bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Chaos: Its Past, Its Present, but mostly Its Future
Authors: Ford Joseph
Published: November 2023

In order to illuminate the significance of determinism in his Newtonian world, Laplace wrote, ‘We ought then to regard the present state of the Universe as the effect of its preceding state and as the cause of its succeeding state.’ Laplace’s world was thus not only determinate but also predictable, for, with sufficient knowledge and skill he could be assured of accurately predicting not only the motion of the solar system but the entire universe as well. For decades, this Weltanschauung so permeated both popular and scientific thinking that not even Poincare’s profound whimsy, ‘The notion of determinism is a fantasy due to Laplace’, could shake the faith of the devout. But eventually the pendulum did swing and, while contemplating the wildly erratic properties of turbulent systems, the mathematicians Ruelle and Takens directed attention to a property which many now take to be the definition of chaos: a chaotic system is one whose final state depends with exquisite sensitivity upon its initial state.
Mersenne and Modern Learning: The Debate over Music
Authors: Duncan David Allen
Published: November 2023

Emphasizing the continuities between the old science and the new, Peter Dear has recently argued that Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) exploited the philosophical and religious orthodoxies of the schools to construct an unrevolutionary agenda for seventeenth-century natural philosophy. In a similar vein, I would like to suggest that Mersenne’s attitudes toward ancient musical authority and modern musical science are sufficiently complex to call into question a traditional or rigid distinction between ancients and moderns in general.
Ancients, Moderns, and the History of Philosophy: Gassendi’s Epicurean Project
Authors: Osler Margaret j.
Published: November 2023

Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) is best remembered for his project of Christianizing the work of the ancient Greek atomist Epicurus, thus reintroducing it into the mainstream of philosophical thought. Gasscndi’s project was comprehensive, extending to all areas of philosophy-logic, physics, and ethics. He sought to substitute an Epicurean philosophy for the Aristotelian one which held sway in the schools. Gassendi criticized Aristotle’s philosophy in many of his works, as did other early ‘modern’ philosophers. However, he also criticized the philosophical methods of his contemporary, Rene Descartes, upon whom modernity in philosophy is so often fathered. So his relationship to the ancients and moderns is complicated. He was not opposed to innovation. On the contrary, he was a strong advocate of Copernicanism and the new natural philosophy endorsed by the intellectual broker Merscnne and his circle.
Leibniz: Modern, Scholastic, or Renaissance Philosopher?
Authors: Brown Stuart
Published: November 2023

Most discussions of the connection between ‘modern philosophy’ and its predecessors give special emphasis to the typically Aristote•hh lian philosophy that prevailed in the ‘schools’. A study of Leibniz’s philosophy would suggest that this is at least partly right. Leibniz seems to have adopted a modern usage in referring to this scholastic philosophy as ‘la philosophic vulgaire’. The French word ‘vulgaire’ and the Latin ‘vulgaris’, as used by Leibniz, sometimes carry the connotation of ‘superficial’. But ‘la philosophic vulgaire’ straight forwardly implies that the philosophy of which it was used (scholasticism) was still the most widely received. And Leibniz also uses the word with this connotation.
Lexicography and Physicke
Authors: McConchie R W
Published: November 2023

Medical practitioners of the sixteenth century had their own body of special terms, just like the doctors of this century. McConchie examines medical terminology used in a selection of thirteen medical works published between 1547 and 1612, and compares it with treatment of these words in the Oxford English Dictionary and other dictionaries of today, showing how well - or ill - the specialist terminology of sixteenth-century medical practitioners has been recorded. He compiles a corpus of new data from a selection of medical texts ranging from scholarly tomes to homely handbooks. The study of this corpus reveals errors, omissions, and biases which raise questions for lexicographical tools in general. Are existing dictionaries adequate in their investigation of Renaissance English? Has current understanding been more biased and more deficient than we thought? If so, how are we to redress the problem? This book uses a specialist semantic domain to raise important issues for lexicographers, and historians of early modern English and medicine.
Spatial References in New Caledonian Languages
Authors: Ozanne-Rivierre Fran Oise
Published: November 2023

Languages often express orientation in space with respect to a set of objective reference points located outside the individual speaker. These may be either fixed (like the cardinal points) or topographically determined (like a given valley or some central point and its surroundings). The primary point of reference may, however, also be the individual himself and his temporary location in a given space (left/right, front/back, near/far, etc.). These reference systems are highly variable across languages and cultures. Some languages have different systems depending on the extent of the space that is taken into account, while others have a unique system.
Finding Your Way in Longgu: Geographical Reference in a Solomon Islands Language
Authors: Hill Deborah
Published: November 2023

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed example of how a spatial system based on geographical reference points is used in the Solomon Islands language Longgu. The broad features of the Longgu system have much in common with other Oceanic languages. Many of the general points made about spatial reference in New Caledonian languages (see Chapter 4 above) and about locatives in Oceanic languages (Bowden 1992) also apply to Longgu. For example, as with many other Oceanic languages the Longgu directional system consists of two axes, one based on the geographical reference points of ‘sea’ and ‘inland’ and the other based on the rising and setting of the sun. The two axes are not identical in their range of use: the axis based on ‘sea’ and ‘inland’ is used only within the land boundary of the Longgu-speaking area, while the axis based on the path of the sun is used beyond it. Thus although the spatial reference system used by Longgu speakers may not seem striking or remarkable when compared with other Oceanic languages, a close description of its use will add to our knowledge of the discourse functions and cultural import of such a system.
Is Platonism Epistemologically Bankrupt?
Authors: Hale Bob
Published: November 2023

Platonism about mathematics, as I shall understand it here, is an ontological thesis. The Platonist holds that we may take the surface syntax of mathematical statements-with its apparent involvement of singular reference to and quantification over numbers of various sorts, sets, and other mathematical entities-as a reliable guide to their logical form, and hence to their truth-conditions. Given that many such statements are true-as the Platonist, in company with most other philosophers of mathematics and working mathematicians, also believes-it follows that there exist such objects as numbers and sets. Since it appears to make no sense to ask where numbers or sets are located, or when they came into existence and how long they will last, the Platonist concludes that they are abstract objects, lying outside space and time.
On the Harmless Impredicativity of N= (‘Hume’s Principle’)
Authors: Wright Crispin
Published: November 2023

Michael Dummett’s Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics and its famous precursor, Frege: Philosophy of Language, contrast sharply in their estimates of Frege’s achievements in those respective subjects. The guiding conviction of Frege: Philosophy of Language was that even admirers of Frege’s writings have tended to a merely superficial appreciation of his contribution, that he is justly viewed as the father of analytical philosophy itself, the first philosopher to perceive the centrality of the philosophy of language. and especially the theory of meaning, in all philosophy, and the inventor of the tradition of systematic thought about meaning within which so much of important recent and contemporary philosophy belongs. By contrast, Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics-notwithstanding the kindest possible concluding accolade-returns a predominantly negative verdict on Frege’s accomplishment in relation to the specific questions which were most important to him. In particular, to the questions at which Grundlagen and Grundgesetze are primarily directed-the character of the subject-matter of number theory and real analysis and the nature of our knowledge about it-Frege’s distinctive Platonist-cum-logicist answer was, according to Dummett, demonstrably ‘catastrophically wrong’.
Northern Europe: Languages as Prime Markers of Ethnic and National Identity
Authors: VikØr Lars s.
Published: November 2023

I discuss together as ‘Northern Europe’ five independent states. From east to west they are Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. In addition I include two territories that are largely autonomous, but not fully independent: the Aland Islands (under Finnish sovereignty) and the Faroe Islands (under Danish sovereignty). One might also include Greenland, which is also under Danish sovereignty, but this island belongs more to America than to Europe geographically as well as ethnically, and it will therefore be excluded from the present discussion. The joint treatment of these states is justified by much shared history, which manifests itself in strong linguistic and cultural links. Traditionally, the over whelming majority of the population in each state is Lutheran Protestant by religion, and the majority languages of each state but Finland show striking similarities and share a relatively recent common origin, and even Finland experienced long domination by Swedish speakers, Swedish still being the first language of a significant minority.
Language and Dialect Death: Socio-Political and Linguistic Considerations
Authors: Jones Mari C
Published: November 2023

The fieldwork carried out in the sociologically similar but linguistically contrasting communities of Rhymney and Rhosllannerchrugog has demonstrated the existence of two distinct phenomena. The first of these, occurring on a superordinate level, concerns the language as a whole, which is threatened by England and English on both socio-political and linguistic fronts although, as stated in Chapter 1, there are considerable revitalization efforts afoot. There now follows in the first half of this chapter, an examination of case studies which have appeared in the language death literature. The subsequent discussion concentrates both on socio-political and linguistic factors in an attempt to give a comprehensive portrayal of an obsolescent language.
A Comparison with the Other Varieties of P-Celtic: Is Language Obsolescence Predictable
Authors: Jones Mari C
Published: November 2023

The previous chapters have demonstrated that as the Welsh language displays increasing signs of obsolescence, at a subordinate level the regional dialects are also displaying certain linguistic changes which may have the long-term effect of creating a single homogeneous variety throughout the territory.

The reasons for the creation and subsequent proliferation of Standard Welsh have already been given in Chapter 4 and need not be reiterated here. However, it is worth pointing out that, by virtue of phenomena such as the education system and the media, and the opportunity it provides for all Welsh-speakers to come together as a separate, cohesive unit with a common identity, the de-dialectalization of modern spoken Welsh seems to be retarding the language’s progression towards extinction, something which, in 1962, the date of Saunders Lewis’s famous speech to the Welsh nation, many people considered to be an inevitable, if somewhat regret-table, fait accompli.
The Price of Eggs: Who Should Bear the Costs of Fertility Treatments?
Authors: Burley Justine C
Published: November 2023

Diderot’s insight into the radical implications of the science of re production is in many ways as acute today as it was in the eighteenth century. Two hundred years on, technological advances have made it possible not only to prevent conception, but also to facilitate the creation of human life through a variety of assisted conception techniques (ACT).
Sperm as Property
Authors: Steinbock Bonnie
Published: November 2023

The new reproductive technologies force us to think about embryos and gametes in ways never before necessary or possible. In particular, cryopreservation enables sperm and fertilized eggs to be maintained for long periods outside the body, giving rise to questions about to whom they belong and what may be done with them. For example, frozen embryos created by married couples intending to undergo in vitro fertilization have become the subjects of ‘custody’ disputes, when the marriages ended in divorce.
Time and Meaning: Sense and Definition in the OED
Authors: Silva Penny
Published: November 2023

Eighteenth-century theories of meaning, philosophical and a priori in nature, ‘began with the mental categories and sought their exemplification in language, as in universal grammar, and based etymology on conjectures about the origin oflanguage’ (Aarsleff 1967: 127). The source of the ‘true’ or ‘original’ meaning of words lay in their etymologies-but in this philosophical approach, etymological work was ‘a matter of discovery through skill, rather than knowledge through study’ (Aarsleff 1967: 248). John Horne Tooke, the master of what Dugald Stewart termed ‘etymological metaphysics’ (Aarsleff 1967: 107), exercised a powerful influence in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century thinking about language in Britain. For Horne Tooke, the etymology-that is, the ‘primordial meaning revealed by it’-comprised ‘all the senses of the word and those of all its derivations’ (Zgusta 1991: 599).
Prosodic Features and Prosodic Structure
Authors: Fox Anthony
Published: November 2023

Prosodic Features and Prosodic Structure presents an overall view of the nature of prosodic features of language - accent, stress, rhythm, tone, pitch, and intonation - and shows how these connect to sound systems and meaning. It is a work of great scholarship and learning, expressed in way that will be accessible to all linguists from advanced undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers. The last substantial overview was published over 20 years ago. Since then the subject has been transformed by linked advances in phonological and phonetic theory and accoustic technology. This book will interest phonologists, phoneticians, and researchers in related applied fields such as speech pathology and speech synthesis.
Sight-Lovers, Mortals, and Doxa
Authors: Palmer John A
Published: November 2023

Who are the ‘lovers of sights and sounds’? Some may think this a question better left unasked given the extremes to which nineteenthcentury scholarship, particularly in Germany, went in trying to detect in such labels veiled allusions to Plato’s contemporary rivals. The fashion for such identifications stretches back to the beginnings of modern Platonic scholarship. Friedrich Schleiermacher detected a polemic against Aristippus in the Theaetetus’s refutation of the thesis that knowledge is perception. He saw traces of a parallel polemic against Antisthenes in the remainder of the dialogue, particularly in the ‘dream theory’ at 2ore-202c.1 Antisthenes was a pupil of Socrates’ and a key figure in the early history of Cynicism. He attacked his younger contemporary Plato in the scurrilously entitled Sathon (a crude pun on ‘Plato’ meaning, roughly, ‘little willy’).2 He has been the second most frequently proposed target of Plato’s criticism in the dialogues after Isocrates. Plato’s treatment of the views of the ‘opsimaths’ or ‘late-learners’ in the Sophist, for instance, has been widely accepted as a direct reference to Antisthenes.
Compensation and Consent: A Brief Comparative Examination of Liability for HIV-Infected Blood
Authors: Giesen Dieter
Published: November 2023

Many complex legal and ethical issues have been raised by the AIDS crisis. As lawyers, scientists, and ethicists, it is vital that we collaborate in identifying and clarifying these issues and that we contribute thereby to rational public discussion of the problems associated with AIDS in society. This chapter will focus upon just one quite specific, but nonetheless significant aspect of this legal and ethical problem field, namely consent in relation to the obtaining and transfusion of HIV-infected blood and the liability of hospitals, blood banks, and others for the transmission of the virus in this manner.
The Possibility of Practical Reason
Authors: Velleman J David
Published: November 2023

This volume contains the work that I have done in the philosophy of action since completing the book Practical Reflection. One of the papers, ‘Epistemic Freedom,’ is an expanded version of a chapter in the book; it was written after the book went to press, though it was published first. I have included it here because I think that it significantly improves on the corresponding portions of the book. One or two of the other papers are attempts to build upon or renovate the theory set down in the book, but most of them are attempts to dig beneath it. Without even referring to that theory, I have tried to unearth more fundamental reasons for wanting a theory of its general form—reasons for thinking that there ought to be a theory of its kind.
The Story of Rational Action1
Authors: Velleman J David
Published: November 2023

Decision theory comprises, first, a mathematical formalization of the relations among value, belief, and preference; and second, a set of prescriptions for rational preference. Both aspects of the theory are embodied in a single mathematical proof. The problem in the foundations of decision theory is to explain how elements of one and the same proof can serve both functions. I hope to solve this problem in a way that anchors the decision-theoretic norms of rational preference in fundamental intuitions about rationality in general. I will thus depart from the tradition of anchoring those norms in intuitions about gambling strategies or preference structures of the sort that are the special concern of the theory itself. Although my interpretation is meant to capture what is right about the decision-theoretic conception of rational preference, it will lead me to argue that there is also something fundamentally wrong about that conception. In my view, decision theory tells us how to be rational in our preferences because it tells us how to have preferences that make sense; but there are ways of making sense that outrun, and may in fact conflict with, the prescriptions of decision theory.
Avoiding Perplexity: The Paradox of Inquiry
Authors: Matthews Gareth B
Published: November 2023

The picture of Socrates as a self-stinging stingray is a profoundly memorable one. Many of us were first won over to philosophy by a teacher who could pace back and forth in front of a class and wrestle publicly, and inconclusively, with endlessly engrossing questions about free will and determinism, or the problem of other minds, or the nature of causality. In other subjects, a teacher might be expected to know the answer to almost all questions students are capable of even formulating. Not so in philosophy. Here the most memorable teachers may be just as adept at getting themselves perplexed, as they are at inducing perplexity in the philosophical neophytes they teach.
Purely Instrumental Perplexity
Authors: Matthews Gareth B
Published: November 2023

To illustrate the thesis that seeking and learning are simply recollection Socrates, in the dialogue Meno, asks Meno to call one of his servants, or house-boys, for Socrates to interrogate him. Meno does as requested. Then Socrates, having first established that the slave-boy before him is a Greek and speaks the language, sets him a geometrical problem. Socrates wants the slave-boy to tell him how to construct a square with an area twice that of a given square.
The Ethical Content of Liberal Law
Authors: Skorupski John
Published: November 2023

It is a sign of our philosophically and politically perplexed times that one can hardly discuss the ethical content of liberal law without a surprising amount of preliminary exhumation and revitalizing of the liberal idea. This may appear a perverse proposition. Is there not a sense in which ‘we are all liberals now’?

I use the word ‘idea’ in a Coleridgean or idealist sense. The Idea of an institution, such as church, university, or law, is the legitimating vision of the purpose of that institution. And while there is a sense in which we are all liberals now, it is also true that agreement about the ethical sources of liberalism-or indeed about whether it is a doctrine that needs ethical sources at all-is eroded, fractured, and unstable. Does this matter? Does the liberal attitude to government and law require an Idea? Or is it more likely to flourish if we do not search too explicitly for its Idea?
Soma and Psyche in Hippocratic Medicine
Authors: Gundert Beate
Published: November 2023

The intuitive feeling that man is something other than the strength of his limbs and the appearance of his physique, something that manifests itself as his thoughts and behaviour, is as old as Greek literature: in Homeric poetry (c.750 BC), thought (phrenes) and works, together with form and stature, make up the whole of the person.1 In life, man’s true self, his essence qua human being, is apparently his mind (nous), which remains constant, even though his outward appearance, his bodily frame, and his voice may change, as happens to Odysseus’ companions when they are transformed into wild beasts by Circe’s spell.2 At death, on the other hand, what is identified as the ‘person’ (autos: he himself) is his corpse (soma), while his soul (psyche), which is similar to breath or air, passes to the house of Hades, where, without its body,
Aspects of the Micro-structure of Word Meanings
Authors: cruse D Alan
Published: November 2023

One of the central problems of lexical semantics is the sensitivity of word meaning to context. This creates difficulties for the description of the content of the meaning of a word, for attempts to account for compositional processes (what are the units being composed?), and for studies of lexical relations and word fields (what are the units which stand in sense-relations, and constitute word fields?). An extreme view of the relation between word meaning and context would be that the notion of the meaning of a word in isolation from particular contexts is not intelligible: every change in context in principle produces a change (maybe minute) in the semantic contribution the word makes. This view is probably untenable in such an extreme version; however, a modified version of it will pervade and underpin claims put forward here. The view that will be defended here is that although in principle word meaning may be regarded as infinitely variable and context sensitive, there are nonetheless regions of higher semantic ‘density’ (metaphor is unavoidable here), forming, as it were, more or less well-defined ‘lumps’ of meaning with greater or lesser stability under contextual change. The process of congelation into lumps will be called ‘nodulation’, and the lumps thus formed ‘sensenodules’.
‘The Garden Swarms with Bees’ and the Fallacy of ‘Argument Alternation’
Authors: Dowty David
Published: November 2023

Analyses of so-called argument alternations such as those in (I) have been a mainstay of syntactic research since the beginnings of generative grammar. In this paper, I argue that the usual syntactic approach to analysing such cases, which assumes that the two sentence types in each case express the same propositions and differ only in their syntactic form, ignores the main linguistic phenomenon that ought to be of interest, namely that such 'alternate' forms serve to convey significantly different meanings. One moral to be drawn is that linguists should not be quick to assume that language 'wastefully' makes its speakers learn alternative syntactic forms to express the same propositions, but rather that we should rather ask for what semantic purpose the second form exists that the first does not.
‘Life-Enhancement’: Its Degrees and Types
Authors: May Simon
Published: November 2023

Though Nietzsche himself, true to his distaste for definitions, docs not clearly explicate criteria for ‘life-enhancement’, the valuations and practices that he deems life-enhancing in his works do, I suggest, consistently exemplify one or more of the following three criteria: ‘power’, ‘sublimation’ (of power), and the sort of ‘formcreation’ that invites love of world and life. Maximal life-enhancement will maximize all three criteria at once.
The Valuation of Truth in Nietzsche’s Philosophy
Authors: May Simon
Published: November 2023

In the light of this survey of both Nietzsche’s general critique of morality and his specific attack on unconditional truthfulness, what conclusions can we draw about how truth is valued in his new ethic? My answer is that, for Nietzsche, the principal (but not the sole) value of truth is to overcome those life-denying ‘errors’ that morality perpetrates ‘as a matter of principle’; that because morality, like any ethic, is, for him, an inextricably historical development, truth is valuable in this way not for anybody at any time, but only for a very particular sort of ethical community at a very particular time in its own history; and that, for those not afflicted by such errors, truth may be valuable in quite different ways.
Rheta- Romance
Authors: Sampson Rodney
Published: November 2023

The term ‘Rheto-Romance’ (R-R) conventionally covers a heterogeneous grouping of Romance varieties spoken in south-eastern Switzerland and parts of north-eastern Italy. Three main branches are customarily recognized. In the West, there are the various Swiss dialects spoken in the canton known in R-R as Grischün, in French as Grisons, and in German as Graubiinden. No single standard variety exists, nor indeed is there a convenient unambiguous term to designate all the different varieties, since the commonly used label ‘Romansh’ (in R-R rumantsch) properly refers to one variety in particular, namely Surselvan, which is spoken in the west of the canton. We will use the French form ‘Grisons’ in referring to the area of R-R speech in Switzerland.
What are cities for? The ethics of urban planning
Authors: Hare R M
Published: November 2023

Other words, though not functional in the sense that the function is implicit in their meaning. nevertheless are words for things that do have functions, ‘Heart’ is an example of such a word. People knew what hearts were, or what the word ‘heart’ meant, before it was discovered that the heart is a pump whose function is to circulate the blood, So the function is not implicit in the meaning. Nevertheless, the heart does have this function. It does not much matter to which of these classes we assign the word ‘city’. Actually I think that it belongs to the second: one could know what a city is without knowing the function of cities (indeed many of our most vocal Greens are in this position); but they do have a function, and we can ask what it is. In other words, we can ask what good it does to have cities in which people live and work in proximity to one another, instead of living and working scattered uniformly over the countryside. I asked and answered this question in 1969b. I said that the reason why we have cities is in order to facilitate communication with one another.
René Descartes (1596–1650)
Authors: Cottingham John
Published: November 2023

Much of Descartes’s early work as a “philosopher’ was what we should now call scientific. His Le Monde (The World, or The Universe), composed in the early 1630s, was a treatise on physics and cosmology, which resolutely avoided the old scholastic apparatus of “substantial forms’ and “real qualities’, and instead offered a comprehensive explanatory schema invoking only simple mechanical principles.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716)
Authors: Sleigh.Jr. R C
Published: November 2023

Eminent rationalist philosopher, born in Leipzig, died in Hanover. Leibniz was acquainted with all the major scientific developments of the second half of the seventeenth century. He made important contributions in geology, linguistics, historiography, mathematics, and physics, as well as philosophy. His professional training was in the law; he earned his living in the Court of Hanover by combining the roles of councillor, diplomat, librarian, and historian.
George Berkeley (1685–1753)
Authors: Warnock Geoffrey
Published: November 2023

Berkeley is a most striking and even unique phenomenon in the history of philosophy. There have been many philosophers who have constructed bold and sweeping, often strange and astonishing, metaphysical systems. Some, particularly in the English tradition—for example, Thomas Reid in the eighteenth century or G. E. Moore in the twentieth—have been devoted to the clarification and defence of ‘common sense”.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–1855)
Authors: hannay Alastair
Published: November 2023

Danish writer and social critic widely credited with setting the stage and providing the conceptual tools for modem existentialism. Kierkegaard was also one of Hegel’s most devastating critics. The formative years in Copenhagen were marked by personal dependence on an oppressively religious father and by the deaths, before he reached the age of 21, of his mother and five of the family of seven of which he was the youngest.
Ludwig wittgenstein (1889–1951)
Authors: Hacker Peter
Published: November 2023

The leading analytical philosopher of the twentieth century, whose two major works altered the course of the subject. Whether by agreement or by disagreement, whether through understanding or misunderstanding, his influence has moulded the evolution of philosophy from the 1920s.
Organization of spatial knowledge in children
Authors: Jr Herbert L Pick
Published: November 2023

How is our spatial knowledge organized? This question has been posed by many investigators of spatial cognition over the last 20 years. A classical answer by Siegel and White (1975) as well as others suggested a progression both in ontogenetic development and microgenetic. According to this formulation the initial organization includes mainly information about proximity to landmarks. Next there is a stage in which there is route knowledge, and finally achievement of an organization which is characterized by configurational knowledge. There is considerable research indicating such a trend over age with children and also reports of such a trend with adults as they acquire more experience with a space. Perhaps as a reaction to rigid behaviourism many researchers (including the present author)
Introduction: Action
Authors: Brewer Bill
Published: November 2023

Two problems are discussed under the head of’ Action’. The first concerns the connection between the spatial representations involved in perception and action. How does perception control and co-ordinate basic spatial action? More precisely, what can we say about the relation between the ways in which spatial information is coded in perception and in the organization of spatial behaviour, given the nature of perceptuo-motor control? The second problem concerns the nature of action itself, as the directed dioing of something by an agent, as opposed to certain bits of animals’ bodies moving in various ways.
The View from ere: The Nonsymbolic Structure of Spatial Representation
Authors: Farber Ilya , Peterman Will , Churchland Patricia Smith
Published: November 2023

One of the great challenges facing the cognitive and neural sciences right now is to figure out how nervous systems understand and represent space. Besides being intrinsically complex and fascinating, spatial representation is an important entry point to a range of large-scale questions of enduring philo sophical interest For starters, there is clearly a close relationship between the representation of space and the representation of one’s own body, and if Antonio Damasio (1994) is correct body representation in turn underpins other forms of self-representation. Related questions involve the nature of coherence and unity in perceptual experience and motor control, and the processes whereby one modality can “trump” another for the sake of coher ence. These lead to questions about modularity and how best to characterize such specialization as is seen in brains of mature animals, especially given interactive effects in brain development and in perception (Ballard 1991, Aloimonos 1993), and recent results concerning plasticity in the developing and adult brain (Elman et al. >1996; Finlay, Hersman and Darlington 1998). Finally, the study of spatial representation provides a fresh perspective on traditional debates about the nature and structure of mental representation, debates that have tended to focus exclusively on examples from the visual and propositional domains.
Introduction
Authors: Rogers G A J
Published: November 2023

That a volume should be published to mark the fourth centenary of the birth of Thomas Hobbes needs no excuse. He remains perennially in the highest ranks of political theorists and a philosopher of great ability and considerable originality who coloured the thought of his and subsequent ages in a way uniquely his own. The essays published here testify to his continuing fascination for us today and to the relevance of his ideas to the late twentieth century.
The Science in Hobbes’s Politics*
Authors: Sorell Tom
Published: November 2023

In the Epistle Dedicatory to De Corpore Hobbes remarked on the immaturity of science or philosophy as he knew it. Writing in 1655 he observed that natural philosophy was then ‘but young’, being no older than the researches of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Harvey. As for civil philosophy, it was still younger. Hobbes claimed that the subject had not existed before the appearance of his De Give in 1642. He meant that no genuine science of morals and politics had existed. There had been a large pre-scientific literature, stretching back to the Romans and Greeks and even earlier writers. But this was comparable to work in celestial and terrestrial physics before Copernicus and Galileo: it was uncertain, unclear, and unprofitable. Only a new kind of political philosophy could instruct men in lheir civil duties, and only a new kind of natural philosophy could identify the causes of phantasms.
Hobbes and Individualism
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: November 2023

That Hobbes was one of the begetters of modern individualism is widely asserted. Quite what it was that he thus begat is equally widely disputed. Herc I try to show that Hobbes espoused a consistent (though not in all respects persuasive) form of individualism in intellectual, moral, and political matters. I draw on two earlier essays of mine, though I do so in order to advance beyond them, not to rest on them.’ One problem is gestured at by my title: what kind of an individualist was Hobbes? Was he the ‘economic’ individualist and booster for capitalism that C. B. Macpherson described? Was he perhaps less a ‘market-oriented’ individualist than the advocate of the self-centred but self-abnegating bourgeois moral style depicted in Leo Strauss’s famous account, or of the ‘privatized’ individualism described in Sheldon Wolin’s Politics and Vision? I suggest at the end of this essay that Hobbes’s individualism was moral and intellectual, not economic, a doctrine of moral and intellectual autonomy- in essence, the individualism of the ‘modern’ character described in Michael Oakeshott’s essay On Human Conduct.
Practical Advice on Tactics
Authors: Walton Douglas
Published: November 2023

Using the argumentation schemes for the four types of slippery slope argument presented in Chapters 2 through 5, along with the analysis of the dialectical structure of slippery slope arguments given in Chapter 6, a rational critic can criticize an instance of this type of argument as weak or faulty in specific respects, posing critical questions about the unsupported premises. But in some cases, this approach is not good enough to rebut the argument.
Mechanizing aristotle: leibniz and reformed philosophy
Authors: mercer Christia
Published: November 2023

Leibniz scholars have made much of this passage. First, they use it as evidence of Leibniz’s youthful conversion from scholasticism to mechanism. Second, they sometimes attribute to him a memory lapse and insist that the walk must have occurred at least two or three years later than Leibniz says; that is, in 1663-5 and not in 1661-2.
Goodman, Density, and the Limits of Sense Perception
Authors: Raffman Diana
Published: November 2023

According to Nelson Goodman, artworks and their scores, scripts, diagrams, blueprints, sketches, and even performances are symbols. The members of this eclectic group instantiate virtually every symbolic relation under the sun: they denote, refer, represent, notate, exemplify, express, describe. In his seminal and difficult book, Languages of Art, Goodman undertakes to provide an analysis of these various relations, sharply segregating his theoretical concerns from merely ‘applied’ or ‘practical’ (e.g. psychological) ones. The following remarks are characteristic: The ... stated requirements for a notational system are all negative and general, satisfiable by systems with null or even no [syntactic] characters A good many other features that might be thought essential are not covered ... No requirement of a manageably small or even finite set of atomic characters, no requirement of clarity, of legibility, of durability, of maneuverability, of ease of writing or reading, of graphic suggestiveness, of mnemonic efficacy, or of ready duplicability or performability has been imposed. These may be highly desirable properties, and to some degree even necessary for any practicable notation; and the study of such engineering matters could be fascinating and profitable. But none of this has anything to do with the basic theoretical function of notation systems. (154)
The Nature of Indian Logic
Authors: Mohanty Jitendra Nath
Published: November 2023

In a work devoted to the concept of reason, a theory of inference must occupy a central place. In a pre-eminent sense, reason is exercised in reasoning, which is what a theory of inference theorizes about. A theory of consciousness (cit) and a theory of (linguistic) meaning (śabda) are, of course, presupposed in any reasoning. The two preceding chapters therefore, have set the stage for a discussion on inference. We exclude perception (pratyaksa)) from consideration: reasoning in the strict sense begins where perception ends. The idea of an unconscious (e.g. associative) reasoning that is embedded in perception is alien to most Indian philosophies. The Buddhists alone have a semblance of it, but they, in effect, reduce perception to inference.
Remarks on the Pramiina Theory
Authors: Mohanty Jitendra Nath
Published: November 2023

A philosophical theory or darśana not only elaborates a view about the nature of things, but also backs up this account with a theory of evidence, rational justification, and critical appraisal. It not only uses such evidence, rational justifications, and critical appraisals, but also has a theory of these theoretical practices—that is to say, a theory of rationality. We may want to look in it for generalized answers to such questions as: When is a cognitive claim valid? What sorts of justificati1on of beliefs are acceptable? In critically appraising rival claims, what criteria are admissible? Where there are conflicting criteria, what are their relative strengths and weaknesses? These are the tasks to which the pramii7Ja theory addresses itself. It is a singular sign of the high level of intellectual sophistication of the darśanas that they all, at some time or other in course of their development, came up with their theories of pramānas.
Introduction
Authors: Sifianou Maria
Published: November 2023

Despite the great significance of ‘politeness’, it is only in recent years that this concept has become a major issue in linguistics. This is evidenced in the vast array of publications which followed Brown and Levinson’s (1978) original extended essay on politeness phenomena, including both confirming and disconfirming findings for their theory. In fact, it was probably this wave of renewed interest which led to the republication in 1987 of the same essay, now accompanied by an extensive introduction. This introduction critically examines all relevant subsequent research, and concludes with Brown and Levinson’s conviction that broadly speaking their initial findings still appear to be justified. Interestingly enough, this reissue coincided with the establishment of 2 October as ‘National Courtesy Day’ in England. This growing interest in and continuing development of the theory of politeness clearly point to the importance of the issue in human interaction and, consequently, in the study of language in its social context.
Speech Act Theory and Politeness: Requests
Authors: Sifianou Maria
Published: November 2023

Speech act theory has also touched on the question of politeness, particularly as it has been advanced by Austin and Searle. Both of these philosophers consider linguistic communication to be not just a means of conveying information, but a tool people use to achieve a variety of goals. When people use language, they do things or have others do things for them: they apologize, promise, request, thank, and so on. The things people can do linguistically have been grouped into a few categories, each with its own subcategories. Regrouping Austin’s extensive list, Searle (1979) proposed a system of five different categories of speech acts. These are: assertives, whose function is to describe states or events in the world, such as asserting, boasting, and claiming; directives, whose function is to direct the addressee to perform or not to perform an act, such as ordering and requesting; commissives, whose function is to commit the speaker to a future course of action, such as promising and threatening; expressives, whose function is to express the speaker’s attitudes and feelings about something, such as thanking, pardoning, and congratulating; and declarations, whose function is to change the status of the person or object referred to by performing the act successfully, such as christening and sentencing.
Requests: Form and Function
Authors: Sifianou Maria
Published: November 2023

As we have already observed, requests can be performed with a variety of constructions. In the previous chapter we focused upon prominence devices and indirectness in relation to requests and politeness. In dealing with the form and function of requests, we shall move on from these considerations to more straightforward request constructions such as imperatives and interrogatives, and later with their possible modification.
Conflicting Appearances: Theaetetus 153d-154b
Authors: Fine Gail
Published: November 2023

Ancient and modern philosophers alike have been fascinated by the so-called problem of conflicting appearances. The problem is simply this. There are, or at least seem to be, conflicting appearances: the wind seems cold to me, but not to you; the honey seems sweet to me, but not to you; abortion seems right to me, but not to you. What should we infer? Numerous answers have been proposed. In this essay, I consider the answer Plato attributes to Protagoras in Theaetetus 153d-154b. The passage has been analysed in detail by Myles Burnyeat, in his fascinating and stimulating paper ‘Conflicting Appearances’; and I shall accordingly spend some time exploring his account, as well as proposing my own.
Morphology I: Nouns and Adjectives
Authors: Szemerenyi Oswald J L
Published: November 2023

The only actual distinction between noun and adjective in lndo European is that the adjective can show different forms according to gender, whereas with the noun this is the case only exceptionally and in a much more limited way (Lat. equus: equa). The inflexion of the two groups is otherwise identical.
Morphology III: Verbs
Authors: Szemerenyi Oswald J L
Published: November 2023

The verbal systems of the various IE languages differ from one another in important ways. Some languages have extremely complicated, others quite simple systems, and this situation causes great difficulties for the comparatist.
Swinburne on Faith and Belief
Authors: Alston William p.
Published: November 2023

In Faith and Reason1 Swinburne sets out an ambitious and impressive account of religious faith and the epistemology thereof, one that is based on a general account of belief and of rational belief in particular. In this chapter I will take issue with his general theory of belief, arguing that it is untenable. I will also make a few remarks on his discussion of the rationality of belief, but, though I do have some rather serious reservations about this account, I will refrain from going into them in detail. Since I will have given what I take to be conclusive reasons for rejecting Swinburne’s account of the nature of belief, I feel called upon to consider what modifications, if any, this demands in his admirably balanced, acute account of religious faith. Fortunately, so far as I can see, little change is called for. Aside from some minor rewriting, the treatment of faith survives unscathed the demise of the general theory of belief on which it is putatively based.
Language Revival, Integration, and Élitism
Authors: Ben-Rafael Eliezer
Published: November 2023

Rabbi Yonatan of Bet Guvrin (Elentheropolis) describes the linguistic-cultural reality of Palestine during the second century AD as follows: ‘There are four languages which are worthy of common use-Greek for poetry, Latin for battle, Syriac (Aramaic) for lamentation, and Hebrew for speech’ (quoted by Greenfield 1978: 154). The description of the dominant culture in contemporary Israel offers a picture of no fewer contradictions. This culture has been shaped by immigrants who had experienced the crisis of East European Jewry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see Vital 1975). ‘Prior to independence (1948),’ say Horowitz and Lissak, ‘the waves of immigration to Palestine were, for the most part, ideologically motivated [which] fueled the separatist tendencies that made the Yishuv [the pre-state Jewish community of Palestine] a quasi-autonomous society’ (Horowitz and Lissak 1989: 6). Zionist ideology, which consists of the Jewish nationalism defining Israel as the motherland of all Jews in the world, continues to determine fundamental political positions in Israel today.
The Quantitative Dimension
Authors: Ben-Rafael Eliezer
Published: November 2023

This chapter introduces the analysis of the cleavages of Israeli society through their languages, by presenting a general statistical picture.