bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Another Go at Musical Profundity: Stephen Davies and the Game of Chess
Authors: Kivy Peter
Published: November 2023

When I decided to conclude my book Music Alone with a chapter called “The Profundity of Music”, I had no idea that what I said on the subject would raise so many hackles.1 But I should have known better. For, after all, pure instrumental music, what I called in the book “music alone”, is generally agreed upon to be one of the fine arts; and perhaps the highest compliment one can pay to a work of the fine arts, it might be thought, is to call it “profound”. So when I cast doubt on whether such music could rightly be called “profound”, I must have been seen as consigning “absolute music”, as it came to be called in the nineteenth century, to a second-class citizenship in the community of arts and letters. A play, a poem, a novel, maybe even a painting, might achieve the highest level, qua work of art, the level of profundity. But a work ofinstrumental music never. Faust, yes; Paradise Lost, yes; the Eroica—application denied.
Changes in speech, language, and communication
Authors: Daisley Audrey , Tams Rachel , Kischka Udo
Published: November 2023

There are several different types of communication disorder that can result from damage to the brain. The type and severity of these problems will depend on: • the location and extent of the brain injury • the severity of the damage • the stage of recovery. In most people the key areas of the brain responsible for controlling speech and language are located in the left hemisphere (side) of the brain. However, the right hemisphere controls other communication skills, and control of the muscles of speech depends on several different areas of the brain.
Family issues after head injury
Authors: Daisley Audrey , Tams Rachel , Kischka Udo
Published: November 2023

So far we have focused on the wide-ranging effects of head injury on the injured person. However, head injury is a crisis which affects not just the injured person, but all members of the family. It is now well recognized that its impact can be as devastating, if not more so, for the relatives as it is for the patient him/herself. Focusing on family issues is important because: head injury can cause family members themselves to experience significant distress, often to the extent that they warrant treatment and help in their own right families play a major role in helping people recover from head injury yet the distress they experience can interfere with this. Therefore, in this chapter we turn our attention to helping you: understand the possible impact of your relative’s head injury on you and your family develop ways to cope.
Paradigm generation and Northern Sámi stems
Authors: Svenonius Peter
Published: November 2023

Northern Sámi, a Finno-Ugric language spoken mainly in Northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland, has a system of consonant gradation which affects consonants at the center of a prosodic foot: the coda of the stressed syllable and the onset of the following syllable (stress is word-initial). Consonant gradation is illustrated in (4.1) for two typical nouns (angle brackets signal that the example is given in the standard orthography; unreferenced examples are generally from Nickel 1990).
The Feeling of Being
Authors: McFarland David
Published: November 2023

Although some of the apparently clever things that animals do induce us to attribute cognitive abilities to the animals concerned, these do not permit us to ascribe such abilities. In Chapter 5 we made a distinction between attribution and ascription. Although attribution and ascription are almost synonymous, it is useful for us to make a distinction. By attribute we mean to intuitively endow an agent with certain qualities by saying, for example, the animal behaves as if it had certain mental capacities. By ascribe we mean that we have reason to endow such capacities. Certainly, in some of the examples outlined in Chapter 5, the animals behaved as if they had cognitive abilities, but the scientists concerned rarely have good reason for such attribution. As we saw in Chapter 4, in some cases where it seemed obvious that cognitive abilities were involved, other non-cognitive explanations were subsequently suggested.
On Perceptual Constancy
Authors: Hatfield Gary
Published: November 2023

Human perception normally occurs through stimulation of nerve endings that leads to brain activity and conscious perception. For example, vision normally occurs when light reflected from objects stimulates the receptor cells in the retina. Phenomenologically speaking, the content of the visual perception corresponds more closely to distant objects than to the patterns of light on the retina. When we are observing a rectangular table while standing at one end, it projects a trapezoidal shape onto the retina, yet our experience of the shape of the tabletop tends toward that of a rectangle in depth.
Rationality and Self-Confidence
Authors: Arntzenius Frank
Published: November 2023

Hair-Brane theory is the latest craze in elementary particle physics. I think it unlikely that Hair-Brane theory is true. Unfortunately, I will never know whether Hair-Brane theory is true, for Hair-Brane theory makes no empirical predictions, except regarding some esoteric feature of the microscopic conditions just after the Big Bang. Hair-Brane theory, obviously, has no practical use whatsoever. Still, I care about the truth: I want my degree of belief D(H) in Hair-Brane theory H to be as close to the truth as possible.
The Syntax of Conditional Sentences
Authors: Lycan William G
Published: November 2023

Without exception, logicians have given us to understand that ‘if ... then ‘ is a syntactically unstructured binary sentence operator, and that antecedent and consequent are syntactically co-ordinate. The campaign began with ⊃ and →, but it did not stop there. Though dissatisfaction with the truth-functional representation led to the truth-functional representation led to the intensional – 3, >, and □→, these connectives are still syntactically unstructured binary sentence operators. And every logician awards any such operator its own distinctive base clause in the recursive truth definition for its containing language. In these ways, ‘ if… then’ is assumed to resemble ‘ (&)and ‘or’ however more complex its truth rule may be. Presumed equivalents of ‘If A, then B’f, such as ’B if A and ‘A only if B’, are treated just the same.
In Defense of Truth Value
Authors: Lycan William G
Published: November 2023

NTVowes much of its popularity, as well as its birth, to E.W. Adams-somewhat ironically, since his paper kicked off the contemporary literature on the truth conditions of conditionals. Dormant for some years, NTV was revived by Gibbard (1981) and further fomented by Appiah (1985), Edgington (1986), and Bennett (1988). As I have said, I reject NTV. In this chapter I shall offer some arguments against it, and then rebut the arguments for it, so that l may move on to my further truth-conditional investigations with a clear conscience.

indicative conditionals have no truth values. Against that, it may be that all indicative conditionals have truth values, but it may also be that some indicatives have truth values and some do not. Suppose, for example, that Emotivism is true and moral judgments lack truth value. Then a conditional with a moral judgment for a consequent ( ‘If he has lied to his mother, that is morally wrong ‘) would presumably lack truth value also, even if NTV is generally false. We should understand NTV firmly as the claim that no indicative conditional has a truth value. But even here there are subtleties, because still in the spirit of NTV, someone might grant that non-contingent conditionals, perhaps just those that are logical truths or their negations, have truth values even though contingent conditionals do not. I shall take this up below, in the form of an objection.
A Beautiful But False Theory of ‘Even If ‘
Authors: Lycan William G
Published: November 2023

‘Even if ’ is a very troublesome locution, raising special and difficult questions in the semantics of conditionals. It is not often discussed by linguists and is generally either ignored or mishandled by philosophers. But my semantics is particularly well equipped to account for its special properties, for I am grammatically prepared to treat ‘even if ’ as the result of letting the word ‘even ’ operate on a conditional antecedent; ‘even ’ applies to ‘if P ’ just as it does to ‘when P ’ and to ‘where P ’ (cf. ‘even when ’, ’even where ’). Thus my contention will be that ‘even ’ in ‘even if actually means ’even ’, just as (I have argued) ‘only ’in‘ only if ’means‘ only ’. In consequence, a theory of‘ even if ’ should fall out of a plausible general theory of the semantics of‘ even ’, if one can be obtained. To my knowledge, Hazen and Slate (1979) and, following them, Bennett (1982) were the first to pursue this strategy; I shall discuss Bennett’s subtle theory and compare it to one of my own.
The‘ Indicative‘ /‘Subjunctive‘ Distinction
Authors: Lycan William G
Published: November 2023

My purposes in this chapter are to make some progress in delineating the semantical distinction between indicative and subjunctive conditionals (as they have been called) and to provide further evidence for the semantics defended so far.

In Chapter 4 I mentioned some strong affinities between indicative and subjunctive conditionals, and it is obvious that the semantical analysis to which our syntactic considerations have led us is strikingly close to Stalnaker‘ s selection-functional idea, common to the Ramsey Test and the similarity-of-worlds approach to conditionals. (As I have said, most of its main advantages over previous versions of the selection-functional idea stem from its not treating surface conditional connectives as being syntactically primitive.) Yet there are wellknown cases, due to Adams (I 965) and others, in which an indicative conditional and its corresponding subjunctive seem to differ sharply in truth value.
Aristotle on the Fantastic Abilities of Animals in De Anima 3.3
Authors: Osborne Catherine
Published: November 2023

1. Fixing the problem: can animals have a successful life without vovs-? My topic in this paper concerns the connection between the objects of perception and the objects of thought. Do we think about, or know, the same objects as we perceive? It is easy to suppose that Aristotle, given his hostility to Plato’s separation of Forms, must have a clear and unambiguous anti-metaphysical answer to this question: there had better be no parallel set of objects occupying a thought-world. And, we might expect, Aristotle’s unambiguously anti-metaphysical answer should surely have some appeal for those modern philosophers who find anti-metaphysical Aristotelianism congenial.
Introduction
Authors: Papineau David
Published: November 2023

This volume contains six essays on rationality. The first two are about theoretical rationality, the rationality of beliefs, while the other four are about practical rationality, the rationality of actions.
The Evolution of Means–End Reasoning
Authors: Papineau David
Published: November 2023

When I woke up a few days ago, the following thoughts ran through my mind. ‘I need a haircut. If I don’t get it first thing this morning, I won’t have another chance for two weeks. But if I go to the barber down the road, he’ll want to talk to me about philosophy. So I’d better go to the one in Camden Town. The tube will be very crowded, though. Still, it’s a nice day. Why don’t I just walk there? It will only take twenty minutes. So I’d better put on these shoes now, have breakfast straight away, and then set out for Camden.’
Introduction: On Contemporary Philosophy of Language
Authors: Preyer Gerhard , Peter Georg
Published: November 2023

Logical form has been a central concern of the analytic tradition in philosophy from Frege and Russell to the present. The logical form of a sentence is thought to reveal both the structure of the thoughts we are expressing, and the structure of the world we think about if our thoughts are true. Thus, investigation into logical forms has played a central methodological role in investigations into the nature of the mind and into the nature of reality. However, the concept of logical form has not received as much attention as might have been expected from the central role it has played in philosophy in the analytic tradition. This book aims to help redress this by bringing together essays on logical form written from a variety of different theoretical perspectives in linguistics and philosophy. The book is divided into three thematically unified parts.
‘Obviously Propositions are Nothing:-Russell and the Logical Form of Belief Reports
Authors: Clapp Lenny , Stainton Robert J
Published: November 2023

In Philosophy of Logical Atomism and elsewhere, Russell maintains that propositions are ‘obviously nothing’. Why he says this isn’t entirely clear. We suspect, however, that he reasoned as follows. If propositions ‘are’, then they must be facts; but if propositions are facts, they cannot be false (or true, for that matter). Hence, Russell concludes, propositions are not facts-and hence ‘are not’.
Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa
Authors: Dupré John
Published: November 2023

The main topic of this paper is the theory of natural kinds that has been developed by Putnam (1975d, esp. 1975a, b, c) and Kripke (1972b; also 1972a). One area to which this analysis has seemed particularly appropriate is that of general terms naming biological organisms. My strategy will be to compare the requirements of this analysis with some actual biological facts and theories. It will appear that these diverge to an extent which, I will claim, is fatal to the theory. Toward the end of the paper I will also make some more constructive remarks about the nature of biological classification.
In Defence of Classification
Authors: Dupré John
Published: November 2023

A topic surprisingly little discussed in recent controversies about the nature of species is classification. By that I mean the practical activity of assigning the vast numbers of organisms in the world to particular kinds. One reason for this neglect, perhaps, is that writers on species are often theorists rather than the practitioners who actually classify organisms; and perhaps in some cases these two personae coexist in the same human body without communicating a great deal with one another. Or perhaps it is because many writers on this topic have reached the conclusion that species aren’t kinds at all, but individuals, so that the nature of species can have little to do with the activity of classification. At any rate, it has become common to treat species primarily as units of evolution rather than units of classification: an influential recent anthology on the topic bears the title The Units of Evolution and the subtitle Essays on the Nature of Species (Ereshefsky 1992b).
Sex, Gender, and Essence
Authors: Dupré John
Published: November 2023

The primary aim of this paper is to show why the assumption that real essences underlie the kinds we distinguish in scientific investigation is mistaken. I want to claim that this assumption is not merely empirically unwarranted, but necessarily at odds with a genuinely empirical approach to science. Briefly, unless one supposes the discovery of a kind to imply the discovery of an essence, there is nothing more to the discovery of a kind than the discovery of the correlations of properties characteristic of the members of the kind. Since I do not believe that essences are to be found so easily, I shall argue that the importance of the discovery of kinds to the progress of science is much less than is generally supposed.
Scrutiny
Authors: Harding Jason
Published: November 2023

A considerable amount of light is shed on the Criterion’s place within the field of inter-war literary journalism by considering its relations with Scrutiny. Eliot’s poetry and critical theories were nowhere more influential than in an undergraduate Cambridge dominated by the followers of I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis. In particular, Leavis’s generalizations of the implications of Eliot’s early critical pronouncements shaped many of the crusades and battles fought by Scrutiny during its formative years. Looking back at Leavis’s self-congratulatory ‘Retrospect’ for the 1963 Cambridge University Press reprint of Scrutiny, however, it is remarkable to note just how far he had come to repudiate the social and cultural values promulgated by the Criterion.
Defence of the West
Authors: Harding Jason
Published: November 2023

Recovering from the effects of nervous exhaustion in Switzerland in December 1921, Eliot, who read German fluently, purchased a copy of Hermann Hesse’s Blick ins Chaos (1921). The notes appended to the 1922 Boni & Liveright edition of The Waste Land included a citation from this book:

Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken in heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Über diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.
Introduction
Authors: Leiter Brian
Published: November 2023

Most of philosophy, both contemporary and importantly historical, does not, alas, live up to this expectation. Earlier and contemporary philosophers worry, to be sure, about truth, knowledge, the just society, and morally right action, as well as the nature of science, beauty, death, law, goodness, rationality, and consciousness. From reflections on these worries one might even extract a “philosophy of life”, though it would hardly be obvious, on an initial reading of Aristotle, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Hegel, or Husserl that this is what they were after.
Theodicy and Pseudo-History in the Timaeus
Authors: Broadie Sarah
Published: November 2023

Pessimism about the human condition presents a challenge to any form of theism that insists on the goodness and benevolence of god or the gods. Although Plato never sits us down to discuss this and just this question (a type of approach which in any case seems usually not to be his in the dialogues from the Republic onwards), I am supposing that he, as a pessimist, an enlightened theist, and a seeker after truth and coherence, saw and accepted the challenge, and framed an answer. For his pessimism we can look chiefly to the Republic, whereas theodicy, if it is to be found anywhere, is surely in the Timaeus.
Self-Reference, Textuality, and the Status of the Political Project in Plato’s Laws
Authors: Adomenas Mantas
Published: November 2023

To say that the Laws is unique among Plato’s dialogues is hardly a radical statement, since one could say the same about two-thirds of Plato’s oeuvre (c.1,200 out of 1,800 Stephanus pages). Nevertheless, certain features in the literary form of the last dialogue, analysed in their relationship to the political project it proposes, are increasingly felt to be highly innovative, and affect our perception of the whole work. ‘From this point of view,’ according to Andre Laks, ‘the Laws is not only without precedent but also without any later equivalent in the history of political thought’.
Fate and Free Will in Stoicism: A Discussion of Susanne Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy’
Authors: Brennan Tad
Published: November 2023

Progress in the study of ancient philosophy, as in most scholarly disciplines, is an incremental matter of slow advances. It is a reviewer’s job to record any forward motion, warn readers away from dead ends and diversions, and celebrate the occasional leaps ahead, when a rare contribution puts us ten years further down the road. Susanne Bobzien’s new book, by contrast, sets us back-about two thousand years. Not since the days when Crinis cribbed Chrysippus have we had this clear an account of the Stoic system or this detailed a presentation of the interconnections between their views on logic, modality, causality, determinism, and moral responsibility-and those earlier compendia are now rather difficult to purchase.
Silence
Authors: Brook Clodagh J
Published: November 2023

When Montale writes ‘la pii1 veraragione e di chi take’ (“So Igor in cui’), he places silence in a position of central importance in a world where words often no longer express truth. His turning towards silence, as proposed in this poem, is an act of revolt against an impoverished linguistic medium. However, silence is not simply the absence or suspension of speech, a turning away from expression, but is a multifaceted phenomenon with expressive power in its own right, and as such may have many diverse connotations, interpretations, and uses, both positive and negative.
Philosophy of Biology
Authors: Brandon Robert , Rosenberg Alex
Published: November 2023

Problems in the philosophy of biology go back to Spinoza, if not to Aristotle. They proliferate after Darwin and become pressing in the late twentieth-century revolution in biology. And these problems are as much those of biologists as philosophers, intersecting as they do both subjects equally. We trace most of these problems back to the nature of adaptation and fitness, and forward in their ramifications for molecular and evolutionary biology and the relations among them. We apply solutions to these problems to illuminate the structure and explanatory strategy of the theory of natural selection, and the controversial conceptual issues about units and levels of biological organization in which it has figured. The philosophy of biology has been a subject of excitement and ferment for more than a generation. We anticipate no relief from this state of affairs.
Geometry and Motion
Authors: Belot Gordon
Published: November 2023

I will discuss only one of the several entwined strands of the philosophy of space and time, the question of the relation between the nature of motion and the geometrical structure of the world.1 This topic has many of the virtues of the best philosophy of science. It is of long-standing philosophical interest and has a rich history of connections to problems of physics. It has loomed large in discussions of space and time among contemporary philosophers of science. Furthermore, there is, I think, widespread agreement that recent insights here have lead to a genuine deepening of our understanding.
Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Field Theory
Authors: Huggett Nick
Published: November 2023

Much attention has been directed to the philosophical implications of quantum field theory (QFT) in recent years; this paper attempts a survey in low-technical terms. First the relations of QFT to other kinds of theory, classical and quantum, particle and field, are discussed. Then various formulations of QFT are introduced, along with related interpretations. Finally a review is made of some of the most interesting foundational problems.

For our discussion of the foundations of quantum field theory (QFT) it will be useful to have a map showing where QFT stands in relation to other physical theories. Figure 1 locates theories as points of a three-dimensional lattice: describing particles or fields, formulated in different spacetimes and either classical or quantum. Consider the classical plane of Figure
Great Apes and the Human Resistance to Equality
Authors: Jamieson Dale
Published: November 2023

Questions about the nature and limits of the community of equals are controversial in both theory and practice. As I write these words, a bloody war between Serbs and Croats is continuing in the former Yugoslavia. Many fear that this is a preview of what may happen in what was once the Soviet Union. Tensions between Czechs and Slovaks are running high, and “the troubles” continue in the northern part of Ireland. Here in New York, where I am writing this essay, relations between Hasidic Jews and African-Americans in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn have deteriorated to the point where a cycle of reprisal killings may have begun. Relations between blacks and Koreans are generally very bad, and all over America there are incidents of white racism against blacks and Asians.
Wild/Captive and Other Suspect Dualisms
Authors: Jamieson Dale
Published: November 2023

Dualisms have had a hard time in recent years. Philosophers used to think that facts and values were distinct, and that philosophy and science were radically different enterprises. While scientists employed empirical methods to discover the way the world happens to be, the job of philosophers was to use conceptual analysis to reveal how the world necessarily is. In the wake of the revolution unleashed by Quine in the early 1950s, philosophers either had to learn some science, find another job, or fight an irredentist action on behalf of conceptual analysis that is mainly of interest only to a few other philosophers.
Ecosystem Health: Some Preventive Medicine
Authors: Jamieson Dale
Published: November 2023

In recent years the language of health and disease has often been employed in discussions of environmental quality. Many people in everyday life find it natural to speak of environments as healthy or diseased. A Southern California mesa, formerly populated by interesting and subtle forms of life, now bulldozed and covered with tract houses and shopping malls, can strike one as the environmental equivalent of a cancer-wracked body. A highly acidic lake or a beetle-infested forest can strike us in the same way.
Why Meaning (Probably) Is n’t Conceptual Role
Authors: Fodor Jerry , Lepore Ernest
Published: November 2023

IT ‘s an achievement of the last couple of decades that people who work in linguistic semantics and people who work in the philosophy of language have arrived at a friendly, de facto agreement as to their respective job descriptions. The terms of this agreement are that the semanticists do the work and the philosophers do the worrying. The semanticists try to construct actual theories of meaning (truth theories, or model theories, or whatever) for one or another kind of expression in one or another natural language; for example, they try to figure out how the temperature could be rising compatibly with the substitutivity of identicals. The philosophers, by contrast, keep an eye on the large, foundational issues, such as: What ‘s the relation between sense and denotation; what ‘s the relation between thought and language; whether translation is determinate; and whether life is like a fountain. Every now and then the philosophers and the semanticists are supposed to get together and compare notes on their respective progress. Or lack thereof. Accordingly, this paper is about not semantics but the philosophy of language. Some of us have been poking around in the basement of meaning theory, and we seem to have discovered a large, nasty crack; as far as we can tell, one of the foundation stones is coming unstuck. We thought we ‘d better tell you about it before the thing gets worse.
On Strawson ‘s Rehabilitation of Metaphysics
Authors: Hacker P M S
Published: November 2023

There appears to be a rhythm in the history of philosophy. Periods of great metaphysical system building are followed by brief periods of anti-metaphysical reaction. The great constructive systems of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century metaphysics were followed by Hume ‘s damnation and Kant ‘s drastic restriction of metaphysics (even though we rightly deem both to have elaborated metaphysical systems). The early nineteenth century saw the revival of grand systematic metaphysics among the post Kantian German Idealists, only to be followed by the destructive reaction of nineteenth-century positivism. But this too was a passing phase, followed by such metaphysical system-builders as Bergson, Bradley, McTaggart, Alexander, and Heidegger. And this again bred a reaction in the inter-war years.
In Defence of Explanatory Ecumenism
Authors: Jackson Frank , Pettit Philip
Published: November 2023

Many of the things that we try to explain, in both our common sense and our scientific engagement with the world, are capable of being explained more or less finely: that is, with greater or lesser attention to the detail of the producing mechanism. A natural assumption, pervasive if not always explicit, is that other things being equal, the more fine00ADgrained an explanation, the better. Thus, Jon Elster, who also thinks there are instrumental reasons for wanting a more fine00ADgrained explanation, assumes that in any case the mere fact of getting nearer the detail of production makes such an explanation intrinsically superior: ‘a more detailed explanation is also an end in itself’ (Elster 1985: 5). Michael Taylor (1988: 96) agrees: ‘A good explanation should be, amongst other things, as fine00ADgrained as possible.’’
Parfit’s P
Authors: Pettit Philip , Smith Michael
Published: November 2023

In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit describes two theories of rationality, the Self00ADinterest Theory, S, and the Present-aim Theory, P. ‘S and P are simply related: they are both theories about rationality’ (p. 129). Parfit thinks that S represents an overwhelming orthodoxy. ‘The Self-interest Theory has been believed by most people for more than two millennia’ (p. 194). P is not a single theory, but rather a class of theories, and Parfit thinks that one of those versions of P which he describes as critical-CP-is the best theory. He rejects some versions of CP, but leaves a number of candidates in the field. ‘We should reject the Self-interest Theory about rationality, and accept the Critical Present-aim Theory’ (p. 450).
A Rebuttal on Functions
Authors: Boorse Christopher
Published: November 2023

This essay has a narrow aim: to answer all major criticisms, except two, of a kind of analysis of function statements previously offered by several writers. Let me call it a general goal-contribution (GGC) analysis, since it defines functions generally as causal contributions to goals. This analysis seeks to cover a wide range of functions, including ordinary ones in artifacts, biological ones in living organisms, and perhaps others as well, as in social science.
Functional Organization, Analogy, and Inference
Authors: Wimsatt William
Published: November 2023

This chapter builds upon my earlier selectionist analysis (Wimsatt 1972) to characterize functional organization, to examine judgments of functional analogy, and to give conditions for evaluating functional inference. The problem of teleology was not invented for philosophers’ amusement, so a good analysis should give some methodological guidance in the construction and evaluation of descriptions of functional organization that could be useful for practitioners. I thus analyze and then move beyond ‘ideal’ functional hierarchies to consider the kinds of pragmatic compromises necessary in the field, and to bring our analyses closer to our practice.
The Rational Analysis of Human Cognition*
Authors: Chater Nick , ford Mike Oaks
Published: November 2023

Rationality appears basic to the understanding of mind and behaviour. In practical decisions, such as whether a person is morally responsible for his or her actions, to whether a person can be hospitalized without consent, it seems crucial to be able to draw a boundary between sanity and madness, between rationality and irrationality. In economics, and increasingly, other areas of social science, human behaviour is explained as the outcome of ‘rational choice’, concerning which products to buy, whom to marry, or how many children to have (Becker 1975, 1981; Elster 1986). But rationality assumptions go deeper still—they are embodied in the folk psychological style of explanation in which we describe each other’s minds and behaviour (Fodor 1987; Stich 1983).
Language Contact In Amazonia
Authors: Aikhenvald Alexandra Y
Published: November 2023

This book considers how forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble one another and what the explanation is for this. The author aims (a) to explain and identify the relationship between areal diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and (b) to discover the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another. This is done using the example of Arawak and Tucanoan languages spoken in the large area of the Vaupés river basin in northwest Amazonia, which spans Colombia and Brazil. In this region language is seen as a badge of identity: language mixing, interaction, and influence are resisted for ideological reasons. Professor Aikhenvald considers which grammatical categories are most and which are least likely to be borrowed in a situation of prolonged language contact where lexical borrowing is reduced to a minimum. She provides a genetic analysis of the languages of the region and considers their historical relationships with languages of the same family outside it. She also examines changes brought about by recent contact with European languages and culture, and the linguistic and cultural effects of being part of a group that is aware its language and identity are threatened. The book is presented in relatively nontechnical language and will interest linguists and anthropologists.
Aspect and Verbs of Movement in the History of Greek: Why Pericles Could ‘Walk into Town’ but Karamanlis Could Not
Authors: Horrocks Geoffrey
Published: November 2023

The phrase in (1) means ‘having wandered (in)to many cities’, with a clear ‘goal’ reading for the prepositional phrase (PP): But the Modern Greek sentence in (2), even though σε+ accusative may in principle have both locative and allative readings:
The Unity Of Opposites In Plato’S Symposium
Authors: Wardy Robert
Published: November 2023

Nothing in Plato is easy, but the Symposium poses a special puzzle. Other dialogues might confront us with arguments which are fiercely difficult to understand, or challenge us with material which is not argumentative, and obscurely related to what we do without hesitation recognize as argument. The distinctive problem of the Symposium is: where are the arguments?’ Of course there are other dialogues which hardly teem with dialectic: and having set such curiosities as the Menexenus aside, one might protest that the argumentative density of the Phaedrus, say, is not so very different from the composition of the Symposium. Yet there is still a difference. If philosophers are wont to remark the rarity of argumentation in this work, no reader alive above the neck-or maybe below the waist-can fail to be gripped by the spectacular richness of ideas it contains. And this bewildering profusion of remarkable notions is distributed between an unparalleled number of Platonic speakers, each of whom works in a different way with and against the conventions of the encomium, and with and against one another.
Not-Being And Difference: On Plato’S Sophi St 256 D 5-258 E 3
Authors: Van Eck Job
Published: November 2023

Plato’s analysis of falsity at Sophist 263 is given in terms ofnotbeing and difference. ‘Theaetetus flies’ is false because what is different is stated as the same, and what is not as what is, 0aTEpa ws TU avTa Kat µ OVTa W<; OVTa (263 D 1-2), things that are different from what is the case concerning him (viz. flying) are described as the same (as what is the case about him). That there are indeed manyµ ovrn, ‘not-beings’ in the sense of things different from the things that are, the Eleatic Stranger (ES) and Theaetetus remarked some lines above, ‘for we said there are many things that are with regard to each thing and many things that are not’ (263 B 11-12), referring to 256 E 6-7, ‘so, with regard to each of the forms, being is many and not-being is indefinite in quantity’. In this way they had been disobedient to Parmenides, who had stated, ‘Never shall it force itself on us that things that are-not are [d’vai µ J6vrn].’ But they had gone even further in their disobedience: ‘but we have not merely shown that the things that are-not are, but also brought to light the form not-being happens to have’ (258 D 5-7).
Aristotle versus Descartes on the Concept of the Mental
Authors: Kahn Charles H
Published: November 2023

I think we may assume that the history of philosophy is valuable for its own sake, as an understanding of the major thinkers of the past. But I want to appeal here to a derivative use, in which the history of philosophy can contribute more directly to the contemporary discussion of philosophical issues. This can occur when the understanding of a remote and sufficiently unfamiliar perspective permits us to reflect critically on the assumptions that underlie a contemporary discussion. Something like this happened in ethics in the last generation, where reflection on ancient ethics succeeded in shedding a critical light on the standard debate between deontologists and consequentialists, with the result that a new approach was opened up under the title of virtue ethics.
Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Nature and Location of Vision
Authors: Sharples Robert W
Published: November 2023

The so-called second book of the treatise On the Soul ( De anima) by Alexander of Aphrodisias is a collection of short discussions on a range of topics, more or less closely connected with psychology. Since 1887 it has commonly been known by the title Mantissa given to it by its editor Ivo Bruns, Mantissa originally being an Etruscan word meaning a make-weight, something the trader puts in to balance up the scales.1 One sequence of discussions in the Mantissa, §§9–14, consists of a series of refutations of non-Aristotelian theories of vision, followed in §15 by an exposition of Aristotelian doctrine and in §16 by a discussion of the Aristotelian account of colour.
Seneca on Freedom and Autonomy
Authors: Inwood Brad
Published: November 2023

It is a pleasure to offer this short essay to Richard Sorabji. He has done path-breaking work on philosophy in the Roman imperial period, with particular emphasis on the interaction of pagan philosophy and non-pagan traditions. In particular, his enthusiastic engagement with Seneca’s philosophical achievements has been a major stimulus for a great deal of recent work. In discussing, however superficially, the relationship between Stoic and Platonic strands in Seneca’s thought and their relationship to some themes in the historian Josephus, I hope at least to suggest some areas and approaches where further exploration might be fruitful.
The Rightness of Acts and the Goodness of Lives
Authors: Wallace R Jay
Published: November 2023

A prominent tendency in recent work of Joseph Raz’s has been to deny that there is any interesting philosophical problem about the authority of moral considerations to govern our lives. Philosophers who address this problem typically suppose that morality designates a domain of putatively normative considerations that hang together in some non00ADvacuous way. They then ask whether the considerations within this unified domain really do constitute reasons for action, and how they stack up compared to reasons of other kinds in respect of their normative importance. Thus it is common to contrast moral considerations with considerations of rational self00ADinterest, and to ask whether and why we should conform to the former when they conflict with the latter.
Causal and metaphysical necessity
Authors: Shoemaker Sydney
Published: November 2023

There was a time, within the memory of some of us, when it was widely accepted that there are just two kinds of necessity. There was logical necessity, which was generally construed as including the necessity of analytic truths. This was assumed to be something to which we have an a priori access. And there was causal necessity, to which our only access is empirical. Since the dominant views about causality then current were Humean in inspiration, there was some question as to how so-called causal necessity, the distinctive status of causal laws and their consequences, deserved the name of “necessity” at all. But that was what it was frequently called.
The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir
Authors: Grosholz Emily R
Published: November 2023

The legacy of Simone de Beauvoir has yet to be properly assessed and explored. The 50th anniversary of the publication of The Second Sex inspired this volume which brings together philosophers and literary critics, some of whom are well known for their books on Beauvoir (Bauer, Le Doeuff, Moi), others new to Beauvoir studies though long familiar with her work (Grosholz, Imbert, James, Stevenson, Wilson). One aim of this collection is to encourage greater recognition of Beauvoir’s philosophical writings through systematic reflection on their place in the canon and on her methods. The Second Sex played a central role in the profound shift in philosophy’s self-understanding that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century, and today offers new problems for reflection and novel means for appropriating older texts. Its reflective iconoclasm can be compared to that of Descartes’ Meditations; its enormous, directly discernible impact on our social world invites comparison with Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. The collection also examines the relationship between Beauvoir’s literary writing and her philosophical thought. Deeply concerned with the critical and creative powers of reason as well as with the betterment of our suffering world, Simone de Beauvoir wrote in a variety of genres in addition to the philosophical essay: the novel, political journalism, and the memoir. The multiplicity of her voices was closely related to her philosophical project. Since Beauvoir’s method (like that of W. E. B. du Bois) proceeded from her own immediate experience, her reflections had to find expression sometimes as narrative, sometimes as autobiography, sometimes as argument. The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir demonstrates the many ways in which Beauvoir’s writings, in particular The Second Sex, can serve as resources for thought, for the life of the mind which is as concerned with the past and future as it is with the present.
Must We Read Simone de Beauvoir?
Authors: Bauer Nancy
Published: November 2023

Given that daughters tend to have ambivalent relationships with their mothers, it should come as no surprise that fifty years down the road feminist academics still don’t know quite what to do with The Second Sex.When Simone de Beauvoir’s Jandmark work on women appeared in English in 1953 there were n’t feminist scholars around to love it or hate it. Feminist theory would not invent itself for another couple of decades; once it did, it took its intellectual nourishment, at least initially, primarily from Marxism rather than from Beauvoir. By the time feminist theory began to take off, Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique(1963) and Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics(1971) had superceded The Second Sexas rallying cries for women’s liberation.
What is ‘good practice’ in historical linguistics: aims and methods
Authors: Fischer Olga
Published: November 2023

The primary tasks of the historical linguist are to give a description of the historical linguistic facts at particular moments in time, to show how linguistic utterances change when they are compared over a period of time, to describe what general mechanisms are involved in or underlie these changes, and, finally, to provide an explanation of the changes that take place in these linguistic utterances. This must be done with reference to the communicative situation and with reference to language users, who, after all, interpret and produce the utterances and are thus in some way responsible for the changes.
From discourse to (morpho)syntax and vice versa: the case of clause fusion
Authors: Fischer Olga
Published: November 2023

The approach in this chapter and the next will be a little different from the one taken in the previous chapters, in that I will concentrate on a number of problems in the grammaticalization approach, which I will discuss from a more formal point of view. In other words, I will use a formal approach more as a perspective on grammaticalization than as one contrasted with it. The reason for this is that some of the issues presented in these chapters are simply not part of the core concern in formal models. Where possible, however, the formal treatment of the topics will also be presented.
Burma/Myanmar
Authors: Watkins Justin
Published: November 2023

Like much of Southeast Asia, the territory of the state formerly known as Burma, now officially renamed Myanmar, is an area of considerable ethnic and linguistic diversity. At least seventy languages are spoken in the country (Bradley 1994, Gordon 2005), and these are associated with a similar number of ethnicities and identities. Within the range of such variety, a broad and important distinction can be made between the largely monolingual, ethnically Burman central area and the multilingual, ethnically diverse border areas. Since independence from British colonial power in 1948, the rulers of Burma/Myanmar – a military government since 1962 – have been concerned with maintaining control over the entire country, and government forces have periodically engaged in armed conflict with up to twenty insurgent groups comprising the larger of the minority ethnicities around the country’s border areas. The languages of the larger groups, in particular Karen, Mon, Shan, and Kachin, have at times been used as a means of dissimilating from the ethnic Burman/Bamar majority, in some cases by organizations seeking political separation. For the government, the Burmese language functions as an important element of its general effort to consolidate control over the country and has accordingly been promoted and spread throughout the nation with considerable effort.
Presentism and Truthmaking
Authors: Keller Simon
Published: November 2023

Saint Augustine ‘s boyhood teachers told him that there are three types of time: past, present, and future. Are we then to say, Augustine asks in his Con/ essions, that the past and future exist? At first, he thinks that they do. It seems, he says, that “when the present emerges from the future, time comes out of some secret store, and then recedes into some secret place when the past comes out of the present “. If the past and future are in some secret place, then they must exist in that secret place. Further, Augustine says, we can remember the past and predict the future, and “to see that which has no existence is impossible “.
Conflicting Causalities: The Jesuits, their Opponents, and Descartes on the Causality of the Efficient Cause
Authors: Hattab Helen
Published: November 2023

What is causality? This was a stock question for Scholastic Aristotelians of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as it is posed, again and again, in well-known commentaries on Aristotle’sPhysics, and in commonly used textbooks of Scholastic philosophy. It forms part of a standard set of questions philosophers at the time raised with respect to Aristotle’s discussion of the efficient cause. To be precise, the question concerns the exact nature of the causality of the efficient cause and usu-ally appears right after treatments of Aristotle’s definition of the efficient cause, and the various kinds of efficient causes.
Aristotle’S Definition of Nature
Authors: Kelsey Sean
Published: November 2023

Aristotle’s definition of nature suggests that the special mark of natural things (by contrast with artefacts) is that they have an internal principle of movement. In this paper I ask what this doctrine really amounts to: what does Aristotle think is the difference between natural things and artefacts? This is not usually felt to be very difficult: ‘The difference is that natural things have an internal principle of movement.’ But the question is really about this idea of an internal principle: about what Aristotle is saying about natural things when he says that their movements have a principle, and that this principle is internal to them.