Abstract Thomas Kuhn is the most famous historian and philosopher of science of the last century. He is also among the most controversial. Since Kuhn's death, his corpus has been interpreted, systematized, and defended. Here I add to this endeavor in a novel way by arguing that Kuhn can be interpreted as a global response-dependence theorist. He can be understood as connecting all concepts and terms in an a priori manner to responses of suitably situated subjects to objects in (...) the world. Further, I claim, this interpretation is useful for three reasons. First, it allows us to systematize and defend Kuhn's views. We can therefore better appreciate him as a thinker in his own right. Second, it deepens our understanding of both the uniqueness of Kuhn's views and the continuity of those views with those of others. We can therefore better appreciate his place in history. And third, as I explain in the paper, my interpretation affords us the only example of an ethnocentric global response-dependence theory. We can therefore better appreciate the versatility of response-dependence itself. (shrink)

Dependent Arising and Emptiness: A Tibetan Buddhist interpretation of Madhyamika philosophy emphasising the compatability of emptiness and conventional phenomena. Elizabeth Napper. Wisdom Publications, Boston, London and Sydney 1989. xiv, 849 pp. Hbk. £34.95/$49.95.

Nonindexical Context-Dependence and the Interpretation as Abduction Approach Inclusive nonindexical context-dependence occurs when the preferred interpretation of an utterance implies its lexically-derived meaning. It is argued that the corresponding processes of free or lexically mandated enrichment can be modeled as abductive inference. A form of abduction is implemented in Simple Type Theory on the basis of a notion of plausibility, which is in turn regarded a preference relation over possible worlds. Since a preordering of doxastic alternatives taken for (...) itself only amounts to a relatively vacuous ad hoc model, it needs to be combined with a rational way of learning from new evidence. Lexicographic upgrade is implemented as an example of how an agent might revise his plausibility ordering in light of new evidence. Various examples are given how this apparatus may be used to model the contextual resolution of context-dependent or semantically incomplete utterances. The described form of abduction is limited and merely serves as a proof of concept, but the idea in general has good potential as one among many ways to build a bridge between semantics and pragmatics since inclusive context-dependence is ubiquitous. (shrink)

Arising and emptiness are the two essential Buddhist concepts, which when understood, lead to the highest school of Buddhist philosophy.

Foreign language anxiety has been identified as a crucial affective factor in language learning. Similar to the situation in language classes, university students in interpretation classes are required to perform in a foreign language when their language skills are inadequate. Investigations are needed to determine the specific impact of FLA on interpretation learning. This study investigated the effects of the specific interpretation classroom FLA on interpretation learning and dependency distance as an indicator of learners’ cognitive load. The participants were 49 (...) undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in English–Chinese interpretation classes at a university in Hong Kong. The results showed a significant negative correlation between ICFLA levels and consecutive interpretation achievement scores. ICFLA was also negatively correlated with DD in consecutive interpretations. Four factors underlying ICFLA were identified. The findings of this study would provide useful insights for researchers and educators to understand the nature and effect of FLA in different settings. (shrink)

This article investigates the ability of mental incapacity tests to account for problems of control, through a study of the approach to alcohol dependence and a comparison with the approach to anorexia nervosa, in England and Wales. The focus is on two areas of law where questions of legal and mental capacity arise for people who are alcohol dependent: decisions about treatment for alcohol dependence and diminished responsibility for a killing. The mental incapacity tests used in these legal (...) contexts are importantly different—one involves a ‘cognitive’ test, while the other includes an explicit impaired-control limb—and the comparison provides insight into a longstanding debate about the virtues of one type of test over the other. It is shown that both kinds of test can take control problems into account, but also that both can be interpreted in narrow and wide ways that significantly influence the outcome of the assessment. It is therefore argued that to a large extent, it is not the kind of mental incapacity test that matters, but how the test is interpreted. It is further proposed that value judgements are playing an unrecognised and inappropriate role in shaping this interpretation. This raises concerns about the current approach to assessing the impact of alcohol dependency on the capacity to make decisions about alcohol use or treatment, as well as broader concerns about flexibility within incapacity tests. (shrink)

This article probes the usefulness of selected theories from Cognitive Linguistics in the context of statutory interpretation. The presumption of legal language is a well-established rule of statutory construction in Polish legal practice that comes from the internationally recognised theory by Jerzy Wróblewski. It rests on a controversial assumption that there are different levels of generality in legal language (i.e. the language of statutes) and a single term may be given different meanings depending on the level of generality that is (...) referred to. The authors use the notion of basic level categorisation from the cognitive theory of prototypes to explain this mechanism. Legal concepts, not unlike ordinary concepts, form hierarchical taxonomies. A single term may denote concepts that are situated at different levels in different conceptual taxonomies. In the absence of special circumstances, a legal term should be given the meaning that resides at a higher level of categorisation in the respective legal taxonomy. This way, the presumption of legal language is found to be justified on both linguistic and psychological grounds. (shrink)

This paper argues that, given a simple [DP VP] sentence, the availability of a collective interpretation crucially depends on the syntactic and semantic properties of the subject DP, specifically the presence versus absence of a pluralizing function that makes the collective interpretation available. In support of my claim, I present Lebanese Arabic and Western Armenian examples in which an indefinite DP contains a cardinal numeral and there is no overt distributivity operator but the interpretation of the sentence is nevertheless obligatorily (...) distributive, regardless of the predicate. I show that neither a distributivity operator within the DP nor one on the predicate can explain this strictly distributive interpretation. Instead, I argue that in order to allow a collective interpretation, an indefinite DP must denote a quantifier over pluralities, a condition that is not always met in numeral-containing indefinite DPs. While the claims in this paper are based primarily on observations from Lebanese Arabic and Western Armenian, because both are morphologically rich languages, the fact that this constraint is operative in these two unrelated languages, in addition to striking similarities to the Russian gender system, suggest that it is an inherent property of DPs crosslinguistically. (shrink)

It is a long-standing view that global translation varies during the cell cycle and is much lower in mitosis than in other cell-cycle phases. However, the central papers in the literature are not in agreement about the extent of downregulation in mitosis, ranging from a dramatic decrease to only a marginal reduction. Herein, it is argued that the discrepancy derives from technical challenges. Cell-cycle-dependent variations are most conveniently studied in synchronized cells, but the synchronization methods by themselves often evoke stress (...) responses that, in turn, affect translation rates. Further, it is argued that previously reported cell-cycle-dependent changes in the global translation rate to a large extent reflect responses to the synchronization methods. Recent findings strongly suggest that the global translation rate is not regulated in a cell-cycle-dependent manner. Novel techniques allowing a genome-wide analysis of translational profiles suggest that the extent and importance of selective translational regulation associated with cell-cycle transitions have been underestimated. Therefore, the main question is which messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are translated, rather than whether the global translation rate is decreased. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A Third-Person-Based or Third-Personal Judgment-Dependent account of mental content implies that, as an a priori matter, facts about a subject’s mental content are precisely captured by the judgments of a second-person or an interpreter. Alex Byrne, Bill Child, and others have discussed attributing such a view to Donald Davidson. This account significantly departs from a First-Person-Based or First-Personal Judgment-Dependent account, such as Crispin Wright’s, according to which, as an a priori matter, facts about intentional content are constituted by (...) the judgments of the subject herself, formed under certain optimal or cognitively ideal conditions. I will argue for two claims: (1) Attributing a Third-Personal Judgment-Dependent account to Davidson is unjustified; Davidson’s view is much closer to a non-reductionist First-Personal Judgment-Dependent account. (2) Third-Personal accounts rest on a misconstrual of the role of an interpreter in the First-Personal accounts; the notion of an interpreter still plays an essential role in the latter ones. (shrink)

The main goal of part 1 is to challenge the widely held view that Poincaré orders the sciences in a hierarchy of dependence, such that all others presuppose arithmetic. Commentators have suggested that the intuition that grounds the use of induction in arithmetic also underlies the conception of a continuum, that the consistency of geometrical axioms must be proved through arithmetical induction, and that arithmetical induction licenses the supposition that certain operations form a group. I criticize each of these (...) readings. More fully, I argue that the justification Poincaré offers for the use of the group notion in geometry appears to extend to set-theoretic notions that would suffice to put arithmetic on a logical foundation, thus undermining his own case for the necessity of intuition in arithmetic. In part 2, I offer an interpretation of intuition’s role on which it justifies the use of group-theoretic, but not set-theoretic, notions. (shrink)

We introduce an atomic formula ${\vec{y} \bot_{\vec{x}}\vec{z}}$ intuitively saying that the variables ${\vec{y}}$ are independent from the variables ${\vec{z}}$ if the variables ${\vec{x}}$ are kept constant. We contrast this with dependence logic ${\mathcal{D}}$ based on the atomic formula = ${(\vec{x}, \vec{y})}$ , actually equivalent to ${\vec{y} \bot_{\vec{x}}\vec{y}}$ , saying that the variables ${\vec{y}}$ are totally determined by the variables ${\vec{x}}$ . We show that ${\vec{y} \bot_{\vec{x}}\vec{z}}$ gives rise to a natural logic capable of formalizing basic intuitions about independence and (...) dependence. We show that ${\vec{y} \bot_{\vec{x}}\vec{z}}$ can be used to give partially ordered quantifiers and IF-logic an alternative interpretation without some of the shortcomings related to so called signaling that interpretations using = ${(\vec{x}, \vec{y})}$ have. (shrink)

There is a tacit assumption that interpretation comes naturally, that human beings live by constantly interpreting. In this sense, we might even rephrase Descartes by saying: We interpret, therefore we are. While such a basic human disposition makes interpretation appear to come naturally, the forms it takes, however, do not. In this work, Iser offers a fresh approach by formulating an "anatomy of interpretation" through which we can understand the act of interpretation in its many different manifestations. For Iser, there (...) are several different genres of interpretation, all of which are acts of translation designed to transpose something into something else. Perhaps the most obvious example of interpretation involves canonical texts, such as the Rabbinical exegesis of the Torah or Samuel Johnson's reading of Shakespeare. But what happens when the matter that one seeks to interpret consists not of a text but of a welter of fragments, as in the study of history, or when something is hidden, as in the practice of psychoanalysis, or is as complex as a culture or system? Iser details how, in each of these cases, the space that is opened up by interpretation is negotiated in a different way, thus concluding that interpretation always depends on what it seeks to translate. For students of philosophy, literary and critical theory, anthropology, and cultural history, Iser's elucidation of the mechanics by which we translate and understand, as well as his assessment of the anthropological roots of our drive to make meaning, will undoubtedly serve as a revelation. (shrink)

The relation of ontological dependence or grounding, expressed by the terminology of separation and priority in substance, plays a central role in Aristotle’s Categories, Metaphysics, De Anima and elsewhere. The article discusses three current interpretations of this terminology. These are drawn along the lines of, respectively, modal-existential ontological dependence, essential ontological dependence, and grounding or metaphysical explanation. I provide an opinionated introduction to the topic, raising the main interpretative questions, laying out a few of the exegetical and (...) philosophical options that influence one’s reading, and locating questions of Aristotle scholarship within the discussion of ontological dependence and grounding in contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

Divergent models applied to the chronology of Australian science leave us with two particular problems unresolved: was late-nineteenth-century science in this peripheral setting becoming more or less dependent on its British fountainhead, and what is the meaning of the reportedly narrow, utilitarian focus of ‘colonial science’? This paper argues that a complex interplay of imperial and local imperatives makes neat classification and periodization of Australia's scientific development a hazardous venture. Compounding the complexity is the nature of the relationship between science (...) and technology, a factor largely ignored in the historiography of Australian science. Contrary to common assumptions, an empirical focus on science-technology links suggests that scientific and technological dependencies were not running in parallel, but out of phase, with science as the laggard. Indeed, it appears that science in late-nineteenth-century Australia may have developed more from its interaction with technological systems than from its own internal dynamics. (shrink)

It was widely believed among post-classical thinkers that the classical Mutakallimūn held that the cause of dependence of an effect on a cause was its origination, or a combination of origination and contingency, or its contingency on condition of its origination. Some post-classical thinkers, led by al-Sayyid al-Sharif al-Jurjānī, went further by interpreting Abu’l-Hasan al-Ashʿarī’s denial of the persistence of accidents was a consequence of his view that origination was the cause of dependence. This is because the origination (...) view entailed that the world was no longer in need of the Creator after its origination, and thus, him and his followers sought to deflect this consequence by holding that accidents do not persist, and since the persistence of substances was dependent on those accidents, and accidents do not persist more than one moment, those substances remained in need of the Creator for those accidents after their origination. This article seeks to investigate this analysis of the Shaykh al-Ashʿarī’s view, alongside the leading scholars of his school. After examining the original sources of classical Ashʿarī thinkers, along with the Baṣran Mu’tazila, and the texts of Ibn Sina, it becomes clear that the Ashꜥarīs did not hold that accidents did not persist in order to deflect that purported consequence. Indeed, it becomes clear that they did not hold that origination was the cause of dependence, but rather, that it was contingency. As for the Mu’tazila, they are explicit that the cause of dependence is origination, and that is based on their view on the reality of the nonexistent. Since essences are real in their state of nonexistence, they are not in need of a cause; and everything that obtains for those essences after they come into exist are entailments of that essence; thus, they only stand in need of a cause in their origination, that is, going from nonexistence into existence. Indeed, they are also explicit that effects do not need the Creator after their origination, and they clarified this through a comparison with a builder and a building. Indeed, the classical Ashꜥarīs criticized them for this, just as Ibn Sina did in the Ishārāt wa’l-tanbīhāt, al-Najāt, and al-Shifā. Thus, those post-classical scholars generalized the statement that origination is the cause of dependence to all classical mutakallimūn, and then they interpreted Ashʿarī’s motivation behind the denial of the persistence of accidents in accordance with that. The truth, however, is that his view on accidents is based on contingency, and that is because a substance is possible of persistence and possible of non-persistence, and therefore, it stands in need of cause to determine its state in the subsequent moment. That determination must entail something additional to the substance itself, otherwise, the effect is redundant. That additional property must be an accident, and since it is impossible for an accident to subsist in an accident, it is not possible for an accident to persist, because it is not receptive to the property which entails persistence; meanwhile, it is possible for substances, because they can sustain accidents. (shrink)

This paper argues that truth values of sentences containing predicates of “personal taste” such as fun or tasty must be relativized to individuals. This relativization is of truth value only, and does not involve a relativization of semantic content: If you say roller coasters are fun, and I say they are not, I am negating the same content which you assert, and directly contradicting you. Nonetheless, both our utterances can be true (relative to their separate contexts). A formal semantic theory (...) is presented which gives this result by introducing an individual index, analogous to the world and time indices commonly used, and by treating the pragmatic context as supplying a particular value for this index. The context supplies this value in the derivation of truth values from content, not in the derivation of content from character. Predicates of personal taste therefore display a kind of contextual variation in interpretation which is unlike the familiar variation exhibited by pronouns and other indexicals. (shrink)

An analogy between functional dependencies and implicational formulas of sentential logic has been discussed in the literature. We feel that a somewhat different connexion between dependency theory and sentential logic is suggested by the similarity between Armstrong's axioms for functional dependencies and Tarski's defining conditions for consequence relations, and we pursue aspects of this other analogy here for their theoretical interest. The analogy suggests, for example, a different semantic interpretation of consequence relations: instead of thinking ofB as a consequence of (...) a set of formulas {A1,...,A n} whenB is true on every assignment of truth-values on which eachA i is true, we can think of this relation as obtaining when every pair of truth-value assignments which give the same truth-values toA 1, the same truth-values toA 2,..., and the same truth-values toA n, also make the same assignment in respect ofB. We describe the former as the consequence relation inference-determined by the class of truth-value assignments (valuations) under consideration, and the latter as the consequence relation supervenience-determined by that class of assignments. Some comparisons will be made between these two notions. (shrink)

Within natural language semantics, pronouns are often thought to correspond to variables whose values are contributed by contextual assignment functions. This paper concerns the application of this idea to cases where the antecedent of a pronoun is a plural quantifiers. The paper discusses the modelling of accessibility patterns of quantifier antecedents in a dynamic theory of interpretation. The goal is to reach a semantics of quantificational dependency which yields a fully semantic notion of pronominal accessibility. I argue that certain dependency (...) phenomena that arise in quantificationally created contexts require a representation of context wherein the labelling of antecedents is not rigid but rather dynamic itself. I propose a stack-based alternative to classic assignment functions, along the lines of Vermeulen (1993) and van Eijck (2001), and give a dynamic semantics of quantification which correctly accommodates the problematic anaphoric phenomena. (shrink)

This volume looks at the symbiotic relationship between the philosophical inquiry into the presuppositions of musical interpretation and the interpretation of particular musical works by musicians. Characteristically, interpreters of music entertain philosophical views about musical interpretation. For example, an interpreter's decision whether to play one or another version of a piece, whether to use one instrument or another, whether to emphasize certain elements, depends in part upon certain convictions of a philosophical nature. An interpreter's resolution of such questions (...) will involve views about what a musical work is--for example, whether it is fully embodied in a score, how strictly all markings should be respected, what pertinence historical research has for interpretations, and how decisive the known or reconstructed intentions of a composer may be. These nineteen previously unpublished essays address a cluster of interrelated questions about the definition, grounds, and nature of musical interpretation. The contributors investigate the aesthetic, cultural, and historical aspects of interpretation as well as fundamental distinctions such as those between a work and its interpretation, musical and non-musical phenomena, and musical meaning and linguistic meaning. (shrink)

Most interpreting theories claim that different interpreting types should involve varied processing mechanisms and procedures. However, few studies have examined their underlying differences. Even though some previous results based on quantitative approaches show that different interpreting types yield outputs of varying lexical and syntactic features, the grammatical parsing approach is limited. Language sequences that form without relying on parsing or processing with a specific linguistic approach or grammar excel other quantitative approaches at revealing the sequential behavior of language production. As (...) a non-grammatically-bound unit of language sequences, frequency motif can visualize the local distribution of content and function words, and can also statistically classify languages and identify text types. Thus, the current research investigates the distribution, length and position-dependent properties of frequency motifs across different interpreting outputs in pursuit of the sequential generation behaviors. It is found that the distribution, the length and certain position-dependent properties of the specific language sequences differ significantly across simultaneous interpreting and consecutive interpreting output. The features of frequency motifs manifest that both interpreting output is produced in the manner that abides by the least effort principle. The current research suggests that interpreting types can be differentiated through this type of language sequential unit and offers evidence for how the different task features mediate the sequential organization of interpreting output under different demand to achieve cognitive load minimization. (shrink)

This paper attacks an account of Kant's controversial distinction between "free" and "dependent" beauty. I present three problems—The Lorland problem, The Crawford Problem, and the problem of intrinsic relation—that are shown to be a consequence of various interpretations of Kant's distinction. Next, I reconstruct Robert Wicks' well-known account of dependent beauty as "the appreciation of teleological style" and point out a key equivocation in the statement of Wicks' account: the judgment of dependent beauty can be thought to consist in comparing (...) any two objects' teleological styles either in respect of how or in respect of how well each realizes a common purpose. I argue that this equivocation forces Wicks into a dilemma: either he must assert the impossibility of ugliness or he must assert that the judgment of dependent beauty is reducible to the judgment of perfection. Either way, he denies important theoretic desiderata. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have demonstrated impressive performance across a variety of clinical tasks. However, notoriously, sometimes these systems are “black boxes.” The initial response in the literature was a demand for “explainable AI.” However, recently, several authors have suggested that making AI more explainable or “interpretable” is likely to be at the cost of the accuracy of these systems and that prioritizing interpretability in medical AI may constitute a “lethal prejudice.” In this paper, we defend the value of interpretability (...) in the context of the use of AI in medicine. Clinicians may prefer interpretable systems over more accurate black boxes, which in turn is sufficient to give designers of AI reason to prefer more interpretable systems in order to ensure that AI is adopted and its benefits realized. Moreover, clinicians may be justified in this preference. Achieving the downstream benefits from AI is critically dependent on how the outputs of these systems are interpreted by physicians and patients. A preference for the use of highly accurate black box AI systems, over less accurate but more interpretable systems, may itself constitute a form of lethal prejudice that may diminish the benefits of AI to—and perhaps even harm—patients. (shrink)

The early Buddhist exegetical text, the Nettippakarana, apparently uniquely, describes the stages of the path as ‘transcendental dependent arising’ (lokuttara paticca-samuppada), in contrast with the twelve nidanas, called ‘worldly dependent arising’ (lokiya paticca-samuppada). A close reading of the Nettippakarana in relation to another, related, exegetical text, the Petakopadesa, reveals that the latter interprets the same stages of the path in a different way. More broadly, while the Petakopadesa takes paticca-samuppada to refer only to the twelve nidanas, the Nettippakarana’s exegetical strategy (...) takes paticca-samuppada to refer to an over-arching principle of conditionality, both ‘worldly’ and ‘transcendental’. This exegesis has proved popular with modern western Buddhist exegetes. (shrink)

The paper rst lays out a non-congurational approach to scope ambiguities in which scope dependencies are treated as dependencies between evaluation indices of variables. The notions of dependent and domain variables are dened naturally in this framework. These concepts are then used to account for the distribution and interpretation of determiner reduplication in Hungarian, a phenomenon that has not received much attention so far.1 1. Introduction This paper contributes to the study of the semantics of indenites in natural language by (...) introducing on the scene a new type of indenite, called dependent. We meet it in Hungarian, where one may reduplicate certain determiners, as illustrated in [1]-[3]. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem of International Exclusion Interaction‐Dependent Justice: Failing Responses or Contributing Factors? Interaction‐Dependent Contextualist Theories: Statism and Nationalism Interaction‐Dependent Universalist Theories: Contractarianism, Nonharm Theories, and the “Cosmopolitan Democracy” Project Conclusions Acknowledgments References.

Which function is computed by a Turing machine will depend on how the symbols it manipulates are interpreted. Further, by invoking bizarre systems of notation it is easy to define Turing machines that compute textbook examples of uncomputable functions, such as the solution to the decision problem for first-order logic. Thus, the distinction between computable and uncomputable functions depends on the system of notation used. This raises the question: which systems of notation are the relevant ones for determining whether a (...) function is computable? These are the acceptable notations. I argue for a use criterion of acceptability: the acceptable notations for a domain of objects D\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal {D}}$$\end{document} are the notations that we can use for the usual D\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal {D}}$$\end{document}-activities. Acceptable notations for natural numbers are ones that we can count with. Acceptable notations for logical formulas are the ones that we can use in inference and logical analysis. And so on. This criterion makes computability a relative notion—whether a function is computable depends on which notations are acceptable, which is relative to our interests and abilities. I argue that this is not a problem, however, since there is independent reason for taking the extension of computable function to be relative to contingent facts. Similarly, the fact that the use criterion makes a mathematical distinction depend on practical concerns is also not a problem because it dovetails with similar phenomena in other areas of computability theory, namely the roles of notation in computation over real numbers and of Extended Church’s Thesis in complexity theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the syntax-semantics of subjunctive clauses in (Modern) Greek. These clauses are headed by the particle na and contain a dependent verbal form with no formal mood features: the perfective nonpast (PNP). I propose that the semantics of na is temporal: it introduces the variable now (n) into the syntax. This is necessary because the apparent present tense in the PNP cannot introduce n. The PNP, instead, contains a dependent time variable. This variable cannot be interpreted (...) as a free variable – hence it cannot be identified with the utterance time of the context. This analysis relies on two premises. One is the (quite influential) idea that pronouns and tenses are analogous creatures (Partee 1973, 1984, Heim 1998, Kratzer 1998, and others). The other premise is that at least some polarity items are expressions that contain variables that cannot be interpreted deictically (Giannakidou 1998, 2001). In the present work I suggest to enlarge the domain of phenomena that can receive a unified treatment across individuals, worlds, and tenses, and treat the subjunctive mood as a non-deictic time, thus an instance of a polarity dependency of the temporal kind. It is my hope that the analysis proposed here for the PNP can be used to analyze verbal subjunctives in Romance languages, and perhaps also infinitival forms in English, but investigation of this question will have be left for the future. (shrink)

This paper argues that scale-dependence of physical and biological processes offers resistance to reductionism and has implications that support a specific kind of downward causation. I demonstrate how insights from multiscale modeling can provide a concrete mathematical interpretation of downward causation as boundary conditions for models used to represent processes at lower scales. The autonomy and role of macroscale parameters and higher-level constraints are illustrated through examples of multiscale modeling in physics, developmental biology, and systems biology. Drawing on these (...) examples, I defend the explanatory importance of constraining relations for understanding the behavior of biological systems. (shrink)

The possibility to interpret expected and nonexpected utility theories in purely probabilistic terms has been recently investigated. Such interpretation proposes as guideline for the Decision Maker the comparison of random variables through their probability to outperform a stochastic benchmark. We apply this type of analysis to the model of Becker and Sarin, showing that their utility functional may be seen as the probability that an opportune random variable, depending on the one to be evaluated, does not outperform a non-random benchmark. (...) Further, the consequent choice criterion is equivalent to a sort of probability of ruin. Possible interpretations and financial examples are discussed. (shrink)

This paper discusses the semantics of bare existentials , i.e. existentials in which nothing follows the post copular NP (e.g. There are four sections ). While it has sometimes been recognized that the interpretation of such sentences depends in some way on context, the exact nature of the context dependence involved has not been properly understood. It is shown that the meaning of bare existentials involves a set-denoting implicit argument, and that the range of interpretations found with bare existentials (...) is predictable from the general properties of implicit arguments. An explicit analysis within a dynamic setting is presented. (shrink)

The so-called Final Ranking of the Philebus offers Socrates’ final evaluation of the relative merits of pleasure and reason in the best life. I begin by examining two common lines of interpretation as they address the criterion according to which the final ranking is organized. I then discuss the role ‘similarity’ has in organizing the investigation throughout the dialogue, from the initial comparison of the two lives (of reason and pleasure singly) down through the final ranking. I then consider the (...) thematic discussions of pleasure and reason separately, arguing that their treatments display an intriguing structural similarity. Next, I propose my own reading of the final ranking, whereby the ‘dependence’ relation at work in those two specific discussions may be see as the through-line of all (now five) tiers of the final ranking. I conclude by suggesting that this interpretation is able to preserve what is worthwhile in the two traditional lines of interpretation, while avoiding the pitfalls that tend to accompany them. (shrink)

Aristotle holds that individual substances are ontologically independent from nonsubstances and universal substances but that non-substances and universal substances are ontologically dependent on substances. There is then an asymmetry between individual substances and other kinds of beings with respect to ontological dependence. Under what could plausibly be called the standard interpretation, the ontological independence ascribed to individual substances and denied of non-substances and universal substances is a capacity for independent existence. There is, however, a tension between this interpretation and (...) the asymmetry between individual substances and the other kinds of entities with respect to ontological independence. I will propose an alternative interpretation: to weaken the relevant notion of ontological independence from a capacity for independent existence to the independent possession of a certain ontological status. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Krzysztof Poslajko reconstructs—and endorses as probative—a dilemma for interpretivism first posed by Alex Byrne. On the first horn of the dilemma, the interpretivist takes attitudes to emerge in relation to an ideal interpreter (and thus loses any connection with actual folk psychological practices). On the second horn, the interpretivist takes attitudes to emerge in relation to individuals’ judgements (and thus denies the possibility of error). I show that this is a false dilemma. (...) By taking a model-theoretic approach to folk psychology, and marrying interpretivism with dispositionalism, interpretivists can viably reject the notion of an ideal (or canonical) interpreter—and relativize attitudes to actual lay interpreters—without taking on board the unacceptable epistemological consequences of allowing that attitudes are judgement-dependent. (shrink)

The idea that some of God's past beliefs depend on our future actions has a long history, going back to Origen in the third century CE. However, it is not always clear what this idea amounts to, since it is not always clear what kind of dependence is at issue. This paper surveys five different interpretations of dependence and, in each case, considers the implications for the debate over theological fatalism. Along the way, we discuss a number of (...) related issues, including the nature of explanation, the scope of metaphysical grounding, and the possibility of backward causation. (shrink)

n his Lectures on the Histmy 0f Philosophy Hegel credits Rousseau with an cpoch-making innovation in the realm 0f practical philosophy, an innovation said to consist in thc fact that Rousseau is thc first thinker t0 recognize "the free will" as thc fundamental principle 0f political philosophy} Since Hcgcl’s 0wn practical philosophy is explicitly grounded in an account 0f thc will and its freedom, Hcgcl’s assertion is clearly intended as an acknowledgment 0f his deep indebtedness t0 R0usscau’s social and political (...) thought. What is not s0 clear, however, is how this indebtedness is t0 bc understood: What precisely docs it mean t0 say that the political theories 0f Hegel and Rousseau share the same first principlc? In this paper I intend t0 follow up 0n this interpretive suggestion 0f Hcgcl’s by claborating, much more explicitly than he himself docs, thc sense in which R0usscau’s political thought is founded 011 thc principle 0f the "frcc wiil." While accomplishing this task will put us in a better position t0 clarify thc obscurc philosophical strategy behind Hcgcl’s 0wn social theory, my primary interest here is t0 illuminate thc foundations 0f R0usscau’s political thought, especially its account 0f the connection between freedom and the general will. I argue that it is necessary t0 distinguish two ways in which Rousseau takes the general will t0 secure, or realize, thc freedom of individual citizens, namely, by functioning as an embodiment as well as a precondition of such freedom. Understanding both 0f these points will lead us t0 scc: that R0usscau’s thought rests 0n two distinct, though not incompatible, accounts 0f how citizens whose actions are constrained by thc general will are in fact subject 0nly to their 0wn wills and therefore free in their 0bcdience to thc general will. As we shall scc, these two accounts arc implicitly based upon distinct conceptions 0f political freedom. (shrink)

After presenting Kripke’s criticism to Frege’s ideas on context dependence of thoughts, I present two recent attempts of considering cognitive aspects of context dependent expressions inside a truth conditional pragmatics or semantics: Recanati’s non-descriptive modes of presentation (MOPs) and Kaplan’s ways of having in mind (WHIMs). After analysing the two attempts and verifying which answers they should give to the problem discussed by Kripke, I suggest a possible interpretation of these attempts: to insert a procedural or algorithmic level in (...) semantic representations of indexicals. That a function may be computed by different procedures might suggest new possibilities of integrating contextual cognitive aspects in model theoretic semantic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Dependent Origination is one of the fundamental concepts of early Buddhism. Traditionally, it is interpreted as a description of saṃsāra, the cycle of rebirth. This article offers a psychological interpretation of Dependent Origination as a model that describes how the forming unconscious of the foetus develops into the self-conscious mind of the adult human. This perspective opens new possibilities for the integration of Buddhist mind development, cognitive psychology and psychotherapy.

We examine “de Broglie-Bohm” causal trajectories for the two electrons in a nonrelativistic helium atom, taking into account the spin-dependent momentum terms that arise from the Pauli current. Given that this many-body problem is not exactly solvable, we examine approximations to various helium eigenstates provided by a low-dimensional basis comprised of tensor products of one-particle hydrogenic eigenstates.First to be considered are the simplest approximations to the ground and first-excited electronic states found in every introductory quantum mechanics textbook. For example, the (...) trajectories associated with the simple 1s(1)1s(2) approximation to the ground state are, to say the least, nontrivial and nonclassical.We then examine higher-dimensional approximations, i.e., eigenstates Ψ α of the Hamiltonian in this truncated basis, and show that ∇ i S α =0 for both particles, implying that only the spin-dependent momentum term contributes to electronic motion. This result is independent of the size of the truncated basis set, implying that the qualitative features of the trajectories will be the same, regardless of the accuracy of the eigenfunction approximation.The electronic motion associated with these eigenstates is quite specialized due to the condition that the spins of the two electrons comprise a two-spin eigenfunction of the total spin operator. The electrons either (i) remain stationary or (ii) execute circular orbits around the z-axis with constant velocity. (shrink)

We argue that the health sciences make causal claims on the basis of evidence both of physical mechanisms, and of probabilistic dependencies. Consequently, an analysis of causality solely in terms of physical mechanisms or solely in terms of probabilistic relationships, does not do justice to the causal claims of these sciences. Yet there seems to be a single relation of cause in these sciences - pluralism about causality will not do either. Instead, we maintain, the health sciences require a theory (...) of causality that unifies its mechanistic and probabilistic aspects. We argue that the epistemic theory of causality provides the required unification. (shrink)

I argue that the Holonomy Interpretation, at least as it has been presented in Richard Healey’s Gauging What’s Real, faces serious problems. These problems are revealed when certain approximations and idealizations that are innate in the original formulation of the Aharonov-Bohm effect are thrust aside; in particular, when the temporal dimension is taken into account. There are two ways in which time re-appears in the picture: by considering complete solutions to the original problem, where the magnetic flux is static, and (...) by examining the effects of time dependent magnetic fluxes. Both cases expose explanatory gaps in the Interpretation, as well as conflicts between it and customary ideas about relativistic locality and local action on which the Interpretation depends. (shrink)