The Community of Solitude

This paper re-examines the egos of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler with reference to Friedrich Nietzsche and the psychologist, James Hillman, and in the process also confronts the ego in other of its many manifestations, misappropriations, and mystifications. The ego is a multi-headed enigma which defies phenomenological description, and only reaches the status of concept by virtue of the gropings of an epistemology which is not up to the task. The goal of this paper is twofold: firstly, to come to terms with what is commonly spoken of as ego, and secondly, to devise a scheme which does justice to it as phenomenon

Science and its demarcation in the light of the history of ideas : a short outline with apparent and real implications for 'appearance and reality'

The idea of 'science' (scientia, science, Wissenschaft) changed dramatically in the course of history: While it was understood as an epistemologically privileged endeavor from antiquity to the 19th century, the status of science and its demarcation from other intellectual activities became more and more problematic in the course of the 20th century. This outline sums up findings from 'Begriffsgeschichte' of the last 50 years and argues that history of ideas in this sense can contribute to a topical and balanced understanding of science that avoids dull scientism and a postmodernist view, which both result from a lack of determination and demarcation of science

Tolerance in science from a philosophical perspective : an essay on its forms and its necessity in modern times

This paper is about the meaning of tolerance in science from a philosophical perspective (e.g. that of Carnap, Quine, and Davidson) as related to virtues and the context of changing languages and paradigms of science. The notion of "science" is used in the English sense of the term; that is as denoting the natural sciences and mathematics, but not the humanities and the social sciences. The common roots of tolerance in the Modern philosophy of science is found in the Enlightenment, particularly the work of Voltaire, whom both Quine and Popper refer to as an authority on the issue

Hermann von Helmholtz, Philosophische und populärwissenschaftliche Schriften. 3 Bände.

Aus dem vielfältigen Werk von Hermann von Helmholtz versammelt diese Ausgabe die im engeren Sinne philosophischen Abhandlungen, vor allem zur Wissenschaftsphilosophie und Erkenntnistheorie, sowie Vorträge und Reden, bei denen der Autor seine Ausnahmestellung im Wissenschaftsbetrieb nutzte, um die Wissenschaften und ihre Institutionen in der bestehenden Form zu repräsentieren und zu begründen. Ein Philosoph wollte Helmholtz nicht sein, aber er legte der philosophischen Reflexion wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis und wissenschaftlichen Handelns große Bedeutung bei. Vor allem bezog er, in der Regel ausgehend von seinen fachwissenschaftlichen Forschungen, in den verschiedensten Kontexten zu erkenntnistheoretischen und methodologischen Problemen der Wissenschaften Stellung. Bereits »Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft« (1847) lässt erkennen, wie verwoben naturwissenschaftliche Grundlagenforschung und philosophische Grundlagenreflexion in seinem Werk sind. Die aus den frühen sinnesphysiologischen Forschungen hervorgegangene empiristische Wahrnehmungslehre trug ihm den Ruf ein, ein maßgeblicher Vertreter des Neukantianismus zu sein. Spätere Arbeiten v.a. zur Geometrie und Arithmetik – das zeigt die vorliegende Ausgabe – stellen jedoch eine radikale Absage an den konstitutiven Kern des Kantianismus (nämlich die Existenz synthetischer Urteile a priori) dar. Helmholtz’ philosophische Beiträge sind bisher in ihrer Vollständigkeit nicht annähernd so gut zugänglich wie sein naturwissenschaftliches Werk. Die Ausgabe enthält außerdem bibliographische Vorberichte zur Einordnung, detaillierte Namens- und Sachregister sowie mit 575 Einträgen für den Zeitraum zwischen 1842 und 2012 die erste umfassende Bibliographie von Helmholtz verfasster Werke überhaupt. »Ich glaube, dass der Philosophie nur wieder aufzuhelfen ist, wenn sie sich mit Ernst und Eifer der Untersuchung der Erkenntnissprocesse und der wissenschaftlichen Methode zuwendet. Da hat sie eine wirkliche und berechtigte Aufgabe.« Helmholtz in einem Brief um 187

The Semantics of Multicopy Atomic ARMv8 and RISC-V

Previous work has established precise operational concurrency models for Power and ARMv8, in an abstract micro-architectural style based on detailed discussion with IBM and ARM staff and extensive hardware testing. To account for the precise architectural behaviour these models are complex. This thesis aims to provide a better understanding for the relaxed memory concurrency models of the architectures ARMv8, RISC-V, and (to a lesser degree) Power. Power and early versions of ARMv8 have non-multicopy-atomic (non-MCA) concurrency models. This thesis provides abstraction results for these, including a more abstract non-MCA ARMv8 storage subsystem model, and characterisations of the behaviour of mixed-size Power and non-MCA ARMv8 programs when using barriers or release/acquire instructions for all memory accesses, with respect to notions of Sequential Consistency for mixed-size programs. During the course of this PhD project, and partly due to our extended collaboration with ARM, ARM have shifted to a much simplified multicopy-atomic concurrency architecture that also includes a formal axiomatic concurrency model. We develop a correspondingly simplified operational model based on the previous non-MCA models, and, as the main result of this thesis, prove equivalence between the simplified operational and the reference axiomatic model. We have also been actively involved in the RISC-V Memory Model Task Group. RISC-V has adopted a multicopy atomic model closely following that of ARMv8, but which incorporates some changes motivated by issues raised in our operational modelling of ARMv8. We develop an adapted RISC-V operational concurrency model that is now part of the official architecture documentation. Finally, in order to give a simpler explanation of the MCA ARMv8 and RISC-V concurrency models for programmers, we develop an equivalent operational concurrency model in a different style. The \promisingarmriscv model, based on the C11 Promising model, gives up the micro-architectural intuition the other operational models offer in favour of providing a more abstract model. We prove it equivalent to the MCA ARMv8 and RISC-V axiomatic models in Coq.This work was funded by a Computer Laboratory and Qualcomm Premium Studentship, an EPSRC and Arm Ltd. Industrial CASE Studentship (grant no. EP/L505389/1), and the EPSRC Programme Grant “REMS: Rigorous Engineering for Mainstream Systems” (grant no. EP/K008528/1)

Memantine and Cholinesterase Inhibitors: Complementary Mechanisms in the Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease

This review describes the preclinical mechanisms that may underlie the increased therapeutic benefit of combination therapy—with the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor antagonist, memantine, and an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (AChEI)—for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Memantine, and the AChEIs target two different aspects of AD pathology. Both drug types have shown significant efficacy as monotherapies for the treatment of AD. Furthermore, clinical observations indicate that their complementary mechanisms offer superior benefit as combination therapy. Based on the available literature, the authors have considered the preclinical mechanisms that could underlie such a combined approach. Memantine addresses dysfunction in glutamatergic transmission, while the AChEIs serve to increase pathologically lowered levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. In addition, preclinical studies have shown that memantine has neuroprotective effects, acting to prevent glutamatergic over-stimulation and the resulting neurotoxicity. Interrelations between the glutamatergic and cholinergic pathways in regions of the brain that control learning and memory mean that combination treatment has the potential for a complex influence on disease pathology. Moreover, studies in animal models have shown that the combined use of memantine and the AChEIs can produce greater improvements in measures of memory than either treatment alone. As an effective approach in the clinical setting, combination therapy with memantine and an AChEI has been a welcome advance for the treatment of patients with AD. Preclinical data have shown how these drugs act via two different, but interconnected, pathological pathways, and that their complementary activity may produce greater effects than either drug individually

Simplifying ARM concurrency: Multicopy-atomic axiomatic and operational models for ARMv8

ARM has a relaxed memory model, previously specified in informal prose for ARMv7 and ARMv8. Over time, and partly due to work building formal semantics for ARM concurrency, it has become clear that some of the complexity of the model is not justified by the potential benefits. In particular, the model was originally non-multicopy-atomic : writes could become visible to some other threads before becoming visible to all — but this has not been exploited in production implementations, the corresponding potential hardware optimisations are thought to have insufficient benefits in the ARM context, and it gives rise to subtle complications when combined with other ARMv8 features. The ARMv8 architecture has therefore been revised: it now has a multicopy-atomic model. It has also been simplified in other respects, including more straightforward notions of dependency, and the architecture now includes a formal concurrency model. In this paper we detail these changes and discuss their motivation. We define two formal concurrency models: an operational one, simplifying the Flowing model of Flur et al., and the axiomatic model of the revised ARMv8 specification. The models were developed by an academic group and by ARM staff, respectively, and this extended collaboration partly motivated the above changes. We prove the equivalence of the two models. The operational model is integrated into an executable exploration tool with new web interface, demonstrated by exhaustively checking the possible behaviours of a loop-unrolled version of a Linux kernel lock implementation, a previously known bug due to unprevented speculation, and a fixed version.</jats:p

Memantine in patients with Alzheimer's disease receiving donepezil: new analyses of efficacy and safety for combination therapy

Introduction: Memantine and cholinesterase inhibitors potentially offer additional benefits in Alzheimer's disease (AD) when used together. This study assessed the efficacy and safety of combination treatment with memantine added to stable donepezil in patients with moderate to severe AD, and in a subset with moderate AD. Methods: Post hoc meta-analyses of data combined from two 24-week, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of memantine 20 mg/day versus placebo, added to a stable cholinesterase inhibitor, were conducted. Data were included for all patients receiving donepezil 10 mg/day with Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores < 20 (n = 510). Efficacy was assessed using measures of cognition, function, and global status. Furthermore, marked clinical worsening, defined as concurrent deterioration from baseline in the three main efficacy domains, and safety, measured by treatment-emergent adverse events, were assessed. Analyses were performed for patients with moderate to severe AD (MMSE 5-19; MOD-SEV subgroup), and also for patients with moderate AD (MMSE 10-19; MOD subgroup; n = 367). Results: At week 24, in the MOD-SEV subgroup, patients receiving memantine added to donepezil significantly outperformed those receiving placebo added to donepezil in measures of cognition (P < 0.0001), function (P = 0.02), and global status (P = 0.010), with standardised mean differences (SMDs) of 0.36, 0.21, and 0.23, respectively (all last observation carried forward). Similarly, in the MOD subgroup, significant benefits were observed for cognition (P = 0.008), function (P = 0.04) and global status (P = 0.008), with SMDs of 0.28, 0.21, and 0.28, respectively. Significantly fewer patients receiving memantine added to donepezil showed marked clinical worsening than those receiving placebo added to donepezil, in both subgroups (MOD-SEV: 8.7% versus 20.4%, P = 0.0002; MOD: 5.9% versus 15.0%, P = 0.006). The incidence of adverse events was similar between treatment groups. Conclusions: These results support and extend previous evidence that combination treatment with memantine added to stable donepezil in patients with moderate AD, and in those with moderate to severe AD, is associated with significant benefits in reducing 24-week decline in cognition, function and global status. Combination treatment produces substantially reduced rates of marked clinical worsening, has good safety and tolerability, and generates effect sizes that are both statistically significant and clinically meaningful