The product of a Kickstarter fundraising campaign, "Clear and Present Thinking" is a college-level textbook in logic and critical thinking. Chapters: 1. Questions, Problems, and World Views 2. Good and Bad Thinking Habits 3. Basics of Argumentation 4. Fallacies 5. Reasonable Doubt 6. Moral Reasoning In an effort to reduce the cost of education for students, this textbook was funded by over 700 people through the Kickstarter online crowd-funding platform.

The institutionalization of History and Philosophy of Science as a distinct field of scholarly endeavour began comparatively earl- though not always under that name - in the Australasian region. An initial lecturing appointment was made at the University of Melbourne immediately after the Second World War, in 1946, and other appoint ments followed as the subject underwent an expansion during the 1950s and 1960s similar to that which took place in other parts of the world. Today there are major Departments (...) at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong, and smaller groups active in many other parts of Australia and in New Zealand. "Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science" aims to provide a distinctive publication outlet for Australian and New Zealand scholars working in the general area of history, philosophy and social studies of science. Each volume comprises a group of essays on a connected theme, edited by an Australian or a New Zealander with special expertise in that particular area. Papers address general issues, however, rather than local ones; parochial topics are avoided. Further more, though in each volume a majority of the contributors is from Australia or New Zealand, contributions from elsewhere are by no means ruled out. Quite the reverse, in fact - they are actively encour aged wherever appropriate to the balance of the volume in question. (shrink)

In this paper we study the notion of forcing for Łukasiewicz predicate logic (Ł∀, for short), along the lines of Robinson’s forcing in classical model theory. We deal with both finite and infinite forcing. As regard to the former we prove a Generic Model Theorem for Ł∀, while for the latter, we study the generic and existentially complete standard models of Ł∀.

In this paper we prove that the category of abelian l-groups is equivalent to the category of perfect MV-algebras. Furthermore, we give a finite equational axiomatization of the variety generated by perfect MV-algebras.

This is a survey of theories of scientific method which opens the book "After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method".

The idea of family resemblance, when applied to science, can provide a powerful account of the nature of science (NOS). In this chapter we develop such an account by taking into consideration the consensus on NOS that emerged in the science education literature in the last decade or so. According to the family resemblance approach, the nature of science can be systematically and comprehensively characterised in terms of a number of science categories which exhibit strong similarities and overlaps amongst diverse (...) scientific disciplines. We then discuss the virtues of this approach and make some suggestions as to how one can go about teaching it in the classroom. (shrink)

Research is crucial to advancing knowledge about dementia, yet the burden of the disease currently outpaces research activity. Research often excludes people with dementia and other cognitive impairments because researchers and ethics committees are concerned about issues related to capacity, consent, and substitute decision-making. In Australia, participation in research by people with cognitive impairment is governed by a national ethics statement and a patchwork of state and territorial laws that have widely varying rules. We contend that this legislative variation precludes (...) a consistent approach to research governance and participation and hinders research that seeks to include people with impaired capacity. In this paper, we present key ethical principles, provide a comprehensive review of applicable legal rules in Australian states and territories, and highlight significant differences and ambiguities. Our analysis includes recommendations for reform to improve clarity and consistency in the law and reduce barriers that may exclude persons with dementia from participating in ethically approved research. Our recommendations seek to advance the national decision-making principles recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission, which emphasize the rights of all adults to make their own decisions and for those with impaired capacity to have access to appropriate supports to help them make decisions that affect their lives. (shrink)

Many philosophical naturalists eschew analysis in favor of discovering metaphysical truths from the a posteriori, contending that analysis does not lead to philosophical insight. A countercurrent to this approach seeks to reconcile a certain account of conceptual analysis with philosophical naturalism; prominent and influential proponents of this methodology include the late David Lewis, Frank Jackson, Michael Smith, Philip Pettit, and David Armstrong. Naturalistic analysis is a tool for locating in the scientifically given world objects and properties we quantify over in (...) everyday discourse. This collection gathers work from a range of prominent philosophers who are working within this tradition, offering important new work as well as critical evaluations of the methodology. Its centerpiece is an important posthumous paper by David Lewis, "Ramseyan Humility," published here for the first time. The contributors first address issues of philosophy of mind, semantics, and the new methodology's a priori character, then turn to matters of metaphysics, and finally consider problems regarding normativity. Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism is one of the first efforts to apply this approach to such a wide range of philosophical issues. _Contributors: _David Braddon-Mitchell, Mark Colyvan, Frank Jackson, Justine Kingsbury, Fred Kroon, David Lewis, Dustin Locke, Kelby Mason, Jonathan McKeown-Green, Peter Menzies, Robert Nola, Daniel Nolan, Philip Pettit, Huw Price, Denis Robinson, Steve Stich, Daniel Stoljar The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

For the performer, a career in the circus often brings with it a nomadic, lonely life. These photographs capture beautiful and unusual images of circus girls, photographs which evoke this sense of darkness and resignation that underlies the otherworldly feats they perform under the big top.

People with dementia have commonly been excluded from research. The adverse impacts of this exclusion are now being recognized and research literature, position statements, and ethics guidelines increasingly call for inclusion of people with dementia in research. However, few published studies investigate the views of potential participants on taking part in research should they experience dementia-related cognitive impairment. This cross-sectional survey examined the views of people aged sixty and older attending hospital outpatient clinics about clinical research participation if they had (...) dementia and impaired decision-making ability. Over 90 percent of respondents were agreeable to participating in a wide range of research activities, such as cognitive testing, physical measurements, imaging procedures, and blood draws. For drug studies, however, agreement dropped to 60 percent. Altruism was a strong motivator for research participation. In regard to who should be involved in decisions about their participation in research during periods of incapacity, respondents mostly preferred the person they appoint as their substitute decision-maker for healthcare matters or a doctor or health professional on the research team. Over three-quarters expressed interest in making an advance research directive. The study findings are discussed in relation to law reforms in Australia that aim to strengthen respect and inclusion for people with impaired decision-making capacity, especially by providing frameworks for advance planning for research participation. (shrink)

We define and study monadic MV-algebras as pairs of MV-algebras one of which is a special case of relatively complete subalgebra named m-relatively complete. An m-relatively complete subalgebra determines a unique monadic operator. A necessary and sufficient condition is given for a subalgebra to be m-relatively complete. A description of the free cyclic monadic MV-algebra is also given.

In this paper we prove that the category of abelianl-groups is equivalent to the category of perfect MV-algebras. Furthermore, we give a finite equational axiomatization of the variety generated by perfect MV-algebras.

What is it to be scientific? Is there such a thing as scientific method? And if so, how might such methods be justified? Robert Nola and Howard Sankey seek to provide answers to these fundamental questions in their exploration of the major recent theories of scientific method. Although for many scientists their understanding of method is something they just pick up in the course of being trained, Nola and Sankey argue that it is possible to be explicit about (...) what this tacit understanding of method is, rather than leave it as some unfathomable mystery. They robustly defend the idea that there is such a thing as scientific method and show how this might be legitimated. This book begins with the question of what methodology might mean and explores the notions of values, rules and principles, before investigating how methodologists have sought to show that our scientific methods are rational. Part 2 of this book sets out some principles of inductive method and examines its alternatives including abduction, IBE, and hypothetico-deductivism. Part 3 introduces probabilistic modes of reasoning, particularly Bayesianism in its various guises, and shows how it is able to give an account of many of the values and rules of method. Part 4 considers the ideas of philosophers who have proposed distinctive theories of method such as Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend and Part 5 continues this theme by considering philosophers who have proposed naturalised theories of method such as Quine, Laudan and Rescher. This book offers readers a comprehensive introduction to the idea of scientific method and a wide-ranging discussion of how historians of science, philosophers of science and scientists have grappled with the question over the last fifty years. (shrink)

In this paper we first provide a new axiomatization of algebraically closed MV-algebras based on McNaughtonʼs Theorem. Then we turn to sheaves, and we represent algebraically closed MV-algebras as algebras of global sections of sheaves, where the stalks are divisible MV-chains and the base space is Stonean.

We present a stronger variation of state MV-algebras, recently presented by T. Flaminio and F. Montagna, which we call state-morphism MV-algebras. Such structures are MV-algebras with an internal notion, a state-morphism operator. We describe the categorical equivalences of such state MV-algebras with the category of unital Abelian ℓ-groups with a fixed state operator and present their basic properties. In addition, in contrast to state MV-algebras, we are able to describe all subdirectly irreducible state-morphism MV-algebras.

The MV-algebra S m w is obtained from the (m+1)-valued ukasiewicz chain by adding infinitesimals, in the same way as Chang's algebra is obtained from the two-valued chain. These algebras were introduced by Komori in his study of varieties of MV-algebras. In this paper we describe the finitely generated totally ordered algebras in the variety MV m w generated by S m w . This yields an easy description of the free MV m w -algebras over one generator. We characterize (...) the automorphism groups of the free MV-algebras over finitely many generators. (shrink)

In this paper we give a representation of the free MV-algebra over one generator as a structure of functions having finite domain.

We prove that the m -generated free MV-algebra is isomorphic to a quotient of the disjoint union of all the m -generated free MV-algebras. Such a quotient can be seen as the direct limit of a system consisting of all free MV-algebras and special maps between them as morphisms.

ABSTRACTElder abuse is a serious and under-detected problem. Law reform agencies and legal profession regulatory authorities have called for action to ensure that lawyers meet their ethical obligations to older clients, including identifying and acting on risk factors for abuse. Screening tools to detect situations of elder abuse exist, but they are targeted mainly at health and social care practitioners. Drawing on international literature, this article identifies and discusses screening tools that could be adapted for use by legal professionals. Three (...) general categories of screening are relevant for lawyers who serve older clients: elder abuse screening tools that cover all domains of abuse or target specific behaviours, such as financial exploitation; screening for decision-making capacity, especially taking account of the impact of abuse or neglect on capacity; and screening to probe the suitability of a person to act in a formal decision-making role for an older person. The article emphas... (shrink)

In this paper we define sheaf spaces of BL-algebras (or BL-sheaf spaces), we study completely regular and compact BL-sheaf spaces and compact representations of BL-algebras and, finally, we prove that the category of non-trivial BL-algebras is equivalent with the category of compact local BL-sheaf spaces.

David Bloor has advocated a bold hypothesis about the form any sociology of science should take in setting out the four central tenets of his ?strong programme? (SP). The first section of this paper discusses how three of these tenets are best formulated and how they relate to one another. The second section discusses how reasons can be causes of belief and how such reasons raise a serious difficulty for SP. The third section discusses how SP is committed to a (...) form of relativism about truth. The fourth section discusses how one might deal with the problem of SP applying both to itself and to other sociological theories. In addition there is, throughout, a discussion of how rules of inference, methodologies, and philosophical doctrines either apply to SP or are exempt from applying. It is argued that SP must be a severely limited doctrine impotent to make evaluative claims about the worth of any theory, including itself. (shrink)

Kripke and Putnam have proposed that terms may be introduced to refer to theoretical entities by means of causal descriptions such as 'whatever causes observable effects O'. It is argued that such a reference-fixing definition is ill-formed and that theoretical beliefs must be involved in fixing the reference of a theoretical term. Some examples of reference-fixing are discussed e.g., the term 'electricity'. The Kripke-Putnam theory can not give an account of how terms may be introduced into science and then subsequently (...) be discovered to be non-referring. A modified account of reference-fixing is suggested in which terms such as Gilbert's electric effluvia' and 'phlogiston' can be introduced into science and then be found to lack a reference. (shrink)

BL-algebras are the Lindenbaum algebras for Hájek's Basic Logic, just as Boolean algebras correspond to the classical propositional calculus. The finite totally ordered BL-algebras are ordinal sums of MV-chains. We develop a natural duality, in the sense of Davey and Werner, for each subvariety generated by a finite BL-chain, and we use it to describe the injective and the weak injective members of these classes.

In this paper we study and equationally characterize the subvarieties of BL, the variety of BL-algebras, which are generated by families of single-component BL-chains, i.e. MV-chains, Product-chain or Gödel-chains. Moreover, it is proved that they form a segment of the lattice of subvarieties of BL which is bounded by the Boolean variety and the variety generated by all single-component chains, called ŁΠG.

In this paper we study the set of MV-algebras with given prime spectrum and we introduce the class of spectral MV-algebras. An MV-algebra is spectral if it is generated by the union of all its prime ideals (or proper ideals, or principal ideals, or maximal ideals). Among spectral MV-algebras, special attention is devoted to bipartite MV-algebras. An MV-algebra is bipartite if it admits an homomorphism onto the MV-algebra of two elements. We prove that both bipartite MV-algebras and spectral MV-algebras can (...) be finitely axiomatized in first order logic. We also prove that there is only, up to isomorphism, a set of MV-algebras with given prime spectrum. A further part of the paper is devoted to some relations between bipartite MV-algebras and their states. Recall that a state on an MV-algebra is a generalization of a probability measure on a Boolean algebra. Particular states are the states with Bayes’ property. We show that an MV-algebra admits a state with the Bayes’ property if and only if it is bipartite. (shrink)

Robert Nola contrasts naturalistic with supernaturalistic explanations of religious belief. He argues that there are two broad rival explanations for religious belief. The first, the common “folk” or religious explanation, is supernaturalistic in that it invokes a deity as a central casual factor in the etiology of people’s belief in the existence of God. The second is naturalistic in that it eschews any appeal to a deity in the explanation of a person’s belief in God and instead invokes only (...) naturalistic factors in the casual etiology of such beliefs. In his paper, he addresses two questions. The first question is how well-supported by the evidence these naturalistic theories are. The second question to how we might compare some naturalistic explanation with a non-naturalistic “folk” explanation. One way in which naturalistic and non-naturalistic theories can be compared with one another is much the same way as one might compare rival theories in science. Here a number of criteria can be invoked, such as ontological parsimony and evidential strength. On criteria such as these, Nola argues that naturalistic explanations of religious belief have the edge over non-naturalistic “folk’ explanations. Once this is granted it can be seen why many in the history of philosophy have claimed that naturalistic explanations of religious belief lead to the debunking of religion; religious “folk” theories have the wrong causal etiology for religious belief in the existence of a deity. (shrink)

Varieties of structuralism Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9557-x Authors Robert Nola, Department of Philosophy, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland Mail Centre, Auckland, 1142 New Zealand Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Some think that issues to do with scientific method are last century's stale debate; Popper was an advocate of methodology, but Kuhn, Feyerabend, and others are alleged to have brought the debate about its status to an end. The papers in this volume show that issues in methodology are still very much alive. Some of the papers reinvestigate issues in the debate over methodology, while others set out new ways in which the debate has developed in the last decade. The (...) book will be of interest to philosophers and scientists alike in the reassessment it provides of earlier debates about method and current directions of research. (shrink)

Summary In several places Popper describes a little experiment in which an audience is given the non-specific command ‚Observe!‘ He draws a number of conclusions from this experiment, in particular that observation takes place in the presence of theoretical problems, questions, hypotheses or points of view. The paper argues that while Popper's experiment is instructive, it hardly supports the strong conclusions he draws about the theory-dominance of observation in science. In particular, it is argued that talk of principles of selection (...) which guide us to relevant observations, rather than the host of irrelevant observations of the naive inductivist, is misleading. Rather, it is the goals, aims, motives or interests of an observer that guide observation and these need not always involve a theoretical component. (shrink)

SummaryThe view that observations in science are theory‐laden is critically evaluated in this paper. A number of theses are distinguished concerning the alleged theory‐ladenness of claims of the form ‘P observes X’ and ‘P observes that X is A’ that derive from some remarks of Hanson; each thesis is shown to be untenable. However a modicum of theory‐ladenness is supported in the claim that some observation‐that reports depend for their truth on other claims which in turn depend for their truth (...) on a piece of scientific theory. (shrink)

What does the nominalization ‘The Enlightenment’ refer to? Sometimes it is used merely to name a period of time in European history. Sometimes it is use to refer to a movement or a process. Again, it is used to refer to some body of doctrine. On other occasions, it is used to refer to people who advanced such bodies of doctrine. Contexts of use may not be sufficient to determine the referent of ‘The Enlightenment’. Such a nominalization is to be (...) contrasted with the use of the adjective ‘enlightened’ to name some property of a person. This paper attempts to say what this property is and show how it underpins an epidemiology of being enlightenedEnlightenment, thebeing enlightenedEnlightenment, theepidemiology of being enlightened, that is, an account of the distribution of enlightened as opposed to unenlightened people in a given society at a given time. This gives the kernel of truth that the nominalization ‘The Enlightenment’ obscures. It also helps show that some recent criticisms of “The Enlightenment” fall quite short of their mark. (shrink)

This is a collection of 23 papers plus an Introduction in a book which revives an old issue that some have declared to be long dead, viz., whether there is any way of demarcating science from other endeavors, but most importantly pseudoscience. This is a timely book that is well worth consulting since it breathes life back into an important problem. There is something in it for all, as the six parts into which it is divided indicate: “What’s the problem (...) with the demarcation problem?”; “History and sociology of pseudoscience”; “The borderlands between science and pseudoscience”; “Science and the supernatural”; “True believers and their tactics”; and “The cognitive roots of pseudoscience.” No short review can hope to cover all the papers, so this is a selective response to chapters largely from the first part with a few forays elsewhere.Though many of the authors in this volume claim that scientists, and others, can allegedly discern individual cases of pseudoscience, they admit that it .. (shrink)

We present a uniform version of Di Nola Theorem, this enables to embed all MV-algebras of a bounded cardinality in an algebra of functions with values in a single non-standard ultrapower of the real interval [0,1]. This result also implies the existence, for any cardinal α, of a single MV-algebra in which all infinite MV-algebras of cardinality at most α embed. Recasting the above construction with iterated ultrapowers, we show how to construct such an algebra of values in a (...) definable way, thus providing a sort of “canonical” set of values for the functional representation. (shrink)