All affordance are social: foundations of a Gibsonian social ontology

Ecological psychology is built on a perception-oriented ontology. The primary focus has been on explaining the perception and action behavior of individual animals. To accommodate social phenomena within the ecological approach, it is necessary to expand the ontology, however theorists have been unclear about how to do this. The paper presents a negative argument and a positive programmatic outline. The negative argument is against the use of the term ‘social affordance’, a term that confuses the perspective of the researcher with that of the animal. Instead, it is advocated that we adopt, as a working hypothesis, the claim that all affordances are social; that is, all affordances are public and are, in principle, observable by a third party. The programmatic outline then shows that affordances alone are insufficient for describing social meaning. An ecological social ontology requires new tools for describing interaction processes, symbolic meaning, and material culture as structures occurring within the populated environment.

Medical Ethics: Common or Uncommon Morality?

This paper challenges the long-standing and widely accepted view that medical ethics is nothing more than common morality applied to clinical matters. It argues against Tom Beauchamp and James Childress’s four principles; Bernard Gert, K. Danner Clouser and Charles Culver’s ten rules; and Albert Jonsen, Mark Siegler, and William Winslade’s four topics approaches to medical ethics. First, a negative argument shows that common morality does not provide an account of medical ethics and then a positive argument demonstrates why the medical profession requires its own distinctive ethics. The paper also provides a way to distinguish roles and professions and an account of the distinctive duties of medical ethics. It concludes by emphasizing ways in which the uncommon morality approach to medical ethics is markedly different from the common morality approach.

Kenelm Digby on Quantity as Divisibility

Kenelm Digby’s Two Treatises, of the Nature of Bodies and of the Nature of Mans Soule (1644) defends quite an idiosyncratic approach to mind-body dualism. In his use of the divisibility argument to prove that the human soul cannot be a material substance, Digby takes an uncompromising stand for merely potential material parts. In his Treatise of Bodies the present article focuses on the mode of construction of the definition of quantity as divisibility and on its links to two distinct fundamental arguments against the actual material parts doctrine. The first, positive, argument consists of a semantic reason drawn from Digby’s general doctrine of meaning, whereas the second, negative, argument, addresses the traditional question of the composition of the continuum. The latter, the author contends, does not build on the medieval controversy itself, but on Digby’s opposition to Galileo’s claim of indivisibilism in his Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences (1638).

Hume’s Negative Argument on Induction

This chapter compares Hume’s negative arguments on induction in Section 1.3.6 of the Treatise of Human Nature and Section 4 of the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. It finds that the argument in the Enquiry is intended to establish a primarily sceptical result, while the argument in the Treatise is intended to establish a primarily psychological result. For one, the surrounding context in the Treatise suggests a more descriptive nature to the argument of THN 1.3.6, while the surrounding context in the Enquiry suggests a more normative nature to the argument of EHU 4. Moreover, the structure of the arguments themselves in these two sections offer further evidence for this difference.

Can a wise society be free?

Recently, Margaret Gilbert has argued that it appears that the wisdom of a society impinges, greatly, on its freedom. In this article, I show that Gilbert’s “negative argument” fails to be convincing. On the other hand, there are important lessons, particularly for democratic theory, that can be by looking carefully, and critically, at her argument. This article will proceed as follows. First, I present Gilbert’s argument. Next, I criticize her understanding of freedom, and then, using arguments from Christopher McMahon, criticize her understanding of a wise society. Finally, I discuss how what has been said can inform how one should think about democratic theory.

Integrals of polylogarithmic functions with negative argument

The connection between polylogarithmic functions and Euler sums is well known. In this paper we explore the representation and many connections between integrals of products of polylogarithmic functions and Euler sums. We shall consider mainly, polylogarithmic functions with negative arguments, thereby producing new results and extending the work of Freitas. Many examples of integrals of products of polylogarithmic functions in terms of Riemann zeta values and Dirichlet values will be given.

Medial adjunct PPs in English: Implications for the syntax of sentential negation

This paper provides evidence that medial adjunct PPs in English are possible. On the basis of corpus data, it is shown that sentence-medial adjunct PPs are not unacceptable and are attested. Our corpus data also reveal a sharp asymmetry between negative and non-negative adjunct PPs. The analysis of the corpus revealed the following pattern: Non-negative adjunct PPs such as at that time resist medial position and instead tend to be postverbal; negative adjunct PPs such as at no time appear medially rather than postverbally. In the second part of the paper, we broaden the empirical domain and include negative complement PPs in the discussion. It is shown that when it comes to the licensing of question tags, English negative complement PPs, which are postverbal, pattern differently from postverbal negative adjunct PPs. That is, sentences with a postverbal negative adjunct PP pattern with negative sentences in taking a positive question tag, while sentences containing a postverbal negative argument PP pattern with affirmative sentences in taking a negative tag. To account for the observed adjunct–argument asymmetry in the licensing of question tags, we propose that clauses are typed for polarity and we explore the hypothesis that a polarity head in the left periphery of the clause is crucially involved in the licensing of sentential negation.

The Engravings of Gouy: France’s Northernmost Decorated Cave

For almost half a century the cave of Gouy, discovered in 1956, was the northernmost Palaeolithic decorated cave known in western Europe. Because of its originality and its geographical location, it overturned our knowledge, as has, today, in its turn, the magnificent discovery of the first British parietal Palaeolithic art which has at last been revealed in Church Hole, at Creswell Crags, in Nottinghamshire (Bahn et al. 2003). This revelation extends the distribution of Palaeolithic parietal art further to the north and the west. Following this major event, the possibilities of similar explorations have been reinforced. Even more than before, other discoveries can today be foreseen, not only in the neighbouring regions but very probably also some day soon in Belgium and Germany. Before the authenticity of its decoration was accepted unanimously, Gouy, like Church Hole, was not exempt from scepticism. This attitude inevitably accompanies discoveries which call into question our knowledge in all fields of research. However, doubt is necessary and, in some ways, it is obviously very useful. In particular, it incites one to gather together all the elements that support the accuracy of any new thing. Where Gouy is concerned, there were two principal objections which counted against it and perplexed researchers. The most frequently used negative argument from the very start was its geographical location. From 1946 to 1956 the Grotte du Cheval, at Arcysur- Cure in Bourgogne (Bailloud 1946), was the northernmost decorated cave. Even this cave appeared very eccentric at this latitude. Consequently, far away from the great regions of parietal art, Gouy could not be attributed to the Upper Palaeolithic. Moreover, the (recognized) open-air occupations of the Upper Palaeolithic and Final Upper Palaeolithic were thought to be virtually non-existent (in the regions close to Gouy). This view already ignored the proximity of the rockshelters of Métreville, near Saint-Pierre d’Autils, where there had been a ‘Magdalenian’ industry associated with mammoth bones (Poulain 1904, 1905). In reply to this opinion, which was still widespread in recent times, Gerhard Bosinski proclaimed in public, ‘it is . . . (the Final Upper Palaeolithic), look for it . . . in your region . . .