Austin on Perception, Knowledge and Meaning

Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia (1962) generates wildly different reactions among philosophers. Interpreting Austin on perception starts with a reading of this text, and this in turn requires reading into the lectures key ideas from Austin’s work on natural language and the theory of knowledge. The lectures paint a methodological agenda, and a sketch of some first-order philosophy, done the way Austin thinks it should be done. Crucially, Austin calls for philosophers to bring a deeper understanding of natural language meaning to bear as they do their tasks. In consequence Austin’s lectures provide a fascinating start—but only a start—on a number of key questions in the philosophy of perception

Teleology, Causation and the Atlas Motif in Plato's Phaedo

In this paper, I propose a new reading of Phaedo 99b6-d2. My main thesis is that in 99c6-9, Socrates does not refer to the teleological αἰτία but to the αἰτία that will be provided by a stronger ‘Atlas’ (99c4-5). This means that the passage offers no evidence that Socrates abandons teleology or modifies his views about it. He acknowledges, instead, that he could not find or learn any αἰτία stronger than the teleological one. This, I suggest, allows an interpretation of the Phaedo in which Socrates offers a consistent account of the αἰτία of generation and destruction

6. Athens: Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) was a native of northern Greece, where his father was a physician . At the age of seventeen he went to Athens, where he formed a close association with Plato and the Academy which lasted until the death of Plato twenty years later. He spent the next twelve years teaching and studying in several different places, including the court of King Philip of Macedonia, where for at least three years he was the tutor of the future Alexander the Great . Much has been written about the relationship between Aristotle and his famous pupil, but most of it is speculation. We simply know very little about it . After the battle of Chaeronea and the accession of Alexander to the Macedonian throne, Aristotle returned to Athens (335 B. C.) and founded the Lyceum, a school patterned after the Academy which survived with it until A. D. 529. During the uprising in Athens which followed the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B. C., Aristotle, whose name had been associated with the conqueror and his Macedonian governor of Greece, thought it best to flee the city. He died in the following year. [excerpt

An Evening Spent with Bill van Zwet

Willem Rutger van Zwet was born in Leiden, the Netherlands, on March 31, 1934. He received his high school education at the Gymnasium Haganum in The Hague and obtained his Masters degree in Mathematics at the University of Leiden in 1959. After serving in the army for almost two years, he obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam in 1964, with Jan Hemelrijk as advisor. In 1965, he was appointed Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Leiden and promoted to Full Professor in 1968. He remained in Leiden until his retirement in 1999, while also serving as Associate Professor at the University of Oregon (1965), William Newman Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1990--1996), frequent visitor and Miller Professor (1997) at the University of California at Berkeley, director of the Thomas Stieltjes Institute of Mathematics in the Netherlands (1992--1999), and founding director of the European research institute EURANDOM (1997--2000). At Leiden, he was Dean of the School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (1982--1984). He served as chair of the scientific council and member of the board of the Mathematics Centre at Amsterdam (1983--1996) and the Leiden University Fund (1993--2005).Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-STS261 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org