The final book of the Tusculans is intended to bring together the results of the preceding books in two ways. It concludes the argument that virtue is sufficient for happiness, where that is understood as invulnerable tranquillity and peace of mind. The book also fills out its opening praise of philosophy, understood as Academic sceptical method. However, the forceful final coda raises problems of philosophical consistency which, when examined carefully, cannot be reconciled with the book’s initial aims.

Living in a city for older adults inevitably involves facing and coping with the frequent deaths of neighbors, friends, and acquaintances, serving as a constant reminder of one’s mortality. Through the stories of three individuals, this chapter offers a glimpse into the experiences of dying, caregiving for the dying, and grieving in The Villages. It also contrasts the pervasive presence of death with the relative invisibility of the "fourth age."

This chapter presents Ockham’s theory of demonstration in Summa Logicae III-2, the syllogism that produces scientific knowledge. He relies on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and Grosseteste’s commentary it. Grosseteste, however, founded the necessity of demonstration on necessary relations in the world. For Ockham, the main challenge is to elaborate a theory of science that addresses the singular beings in a contingent world. His theory is characterized by a conception of purely logical necessity, a semiotic conception of cause, and the requirement that subject terms must have reference in order for affirmative propositions to be true. Many propositions about the natural world are not susceptible to demonstration in the strict sense, but Ockham distinguishes different kinds of demonstration. He is not so much trying to limit the field of demonstrable natural knowledge as to relax the meaning of demonstrability so that it includes many dubitable propositions that can be made evident.

The Preface introduces some of the key questions and analytical points of the book, its sources, and some of its contributions. It details how the book was inspired by an art exhibition that the authors co-organized with art historian Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz and the process through which some of the questions posed by the exhibition became a book project. It discusses how it was frequently difficult to assess whether an artist was racialized, at least in some social contexts, as a person of African descent, and the author’s strategies to handle this question.

This chapter develops the proper modally inflected understanding of the living animals on earth, which are the most plausible examples of entities that enjoy phenomenal consciousness, which is the first core feature of the MOUDD theory. It includes an introduction to the necessary rudiments of neurophysiology.

This chapter sketches the third key component of the MOUDD theory, a modal structuralist explanation of our experience of particular sensory qualia, by an initial focus on color experience. The actual modal structure of our neurophysiology of color vision explains the apparent modal structure of our color qualia.

According to Aristotle and Linnaeus, there were only two “kingdoms” – Plantae and Animalia. In the 1800s, Haeckel carved kingdom “Protista” off of Linnaeus’ Plantae. Kingdoms for Fungi and Bacteria (Monera) were later added. By the time I was in secondary school, I learned a five-kingdom system. The five “kingdoms” that I learned are still frequently used in biology lessons: animals, plants, fungi, protists, and bacteria. But we now know that a five-kingdom story is so simplified as to be misleading, and it tells us very little about the broad tree of life. Back then, in the 1900s, our limited understanding made things seem more simple, but recent DNA sequence data indicate that the groupings are much more complex.

The five-kingdom system was first proposed in 1969. (1) Animalia were multicellular creatures that eat other organisms. (2) Fungi were generally multicellular decomposers that fed by a network of filamentous cells. (3) Plantae included especially the land plants.

This chapter gives a critical exposition of Ockham’s innovations in the theory of the assertoric syllogism: his extensions of the class of syllogistic propositions to include singular propositions, propositions with a quantified predicate, tensed propositions and propositions in grammatical cases other than the nominative; his rules for the conversion of these propositions and for syllogisms containing them; his un-Aristotelian style of reducing syllogisms to the first figure by inference-to-inference transformations; and above all his use of supposition theory as a semantic base for this expanded syllogistic theory. His broadening of the scope of syllogistic theory resulted in abandoning several Aristotelian rules of the syllogism; it also resulted in a toleration of inferences containing redundant premises. The chapter provides proof-theoretic justifications for certain inferences that Ockham merely declared to be valid. It also argues that the originality of certain aspects of Ockham’s logic results from his philosophical nominalism.

Most American environmental law scholarship overlooks the role of cities in environmental law and policy. Instead, scholars typically focus on federal environmental law. This book emphasizes the potential for leading cities to play a meaningful role in protecting the environment. It offers a framework for understanding the factors that give to, and constrain, local environmental law and policy. Local environmental policy may emerge from the top from local elites centrally concerned with local economic development, and from the “bottom up” from community groups. However, there are limits on the costs that local governments can impose on local actors to address global environmental problems, such as limiting climate change, given the overriding importance that local governments attach to promoting economic development. The book offers case studies of local environmental efforts in New York City to illustrate the promise and limitations of local environmental policy. Taking into account the opportunities and constraints at the local level, the book outlines a high-level agenda of actions that local governments in large cities should undertake to adapt to climate change and contribute to decarbonization.

In chapter four, Sean Williams illustrates the creative potential of music and dance for the development of revivalism up to the present day. During the early years of the Revival, beginning in the 1890s, Irish dance and music were governed by strict ideas about form and performance promulgated by such groups as the Gaelic League. Music and dance, in different ways, underscore the difficulties of remaining connected to traditional standards while allowing the introduction of modern or non-Irish elements in singing style, dance steps, and instrumentation. At each stage of the development of cultural revivalism, cultural authenticity is vitally important. Despite apparent ruptures in the traditions of music and dance, both have flourished on a world stage with their “Irishness” intact. Because of the inclusion of non-Irish dance and vocal styles, a contemporary spectacle such as Riverdance, while quite different from traditional forms of dance, remain connected to broader revivalist concerns.