bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Law and the Protection of Institutions
Authors: Mitchell Basil
Published: November 2010

It is a pity that the question about the proper purpose of law has so often been formulated in terms of ‘the enforcement of morals’. Not only is that issue highly charged with emotion, but the sense of the expression is unclear and, taken in any ordinary sense, its importance is marginal. What Lord Devlin seems chiefly to be arguing, when he supports the enforcement of morals, is that there are in any society certain central institutions which receive and deserve protection by law and that without such protection the society in question would disintegrate. His examples in our own society are monogamy and private property. It is true that these institutions are closely bound up with parts of our morality in two different ways: (a) certain moral prohibitions are defined in terms of them, e.g. adultery and theft; (b) a host of obligations is associated with them upon whose general acceptance and discharge their continuance depends. But it is only in an extended sense that one could describe the institutions themselves as parts of the common morality. It is possible, therefore, to hold that the law may properly be used to protect such institutions without necessarily taking the further step of maintaining that their protection requires and justifies legal prohibition of acts which offend against the associated morality. Professor Hart states this position clearly (a position which he does not himself accept): ‘What is essential and to be preserved is the essential core. On this footing it would be an open and empirical question whether any particular moral rule or veto, e.g. on homosexuality, adultery or fornication, is so organically connected with the central core that its maintenance and preservation is required as a vital outwork or bastion.’
Word and Concept
Authors: Vendler Zeno
Published: November 2010

If a speaker (S) says something in a language (L) and one of the listeners (A) knows L but another (B) does not, then, normally, A will understand what S said but B will not. What is it, exactly, that A, but not B, succeeds in doing in this case, and how to account for the difference? This is a fundamental problem, which the philosophy of language should be able to solve, yet, to my knowledge, has not done so to date.
The Ghost of the Tractatus
Authors: Kenny Anthony
Published: November 2010

Wittgenstein was unreliable as an historian of philosophy. When he criticised other philosophers he rarely gave chapter and verse for his criticism, and on the rare occasions on which he quoted verbatim he did not always do justice to the authors quoted. I will illustrate this first in the comparatively unimportant case of Augustine and then in the more serious case of Frege.
Can whether one proposition makes sense depend on the truth of another? (Tractatus 2.0211—2)
Authors: White R. M.
Published: November 2010

Wittgenstein's Tractatus contains a wide range of profound insights into the nature of logic and language – insights which will survive the particular theories of the Tractatus and seem to me to mark definitive and unassailable landmarks in our understanding of some of the deepest questions of philosophy. And yet alongside these insights there is a theory of the nature of the relation between language and reality which appears both to be impossible to work out in detail in a way which is completely satisfactory, and to be bizarre and incredible. I am referring to the so-called logical atomism of the Tractatus. The main outlines of this theory at least are clear and familiar: there are elementary propositions which gain their sense from being models of possible states of affairs; such propositions are configurations of names of simple objects, signifying that those simples are analogously configured; every proposition has its sense through being analysable as a truth-functional compound of elementary propositions, thus deriving its sense from the sense of the elementary propositions when this view is taken in conjunction with the idea that the sense of a proposition is completely specified by specifying its truth-conditions. In this way the Tractatus incorporates in its working out a philosophical system analogous to the classical philosophical systems of Leibniz or Spinoza which are regarded by many people, in a sense rightly, as the prehistoric monsters of philosophy which are not to be studied as living organisms, but studied as the curiosities of human thought. And we may here agree that in the end we must simply reject a philosophy which incorporates such features as its postulation of simple eternal objects, or of a possibility of an analysis of a proposition which was presented as a pre-condition for the propositions that we ordinarily utter to make sense, and yet the specific form of which we are unaware of, and so on.
The Grundgedanke of the Tractatus
Authors: McGuinness Brian
Published: November 2010

I take as my text propostion 4.0312 of the Tractatus:

The possibility of propositions is based on the principle that objects have signs as their representatives.

My fundamental idea is that the ‘logical constants’ are not representatives; that there can be no representatives of the logic of facts.

Practically the same words occur (with two additional sentences) in Wittgenstein's Notebook for 25 December 1914, where Miss Anscombe translates them:

The possibility of the proposition is, of course, founded on the principle of signs as going proxy for objects.

Thus in the proposition something has something else as its proxy. But there is also the common cement.

My fundamental thought is that the logical constants are not proxies. That the logic of the fact cannot have anything as its proxy.
Wittgenstein and Idealism
Authors: Williams Bernard
Published: November 2010

Tractatus, 5.62 famously says: ‘… what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.’ The later part of this repeats what was said in summary at 5.6: ‘the limits of my language mean the limits of my world’. And the key to the problem ‘how much truth there is in solipsism’ has been provided by the reflections of TLP, 5.61.
Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, and Ethics
Authors: Griffiths A. Phillips
Published: November 2010

Wittgenstein always thought that he had not been understood, and indeed that it was very unlikely that many people ever would understand him. Russell not only failed to understand Wittgenstein's later work; according to Wittgenstein himself, Russell profoundly failed to understand even the Tractatus. Professor Anscombe says even she did not understand him, and that to attempt to give an account of what he says is only to express one's own ordinariness or mediocrity or lack of complexity. Certainly, most people acquainted with the Tractatus, when that work was Wittgenstein's only published book, gave it what now seems a quite crass positivistic interpretation. Wittgenstein's own preface to the Tractatus, despite its last sentence, does not help. He does tell us that the whole sense of the work is that what can be said can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must consign to silence: but this does not make it clear that what we cannot talk about is all that is really important. Even when one has realised all this, however, one is aware mostly of one's failure to understand; and that if one did get any distance in understanding the last sixth of the Tractatus, the process would be extremely difficult, and the results quite astonishing.
Other Minds
Authors: Vesey Godfrey
Published: November 2010

There is a passage in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations in which he compares an answer that may be given to a philosophical question about someone else's pain with an answer that may be given to a question about the meaning of ‘It is 5 o'clock on the sun’. Wittgenstein does not compare other answers that may be given to the two questions. And he does not compare the questions themselves in respect of what lies behind them – making them ones which we can, or cannot, easily ‘see through’ – or in respect of how they should be answered. Yet there is material in what he says elsewhere in the Investigations and in other of his later writings for a manysided and, I think, useful development of the comparison. Anyway, that is what I shall attempt in this lecture.
Wittgenstein on the Soul
Authors: Dilman İlham
Published: November 2010

It is sometimes said that a human being has a soul, whereas animals and lifeless things do not. The distinction made is of significance probably for most religions. Although it sets man apart and places him in a unique category, it should not be taken to imply that there is no difference between what is alive and has sentience, apart from man, and what is lifeless and unconscious. This was Descartes' error. For he ran together several distinctions and equated the soul with consciousness.
Silent Soliloquy
Authors: Squires Roger
Published: November 2010

Speaking is so closely associated with making noises that such descriptions as ‘silent soliloquy’ and ‘soundless monologue’ have an air of paradox. Yet people frequently say things to themselves in such a way that not even a close observer has any reason to think they have done so. It is therefore tempting to suppose that on such occasions a sequence of surrogate speech sounds is produced in the person's head which he alone hears or introaudits, as if what distinguishes silent inner speech from normal speech is that the word substitutes are conveniently hidden from all save their producer.
Wittgenstein on Certainty
Authors: Ayer A. J.
Published: November 2010

Wittgenstein's book On Certainty which was first published in 1969, eighteen years after his death, is a collection of notes which he composed during the last eighteen months of his life. As his editors explain in their preface, these notes, which were written at four different periods, are all in the form of a first draft. They are more repetitive than they no doubt would have been if Wittgenstein had been able to revise them. Even so, they are characteristically succinct and penetrating, and the argument which they develop is easier to follow than that of the general run of Wittgenstein's later work.
Wittgenstein's Theory of Knowledge
Authors: Coope Christopher
Published: November 2010

I shall start by considering the apparently paradoxical doctrines that Wittgenstein put forward about knowledge: they show how the concept of knowledge is, as he says, ‘specialized’. This is not, as I shall show, a very important issue in itself, but it leads on to other points, of more interest: how it comes about, for example, that ‘not all corrections of our beliefs are on the same level’. I shall then discuss the idea that we inherit a certain picture of the world that forms the background of our experiments and researches. This idea, which is not of course unique to Wittgenstein, is, however, developed with many fresh insights. I end with some discussion of Wittgenstein's reported views on religious belief, which should not, in my opinion, be regarded as part of his contribution to philosophy, the interest of them being, perhaps, more biographical than philosophical.
Moral Integrity
Authors: Mayo Bernard
Published: November 2010

‘Moral Integrity’ has struck me for some time as one of those things that is more a matter of name-dropping than of real acquaintance. But when I undertook to say something about it, I soon discovered that I had bitten off far more than I – or perhaps anyone – could chew within the hour. In this I find myself in good company: for Professor Winch also chose this title for his Inaugural Lecture – I apologise for overlooking this when I chose my own title – and in his first paragraph he explains that he will be saying nothing about Moral Integrity, though he expresses the hope that what he has said will be found to have a bearing on it. I shall not be discussing his lecture, except incidentally; but I commend his wisdom in not trying, as rashly as I am, to say something directly about the topic.
Educating the Imagination
Authors: Warnock Mary
Published: November 2010

My topic may seem a bizarre mixture of epistemology and value theory; and perhaps it is best to acknowledge this oddity at once. I should also, perhaps, confess that such a mixture has always seemed something to aspire to. Any philosopher who has made it seem that feeling strongly about something, valuing it highly, is an inevitable consequence of the nature of human understanding, that from the facts of knowledge or perception one can derive the inescapable facts of emotion or desire, any such philosopher has always deeply appealed to me. I am therefore a confessed perpetrator of the naturalistic fallacy. Indeed I go further, and say that I love the fallacy. So Spinoza, Hume (however much people say that he first discovered naturalism to be fallacious) and Sartre all seem to me to be real philosophers, on the grounds that for them this connexion between knowing and wanting seemed inevitable. My aim is to illustrate this kind of connexion by suggesting that the human imagination is such that we ought to value it and respect it more highly than anything else; and that therefore, if it can be educated and improved, it is to this education that we should give priority, if we are concerned with education at all. It may seem on the face of it absurd to say that we ought to value any particular human faculty or capacity. It may be thought that this is not the kind of object or evaluation with which at any rate philosophers should be concerned. But the fact is, of course, that we do value very highly indeed all kinds of capacities that we have, such as sight, and hearing and understanding. And being unashamedly naturalistic, I have no hesitation in saying not only that we do value them, but that we ought to; they are, in every sense, valuable.
On Having a Reason
Authors: Hampshire Stuart
Published: November 2010

The prescription that lays down how one ought to reason in moral matters is normally supported by a more general account of reasoning, which suggests limits upon what can be counted as reasoning of any kind, whether practical or theoretical. If, for example, one accepts, or presupposes, a Cartesian theory of reasoning, the normal case of reasoning is apt to be represented as conscious and explicit inference from one more or less clear idea to another in a set of distinguishable steps. The distinguishable steps are the feature that I wish to stress now. Given this Cartesian account, the normal case of rational deliberation before decision will also be represented as more or less explicit inference from one idea, or proposition, to another in successive, distinct steps.
Assessing the Value of Saving Lives
Authors: Glover Jonathan
Published: November 2010

Sir, I have recently had occasion to give my support to a local demand by parents and teachers for a patrolled crossing over a busy road outside their children's school. I have been appalled at what I have learned.

First, that such requests are considered on the evidence of traffic volume, the number of children killed and injured, and the degree of ‘negligence’ of a child in contributing to his own injury. Second, the battle to justify the need for a crossing patrol has to be fought over and over again, by each school independently. Must we then draw up, for every school, a profit and loss account of children killed and injured balanced against inconvenience to traffic? Traffic volume is irrelevant, any traffic constitutes a risk. Can a five-year-old be ‘negligent’ in law? A child is a child is a child: of course he is ‘negligent’ — whatever that means! Whose children are they but ours who drive the traffic?

There can be no argument. The issue is, do we suffer some occasional inconvenience as we drive or do we prefer to risk death and injury to our children? There is only one answer and I am sure the police are only too painfully aware of it but find themselves trapped in a maze of bureaucratic nonsense, sanctified by committal to print and blessed by precedent.
Representation in Music
Authors: Urmson J. O.
Published: November 2010

A Satisfactory discussion in depth of all the philosophical problems that could be raised concerning musical representation would require much more space as well as more ability than I have at my disposal. Nobody should believe, or believe that I believe, that what follows is more than a rather sketchy examination of a few central issues.
Memory as Direct Awareness of the Past
Authors: Malcolm Norman
Published: November 2010

The philosophy of memory has been largely dominated by what could be called ‘the representative theory of memory’. In trying to give an account of ‘what goes on in one's mind’ when one remembers something, or of what ‘the mental content of remembering’ consists, philosophers have usually insisted that there must be some sort of mental image, picture, or copy of what is remembered. Aristotle said that there must be ‘something like a picture or impression’; William James thought that there must be in the mind 'an image or copy’ of the original event; Russell said that ‘Memory demands an image’. In addition to the image or copy a variety of other mental phenomena have been thought to be necessary. In order for a memory image to be distinguished from an expectation image, the former must be accompanied by ‘a feeling of pastness’. One has confidence that the image is of something that actually occurred because the image is attended by ‘a feeling of familiarity’. And in order that you may be sure that the past event not merely occurred but that you witnessed it, your image of the event must be presented to you with a feeling of ‘warmth and intimacy’. When all the required phenomena are put together, the mental content of remembering turns out to be, as William James says, ‘a very complex representation’.
An Empirical Account of Mind
Authors: Taylor D.M.
Published: November 2010

What could an empirical theory of the Mind be? Surely one which demonstrated that questions about the existence of minds were empirical questions – to be decided by observation, by the senses. This in turn would require an explanation of the meaning of statements about minds or mental states in terms referring to observable events, states and objects.
Hume's Impressions
Authors: Butler R. J.
Published: November 2010

It is a pleasure to read Hume, and to watch him explore recalcitrant problems with agility of mind and grace of style. Ironically these twin abilities have worked against each other from the beginning, in the first place because in the matter of writing Hume was an innovator — nobody before him had so successfully albeit unwittingly adapted French syntax to the writing of English-and-Scottish - and in the second place because on the grace of his style subtleties of thought flow past his readers, who then accuse him of obscurity. So abstruse were his writings to his contemporaries that he failed to achieve the literary recognition for which he craved; and even today, long after the elegance of his style has been received, it is said by Passmore that Hume in contrast to Berkeley ‘was a philosophical puppy-dog, picking up and worrying one problem after another, always leaving his teeth-marks in it, but casting it aside when it threatened to become wearisome.’ Similarly Selby-Bigge says in his introduction to the Enquiries:

His pages, especially those of the Treatise, are so full of matter, he says so many things in so many different ways and different connexions, and with so much indifference to what he has said before, that it is very hard to say positively that he taught, or did not teach, this or that particular doctrine. He applies the same principles to such a great variety of subjects that it is not surprising that many verbal, and some real inconsistencies can be found in his statements. He is ambitious rather than shy of saying the same thing in different ways, and at the same time he is often slovenly and indifferent about his words and formulae. This makes it easy to find all philosophies in Hume, or, by setting up one statement against another, none at all.
What is the Verifiability Criterion a Criterion of?
Authors: Brown Stuart
Published: November 2010

As my title implies, I think the verifiability criterion is indeed a criterion of something. I do not intend, therefore, merely to commemorate it. On the other hand I am not sure that those who put it forward in its more liberal forms as a criterion of ‘factual significance’ or ‘literal meaningfulness’ were right in what they identified as the consequence of a sentence's failing to satisfy it. What I want to argue for, in a somewhat reductionist spirit, is a resurrected version of the ‘weak’ verifiability criterion. My resurrected version will certainly appear more rarefied, in so far as it is independent of (and does not therefore require to be embodied in) empiricism. It will, I hope, also be purified of some of the mortal blemishes from which the criterion, as construed by members of the Vienna Circle, seems not to have recovered.
Why Should the Science of Nature be Empirical?
Authors: Cohen L. Jonathan
Published: November 2010

In the past empiricist philosophy has urged one or other or both of two interconnected, and sometimes interconfused, theses. The first has been a thesis about the causal origins of certain beliefs, the second a thesis about the proper criteria for appraising these beliefs. The causal thesis is that all beliefs about the structure and contents of the natural world are the end-product of a process that originates wholly in individual experiences of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching. The criterial thesis is that all these beliefs are ultimately to be appraised for their truth, soundness or acceptability in terms of the data afforded by such perceptual acts. Of recent years the causal version of empiricism has been much attacked, primarily in regard to its implications about language-learning. The language in terms of which our beliefs are constructed is heavily conditioned, we are told, by certain congenital features of the human brain. But, whenever Chomsky and his followers have assailed the causal version of empiricism, they have always been careful to claim for their doctrines the warrant of empirical evidence. They have never questioned the correctness of the criterial version of empiricism.
Reason and Happiness
Authors: Scruton Roger
Published: November 2010

Are moral judgements objective? This is a question of great complexity, and in what follows I shall try to cast some light on what it means, and on how it might be answered.
Needs, Desires and Moral Turpitude
Authors: Wollheim Richard
Published: November 2010

Need and Desire have obvious affinities. In this lecture I shall consider how they are to be distinguished, and how they may be confused: distinguished, that is, within philosophy, and confused in life itself. I shall then consider, very briefly, how this possibility of confusion bears upon morality and moral assessment.
My Role and its Duties
Authors: Hollis Martin
Published: November 2010

Recipes for the Good Society used to run, in caricature, something like this:

1. Take about 2000 hoM, sap., analyse each into essence and accidents and discard the accidents.

2. Place essences in a large casserole, add socialising syrup and stew until conflict disappears.

3. Serve with a pinch of salt.
Three Views concerning Human Freedom
Authors: Watkins John
Published: November 2010

Ultimately, the only good reason for restricting the freedom of responsible adults is to protect other people's freedom, to increase the overall enjoyment of freedom.
Hog in Sloth, Fox in Stealth: Man and Beast in Moral Thinking
Authors: Benson John
Published: November 2010

Human beings find themselves sharing the world with a great variety of other animals. Besides using them in various ways, we think about them and compare ourselves with them, and it is hard to envisage the difference it would make to our understanding of ourselves if they were not there. For one thing we should not have the concept of the human species, and that human beings should be thought of, however theoretically, as all belonging to one species is of momentous importance for morality. The existence of other species might be significant in that way, however, even if we did not pay much attention to them and even if more particular thoughts about or observations of them did not form part of the fabric of our moral thinking. It is with some particular ways in which other species enter our moral thinking and our thinking about morals that I intend to concern myself. There are three of these that I shall discuss: first, the use of animal characters in moral tales, secondly the description of human characteristics in terms of real or supposed analogies with the characteristics of beasts; and thirdly much more briefly the application to human beings of behaviour patterns established in studies of other animals.
Contrasting Methods of Environmental Planning
Authors: Hare Richard
Published: November 2010

In planning the conduct of his affairs in relation to nature, man is faced with many problems which are so complex and so intermeshed that it is hard to say at first even what kind of problems they are. We are all familiar with the distinction between factual and evaluative questions, and I do not doubt that there is this distinction; but the actual problems with which we are faced are always an amalgam of these two kinds of question. The various methods used by environmental planners are all attempts to separate out this amalgam, as we have to do if we are ever to understand the problems — let alone solve them. I wish in this lecture to give examples of, and appraise, two such methods. I shall draw from this appraisal not only theoretical lessons which may interest the moral philosopher, but also practical lessons which, I am sure, those who try to plan our environment ought to absorb. Though my examples come mostly from urban planning, because that is the kind of planning with whose problems (although only an amateur) I am most familiar, what I have to say will apply also to problems about the countryside. Whether we have to deal with the human nature of the man in the congested street, or the nature of the nature reserves or of the areas of outstanding natural beauty, the word ‘nature’ may bear slightly different senses, but the problem is still the same: to ascertain the facts about this nature, and then to think how we should conduct ourselves in order to make things better, or at any rate not worse, than they would otherwise be.
Techniques and Values in Policy Decisions
Authors: Self Peter
Published: November 2010

Increasing use is made of techniques which are supposed to make policy decisions more ‘rational’. Rather little attention, however, has been paid to the relation between these techniques and (a) the logic of choice, (b) the political process, (c) value judgements and assumptions. This short paper will investigate these questions in relation to a particularly fashionable technique, that of cost-benefit analysis.
Hume on what there is
Authors: Chappell V. C.
Published: November 2010

Ontology was never Hume's main interest, but he certainly had opinions as to what there is, and he often expressed these in his philosophical works. Indeed it seems clear that Hume changed his ontological views while writing the Treatise, and that not just one but two different ontologies are to be found there. The ontology of Parts I, II, and III of Book I is more or less Lockean. There are minds and their operations and qualities. There are physical entities, bodily actions and qualities if not bodies over and above these. And there are further entities, called ideas by Locke and perceptions by Hume, that represent things other than themselves, both physical and mental, while existing in and being dependent upon minds. In Part IV of Book I, however, and especially in Sections 2 and 6, a new ontology appears, one that differs not only from the doctrine of the earlier sections of the Treatise but also from any that previous philosophers had held. According to this new ontology, there are only perceptions: all other sorts of things are absorbed by or reduced to these, or else simply eliminated. Berkeley had indeed assimilated bodies and the properties of bodies to perceptions, but he had kept minds as a distinct category of entity. Hume went the whole way, making everything perceptions. We might characterise this new ontology as trans-Berkeleyan, or call it, on account of its similarity to later doctrines so named, phenomenalism or neutral monism.
Hume's Concept of Truth
Authors: Walsh W. H.
Published: November 2010

Hume's explicit pronouncements about truth are few and unenlightening. In a well-known passage near the beginning of Book III of the Treatise (III i 1; p. 458 in Selby-Bigge's edition) he writes that ‘Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood. Truth or falsehood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact.’ Hume's main concern in this passage, however, is not with the concept of truth, but with his thesis that moral distinctions are not derived from reason: he introduces his reference to truth only with a view to showing that our ‘passions, volitions and actions … being original facts and realities, complete in themselves,’ are not susceptible of the agreement and disagreement spoken of, and therefore cannot be said to be true or false, in conformity with or contrary to reason. The account of truth given here is not elaborated, and perhaps not even thought to need elaboration. Similarly with another passage a few pages earlier in which Hume says that ‘Truth is of two kinds, consisting either in the discovery of the proportions of ideas, considered as such, or in the conformity of our ideas of objects to their real existence’ (T, ii iii 10; 448 SB). Here again his interest is not in truth itself but in ‘curiosity, or the love of truth,’ the passion which, Hume says, ‘was the first source of all our inquiries’ (ibid.). Hume seems to take it for granted that nothing more needs to be said about what it is to discover ‘the proportions of ideas, considered as such,’ or about the circumstances in which we can speak of there being ‘conformity’ or the lack of it between our ideas of objects and their real existence. So far as he is concerned the central point to grasp is the distinction between propositions which have to do with relations of ideas and those which express, or purport to express, matters of fact. Once this distinction is clear, the nature of truth is supposed to be plain.
Rousseau as Philosopher
Authors: Manser Anthony
Published: November 2010

Rousseau seldom gets a mention as a philosopher in the conventional histories; if he appears at all it is in connection with that strange and rather suspect discipline ‘political philosophy’. Even then there is a tendency to look upon him as an unsystematic thinker, as a ‘philosophy’ rather than as a genuine philosopher. His ideas are held to be interesting, but the connections between them are thought to be emotional rather than logical. Again, Émile is read by students of education, but not by those studying philosophy. This is both because the ‘philosophy of education’ is thought not to be of great importance and again because of Rousseau's lack of logical rigour. Now it is true that Rousseau himself was an emotional figure, and from reading his Confessions it is easy to get the idea that there is no point in looking for interesting philosophical points in his works.
Defining and evaluating the impact of cross-disciplinary conservation research
Authors: EVELY ANNA C. , FAZEY IOAN , LAMBIN XAVIER , LAMBERT EMILY , ALLEN SARAH , PINARD MICHELLE
Published: November 2010

Cross-disciplinary research is advocated as a way of improving understanding of the complexity of environmental problems; cross-disciplinary projects, centres and academic institutes have increased. However, there is confusion over the nature of cross-disciplinary research. Through review of papers defining themselves as cross-disciplinary that aim to address conservation problems, and by standardizing the definition of cross-disciplinary research, it is possible to evaluate the potential research impact on peers and practitioners. When papers were reclassified by authors, those reclassified as transdisciplinary were perceived to have a greater impact on practitioners, and those reclassified as non cross-disciplinary had the greatest impact on colleagues. Having clear definitions for types of cross-disciplinary research would help establish a firm foundation, not only for improving research quality, but also for evaluating research impact. While the number of cross-disciplinary studies is increasing, cross-disciplinary research falls short of integrating disciplinary methods in much depth and does not have much impact on participants outside of academia.
Can ecosystem services lead ecology on a transdisciplinary pathway?
Authors: REYERS BELINDA , ROUX DIRK J. , O'FARRELL PATRICK J.
Published: November 2010

The discipline of ecology has evolved through several phases as it has developed and defined itself and its relationship with human society. While it initially had little to do with human concerns, it has become more applied, and is today more integrated with the human element in the way it conceptualizes complex social-ecological systems. As the science has developed, so too have its relationships with other disciplines, as well as people and processes outside the domain of science. However, it is unclear how far ecology has progressed in developing these relationships and where it should best focus its efforts in the future in order to increase its relevance and role in society. The concept of ecosystem services (the benefits people get from nature) has the potential to further this integration and clarify ecology's role and relevance in society, however doubt remains as to whether the concept has helped ecology in developing disciplinary and societal relationships. This review assesses the progress of ecology in relation to a transdisciplinary knowledge hierarchy (empirical, pragmatic, normative and purposive) where all levels of the hierarchy are coordinated on the basis of an overall purpose introduced from the purposive level down. At each of the levels of the knowledge hierarchy, the principles of transdisciplinarity, ecology's progress, the contribution of ecosystem services to this progress and future directions for a transdisciplinary ecology are explored. Ecology has made good progress in developing an interdisciplinary dialogue between the natural and social sciences and sectors. It is well-integrated with empirical and pragmatic disciplines and coordinates research at these two levels. At the normative level, the absence of collaborative frameworks and planning instruments is a major gap limiting the influence that ecology can have on land and resource use decisions at this level. At the purposive level, ecology has limited interactions with a narrow set of values associated with ecological ethics and economics. There is an obvious need for ecology to engage with the purposive disciplines of philosophy, ethics and theology, but also a need for ecological research to transform itself into a social process dealing with values and norms of both society and science. Ecosystem services have helped ecology to make links with many disciplines at the empirical and pragmatic levels, provided a useful concept and framework for interactions at the normative level requiring further examination, and helped make values explicit, allowing ecologists to begin to interact with the purposive level. The Western ecological economic origins of the ecosystem service concept presents a potential constraint to interactions at the purposive level, and must be considered and addressed if ecosystem services are to further the development of a transdisciplinary ecology, the joint ecology-society debate and the formulation and execution of policy.
Retrospective cohort study of an outbreak of cryptosporidiosis caused by a rareCryptosporidium parvumsubgenotype
Authors: GRINBERG A. , POMROY W. E. , SQUIRES R. A. , SCUFFHAM A. , PITA A. , KWAN E.
Published: November 2010

The occurrence of a gastrointestinal illness among a class of 96 undergraduate veterinary students in New Zealand prompted laboratory and questionnaire-based investigations.Cryptosporidium parvumwas the only enteropathogen identified in 4/7 faecal specimens analysed. TheC. parvumisolates carried a rareIIaGP60 allele, indicating a point-source outbreak. The infection source could not be microbiologically traced, but the investigation suggested contact with calves during a practical class as the most likely exposure. A total of 25/80 respondents to a questionnaire were defined as cases using a clinical case definition (31% attack rate). The inferred median incubation period was 5 days (range 0–11 days), and the median illness duration was 5–6 days (range 2–23 days), corroborating previous observations in experimental cryptosporidiosis. Disease was self-limiting, characterized by abdominal discomfort, diarrhoea, and in some cases, vomiting. Originating from a rural area and having had previously handled ruminants were associated with a significant risk reduction in males. All the three students who reported chronic use of steroid inhalers for treatment of asthma were cases. This case highlighted, once again, the potential hazard for explosive outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis.
Classification algorithms to improve the accuracy of identifying patients hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia using administrative data
Authors: YU O. , NELSON J. C. , BOUNDS L. , JACKSON L. A.
Published: November 2010

In epidemiological studies of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) that utilize administrative data, cases are typically defined by the presence of a pneumonia hospital discharge diagnosis code. However, not all such hospitalizations represent true CAP cases. We identified 3991 hospitalizations during 1997–2005 in a managed care organization, and validated them as CAP or not by reviewing medical records. To improve the accuracy of CAP identification, classification algorithms that incorporated additional administrative information associated with the hospitalization were developed using the classification and regression tree analysis. We found that a pneumonia code designated as the primary discharge diagnosis and duration of hospital stay improved the classification of CAP hospitalizations. Compared to the commonly used method that is based on the presence of a primary discharge diagnosis code of pneumonia alone, these algorithms had higher sensitivity (81–98%) and positive predictive values (82–84%) with only modest decreases in specificity (48–82%) and negative predictive values (75–90%).
Berkeley's Immaterialism and Kant's Transcendental Idealism
Authors: Ayers M. R.
Published: November 2010

Ever since its first publication critics of Kant'sCritique of Pure Reasonhave been struck by certain strong formal resemblances between transcendental idealism and Berkeley's immaterialism. Both philosophers hold that the sensible world is mind-dependent, and that from this very mind-dependence we can draw a refutation of scepticism of the senses.
Hegel on Action
Authors: Inwood Michael
Published: November 2010

One of the things that makes Hegel hard to understand is the difficulty of identifying the problems and questions to which he was responding, at least in a form in which we can appreciate them. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, he was involved in the intellectual life of his time, and many of the themes which engaged him have now lost their urgency. Secondly, because he wanted to connect every topic into a single, coherent system, and because the transition from one topic to the next usually depends on some problem which cannot be solved unless the transition is made, some of the problems he unearths seem fairly insubstantial. Finally, his desire to philosophize without making any presuppositions means that he is reluctant to state the problems which he is trying to solve in advance. Any problem involves presuppositions, both of facts and about the meaning and coherence of the words or concepts used in stating it. Problems arise within Hegel's system, therefore, and they do so in a guise appropriate to their context. To some extent, the appreciation of the problems presupposes an understanding of the system.
The Primacy of Practice: ‘Intelligent Idealism’ in Marxist Thought
Authors: Norman Richard
Published: November 2010

The chief defect of all previous materialism (including that of Feuerbach) is that things, reality, the sensible world, are conceived only in the form of objects of observation, but not as human sense activity, not as practical activity, not subjectively. Hence, in opposition to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism, which of course does not know real sense activity as such (Marx, Theses on Feuerbach I, trans. T. B. Bottomore).
On Being Terrestrial
Authors: Midgley Mary
Published: November 2010

We will start with a fable—

There was once a creator who wanted to create free beings.

The other creators, it seems, didn't share this ambition, indeed they thought his project was philosophically confused. They were well satisfied with their own worlds. But our creator (we will call him C) sat down to work it out.

‘How will you even start?’ asked his friend D, the Doubter.

‘Well, I know what I won't do’, answered C. ‘I won't just give them an empty faculty named Desire, and tell them to invent values and want what they choose. Unless they want something definite for a start, they won't even be able to start choosing.’

‘Exactly’, said D.

‘So what I think I must do,’ C went on, ‘is to give them a lot of desires which conflict, and make them bright enough to see they have got to do something about it.’
Solitude in Philosophy and Literature: The H. B. Acton Memorial Lecture
Authors: Lewis Hywel D.
Published: November 2010

‘I understand that the world was nothing, a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understand that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink.

—An ugly god pitifully dying in a tree.’
Aristotle and Agamemnon
Authors: Bambrough Renford
Published: November 2010

My theme is tragical–historical–philosophical.

Though the chief characters are Aristotle and Agamemnon, there are strong supporting roles for Heraclitus and Professor Sir Denys Page, and you will also hear the voices of Aeschylus, Spinoza, J. A. Froude and Professor A. W. H. Adkins.

Heraclitus speaks first: ‘dis es ton auton potamon’, he says, ‘ouk an embaiês.’
“Reality” in Early Twentieth-century German Literature
Authors: Stern J. P.
Published: November 2010

Among the most striking aspects of modern literature—expecially of modern German literature—are its frequent references to a notion called ‘reality’. The philosophical question this raises, ‘What is reality?’, is to one side of this enquiry, and so is the question whether or not this is a sensible question: this essay is intended as a contribution not to philosophy but to its connections with literary history and criticism. My present purpose, which determines my procedure, is (I) to outline the various closely related meanings of the word ‘Wirklichkeit’ throughout its very long history; (2) to describe the polarization of meanings which occurred in the course of the nineteenth century, and Nietzsche's part in making the new polarity available to his literary heirs; (3) to illustrate the way German literature became involved in this process in the first decade of our century; and, finally, (4) to point to some of its political implications. My argument is part of a much larger topic, one that is not confined either to the German-speaking countries or indeed to literature. The topic, the ideologizing of ‘reality’, is relevant to all modern cultures. The present paper offers no more than a sketch of this development in one cultural area of our world.
Literary Examples and Philosophical Confusion
Authors: Beardsmore R. W.
Published: November 2010

It is by no means unusual in works of philosophy for writers to make use of examples from literature or (like e.g. Peter Winch and Eugene Kamenka) to bemoan the lack of literary examples in the work of other philosophers. Nor is it unusual for philosophers to write substantial tomes without ever mentioning any work of literature or (like R. M. Hare and C. W. K. Mundle) to condemn the use of literary examples as a threat to clarity of thought. This contradiction in practice and principle might lead us to suspect that what we are here dealing with is at least to some extent a philosophical disagreement, and I believe this to be the case. Unfortunately, what is extremely unusual is any direct discussion of the philosophical issues involved, that is to say any discussion of what philosophers are doing when they appeal in their writings to works of literature, and of what if anything is lost by those who fail to do so.
Thematic Concepts: Where Philosophy Meets Literature
Authors: Olsen Stein Haugom
Published: November 2010

In Euripides' Hippolytus, Phaedra, wife of Theseus, king of Athens, falls in love with the unsuspecting Hippolytus, Theseus' son by the amazon Antiope. Phaedra's passion is the work of the goddess Aphrodite, who wants to revenge herself on Hippolytus because he has rejected her and devoted himself to the chaste Artemis. Through Paedra's nurse Hippolytus is made aware of her love and invited to her bed. He emphatically rejects her offer and violently abuses Phaedra and her nurse. To save her honour Phaedra commits suicide and leaves a note accusing Hippolytus of raping her. Theseus, confronted on his return from an expedition with the suicide and the note, banishes Hippolytus and prays to his father, the seagod Poseidon, to fulfil one of the three wishes he has granted him and kill Hippolytus. Leaving Troezen, Hippolytus is killed when his horses are frightened by a monster thrown on shore by Poseidon from a giant wave. Theseus is brought to realize his mistake by the goddess Artemis who appears to him and reveals the truth. The play ends with the reconciliation of Theseus and the dying Hippolytus. This, in bare outline, is what happens in the play. It is what might be called its subject. The play is about these events and characters. Now it is also possible to give another type of description of Euripides' play. For the play does not merely have a subject but also a theme. While it is straightforward and unproblematic to give a description of the subject of the play a statement of its theme presents difficulties. The subject is, in an obvious sense, given for any competent speaker of the language in which the work is written. The theme, on the other hand, emerges from the subject in conjunction with other features of the work, and it emerges through the reader's constructive labour. There is no theme for the reader who is unwilling or unable to engage in this constructive labour.
Dostoyevsky: Psychology and the Novelist
Authors: Dilman İlham
Published: November 2010

In a lecture on ‘Science and Psychology’ Dr Drury distinguishes between ‘a psychology which has insight into individual characters’ and ‘a psychology which is concerned with the scientific study of universal types’, one which comprises ‘those subjects that are studied in a university faculty of psychology’. The former, and not the latter, he says, is psychology in ‘the original meaning of the word’. ‘We might say of a great novelist such as Tolstoy or George Eliot (he goes on) that they show profound psychological insight into the characters they depict … In general, it is the great novelists, dramatists, biographers, historians, that are the real psychologists.’