerning Aristotle’s theory of perception. I investigate why Aristotle thought that plants cannot perceive. Aristotle says that it is because they do not have a mean and cannot receive forms without matter (DA 424a32–b3). A crucial question is whether ‘to receive forms without matter’ means ‘to receive the forms of the sensible object without receiving matter from the sensible object’ (literalism) or ‘to receive the forms of the sensible object without being affected materially’ (spiritualism). As an explanation of why
A Posteriori Identities and the Requirements of Rationality
Authors: White Stephen L
Published: November 2023

Imagine that a medical team and submarine have been miniaturized and injected into the brain of a conscious subject to correct an otherwise irreparable condition. As leader of the team carrying out this procedure, your greatest fear is that the subject, who is unaware of his situation, will take aspirin in response to the extensive c-fiber firing that you are apprehensively watching develop. For, as you know, in the subject’s compromised condition, aspirin would cause nerve impulses and thus electrical activity in the brain that would completely destroy normal cognition. What you don’t know is that the brain you are trying to repair is your own—that the nerve impulses from your body (minus the brain) produce the inputs (via a wireless connection) to the very brain whose activities you are witnessing.
God and the Problem of Universals
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: November 2023

We sort things into classes we find natural: we call some animals cats, some dogs, etc. In so doing we attribute being cats, dogs, etc. to them. Theories of attributes are answers to the question, ‘‘what exactly makes it correct to attribute to something (say) being a cat?’’ Some philosophers, realists, think that what makes it correct is that this animal has a real constituent, cathood, in common with all other cats: there is a single entity, a universal, cathood, in which (so to speak) all cats overlap. Other philosophers, nominalists, deny that there is such a thing as cathood. Recent theories of attributes typically do not assume that God exists. There are at least two reasons for this: most philosophers do not think it likely that God exists, and even more do not see how the existence of God could ever bear on the theory of attributes. It was not always thus. In the debate’s medieval heyday, the players were all theists. Many saw God’s existence as intensely relevant to this issue. Aquinas, for instance, rejects Platonist theories of universals because ‘‘it seems contrary to the faith to hold, as the Platonists did, that the Forms of things exist in themselves’’.
Health of the People: The Highest Law?1
Authors: Gostin Lawrence O , Stone Lesley
Published: November 2023

From my perspective, as a White House official watching the budgetary process, and subsequently as head first of a health care financing agency and then of a public health agency, I was continually amazed to watch as billions of dollars were allocated to financing medical care with little discussion, whereas endless arguments ensued over a few millions for community prevention programs. The sums that were the basis for prolonged, and often futile, budget fights in public health were treated as rounding errors in the Medicare budget. Law and ethics in population health are having a renaissance (Gostin 2000a; Reynolds 2003).
Population-Level Bioethics: Mapping a New Agenda
Authors: Wikler Daniel , Brock Dan W
Published: November 2023

Bioethics was long focused on ethical issues arising in the relationships and interactions of individual patients and their physicians, as well as individual investigators and their research subjects. Ethical issues arising at the population level are no less acute, but are much less visible to lay people, to health professionals, and to many bioethicists. The issues come into focus only when one adopts a bird’s eye view that looks at populations. From this perspective, new issues become visible, and their close kinship to long-debated ethical questions in other fields such as population policy, environmental health, and political philosophy becomes apparent.
Reasonable Limits to Public Health Demands1
Authors: Hoven Mariëtte Vanden
Published: November 2023

With an increasing frequency, individuals in Western countries are con- fronted with preventive programmes. These activities vary from offers of general screening and immunisation programmes to specific lifestyle and nutritional recommendations; for example, you can be tested for cholesterol while shopping in the supermarket, buy step-o-meters to measure your physical activity, or you can obtain preconception information about possible genetic risks when deciding to have children. In the jungle of public health we often simply assume that each individual will benefit from all these recommendations and offers. However, this is not true.
What is a puma?
Authors: Hansell Michael
Published: November 2023

A panther is on the loose in the west of Scotland. Sightings suggest it is moving towards Glasgow. There is no photo, no DNA extracted from a hair found on a garden fence, but it is out there. There are others down in England. In the 1960s the puma, not the panther, was the wild beast of the moment and in the summer of 1965 a bunch of Oxford zoology postgraduates and their friends set off on weekend safari in search of conclusive evidence of the ‘Surrey puma’. Among the group were Richard Dawkins and myself. The best evidence we came up with was some large scratch marks. A puma or, more likely, the foot flourish of a large dog satisfied after just relieving itself?
The Nest’s Tale: Affectionate Disagreements With Richard Dawkins
Authors: Bateson Patrick
Published: November 2023

Richard and I are sometimes presented as being highly critical of each other. Those who hope for bloody gladiatorial contests are disappointed when they discover that the circles of our interests and beliefs overlap much more extensively than they had believed. Obviously we disagree about some matters, as I shall describe later. Nevertheless, the disagreements are generally teasing and affectionate, since we are old friends, and have not taken on the character of those bitter wrangles that can disfigure the face of academic life. For my part, I have much to be grateful to Richard for what he has done. Like numerous other academics working in university biology departments
Expressivism, Yes! Relativism, No!
Authors: Horgan Terry , Timmons Mark
Published: November 2023

Expressivism in ethics is a metaethical view according to which (roughly) a typical moral judgment functions to express some psychological state other than a descriptive belief, such as some desire, intention, or other motivating state with regard to some object of evaluation. This metaethical view is, of course, a close cousin (if not identical to) what used to be called ‘noncognitivism’, and noncognitivists like C. L. Stevenson (as our epigraph indicates) were opposed to moral relativism. Contemporary expressivists like Simon Blackburn (1996, 1998) follow Stevenson in being opposed to relativism. Our own evolving metaethical view is a version of what we call cognitivist expressivism, and we, too, are opposed to moral relativism. (see Horgan and Timmons, 2006).

However, some contemporary critics of expressivist views, including Paul Bloomfield (2003) and Russ Shafer-Landau (2003), have followed Philipp

Foot in claiming that expressivists are committed to some form or another of moral relativism despite what such expressivists say. And we suppose Bloomfield and Shafer-Landau would say the same thing about Stevenson’s version of noncognitivism. This is peculiar, given the careful attention that Stevenson, Blackburn, and we ourselves have devoted to explaining why expressivist and related views are not committed to moral relativism.
Anthropocentric Constraints on Human Value
Authors: D’Arms Justin , Jacobson Daniel
Published: November 2023

According to Cicero, ‘all emotions spring from the roots of error: they should not be pruned or clipped here and there, but yanked out’ (Cicero, 2002: 60). The Stoic enthusiasm for the extirpation of emotion is radical in two respects, both of which can be expressed with the claim that emotional responses are never appropriate. First, the Stoics held that emotions are incompatible with virtue, since the virtuous man will retain his equanimity whatever his fate. Grief is always vicious, both bad and bad for you, even when directed at events commonly considered tragic, such as the loss of one’s child. Second, they buttressed this view with an account of the nature of emotion and its relation to value. Emotions are evaluative judgments that are systematically false, because they attribute significant value or disvalue to external things and events beyond an agent’s control— such as wealth, honor, pain, and death— which are merely ‘indifferents’: neither good nor bad.
Knowing Enough to Disagree: A New Response to the Moral Twin Earth Argument
Authors: Roojen Mark van
Published: November 2023

At the beginning of the twentieth century, G. E. Moore’s open question argument convinced many philosophers that moral statements were not equivalent to statements made using non-moral or descriptive terms. For any non-moral description of an action or object it seemed that competent speakers could without confusion doubt that the action or object was appropriately characterized using moral terms such as ‘good’ or ‘right’. The question of whether the action or object so described was good or right was always open, even to competent speakers. In the absence of any systematic theory to explain the possibility of synthetic as opposed to analytic identities, many were convinced this demonstrated that moral properties could not be identified with any natural (or supernatural) properties. Thus Moore and others concluded that moral properties such as goodness were irreducible sui generis properties, not identical to natural

properties (Moore, 1903: 15). Noncognitivists used the same argument to support the idea that moral judgments have an expressive function rather than a representational function. Their explanation for the failure of competent speakers to recognize the equivalence of moral predicates with other predicates was that these terms, unlike other predicates, did not serve to represent properties at all (Ogden and Richards, 1923: 125).
Negation for Expressivists: A Collection of Problems with a Suggestion for their Solution
Authors: Dreier James
Published: November 2023

Crucial to the solution of various problems for expressivism is the development of a coherent semantics for negation. Nicholas Unwin (2001) explained why Allan Gibbard’s program in Wise Choices, Apt Feelings was not up to the task. Briefly, the problem is that there are three ways to ‘negate’ a sentence like

(M) Miss Manners thinks one must write thank you notes by hand. The three are:

(N1) Miss Manners believes one must not write thank you notes by hand.

(N2) Miss Manners believes it is not so that one must write thank you notes by hand.

(N3) Miss Manners does not believe one must write thank you notes by hand.

But the resources available in Gibbard’s scheme seem to allow the construction of only two, most plausibly (N1) and (N3), with no way to interpret (N2). From a logical point of view, we can think of requirement and permission as operators on sentences (or on infinitives or participles).
Theoretical Lexicography and its Relation to Dictionary-making
Authors: Atkins B T S
Published: November 2023

Does theoretical lexicography exist? If this forum is to discuss its nature, we must at least grant it the benefit of the doubt, although its counterpart, practical lexicography, has a tautological ring to it. I propose here to interpret the term theoretical lexicography in the very general sense of “a body of theory related to lexicography,” and, drawing inspiration from the title of Landau (1984), to define lexicography as “the art and craft of dictionary-making.” A more traditional definition of this latter term is to be found in the 1990 Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD): “the compiling of dictionaries.” That plural form is very important. Abstract terms like lexicography and generic concepts like the dictionary form a smoke screen between theoretical discussions and the real, hard world of dictionary-making. What I have to say here concerns making dictionaries, not making “the dictionary.” Dictionaries may be considered from the point of view of form or of content, and both are relevant to this discussion. First, form: a dictionary (to quote the COD again) is “a book that lists … and explains the words of a language …” Much is written nowadays in artificial intelligence circles about electronic dictionaries, but almost the whole of dictionary production still consists of books—and I know no publisher who sees an imminent profitable market for custom-built electronic dictionaries. The electronic dictionaries that exist today all started life as books, with the tiny exception of lexicons built expressly for a computer. To my knowledge, apart from the Japanese EDR Electronic Dictionaries, none of these is even as big as a small pocket dictionary. Books are the focus of professional lexicography, and the dictionaries discussed, reviewed, praised, or criticized are books. Theoretical lexicography must be relevant to books.
The Future of Linguistics and Lexicographers: Will there be Lexicographers in the Year 3000?
Authors: Grefenstette Gregory
Published: November 2023

Lexicology has been posed as a science ever since the 18th century. In the article Grammaire from Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia, lexicology is described as the explanation of three aspects of knowledge about each of the words from a language: its Material, its Value, and its Etymology. The Material is described as how a given word is put together: the syllables that compose it, how it is pronounced. The Value of a word is divided into three parts: the fundamental sense (proper or figurative), the specific sense (now called the part-of-speech), and the accidental sense (morphological variants of the word). The Etymology concerns the rules by which new words are formed, as well as the historical sources of a word interesting as an aid to understanding the word’s current meaning. Lexicology dealt with words taken in isolation, while syntax concerned words in the context of other words. The section ends: “Tels sont les points de vue fondamentaux auxquels on peut rapporter les principes de la Lexicologie. C’est aux dictionnaires de chaque langue à marquer sur chacun des mots qu’ils renferment, les décisions propres de l’usage, relatives à ces points de vue.” Looking at modern dictionaries, we find that lexicographers in every language have taken these words to heart. The same principles are found in today’s dictionary entries. The Material is presented in a word’s spelling, pronunciation, and syllabification. The Etymology is often covered by a succinct presentation of the word’s origins. Two of the three parts of the word’s Value, the part-of-speech and special morphological variants, are almost invariably included in the entry. The remaining point of view on a word, a description of the fundamental sense, composes the meat of the dictionary entry, and, to mix the culinary metaphor, is the bread-and-butter of the lexicographer.
The Score: is it Written Down?
Authors: Noble Denis
Published: November 2023

We have seen that the human genome is a vast database of information, 3 billion base pairs, which make up 20–30 000 genes. Each of these is used to encode the amino acid sequence of a particular protein, or set of proteins. The complete sequence and structure of the proteins is sometimes referred to as the proteome. So how is the information in the genome used to create the proteome? This is quite a challenging question.
Newton’s Principia
Authors: Grosholz Emily R
Published: November 2023

Molecules cannot be perceived directly by human beings, though their appearance is inferred indirectly from traces detected by various laboratory instruments. One important feature they share with macroscopic objects is shape, and, as we saw in Chapter 3, 4, and 5, geometrical shape may thus serve an important role in linking the microscopic and macroscopic, the molecular world and the world of the laboratory, field, and classroom.
Irish counting plurals
Authors: Acquaviva Paolo
Published: November 2023

Our second case study features a special type of plural nouns in Irish. In this language, nouns governed by a numeral between three and ten must be, or at least can be, singular. The admissibility of the plural in this context varies lexically and dialectally, but no dialect follows the usual lndo-European pattern which mandates plural in this context. The (modern) Irish equivalent of ‘three books’ is thus literally ‘three book’, as a possibility if not always an obligation.
Discovering the Timetree of Life
Authors: Hedges S Blair , Kumar Sudhir
Published: November 2023

With great delight, we can say that the time has come, and that it is now. Certainly, many important details remain to be worked out, such as deep branching patterns among major taxonomic groups and the interrelationships of many species, but much of the tree of life already has taken shape (2). 7is revolution in evolution has occurred largely through advances in molecular biology over the last half century, building on a foundation laid by paleontology and comparative biology. It would not have been possible without many discoveries, progressively building on previous work, such as the structure of DNA (3), methods to sequence proteins and DNA (4–6), a technique to rapidly amplify DNA (7), and advances in statistical methods of data analysis. Some—perhaps most—of the resulting molecular phylogenies have corroborated trees based on morphology and cell biology, but many Andings were unexpected including the discoveries of archaebacteria (8) and an African clade of mammals (9) to name just two. Our current understanding of the tree of life draws from fossils, morphology, and—especially in the last two decades— many molecular phylogenies.
Animals (Metazoa)
Authors: Blair Jaime E
Published: November 2023

The evolution of large, heterotrophic metazoans (Fig. 1) has undoubtedly had a signiAcant impact on the history of life by increasing the complexity of trophic interactions both in marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Metazoans are most closely related to Fungi as part of Opisthokonta, a eukaryotic supergroup which also includes unicellular choanoPagellates, icthyosporeans, and nucleariids (1, 2). theclosest relatives of metazoans are the choanoPagellates; morphological similarities between the collar cells of sponges and the colonial habits of choanoPagellates were noted over 150 years ago (3). In addition, important molecular characteristics traditionally thought to be unique to metazoans, such as cell signaling and adhesion protein families, have also been found in choanoPagellates (4, 5). Here I review the relationships and divergence times among the metazoan phyla.
Snakes (Serpentes)
Authors: Vidala Nicolas , Ragec Jean-Claude , Coulouxd Arnaud , Hedgesb S Blair
Published: November 2023

Snakes are among the most successful groups of reptiles, numbering about 3070 extant species (1). 7ey are divided into two main groups. The fossorial scolecophidians (370 sp.) are small snakes with a limited gape size and feed on small prey (mainly ants and termites) on a frequent basis. thealethinophidians, or typical snakes (2700 sp.), are more ecologically diverse and most species feed on relatively large prey, primarily vertebrates, on an infrequent basis (2, 3). According to most morphological studies, a distinctive evolutionary trend within living snakes is the increase of the gape size from fossorial scolecophidians (Typhlopidae, Leptotyphlopidae, and Anomalepididae) and fossorial alethinophidians (Aniliidae, Cylindrophiidae, Uropeltidae, and Anomochilidae) to ecologically diverse macrostomatan alethinophidian snakes such as boas, pythons, and caenophidians (advanced snakes) (2, but see 4). Macrostomatans are able to ingest very large prey, oJen greater in diameter than the snake itself (5), and the monophyly of the macrostomatan condition is supported by several unambiguous shared-derived characters (6). All venomous snakes are found within Caenophidia, which includes the great majority of extant snakes (2500 sp.) (1).
Shorebirds (Charadriiformes)
Authors: Baker Allan J , Pereiraa Sérgio L
Published: November 2023

Shorebirds are a diverse cosmopolitan group that forms the monophyletic Order Charadriiformes. 7ey represent one of the largest clades in birds with 366 species classiAed traditionally in 19 families (1). theorder can be divided into three major clades (2–4): Scolopaci (sandpipers, jacanas, painted snipes, seedsnipes, and Plains-wanderer), Lari (Crab Plover, coursers and pratincoles, gulls, terns, skimmers, and alcids), and Charadrii (plovers, oystercatchers, Ibisbill, stilts, avocets, sheathbills, and Magellanic Plover) (Fig. 1). Here we review the phylogenetic relationships and estimates of divergence times of the families of shorebirds. Relationships among taxa and even which taxa should be included in the Charadriiformes has proved di1cult in the past, due in part to convergent acquisition of traits involved in exploitation of a range of ecological niches (4). Phylogenies derived from an extensive data set of morphological and skeletal characters (5) lack resolution at various nodes, and the topologies change depending on how characters are coded and which ones are excluded from analyses (5–8).
Tenrecs and golden moles (Afrosoricida)
Authors: Poux Céline
Published: November 2023

The mammalian Order Afrosoricida is composed of two families, the tenrecs (Tenrecidae; Fig. 1) and golden moles (Chrysochloridae) (1). thename Afrosoricida, coined by Stanhope et al. (1), has been debated (2), but is now broadly accepted and used in the literature. theorder includes 10 genera and 33 species of tenrecs and nine genera and 21 species of chrysochlorids. Among the tenrecs, the most species-rich genus is Microgale, which accounts for two-thirds of the overall tenrec diversity and for which new species are still being discovered (3). thedistribution of afrosoricids is restricted to subSaharan Africa and Madagascar. All golden moles are blind subterranean species, of which the greatest diversity has been recorded in Southern Africa (2). In contrast, only one of the tenrec subfamilies is present on the African mainland. All other tenrec subfamilies are endemic to Madagascar. Tenrecs display a high level of adaptation to their environment and are remarkable examples of convergent morphological evolution with other insectivores, notably shrews, hedgehogs, and moles (4). 7is makes it di1cult to understand their origin and phylogenetic interrelationships on the basis of morphological characters alone. Here, the molecular and morphological data that form the basis of our current understanding of the relationships and the divergence times of Afrosoricida will be reviewed, with emphasis on the time of divergence of the two families.