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Philosophers

Mortimer Adler
Rogers Albritton
Alexander of Aphrodisias
Samuel Alexander
William Alston
Anaximander
G.E.M.Anscombe
Anselm
Louise Antony
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
David Armstrong
Harald Atmanspacher
Robert Audi
Augustine
J.L.Austin
A.J.Ayer
Alexander Bain
Mark Balaguer
Jeffrey Barrett
William Barrett
William Belsham
Henri Bergson
George Berkeley
Isaiah Berlin
Richard J. Bernstein
Bernard Berofsky
Robert Bishop
Max Black
Susanne Bobzien
Emil du Bois-Reymond
Hilary Bok
Laurence BonJour
George Boole
Émile Boutroux
Daniel Boyd
F.H.Bradley
C.D.Broad
Michael Burke
Jeremy Butterfield
Lawrence Cahoone
C.A.Campbell
Joseph Keim Campbell
Rudolf Carnap
Carneades
Nancy Cartwright
Gregg Caruso
Ernst Cassirer
David Chalmers
Roderick Chisholm
Chrysippus
Cicero
Tom Clark
Randolph Clarke
Samuel Clarke
Anthony Collins
Antonella Corradini
Diodorus Cronus
Jonathan Dancy
Donald Davidson
Mario De Caro
Democritus
Daniel Dennett
Jacques Derrida
René Descartes
Richard Double
Fred Dretske
John Earman
Laura Waddell Ekstrom
Epictetus
Epicurus
Austin Farrer
Herbert Feigl
Arthur Fine
John Martin Fischer
Frederic Fitch
Owen Flanagan
Luciano Floridi
Philippa Foot
Alfred Fouilleé
Harry Frankfurt
Richard L. Franklin
Bas van Fraassen
Michael Frede
Gottlob Frege
Peter Geach
Edmund Gettier
Carl Ginet
Alvin Goldman
Gorgias
Nicholas St. John Green
H.Paul Grice
Ian Hacking
Ishtiyaque Haji
Stuart Hampshire
W.F.R.Hardie
Sam Harris
William Hasker
R.M.Hare
Georg W.F. Hegel
Martin Heidegger
Heraclitus
R.E.Hobart
Thomas Hobbes
David Hodgson
Shadsworth Hodgson
Baron d'Holbach
Ted Honderich
Pamela Huby
David Hume
Ferenc Huoranszki
Frank Jackson
William James
Lord Kames
Robert Kane
Immanuel Kant
Tomis Kapitan
Walter Kaufmann
Jaegwon Kim
William King
Hilary Kornblith
Christine Korsgaard
Saul Kripke
Thomas Kuhn
Andrea Lavazza
James Ladyman
Christoph Lehner
Keith Lehrer
Gottfried Leibniz
Jules Lequyer
Leucippus
Michael Levin
Joseph Levine
George Henry Lewes
C.I.Lewis
David Lewis
Peter Lipton
C. Lloyd Morgan
John Locke
Michael Lockwood
Arthur O. Lovejoy
E. Jonathan Lowe
John R. Lucas
Lucretius
Alasdair MacIntyre
Ruth Barcan Marcus
Tim Maudlin
James Martineau
Nicholas Maxwell
Storrs McCall
Hugh McCann
Colin McGinn
Michael McKenna
Brian McLaughlin
John McTaggart
Paul E. Meehl
Uwe Meixner
Alfred Mele
Trenton Merricks
John Stuart Mill
Dickinson Miller
G.E.Moore
Ernest Nagel
Thomas Nagel
Otto Neurath
Friedrich Nietzsche
John Norton
P.H.Nowell-Smith
Robert Nozick
William of Ockham
Timothy O'Connor
Parmenides
David F. Pears
Charles Sanders Peirce
Derk Pereboom
Steven Pinker
U.T.Place
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Porphyry
Huw Price
H.A.Prichard
Protagoras
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Willard van Orman Quine
Frank Ramsey
Ayn Rand
Michael Rea
Thomas Reid
Charles Renouvier
Nicholas Rescher
C.W.Rietdijk
Richard Rorty
Josiah Royce
Bertrand Russell
Paul Russell
Gilbert Ryle
Jean-Paul Sartre
Kenneth Sayre
T.M.Scanlon
Moritz Schlick
John Duns Scotus
Arthur Schopenhauer
John Searle
Wilfrid Sellars
David Shiang
Alan Sidelle
Ted Sider
Henry Sidgwick
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Peter Slezak
J.J.C.Smart
Saul Smilansky
Michael Smith
Baruch Spinoza
L. Susan Stebbing
Isabelle Stengers
George F. Stout
Galen Strawson
Peter Strawson
Eleonore Stump
Francisco Suárez
Richard Taylor
Kevin Timpe
Mark Twain
Peter Unger
Peter van Inwagen
Manuel Vargas
John Venn
Kadri Vihvelin
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G.H. von Wright
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R. Jay Wallace
W.G.Ward
Ted Warfield
Roy Weatherford
C.F. von Weizsäcker
William Whewell
Alfred North Whitehead
David Widerker
David Wiggins
Bernard Williams
Timothy Williamson
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Susan Wolf
Xenophon

Scientists

David Albert
Michael Arbib
Walter Baade
Bernard Baars
Jeffrey Bada
Leslie Ballentine
Marcello Barbieri
Gregory Bateson
Horace Barlow
John S. Bell
Mara Beller
Charles Bennett
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Susan Blackmore
Margaret Boden
David Bohm
Niels Bohr
Ludwig Boltzmann
Emile Borel
Max Born
Satyendra Nath Bose
Walther Bothe
Jean Bricmont
Hans Briegel
Leon Brillouin
Stephen Brush
Henry Thomas Buckle
S. H. Burbury
Melvin Calvin
Donald Campbell
Sadi Carnot
Anthony Cashmore
Eric Chaisson
Gregory Chaitin
Jean-Pierre Changeux
Rudolf Clausius
Arthur Holly Compton
John Conway
Simon Conway-Morris
Jerry Coyne
John Cramer
Francis Crick
E. P. Culverwell
Antonio Damasio
Olivier Darrigol
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Richard Dawkins
Terrence Deacon
Lüder Deecke
Richard Dedekind
Louis de Broglie
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Hans Driesch
John Dupré
John Eccles
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Manfred Eigen
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George F. R. Ellis
Hugh Everett, III
Franz Exner
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R. A. Fisher
David Foster
Joseph Fourier
Philipp Frank
Steven Frautschi
Edward Fredkin
Augustin-Jean Fresnel
Benjamin Gal-Or
Howard Gardner
Lila Gatlin
Michael Gazzaniga
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen
GianCarlo Ghirardi
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James J. Gibson
Nicolas Gisin
Paul Glimcher
Thomas Gold
A. O. Gomes
Brian Goodwin
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Dirk ter Haar
Jacques Hadamard
Mark Hadley
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Augustin Hamon
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Hyman Hartman
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Basil Hiley
Art Hobson
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Ruth E. Kastner
Stuart Kauffman
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William R. Klemm
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Stephen Kosslyn
Daniel Koshland
Ladislav Kovàč
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Alfred Landé
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Joseph LeDoux
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Seth Lloyd
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Donald MacKay
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Warren McCulloch
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Jacques Monod
Vernon Mountcastle
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Hans Primas
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Adolphe Quételet
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Jürgen Renn
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A.A. Roback
Emil Roduner
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David Rumelhart
Robert Sapolsky
Tilman Sauer
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Jürgen Schmidhuber
Erwin Schrödinger
Aaron Schurger
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Thomas Sebeok
Franco Selleri
Claude Shannon
Charles Sherrington
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Herbert Simon
Dean Keith Simonton
Edmund Sinnott
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Lee Smolin
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Tom Stonier
Antoine Suarez
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Richard Tolman
Giulio Tononi
Peter Tse
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C. S. Unnikrishnan
Nico van Kampen
Francisco Varela
Vlatko Vedral
Vladimir Vernadsky
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Heinz von Foerster
Richard von Mises
John von Neumann
Jakob von Uexküll
C. H. Waddington
James D. Watson
John B. Watson
Daniel Wegner
Steven Weinberg
Paul A. Weiss
Herman Weyl
John Wheeler
Jeffrey Wicken
Wilhelm Wien
Norbert Wiener
Eugene Wigner
E. O. Wilson
Günther Witzany
Stephen Wolfram
H. Dieter Zeh
Semir Zeki
Ernst Zermelo
Wojciech Zurek
Konrad Zuse
Fritz Zwicky

Presentations

Biosemiotics
Free Will
Mental Causation
James Symposium
 
Plato

Xenophon was a contemporary of Plato, like him a student of Socrates and like him an author of dialogues, including conversations with the lyric poet Simonides, who we find in Plato's Protagoras.

Xenophon's dialogue Hiero or On Tyrannicus is a founding document in the history of dictatorship, the source for Leo Strauss' 1948 essay On Tyranny, and perhaps a source for the founders of American democracy, in their search for virtue and the pursuit of happiness.

Consider the final part of Xenophon's advice to Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse.

(1) "You must not, Hiero, shrink from spending from your private possessions for the common good. For it seems to me that what a man as tyrant lays out for the city is spent more on what is necessary than what he lays out for his private [estate]. Let us examine each detail point by point.

(2) "First, which do you think would dignify you more, a house embellished at tremendous cost, or the whole city furnished with walls, temples, colonnades, market places, and harbors?

(3) "As for arms, which of the two would appear more formidable to your enemies, yourself fitted out in the most splendid arms, or your entire city well armed?

4) "Take revenues: in which way do you think they would become greater, if you should keep your private property alone productive, or if you should contrive to make the property of all the citizens so?

(5) "And regarding the pursuit believed to be the most noble and magnificent of all, the raising of chariot horses, in which way do you think there would be greater dignity, if you yourself should raise the most teams among the Greeks and send them to the games, or if the most breeders, and the most in competition, should be from your city? And as for winning victories, which do you hold the nobler way: by the virtue of your chariot horses, or by the happiness of the city which you rule?

(6) "I myself say that it is not fitting for a man who is a tyrant even to compete against private men. For, should you win, you would not be admired, but envied, as meeting the cost by means of many estates; and should you lose, you would be ridiculed most of all.

(7) "But I tell you, Hiero, your contest is against others who rule cities; if you make the city you rule the happiest of these, know well that you will be declared by herald the victor in the most noble and magnificent contest among human beings.

8) "First, you would at once secure the love of your subjects, which is the very thing you happen to desire. Further, the herald of your victory would not be one, but all human beings would sing of your virtue.

9) "Being an object of attention you would be cherished not only by private men, but by many cities; marveled at not only in private, but in public among all as well;

(10) "it would be possible for you, as for as safety is concerned, to travel wherever you wish, for the sake of viewing the sights; and it would be possible for you to do this remaining here. For there would be a continual festival by you of those wishing to display whatever wise, beautiful, or good thing they had, and of those desiring to serve you as well.

(11) "Every man present would be your ally, and every man absent would desire to see you. Therefore, you would not only be liked, you would be loved by human beings; as for the fair, you would not have to seduce them, but submit to being seduced by them; as for fear, that you might suffer some harm;

12) "You would have willing men obeying you, and you would see them willingly take thought for you; if there should be some danger, you would see not only allies, but also champions, and those eager; being deemed worthy of many gifts, you will not be at a loss for someone well disposed with whom to share them, with all men rejoicing at your good things and all fighting for those which are yours just as if they were their own.

(13) "For treasuries, furthermore, you would have all the wealth of your friends.

"But enrich your friends with confidence, Hiero; for you will enrich yourself. Augment the city, for you will attach power to yourself. Acquire allies for it.

14) "Consider the fatherland to be your estate, the citizens your comrades, friends your own children, your sons the same as your life, and try to surpass all these in benefactions.

(15) "For you prove superior to your friends in beneficence, your enemies will be utterly unable to resist you. And if you do all these things, know well, of all things you will acquire the most noble and most blessed possessions to be met with among human beings, for while being happy, you will not be envied for being happy."

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