Meta-programs, which treat other computer programs as data, include compilers, editors, simulators, debuggers, and program transformers. Because of the wide ranging applications, meta-programming has become a subject of considerable practical and theoretical interest. This book provides the first comprehensive view of topics in the theory and application of meta-programming, covering problems of representation and of soundness and correctness of interpreters, analysis and evaluation of meta-logic programs, and applications to sophisticated knowledge-based systems.Harvey Abramson is Reader in Computer Science at the (...) University of Bristol, England; M. H. Rogers is Professor of Computer Science, also at the University of Bristol. Meta-Programming in Logic Programming is in the series Logic Programming Research Reports and Notes, edited by Ehud Shapiro. (shrink)

For T any completion of Peano Arithmetic and for n any positive integer, there is a model of T of size $\beth_n$ with no (n + 1)-length sequence of indiscernibles. Hence the Hanf number for omitting types over T, H(T), is at least $\beth_\omega$ . (Now, using an upper bound previously obtained by Julia Knight H (true arithmetic) is exactly $\beth_\omega$ ). If T ≠ true arithmetic, then $H(T) = \beth_{\omega1}$ . If $\delta \not\rightarrow (\rho)^{ , then any completion of (...) Peano Arithmetic has a model of size δ with no set of indiscernibles of size ρ. There are similar results for theories strongly resembling Peano Arithmetic, e.g., ZF + V = L. (shrink)

Probably to most students of Moral Philosophy there comes a time when they feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction with the whole subject. And the sense of dissatisfaction tends to grow rather than to diminish. It is not so much that the positions, and still more the arguments, of particular thinkers seem unconvincing, though this is true. It is rather that the aim of the subject becomes increasingly obscure. "What," it is asked, "are we really going to learn by Moral (...) Philosophy?" "What are books on Moral Philosophy really trying to show, and when their aim is clear, why are they so unconvincing and artificial?" And again: "Why is it so difficult to substitute anything better?" Personally, I have been led by growing dissatisfaction of this kind to wonder whether the reason may not be that the subject, at any rate as usually understood, consists in the attempt to answer an improper question. And in this article, I shall venture to contend that the existence of the whole subject, as usually understood, rests on a mistake, and on a mistake parallel to that on which rests, as I think, the subject usually called the Theory of Knowledge. (shrink)

THIS paper seeks to elucidate the phenomenon known in psychology as 'the specious present,' by postulating a two-dimensional theory of the extensional aspects of time. On this theory, the usual logical and psychological difficulties, encountered in current accounts of this phenomenon, can be resolved. For, when there are two dimensions of time, the same event may be without extension in one of these dimensions ('transition-time'), while it is nevertheless finitely extended in the other of these dimensions ('phase-time'); so that in (...) a definable sense the phases of a finitely enduring event, though successive in one time-order, yet are contemporary in the other. The epistemological standpoint implicit in the paper is generally similar to the one Bertrand Russell has put forward, in his Physics and Experience (Cambridge, 1946), and his Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (London, 1948) (allowing for the changes which would be required in Russell's theory to take into account a second time dimension). A 'psycho-neural parallelism,' or one-one correspondence, is postulated between features of certain 'experiential events' (namely, those experiential events normally held to be happening to some person's mind, which are describable in the language of psychology); and features of certain 'physical events' (namely, those events described in the language of physics, chemistry and physiology, which are ordinarily conceived as happenings in that same person's body). These physical events are conceived of as being causally connected with events in the physical world outside the experient's body, by means of the concepts of light waves, sound waves, chemical stimuli, and consequential processes in the nervous system (central and peripheral) and sense-organs, in the usual way. In terms of this psycho-neural parallelism the physical correlate of the finite temporal span of the specious, or experiential present, is to be found in certain consequences of the uncertainty principle in quantum physics; according to which there is a finite interval of time necessarily associated with a nearly precise determination of energy levels, and of transitions between them. Some of the physical implications of this theory, applied to processes in the material structure of the human body, are discussed qualitatively. But, for the reasons given in the last section of the paper, a quantitative treatment is not yet possible. The paper is greatly indebted in regard to the physical application of the two-dimensional theory of time, to the discussion of the pentadic group structure in Eddington's Fundamental Theory (Cambridge, 1946 and 1950); and in particular to the treatment there of the phase-variable as the 'time-analogue' in the quantum statistics of stationary states. (shrink)

A promise to do some action seems to create a binding obligation to do that action. And yet, paradoxically, an obligation seems not to be a fact that we can create or bring into existence; we can create an obligation only by creating or bringing into existence something else. The only way to avoid the paradox is to show that the act of promising creates something other than an obligation, which nonetheless binds us to perform the action in question. After (...) considering and rejecting various options such as the promisee's expectation and the promisor's resolve, Prichard locates the bindingness of a promise in a prior general promise, which allows the noises we make when promising to generate an obligation to perform the promised action. (shrink)

This note is in answer to some criticisms by professor mundle of dobb's work on the above topic. he first presents a general argument, relevant to those criticisms, regarding the physical significance of the fifth dimension. (staff).

On Sikh ethics; includes brief biographies of Sikh religious leaders.