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John Rogers’ contribution to the study of early-modern philosophy has taken two forms, scholarly and practical. Much of his scholarly work has been focused on or around the thought of John Locke, and his many organizational achievements include the central role in founding and editing a journal that stands with the best in the world. It may therefore be deemed appropriate both that the present piece should be about Locke, and that it has been stimulated by my rereading of two good articles, published in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy a few years ago,1 the author of which, Jonathan Walmsley, in both cases records his gratitude to John for editorial help received. I should start by explaining that Walmsley and I are agreed on the important point that, for Locke, an “idea,” as “whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding when a Man thinks,” is an “image” in that it is an object of sense or imagination, and never a purely intellectual concept or idea such as was postulated by Platonists, Aristotelians and Cartesians. “Sense” here includes “internal sense” or reflection, and the operations of (external) sense and reflection together constitute “experience.”2 This was a fairly radical move away from the traditional assignment of reflexive awareness of the mind and its operations to pure intellect. Those who purport to find evidence that Locke’s ideas are at least sometimes more like intellectual conceptions (or like “concepts” in a Kantian or even present-day understanding of what a concept is) generally rely on two main arguments. One appeals to ideas of reflection, which is simply to ignore or misconstrue what Locke says about reflection.3 The other appeals to a certain kind of reading of his account of abstraction, which is the topic of the present paper, although that reading will be alluded to only incidentally.

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Journal Article Ordinary Objects, Ordinary Language, and Identity Get access Michael Ayers Michael Ayers Wadham College, University of Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar The Monist, Volume 88, Issue 4, 1 October 2005, Pages 534–570, https://doi.org/10.5840/monist200588427 Published: 25 November 2014

Richard Popkin’s The History of Scepticism , first published in 1960, is a classic, ground-breaking work on the history of philosophical and religious ideas. Popkin’s contribution to the historiography of early modern thought has been very great indeed, both through this twice expanded book and through an extraordinary number of writings on associated topics. In the course of his career he has explored, expounded and ordered a vast amount of material relating to the lives and writings of major and minor thinkers, cutting paths through what was often a wilderness, and encouraging others to go with him. Since the first edition, The History of Scepticism: From Erasmus to Descartes , and the second, From Erasmus to Spinoza (1979), his judgements have not gone unquestioned, but his vision and industry have surely permanently influenced assessment of the role and significance of sceptical theory in early modern philosophy and religion. The present and (assuming that its author’s rueful supposition is correct) final edition, The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle , contains responses to some of the objections. Its reviewer is faced with the daunting task of critically evaluating a classic now based on half a century’s research and debate. Certainly its subject-matter extends far outside my own first-hand acquaintance. It is a consoling thought that few, if any reviews of this work are likely to be other than partial and selective.

all will make inferences; one aspect of leadership concentrates on minimizing our tendency to drift apart in how we assign meaning. am saying society is based on shared meanings, which constitute the culture. If we don't share coherent meaning, we do not make much of a society. ... I find that something like [dialogue] is necessary for society to function properly and for society to survive. Otherwise it will all fall apart. This shared meaning is really the cement that holds society together, and you could say that the present society has some very poor quality cement. David Bohm 1) Background I have invested the most recent half-dozen years of my working life engaged in leadership development in a variety of contexts. I've worked as an internal consultant in a Fortune 500 company. I've worked as an adjunct faculty member in a liberal arts university. I've served as the Board Chair for a regional nonprofit. It surprises some to hear that semantics has a role to play in leadership development. The only time most people seem to refer to semantics at all occurs during an exchange such as this: Person A, plaintively: I think you've glossed over a key point -- that's not about leadership, that's management! Person B, dismissively: Oh, you're just arguing semantics! Well, yes, what we mean by the words we use does concern semantics. Furthermore, effective leadership requires a rich understanding of the role semantics plays in everyday communications. Effective leadership requires the creation of shared meanings because, as Bohm points Out in the above quote, these shared meanings constitute our collective culture. The overall framework my colleagues and I created for leadership development used the graduate seminar as the basic model. We would work with adults experienced in the worlds of working and learning. We focused on their learning instead of our teaching. Each group met for a block of time (four-to-five hours) once each week for about twelve weeks. We would deliberately revisit the topic of communications and the particular importance of effective communications. In one particular session, we would bring semantics to the very center of focus. In that session (typically about the fourth) we would turn to two tools, suggesting that the learners consider the connections between them. Note that although I prefer to include the following exercise within the larger context of our multi-session exploration (Discovering Leadership), I have also used it as a standalone exercise taking perhaps 50-60 minutes of elapsed time. I have used it with business people with varying backgrounds (ranging from information technology professionals in staff organizations to research-and-development specialists in line organizations) and varying positions in the hierarchy (from the directors to rank-and-file scientists and engineers). I've also used it with educators (teachers and principals/administrators). The groups have ranged in size from as few as eight to as many as twenty. The settings have included my appearance as onetime guest speaker at a routine monthly staff meeting and serving as light entertainment over boxed lunches at a divisional sales meeting. In this paper, I will describe an exercise which highlights two separately valuable tools -- The Uncritical Inference Test and the Ladder of Inference. The exercise integrates them into a critical leadership concept: the central role of clear communications. Then I will add a third tool to enrich the utility of the first two -- Thinking Outside the Box. 2) The Uncritical Inference Test According to the copyright information on The Uncritical Inference Test, we cannot call it a new invention. William V. Haney created it in 1955. I start this exercise with this tool because of its non-intimidating appearance. …

The transition from sol to gel is a process that is critical to the properties of engineered nanomaterials, but one with few available techniques for observing the dynamic processes occurring during the evolution of the gel network. Specifically, the observation of various cluster aggregation models, such as diffusion-limited and reaction-limited cluster growth can be quite difficult. This can be rather important as the actual aggregation model can dramatically influence the mechanical properties of gels, and is significantly affected by the presence of convective flows, or their absence in microgravity. We have developed two new non-intrusive optical methods for observing the aggregation processes within gels in real time. These make use of the dynamic behavior of laser speckle patterns produced when an intense laser source is passed through a gelling sol. The first method is a simplified time-correlation measurement, where the speckle pattern is observed using a CCD camera and information on the movement of the scattering objects is readily apparent. This approach is extremely sensitive to minute variations in the flow field as the observed speckle pattern is a diffraction-based image, and is therefore sensitive to motions within the sol on the order of the wavelength of the probing light. Additionally, this method has proven useful in determining a precise time for the gel-point, an event often difficult to measure. Monitoring the evolution of contrast within the speckle field is another method that has proven useful for studying aeration. In this case, speckle contrast is dependent upon the size (correlation length) and number of scattering centers, increasing with increasing size, and decreasing with increasing numbers. The dynamic behavior of cluster growth in gels causes both of these to change simultaneously with time, the exact rate of which is determined by the specific aggregation model involved. Actual growth processes can now be observed, and the effects of varying gravity fields on the growth processes qualitatively described. Results on preliminary ground-based measurements have been obtained.