This chapter summarises the results of the Krajina Project, which was established in 1998 to investigate the archaeological remains, material culture and continuing ethnographic legacy of this distinctive late medieval/early modern frontier society. The project has focused on an area in the north-west corner of Bosnia-Herzegovina, between Kladuŝa and Bihać, known as the Bihaćka Krajina. This was one of the last districts in the region to be conquered by the Ottoman state, not falling to the sultan's forces until the late (...) sixteenth century — a territorial high water mark. The ethnographic evidence provides significant insights into the continuing legacy of the Ottoman-Hapsburg frontier in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (shrink)

This study reconstructs the relationship between philosophy and politics in the way in which Heidegger's failure as a politician influenced the redevelopment of philosophy in the 1930s. The author also explains how Heidegger's failure influenced the content and direction of his later work.

From the desire to find support and confirmation for our personal sensory observations, and from the human interest in sharing our experiences with others, there emerges a basic principle of scientific method: We demand the possibility of intelligible communication and agreement concerning individuals' sensory perceptions in particular and their experiences in general. This requirement is made both for the natural and social sciences. The raw material offered for logical organization must be capable of exhibiting an inter-subjective character—such material, or protocols, (...) must be acceptable in common to all concerned. And it must be acceptable for logical organization or systematization in some science. (shrink)

In the Bayesian approach to quantum mechanics, probabilities—and thus quantum states—represent an agent’s degrees of belief, rather than corresponding to objective properties of physical systems. In this paper we investigate the concept of certainty in quantum mechanics. Particularly, we show how the probability-1 predictions derived from pure quantum states highlight a fundamental difference between our Bayesian approach, on the one hand, and Copenhagen and similar interpretations on the other. We first review the main arguments for the general claim that probabilities (...) always represent degrees of belief. We then argue that a quantum state prepared by some physical device always depends on an agent’s prior beliefs, implying that the probability-1 predictions derived from that state also depend on the agent’s prior beliefs. Quantum certainty is therefore always some agent’s certainty. Conversely, if facts about an experimental setup could imply agent-independent certainty for a measurement outcome, as in many Copenhagen-like interpretations, that outcome would effectively correspond to a preexisting system property. The idea that measurement outcomes occurring with certainty correspond to preexisting system properties is, however, in conflict with locality. We emphasize this by giving a version of an argument of Stairs [(1983). Quantum logic, realism, and value-definiteness. Philosophy of Science, 50, 578], which applies the Kochen–Specker theorem to an entangled bipartite system. (shrink)

Logic has pride of place in mathematics and its 20th century offshoot, computer science. Modern symbolic logic was developed, in part, as a way to provide a formal framework for mathematics: Frege, Peano, Whitehead and Russell, as well as Hilbert developed systems of logic to formalize mathematics. These systems were meant to serve either as themselves foundational, or at least as formal analogs of mathematical reasoning amenable to mathematical study, e.g., in Hilbert’s consistency program. Similar efforts continue, but have been (...) expanded by the development of sophisticated methods to study the properties of such systems using proof and model theory. In parallel with this evolution of logical formalisms as tools for articulating mathematical theories (broadly speaking), much progress has been made in the quest for a mechanization of logical inference and the investigation of its theoretical limits, culminating recently in the development of new foundational frameworks for mathematics with sophisticated computer-assisted proof systems. In addition, logical formalisms developed by logicians in mathematical and philosophical contexts have proved immensely useful in describing theories and systems of interest to computer scientists, and to some degree, vice versa. Three examples of the influence of logic in computer science are automated reasoning, computer verification, and type systems for programming languages. (shrink)

Studies the politics of Heidegger in terms of "thrownness" or "existential contingency". Attempts to think through Heidegger's philosophy in a manner that parallels his own dialogue with other key western thinkers.

The proof theory of many-valued systems has not been investigated to an extent comparable to the work done on axiomatizatbility of many-valued logics. Proof theory requires appropriate formalisms, such as sequent calculus, natural deduction, and tableaux for classical (and intuitionistic) logic. One particular method for systematically obtaining calculi for all finite-valued logics was invented independently by several researchers, with slight variations in design and presentation. The main aim of this report is to develop the proof theory of finite-valued first order (...) logics in a general way, and to present some of the more important results in this area. In Systems covered are the resolution calculus, sequent calculus, tableaux, and natural deduction. This report is actually a template, from which all results can be specialized to particular logics. (shrink)

(2013). Disrespectful Care in the Treatment of Sickle Cell Disease Requires More Than Ethics Consultation. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 12-14. doi: 10.1080/15265161.2013.768857.

Despite their differences in origin, the three influential schools of twentieth-century continental cultural criticism--the Frankfurt School, existentialism, and poststructuralism--have long been treated as an ensemble and with critical hesitancy. Examining these schools as responses to the apparent collapse of Western civilization in the twentieth-century and as formidable intellectual challenges to the cultural legacies of the Enlightenment, this book provides a productive base for criticism and broadens our understanding of their histories and reception.

We prove a Gleason-type theorem for the quantum probability rule using frame functions defined on positive-operator-valued measures, as opposed to the restricted class of orthogonal projection-valued measures used in the original theorem. The advantage of this method is that it works for two-dimensional quantum systems and even for vector spaces over rational fields—settings where the standard theorem fails. Furthermore, unlike the method necessary for proving the original result, the present one is rather elementary. In the case of a qubit, we (...) investigate similar results for frame functions defined upon various restricted classes of POVMs. For the so-called trine measurements, the standard quantum probability rule is again recovered. (shrink)

The Curry-Howard isomorphism is a proof-theoretic result that establishes a connection between derivations in natural deduction and terms in typed lambda calculus. It is an important proof-theoretic result, but also underlies the development of type systems for programming languages. This fact suggests a potential importance of the result for a philosophy of code.

This article shows how descriptive imagery can be used to hijack evolved psychological instincts and prejudice the judgment of others, particularly in the legal and political domains. By mimicking the cues that represented threats to our ancestors, those wishing to color the perception of others can subtly trigger the affective responses that evolved to help navigate ancestral threats. When this happens, logic may be unseated in favor of deep-seated instinctual responses, often to a problematic degree. In this way, lawyers, politicians, (...) and activists, taking a page out of the playbook of novelists and other storytellers, can weaponize words, images, descriptions, and narratives to, often improperly, sway the opinions of others. (shrink)

Research is increasingly suggesting that human intuitions form the core of many laws. Laws, therefore, can serve as one potential testing ground for new theories about the content and structure of intuitions. Here the model of ownership psychology as an evolved cognitive adaptation is evaluated against long-standing features of property law.

This classic, provocative introduction to classical metaphysical questions focuses on appreciating the problems, rather than attempting to proffer answers.

Textbook on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and computability theory, based on the Open Logic Project. Covers recursive function theory, arithmetization of syntax, the first and second incompleteness theorem, models of arithmetic, second-order logic, and the lambda calculus.

It is true that Hegelian historicism has indeed led to a dominant ethos of moral relativism bound up with the belief that individual self-actualization is the highest value, thus creating a society that is, in the phrase of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. “after God.” Nevertheless, this egocentric and nihilistic relativism exists alongside a robust and militant moral totalitarianism enforced by the modern clerisy of the media, multi-national corporations, and government bureaucrats, that is, a “managerial elite.” This article argues that the (...) transcendental idealism of Kant and the subsequent historicization of Kant’s dialectic by Hegel has served to reconceptualize the older, Baconian view of science, creating the idea that scientific progress is moving toward the goal of a future perfection of absolute rational unity. The a priori rational structure of reality that makes science possible is not a Platonic Ideal, but something that unfolds within history. This is what allowed Marx to conceive of dialectical materialism as a science, and this is what allows the managerial elite of the present to claim a scientific and objective basis for their programs while at the same time using the tools of historical and cultural criticism to relativize and historicize the claims of all competing moral and social “constructs.”. (shrink)

Having visited Ireland regularly during the 1930s, Ludwig Wittgenstein resigned his Cambridge philosophy professorship in 1947 and moved there, living in a fishing village on the Atlantic coast and hotels in Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains. Although Wittgenstein spent some time out of the country, Ireland was effectively his base for three very productive years during which he worked on what would become one of his key books, the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein in Ireland represents the first sustained account (...) of Wittgenstein's time in Ireland, placing it in its historical context. Wall pays a good deal of attention to the representation of the Irish landscape in which the Austrian philosopher found himself able to work; a large part of his writings were produced in the bleak landscapes of Ireland and Norway. (shrink)