This essay shows that some recent work by George Weaver can be reformulated in an especially perspicuous way within the theory of closure systems. Closure theoretic generalizations of some theorems of Robert Goldblatt are presented. And, more generally, the relation between closure systems and the deducibility relations of Goldblatt is explored.

It is well-known that feature structures can be fruitfully viewed as forming a Scott domain. Once a linguistically motivated notion of set value in feature structures is countenanced, however, this is no longer possible inasmuch as unification of set values in general fails to yield a unique result. In Pollard and Moshier 1990 it was shown that, while falling short of forming a Scott domain, the set of feature structures possibly containing set values satisfies the weaker condition of forming (...) a 2/3 SFP domain when equipped with an appropriate notion of subsumption: that is, for any finite setS of feature structures, there is a finite setM of minimal upper bounds ofS such that any upper bound ofS is approximated by a member ofM. Unfortunately, the 2/3 SFP domains are not as pleasant to work with as Scott domains since they are not closed under all the familiar domain constructions; and the question has remained open whether the feature structure domain satisfies the added condition of profiniteness. In this paper we resolve this question in the affirmative. (shrink)

Commiserating with Devastated Things: Milan Kundera and the Entitlement of ThinkingWIRTHJASON M.fordham university press. 2016. pp. 227227. £54.00..

POLLARD ARGUES THAT IN MY EARLIER ARTICLE, "TRUTH FROM\nFICTION?", I UNDERESTIMATE THE STRENGTH OF THE POSITION\nTHAT WORKS OF FICTION CONTAIN OR IMPLY THEIR "MORALS" OR\n"MESSAGES." I ARGUE THAT HIS PROPOSED METHOD FOR\nDETERMINING SUCH TRUTHS PRODUCES ONLY PROPOSITIONS WHICH\nCAN BE CLAIMED TO BE TRUE OF THE WORK, AND NOT PROPOSITIONS\nWHICH HAVE A CLAIM TO TRUTH ABOUT THE REAL WORLD. IN\nADDITION, HE HAS FALLEN INTO A DIFFICULTY I PREDICTED FOR\nHIS SORT OF POSITION: HE HAS TO DEFEND THE CREDIBILITY OF\nTHE AUTHOR AS (...) INFORMANT IN ORDER TO DEFEND THE COGNITIVE\nIMPORTANCE OF THE AUTHOR'S WORK OF FICTION. (shrink)

Book Reviewed in this article: Traditional Sayings in the Old Testament. By Carole R. Fontaine. Pp. viii, 279, Sheffield, The Almond Press, 1982, £17.95, £8.95. The First Day of the New Creation: The Resurrection and the Christian Faith. By Vesilin Keisch. Pp.206, Crestwood, New York, St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1982, £6.25. The First Day of the New Creation: The Resurrection and the Christian Faith. By Vesilin Keisch. Pp.206, Crestwood, New York, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1982, £6.25. The Resurrection of Jesus: (...) A Jewish Perspective. By Pinchas Lapide. Pp.160, London, SPCK, 1983, 4.95. Easter Enigma. By John Wenham. Pp.162, Exeter, Paternoster Press, 1984, £2.95. The Anastasis: the Resurrection of Jesus as an Historical Event. By J. Duncan M. Derrett. Pp.xiv, 166, Shipston‐on‐Stour, P. Drinkwater, 1982, £5.00. The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity. By Christopher Rowland. Pp. xii, 562, London, SPCK, 1982, £22.50. Christianity Rediscovered: An Epistle from the Masai. By Vincent J. Donovan. Pp. viii, 200, London, SCM Press, 1982, £5.50. Basics of a Roman Catholic Theology. By William A. Van Roo, S.J. Pp.387, Rome, Gregorian University Press, 1982, $21.00. Charisms and Charismatic Renewal: a Biblical and Theological Study. By Francis A. Sullivan. Pp.184, Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1982, £5.95. Holiness and Politics. By Peter Hinchliff. Pp.214, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982, £8.95. Rational Theology and the Creativity of God. By Keith Ward. Pp.240, Oxford, Blackwell, 1982, £14.00. The Point of Christology. By S.M. Ogden. Pp.xii, 193, London, SCM Press, 1982, £5.95. Fullness of Humanity: Christ's Humanness and Ours. By T.E. Pollard. Pp.126, Sheffield, The Almond Press, 1982, £9.95, £5.95. Milton's Good God: A Study in Literary Theodicy. By Dennis Richard Danielson. Pp.xi, 292, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £20.00. Biblical Tradition in Blake's Early Prophecies: The Great Code of Art. By Leslie Tannenbaum. Pp.xiii, 373, Princeton University Press, 1982, £17.60. The Inner Journey of the Poet and Other Papers. By Kathleen Raine, edited by Brian Keeble. Pp.xii, 208, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1982, £9.95.iVol. 34: Horayot and Niddah. Translated by Jacob Neusner. Pp.xiii, 243, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1982, £17.50. Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire A.D. 312–460. By Ed. Hunt. Pp. £+ 269, Oxford University Press, 1982, £16.50. Constantine versus Christ: The Triumph of Ideology. By Alistair Kee. Pp.186, London, SCM Press, 1982, £5.95. Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity. By Peter Brown. Pp.347, London, Faber and Faber, 1982, £10.50. Elishe: History of Vardan and the Armenian War. Translation and commentary by Robert W. Thomson. Pp.x, 353, 1 map, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1982, £21.00. Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe: Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes. Edited by Dorothy Whitelock, Rosamond McKitterick and David Dumville. Pp.x, 406, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £39.00. Letters from Ireland 1228–1229 by Stephen of Lexington. Translated with an introduction by B.W. O'Dwyer. Pp.vii, 292, Kalamazoo, Cistercian Publications, 1982, $24.95. The Occupation of Celtic Sites in Ireland by the Canons Regular of St Augustine and the Cistercians. By Geraldine Carville. Pp.ix, 158, Kalamazoo, Cistercian Publications, 1982, $13.95. Chartres: The Masons who built a Legend. By John James. Pp.200, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982, £17.50. Temples, Churches and Mosques: A Guide to the Appreciation of Religious Architecture. By J.G. Davies. Pp.x, 262, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982, £12.50. The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and their Myth. By Peter Partner. Pp.xxi, 209. Oxford University Press, 1982, £12.95. The Italian Crusades: The Papal‐Angevin Alliance and the Crusades Against Christian Lay Powers, 1254–1343. By Norman Housley. Pp.xi, 293, Oxford, Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1982, £17.50. The Westminster Chronicle, 1381–1394. Edited and Translated by L.C. Hector and Barbara F. Harvey. Pp.lxxvii, 563. Oxford, the Clarendon Press, 1982, £42.00. Frömmigkeitstheologie am Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts. By Berndt Hamm. Pp.xv, 378, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1982, 168 DM. Erasmi Opera omnia, IX, 2: Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Apologia respondens ad ea quae Iambus Lopis Stunica taxavrat in prima duntaxat Novi Testamenti aeditione. Edited by Henk Jan de Jonge. Pp.292, Amsterdam, North‐Holland Publishing Company, 1983, 280 guilders. The Christian Polity of John Calvin. By Harro Höpfl. Pp.x, 303, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £27.50. Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God. By John Calvin, translated with an Introduction by J.K.S. Reid. Pp.191, Cambridge, James Clarke & Co., 1982, £5.95. Spanish Protestants and Reformers in the Sixteenth Century: A Bibliography. By A. Gordon Kinder. Pp.108, London, Grant & Cutler, 1983, £6.80. Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church. By Peter Lake. Pp.viii, 357, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £27.50. Resistance and Compromise: The Political Thought of Elizabethan Catholics. By Peter Holmes. Pp.viii, 279, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £22.50. Dutch Puritanism: A History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. By Keith L. Sprunger. Pp.xiii, 485, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1982, 172 guilders. John Toland and the Deist Controversy. By Robert E. Sullivan. Pp.viii, 355, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1982, £19.95. Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England. By Stephen A. Marini. Pp. 213, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1982, £11.55. Religion and Society in North America: An Annotated Bibliography. Edited by Robert deV: Brunkow. Pp.xi, 515, Santa Barbara, ABC‐Clio; Oxford, EBC‐Clio, 1983, £57.75. Charles Lowder and the Ritualist Movement. By Lida Ellsworth. Pp.vi, 234, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982, £17.95. How the Pope became Infallible: Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion. By August Bernhard Hasler. Pp.xi, 383, New York, Doubleday, 1981, $14.95; London, Sheldon Pres, 1982, £15.00. Hauptsache der Papst ist katholisch. Edited by Bruno Nies. Pp.104, Salzburg, Otto Müller, 1982, öS 140. Religious Change in Contemporary Poland: Secularization and Politics. By Maciej Pomian‐Srednicki. Pp.227, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, £12.50. World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World. Edited by David B. Barrett. Pp.1010, Nairobi, Oxford University Press, 1982, £55.00. Probability and Evidence. By Paul Horwich. Pp.vii, 146, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £15.00. Philosophical Foundations of Probability Theory. By Roy Weatherford. Pp.xi, 282, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982, £15.00. The Origins of Greek Thought. By Jean‐Pierre Vernant. Pp.144, London, Methuen, 1982, £9.95. Portraying Analogy. By J.F. Ross. Pp.xi, 244, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £20.00. The Marriage of East and West. By Bede Griffiths. Pp.224, London, Collins, 1982, £5.95. The Religious Experience: A Socio‐Psychological Perspective. By C.D. Batson & W.L. Ventis Pp.ix, 356, New York, Oxford University Press, 1982, £18.50,£9.95. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the representation of negated sentences in Minimal Recursion Semantics (Copestake, Flickinger, Pollard, & Sag, 2005). We begin with its treatment in the English Resource Grammar (Flickinger, 2000, 2011), a broad-coverage implemented HPSG (Pollard & Sag, 1994), and argue that it is largely a suitable representation for English, despite possible objections. We then explore whether it is suitable for typologically different languages: namely, those that express sentential negation via inflection on the verb, particularly Turkish (...) and Inuktitut. We find that the interaction between negation and intersective modifiers requires a change to the way in which (at least) one of them contributes to semantic composition, and we argue for adapting the analysis of intersective modifiers. (shrink)

In a finitary closure space, irreducible sets behave like two-valued models, with membership playing the role of satisfaction. If f is a function on such a space and the membership of in an irreducible set is determined by the presence or absence of the inputs in that set, then f is a kind of truth function. The existence of some of these truth functions is enough to guarantee that every irreducible set is maximally consistent. The closure space is then said (...) to be expressive. This paper identifies the two-valued truth functional conditions that guarantee expressiveness. (shrink)

In the Autumn of 1955 a group of distinguished Christian thinkers met at Kent School in Connecticut for a seminar on the Christian idea of education. These papers and transcripts of their discussions restate something of the vision of what a general education could be in a Christian context.

Say that a property is topological if and only if it is invariant under homeomorphism. Homeomorphism would be a successful criterion for the equivalence of logical systems only if every logically significant property of every logical system were topological. Alas, homeomorphisms are sometimes insensitive to distinctions that logicians value: properties such as functional completeness are not topological. So logics are not just devices for exploring closure topologies. One still wonders, though, how much of logic is topological. This essay examines some (...) logically significant properties that are topological (or are topological in some important class). In the process, we learn something about the conditions under which the meaning of a connective can be "given by the connective's role in inference.". (shrink)

The expressive truth functions of two-valued logic have all been identified. This paper begins the task of identifying the expressive truth functions of n-valued logic by characterizing the unary ones. These functions have distinctive algebraic, semantic, and closure-theoretic properties.

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

BackgroundCurrent guidelines do not clearly outline when assent should be attained from paediatric research participants, nor do they detail the necessary elements of the assent process. This stems from the fact that the fundamental justification behind the concept of assent is misunderstood. In this paper, we critically assess three widespread ethical arguments used for assent: children’s rights, the best interests of the child, and respect for a child’s developing autonomy. We then outline a newly-developed two-fold justification for the assent process: (...) respect for the parent’s pedagogical role in teaching their child to become an autonomous being and respect for the child’s moral worth.DiscussionWe argue that the ethical grounding for the involvement of young children in medical decision-making does not stem from children’s rights, the principle of best interests, or respect for developing autonomy. An alternative strategy is to examine the original motivation to engage with the child. In paediatric settings there are two obligations on the researcher: an obligation to the parents who are responsible for determining when and under what circumstances the child develops his capacity for autonomy and reasoning, and an obligation to the child himself. There is an important distinction between respecting a decision and encouraging a decision. This paper illustrates that the process of assent is an important way in which respect for the child as an individual can be demonstrated, however, the value lies not in the child’s response but the fact that his views were solicited in the first place.SummaryThis paper demonstrates that the common justifications for the process of assent are incomplete. Assent should be understood as playing a pedagogical role for the child, helping to teach him how specific decisions are made and therefore helping him to become a better decision-maker. How the researcher engages with the child supports his obligation to the child’s parents, yet why the researcher engages with the child stems from the child’s moral worth. Treating a child as having moral worth need not mean doing what they say but it may mean listening, considering, engaging or involving them in the decision. (shrink)

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

Management and non-management employees of a northeastern bank read a description of a manager who engaged in a breach of confidentiality. Subjects were asked to evaluate the acceptability of 27 excuses. Results showed that subjects' ratings of acceptability were affected by their individual perception of the severity of the stimulus manager's breach of confidentiality. Subjects' rank did not affect acceptability of accounts.

Contingency is the presence of non-actualized possibility in the world. Fatalism is a view of reality on which there is no contingency. Since it is contingency that permits agency, there has traditionally been much interest in contingency. This interest has long been embarrassed by the contention that simple and plausible assumptions about the world lead to fatalism. I begin with an Aristotelian argument as presented by Richard Taylor. Appreciation of this argument has been stultified by a question pertaining to the (...) source of necessity and possibility and a closely related one regarding the nature of metaphysics itself. Answering these questions reveals the crucial issue here, to wit, necessity and possibility in a temporal world. This issue is investigated through an important later criticism of Taylor by David Foster Wallace. Wallace’s critique is significant because it brings to the fore the pivotal notion for understanding contingency in a temporal world, that of synchronic possibility, the idea that incompatible states of affairs are possible at a single moment. This notion provides the basis of distinguishing two systematic accounts of truth, modality and time: two metaphysics of contingency. On one account, Taylor’s Aristotelian argument is straightforwardly valid and compelling; on the other, it is fallacious. In closing, I present reasons why the former account, supporting the Aristotelian views of time and truth, is correct and make some comments to ameliorate this conclusion. (shrink)

The importance of graduating ethical health professionals is indisputable. Yet evaluating the quality of ethics education programs remains problematic for educators. A divide between learning and integrating ethics in everyday professional practice lies at the heart of this issue. The Ethics in Professional Practice (EPP) project addresses health professions' students’ self-efficacy for ethical practice. Students are cast as central characters in authentic vignettes and complete guided learning activities to facilitate their ethical reasoning skills. A design-based research approach was utilised to (...) create EPP resources and this study focuses on the analysis phase of the design process. The aim was to investigate EPP learning outcomes by developing innovative measures based upon Kirkpatrick’s ( 2006 ) evaluation model: namely, reaction, learning, behaviour and effects. Health professions students from Exercise and Sports Science, Rehabilitation Counselling and Speech Pathology (n = 58) participated in the EPP. Qualitative content analysis of reflective statements demonstrated their ethical sensitivity in four categories: Expectations and Empathy in Quality Care; Managing Overwhelming Demands; Informed, Engaged and Empowered; Access to Flexible Models of Service Delivery. Findings from the Rehabilitation Counselling cohort (n = 16) were explored in-depth using Semantic Differential Scales and demonstrated positive ethical reasoning outcomes. Participants also developed individual, ethical practice goals for professional practica. Qualitative content analysis of these goals demonstrated clear ethical reasoning learning effects. Participants integrated concepts of becoming an ethical professional with effective communication, collaboration, empowerment and quality care. Study outcome measures are critiqued and findings may inform redesign of future ethics education resources. (shrink)