Showing papers on "Identity (philosophy) published in 1994"

“Our Ancestors the Gauls”: Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe

Abstract: De l'erection de la statue de Vercingetorix a Alesia au discours de F. Mitterand au Mont Beuvray, les rappels ideologiques a l'histoire gauloise ne manquent pas. Tous les pays europeens se servent de l'histoire celtique pour rallier les consciences populaires contre l'envahisseur romain. L'A. montre que ce discours est toujours d'actualite dans l'identite de l'Europe moderne qui se construit

Holes and Other Superficialities

Abstract: This investigation on the borderlines of metaphysics, everyday geometry and the theory of perception seeks to answer two basic questions: Do holes really exist? If they do, what are they? Holes are among entities that down-to-earth philosophers would like to expel from their ontological inventory. Casati and Varzi argues in favour of holes' existence, examining their ontology of holes, their geometry, their part-whole relations, their identity, their causal role and the ways we perceive them.

The philosophy of childhood

Abstract: So many questions, such an imagination, endless speculation: the child seems to be a natural philosopher - until the ripe old age of eight or nine, when the spirit of inquiry mysteriously fades. What happened? Was it something we did - or didn't do? Was the child truly the philosophical being he once seemed? Gareth Matthews takes up these concerns in "The Philosophy of Childhood", an account of children's philosophical potential and of childhood as an area of philosophical inquiry. Seeking a philosophy that represents the range and depth of children's inquisitive minds, Matthews explores both how children think and how we, as adults, think about them. Adult preconceptions about the mental life of children tend to discourage a child's philosophical bent, Matthews suggests, and he probes the sources of these limiting assumptions: restrictive notions of maturation and conceptual development; possible lapses in episodic memory; and the experience of identity and growth as "successive selves", which separate us from our own childhoods. By exposing the underpinnings of our adult views of childhood, Matthews, a philosopher and long time advocate of children's rights, clears the way for recognizing the philosophy of childhood as a legitimate field of inquiry. He then conducts us through various influential models for understanding what it is to be a child, from the theory that individual development recapitulates the development of the human species to accounts of moral and cognitive development, including Piaget's revolutionary model. The metaphysics of playdough, the authenticity of children's art, the effects of divorce and intimations of mortality on a child - all have a place in Matthews's discussion of the philosophical nature of childhood. His book should prompt us to reconsider the distinctions we make about development and the competencies of mind, and what we lose by denying childhood its full philosophical breadth.

From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry: Dynamics of Matter and Dynamics of Disciplines, 1800-1950

Abstract: How did chemistry and physics acquire their separate identities, and are they on their way to losing them again? Mary Jo Nye has written a graceful account of the historical demarcation of chemistry from physics and subsequent reconvergences of the two, from Lavoisier and Dalton in the late eighteenth century to Robinson, Ingold, and Pauling in the mid-twentieth century Using the notion of a disciplinary "identity" analogous to ethnic or national identity, Nye develops a theory of the nature of disciplinary structure and change She discusses the distinctive character of chemical language and theories and the role of national styles and traditions in building a scientific discipline Anyone interested in the history of scientific thought will enjoy pondering with her the question of whether chemists of the mid-twentieth century suspected chemical explanation had been reduced to physical laws, just as Newtonian mechanical philosophers had envisioned in the eighteenth century

The groupoid model refutes uniqueness of identity proofs

Abstract: We give a model of intensional Martin-Lof type theory based on groupoids and fibrations of groupoids in which identity types may contain two distinct elements which are not even prepositionally equal. This shows that the principle of uniqueness of identity proofs is not derivable in the syntax. >

Piaget before Piaget

Abstract: Introduction - biography and autobiography Neuchatel, an orderly little town mollusk taxonomy natural history the friends of nature Piaget discovers Bergson natural history and creative evolution at the threshold of biology the protestant context the problem of religion from catechism to philosophy the mission of the idea the making of a new identity recherche the theory of equilibrium - from personal crisis to universal salvation.

Dion and theon: An essentialist solution to an ancient puzzle

Abstract: L'A. analyse les solutions de l'enigme de Dion et Theon creee par le philosophe stoique Chrysippus (c.280 B.C. - c.206 B.C.) et propose sa propre solution essentialiste

Vague Identity and Quantum Indeterminacy

Abstract: [4] David Lewis, 'Meaning Without Use: A Reply to Hawthorne,' Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (1992) 106-10. [5] Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982). [6] John O'Leary-Hawthorne, 'A Note on "Languages and Language"', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68 (1990) 116-18. [7] John O'Leary-Hawthorne, 'Meaning and Evidence: A Reply to Lewis', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 71 (1993) 206-11. [8] Stephen Stich, The Fragmentation of Reason (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990).

Identity, authority, and freedom : the potentate and the traveler

Abstract: Quel est desormais le role de l'universite dans la comprehension des interactions entre l'Etat, la politique, l'economie globale, la connaissance ? La liberte intellectuelle est un probleme different dans chaque societe, qui doit etre au centre des preoccupations des universitaires, car la veritable question refere, non pas a la mise en doute du serieux des universites dans les societes modernes, mais plutot a la realite perceptive de chaque universite, et donc methode de pensee propre a une communaute

A virial identity applied to relativistic stellar models

Abstract: A two-dimensional integral identity is derived for a general asymptotically flat four-dimensional spacetime, providing a generalization of the `virial' identity obtained by Bonazzola for the stationary axisymmetric case. It is applied to show that some spatial component of the stress--energy tensor must be positive in some (if not all) points of a static stellar model. This identity has also proved to be useful for checking numerical solutions of Einstein's equation describing rotating neutron stars.

Minimal representations of E6, E7, and E8 and the generalized Capelli identity

Abstract: We explicitly construct, in a uniform fashion, the (unique) minimal and spherical representation pi0 of the split real Lie group of exceptional type E6, E7, or E8. We obtain several algebraic and analytic results about pi0.

Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle's Metaphysics

Abstract: Introduction 1. THE IDENTITY OF COMPOSITE SUBSTANCE 1. A Puzzle Concerning Matter and Form 2. Aristotle on Identity 3. Individuals and Individuation in Aristotle 2. THE UNITY OF COMPOSITE SUBSTANCE 4. Matter and Form: Unity, Persistence, and Identity 5. Substantial Holism 6. Parts, Compounds, and Substantial Unity 3. THE POTENTIAL AND THE ACTUAL 7. Aristotle's Notion of Potentiality in Metaphysics Theta 8. The Activity of Being in Aristotle's Metaphysics 9. The Priority of Actuality in Aristotle 10. Essences, Powers, and Generic Propositions 4. MATTER AND FORM 11. Aristotle on the Relation between a Thing and its Matter 12. The Essence of a Human Being and the Individual Soul in Metaphysics Z and H 13. The Definition of Generated Composites in Aristotle's Metaphysics 5. PRINCIPLES OF ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS 14. Aristotle's Conception of Metaphysics as a Science Bibliography, Index Locorum, General Index

A new theory of content I: Basic content

Abstract: Philosophers of science as divergent as the inductivist Carnap and the deductivist Popper share the notion that the (logical) content of a proposition is given by its consequence class. I claim that this notion of content is (a) unintuitive and (b) inappropriate for many of the formal needs of philosophers of science. The basic problem is that given this notion of content, for any arbitraryp andq, ⌈(p Vq)⌉ will count as part of the content of bothp andq. In other words, any arbitraryp andq share some common content. This notion of content has disastrous effects on, for instance, Carnap's attempts to explicate the notion of confirmation in terms of probabilistic favorable relevance, and Popper's attempts to define verisimilitude. After briefly reviewing some of the problems of the traditional notion of content I present an alternative notion of (basic) content which (a) better fits our intuitions about content and (b) better serves the formal needs of philosophers of science.

An introduction to New Testament Christology

Abstract: The leading U.S. Catholic scholar on the Bible explores the identity of Jesus in the New Testament.

Preliminary geologic map emphasizing bedrock formations in Contra Costa County, California; a digital database

Abstract: This digital map database, which is compiled from previously published and unpublished sources combined with new mapping, represents the general distribution and identity of bedrock in Contra Costa County, California.

The Kurdish tragedy

Abstract: * Preface * 1. The Kurdish Identity * 2. The Kurds of Turkey * 3. The Kurds of Iraq * 4. The Kurds of Iran * 5. The Kurds in Syria * 6. Conclusion * 7. Appendices * Chronology * Bibliography * Afterword

Canada - An American Nation?: Essays on Continentalism, Identity, and the Canadian Frame of Mind

Abstract: Are Canadians so influenced by the United States that they lack a distinct identity? This question has preoccupied Canadians and Canadianists for years. Canada - An American Nation? is a compilation of Allan Smith's essays on the influence of American society on Canadian identity. Based on the notion that Canada can best be understood if viewed in relation to the United States, the book explores the ways in which American influences have challenged Canada's cultural independence and asks whether Canada has maintained its own identity.

Whose will is it, anyway? A discussion of advance directives, personal identity, and consensus in medical ethics.

Abstract: I consider objections to the use of living wills based upon the discontinuity of personal identity between the time of the execution of the directive anbd the time the person becomes incompetent. Recent authors, following Derek Parfit's “Complex View” of personal identity, have argued that there is often not sufficient identity interests between the competent person who executes the living will and the incompetent patient to warrant the use of the advance directive. I argue that such critics err by seeking personal identity in a purely descriptive manner. By exploring Buchanan and Brock's concept of “surviving interests”, an argument is developed that certain future-oriented acts have a normative force that contributes to the narrative unity which is constitutive of personal ideality. This narrative concept of the self is entailed by many of the our ordinary practices and challenges the philosophical consensus to view the self in a more dynamic and communitarian manner.

The Jews of Moscow, Kiev, and Minsk: Identity, Antisemitism, Emigration

Abstract: List of Tables and Figures - Preface - The Scope of the Study - The Jews in Soviet and Post-Soviet Society - Identity - Antisemitism - Emigration - Between East and West - Appendix A Methodological Notes - Appendix B The Questionnaire - Sources Cited - Index of Names

Schreier varieties of algebras

Abstract: Some necessary and sufficient conditions for a variety of algebras to possess the Schreier property are given It is proved that the variety of algebras defined by the identity xx2 = 0is a Schreier variety

Strict Fregean free logic

Abstract: L'A. soutient la position stricte de Frege quant a la necessite d'avoir une reference pour un terme singulier, et montre que la semantique supervaluative n'est pas la meilleure solution pour eviter les problemes poses par les predicats non-existentiels

Requiem for the identity theory

Abstract: This paper examines the impact that recent advances in clinical neurology, introspectionist psychology and neuroscience have upon the philosophical psycho‐neural Identity Theory. Topics covered include (i) the nature and properties of phenomenal consciousness based on a study of the ‘basic’ visual field, i.e. that obtained in the complete dark, the Ganzfeld, and during recovery from occipital lobe injuries; (ii) the nature of the ‘body‐image’ of neurology and its relation to the physical body; (iii) Descartes’ error in choosing extension in space as the criterion for distinguishing the physical and the mental; (iv) the technical distinction between sensing and perceiving; (v) why phenomenal Direct Realism is incorrect whereas epistemic DR and the representative theory are correct; (vi) the ontological and topological status of phenomenal space and physical space. This leads to considerations of the current ‘binding problems’ in neuroscience; the role of the brain mechanisms that construct the sensory fiel...

Proof-theoretical Semantics and Fregean Identity-criteria for Propositions

Abstract: In his Grundgesetze, §32, Frege launched the idea that the meaning of a sentence is given by its truth condition, or, in his particular version, the condition under which it will be a name of the True. This, indeed, was only one of the many roles in which truth has to serve within the Fregean system. In particular, truth is an absolute notion in the sense that bivalence holds: every Gedanke (proposition) is either true or false, in complete independence of any conative activity, whether by God or man. Thus various epistemological notions, such as the correctness of an assertion made, or judgement passed, are reducible to this absolute notion of truth: an assertion (judgement) made (public) through the utterance of a declarative sentence is correct when the proposition expressed by the sentence in question is true. Given this absolute status of truth it is not surprising that Frege is of the opinion that truth is a sui generis notion which has to be left unanalyzed and, indeed, which is indefinable. It was left to others, in particular Brentano, Russell, and above all, the author of the Tractatus, to provide the desired analysis of truth along the pattern of the truth-maker scheme: