We give some lectures on the work on formal logic of Jacques Herbrand, and sketch his life and his influence on automated theorem proving. The intended audience ranges from students interested in logic over historians to logicians. Besides the well-known correction of Herbrand’s False Lemma by Goedel and Dreben, we also present the hardly known unpublished correction of Heijenoort and its consequences on Herbrand’s Modus Ponens Elimination. Besides Herbrand’s Fundamental Theorem and its relation to the Loewenheim-Skolem-Theorem, we carefully investigate Herbrand’s (...) notion of intuitionism in connection with his notion of falsehood in an infinite domain. We sketch Herbrand’s two proofs of the consistency of arithmetic and his notion of a recursive function, and last but not least, present the correct original text of his unification algorithm with a new translation. (shrink)

Using Heijenoort’s unpublished generalized rules of quantification, we discuss the proof of Herbrand’s Fundamental Theorem in the form of Heijenoort’s correction of Herbrand’s “False Lemma” and present a didactic example. Although we are mainly concerned with the inner structure of Herbrand’s Fundamental Theorem and the questions of its quality and its depth, we also discuss the outer questions of its historical context and why Bernays called it “the central theorem of predicate logic” and considered the form of its expression to (...) be “concise and felicitous”. (shrink)

Building on the insights of Capital I, and dispatching common liberal misunderstandings of those insights, Claus Peter Ortlieb makes the case for what mainstream economists euphemistically call “secular stagnation”: that is, an economic crisis that cannot be resolved by economic means.

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 91 Heft: 1 Seiten: 1-5.

Der Beitrag von Claus Pias geht von zwei Beobachtungen aus: einem Zurücktreten des Medienbegriffs innerhalb medienwissenschaftlicher Forschung und eines Desinteresses sogenannter ›Digitalisierung‹ ihr gegenüber. Er untersucht, inwiefern Medientheorie (von McLuhan und Kittler bis zu den sogenannten Digital Humanities) durch einen starken Medienbegriff an der Herausbildung von Zeitsemantiken und Narrativen von ›Digitalisierung‹ beteiligt war und von ihnen profitiert hat. Als Konsequenz fordert Pias zu medienwissenschaftlicher Grundlagenforschung auf, die mit einer strategischen Revision und Aktualisierung von ›Medien‹ als Begriff und Gegenstand einhergeht. (...) Der Beitrag von Kathrin Peters stimmt mit dieser Lagebeschreibung nur teilweise überein. Die Skepsis gegenüber den Zukunfts- und Dringlichkeitsrhetoriken gegenwärtiger Digitalisierungsoffensiven wird von ihr geteilt, dass allerdings vor allem eine Medienwissenschaft des ›medientechnischen a priori‹ eine Antwort auf den gegenwarts- und an- wendungsfixierten Digitalisierungsdiskurs liefern könnte, erscheint Peters als zu kurz gegriffen. Andere medienwissenschaftliche Ausrichtungen sind dazu ebenso in der Lage: medienwissenschaftliche Analysen zu Kolonialität und Postkolonialität, feministische, gen- der- und queertheoretische Fragestellungen, eine medienwissenschaftlich informiert Wissenschaftsforschung und Affekttheorie – um nur einige zu nennen. Es geht um Konzepte von Medienwissenschaft als Fragestellung, die ihre Gegenstände in den verschiedensten Bereichen hervorbringen, dabei aber zugleich als Mittel und Mittler immer wieder unsichtbar werden. Debate: Media Studies without Media Claus Pias’ article starts out from two points of observation: a recession of the term media within the field of media studies and a dis- interest of the so-called digitalization in this particular term. Pias examines the impact media theory (ranging from McLuhan and Kittler to the so-called Digital Humanities) had on the development of time semantics and the narratives of ›digitalization‹ due to the use of a strong media term, and how media theory profited from it. mAs a result, Pias calls for establishing basis research in media studies, going hand in hand with a strategic revision and update of media, as a term as well as a subject. In her article, Kathrin Peters only partially agrees with this evaluation. She shares the scepticism concerning future-rhetoric as well as priority-rhetoric, both featuring heavily in current digital offensives; however, in her opinion it is not enough to hope for answers on today’s digitalization-discourse from media studies hailing the media-technical a priori. There are other approaches in media studies which are able to offer these answers: analysis of colonialism and post-colonialism, feministic, gender- and queer-theoretical questions, a media-informed science of knowledge and affect theory, just to name a few of them. It is all about concepts of media science being perceived as problems which bring forth their own subjects in various areas of research, yet as a tool as well as an intermediary, they are frequently overlooked. (shrink)

Debate: Media Studies without MediaClaus Pias’ article starts out from two points of observation: a recession of the term media within the field of media studies and a dis- interest of the so-called digitalization in this particular term. Pias examines the impact media theory (ranging from McLuhan and Kittler to the so-called Digital Humanities) had on the development of time semantics and the narratives of ›digitalization‹ due to the use of a strong media term, and how media theory profited from (...) it. mAs a result, Pias calls for establishing basis research in media studies, going hand in hand with a strategic revision and update of media, as a term as well as a subject. In her article, Kathrin Peters only partially agrees with this evaluation. She shares the scepticism concerning future-rhetoric as well as priority-rhetoric, both featuring heavily in current digital offensives; however, in her opinion it is not enough to hope for answers on today’s digitalization-discourse from media studies hailing the media-technical a priori. There are other approaches in media studies which are able to offer these answers: analysis of colonialism and post-colonialism, feministic, gender- and queer-theoretical questions, a media-informed science of knowledge and affect theory, just to name a few of them. It is all about concepts of media science being perceived as problems which bring forth their own subjects in various areas of research, yet as a tool as well as an intermediary, they are frequently overlooked. (shrink)

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, SETLcoin, Ether, Solar Coin, or Liberty Reserve exist since 2009. Because of their decentralized control, they are often considered a threat or alternative to the conventional centralized banking system. While the technological implication of some such currencies, especially of Bitcoin, has attracted much attention, so far there is little discussion about the entire field of cryptocurrencies and very little academic literature addressing its ethical significance. In this article, we thus address the impact of “blockchain technology” on (...) the nature of financial transactions from a business ethics perspective. We begin with a survey on relevant literature from neighboring disciplines. Next, we work towards a 3 × 3 framework for current debates on the ethics of cryptocurrencies : we combine the micro, meso, and macro levels of business and society with assessments of the potential ethical impact of cryptocurrencies as morally beneficial, detrimental, and ambiguous. In addition, we highlight possible avenues for future research, such as the changing roles of the miners and regulators, the prosocial use of cryptocurrencies, the antisocial use for shadow banking and transactions in the ‘dark net’ and cryptocurrencies’ effect on inflation and deflation. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page W17-W19.

Firms increasingly deploy algorithmic pricing approaches to determine what to charge for their goods and services. Algorithmic pricing can discriminate prices both dynamically over time and personally depending on individual consumer information. Although legal, the ethicality of such approaches needs to be examined as often they trigger moral concerns and sometimes outrage. In this research paper, we provide an overview and discussion of the ethical challenges germane to algorithmic pricing. As a basis for our discussion, we perform a systematic interpretative (...) review of 315 related articles on dynamic and personalized pricing as well as pricing algorithms in general. We then use this review to define the term algorithmic pricing and map its key elements at the micro-, meso-, and macro levels from a business and marketing ethics perspective. Thus, we can identify morally ambivalent topics that call for deeper exploration by future research. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungEs ist ein Standard-Verfahren der Medizinethik, auf die Möglichkeit des Missbrauchs solcher Instrumente hinzuweisen, die im lege-artis-Gebrauch legitim sein können. Ein etabliertes Instrument der medizinischen Praxis sind paternalistische Handlungen, die bei geringer Reichweite individueller Entscheidungskompetenz, etwa bei Minderjährigen, verantwortliches Handeln absichern sollen. In der bisherigen Debatte wird Paternalismus als Problem eines ungerechtfertigten oder übermäßigen Gebrauchs diskutiert. Bislang erscheint in der medizinethischen Paternalismus-Debatte das Problem des scheinbaren Paternalismus zu wenig reflektiert. Auch die Thematik der sexualisierten Gewalt gegen Minderjährige im medizinischen Setting (...) ist bisher wenig beachtet worden. Für diese spezifische Form der Gewalt gibt es verschiedene Ermöglichungsbedingungen. Eine wichtige liegt in der Akzeptanz paternalistischer Handlungen im medizinischen Kontext. Denn ein scheinbarer Paternalismus im Zusammenhang mit sexualisierter Gewalt gegen Minderjährige profitiert von der Praxis des passageren Übergehens des aktuellen Willens eines Kindes. Der prominente Fall Larry Nassars, der als Teamarzt der US-Kunstturnerinnen in hunderten Fällen junge Patientinnen sexualisierter Gewalt ausgesetzt hat, macht auf die Möglichkeit sexualisierter Gewalt durch medizinisches Personal aufmerksam. Geht es in der Paternalismus-Debatte um die Frage, in welchen Zusammenhängen Paternalismus problematisch oder unproblematisch ist, so trägt diese Studie den Problemaspekt der Täuschung im Zusammenhang mit sexualisierter Gewalt bei. Sie leistet damit einerseits einen Beitrag zur Thematisierung sexualisierter Gewalt im klinischen Kontext, und sie trägt zum anderen zur medizinethischen Diskussion des Paternalismus bei, die nicht von der Möglichkeit des Schein-Paternalismus absehen sollte. Unter Schein-Paternalismus oder fingiertem Paternalismus wird hier eine Haltung und Praxis verstanden, die in der Gestalt eines Paternalismus eigene Interessen des Agierenden zum Schaden der in Abhängigkeit befindlichen Person verfolgt und Fürsorgepflichten ignoriert. Denn die kindliche Gewöhnung an die Unterordnung des eigenen Willens und Körpers im asymmetrischen klinischen Kontext kann dazu genutzt werden, fingierten Paternalismus zu etablieren. Die Rede vom Schein-Paternalismus soll dabei aber nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass die Grenzziehung zwischen Paternalismus und Nicht-Paternalismus in der Praxis ebenso komplex ist wie diejenige zwischen körperlich-asexueller und körperlich-sexueller Gewalt. Ein präzises und transparentes lege-artis-Modell des Paternalismus soll hier als Basis für die Prävention sexualisierter Gewalt im klinischen Kontext diskutiert werden. Methodisch basiert diese Arbeit auf einer Auswertung der interdisziplinären Fachliteratur zur sexualisierten Gewalt im klinischen Kontext und zum Paternalismus. Es folgt dann eine Zusammenfügung der so gewonnenen Erkenntnisse, sodass am Ende eine komplexere Aussage AB über das Verhältnis von sexualisierter Gewalt und Schein-Paternalismus steht. (shrink)

This article compares the ways in which Michel Foucault’s and Quentin Skinner’s historical analyses seek to unsettle the limits on present forms of freedom. We do so by comparing their ways of analysing discourse, rationality and agency. The two authors differ significantly in the ways they deal with these three phenomena. The most significant difference lies in their ways of addressing agency and its relationship to power. Notwithstanding these differences, the historical analyses of both authors seek to problematize the ways (...) in which past thoughts and practices limit contemporary forms of freedom. While Foucault seems to go furthest in this endeavour, a comparison may enrich both lines of historical analyses. (shrink)

Regular musical activity as a complex multimodal lifestyle activity is proposed to be protective against age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. This cross-sectional study investigated the association and interplay between musical instrument playing during life, multi-domain cognitive abilities and brain morphology in older adults from the DZNE-Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Study study. Participants reporting having played a musical instrument across three life periods were compared to controls without a history of musical instrument playing, well-matched for reserve proxies of education, (...) intelligence, socioeconomic status and physical activity. Participants with musical activity outperformed controls in global cognition, working memory, executive functions, language, and visuospatial abilities, with no effects seen for learning and memory. The musically active group had greater gray matter volume in the somatosensory area, but did not differ from controls in higher-order frontal, temporal, or hippocampal volumes. However, the association between gray matter volume in distributed frontal-to-temporal regions and cognitive abilities was enhanced in participants with musical activity compared to controls. We show that playing a musical instrument during life relates to better late-life cognitive abilities and greater brain capacities in OA. Musical activity may serve as a multimodal enrichment strategy that could help preserve cognitive and brain health in late life. Longitudinal and interventional studies are needed to support this notion. (shrink)

The current international asylum regime recognizes only persecuted persons as rightful asylum applicants. The Geneva Convention and Protocol enumerate specific grounds upon which persecution is recognized. Claimants who cannot demonstrate a real risk of persecution based on one of the recognized grounds are unlikely to be granted asylum. This paper aims to relate real-world practices to normative theories, asking whether the Convention’s restricted preference towards persecuted persons is normatively justified. I intend to show that the justifications of the persecution criterion (...) also apply to grounds currently lacking recognition. My main concern will be persecution on the grounds of gender.The first section introduces the dominant standpoints in theories of asylum, which give different answers to the question of who should be granted asylum, based on different normative considerations. Humanitarian theories base their claims on the factual neediness of asylum-seekers, holding that whoever is in grave danger of harm or deprivation should be granted asylum. Political theories base their justifications on conceptions of legitimacy and membership, holding that whoever has been denied membership in their original state should be granted asylum. Under political theories, Matthew Price’s theory will be discussed, which provides a normative justification of the currently recognized persecution criterion. The second section provides a descriptive definition of persecution based on Kuosmanen, and evaluates the normative relevance of the different elements of this definition based on the theories presented previously. The third section is devoted to the examination of the normative justifiability of the nexus clause’s exclusive list of the bases upon which persons might be persecuted. The section argues that while the clause does not recognize that persecution might be based on gender, in fact many women experience harms based on gender that fulfil all the normatively relevant definitive conditions constituting persecution. The conclusion shows that although the current law’s preferences towards the persecuted are justifiable, the nexus clause’s limiting enumeration of grounds is not. This applies especially to the exclusion of gender as grounds for granting asylum.Article first published online: 21 DEC 2015. (shrink)

The Cistercian Jaume Janer († after 1506) was the most prolific student of Pere Daguí, the first professor in the Lullist Studium on Majorca, and became himself, by royal privilege from the Crown of Aragon, the leader of a similar institution in Valencia. Janer’s and Daguí’s brand of Lullism embraced elements from Scotism. In particular, Janer in three of his works discussed the system of distinctions put forward by Peter Thomae, one of Duns Scotus’s early followers. This preoccupation with (...) Scotist distinction theory remained a doctrinal centerpiece of eclectic Lullism at least until the second half of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

It is well known that the interpretation of quantificational expressions in the comparative clause poses a serious challenge for semantic analyses of the English comparative. In this paper, we develop a new analysis of the comparative clause designed to meet this challenge, in which a silent occurrence of the negative degree quantifier no interacts with other quantificational expressions to derive the observed range of interpretations. Although our analysis incorporates ideas from previous analyses, we show that it is able to account (...) for a broader range of facts than other approaches, with a minimum of construction-specific stipulations. We demonstrate that the analysis can be embedded within a general syntactic and semantic architecture for the comparative, and although our analysis focuses on the English data, we give evidence of its potential for crosslinguistic application. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our approach for the analysis of “split-scope” phenomena in nominal quantification. (shrink)

RésuméJe critique dans cet article la théorie «naïve»des attributions de croyances, selon laquelle la signification d'un nom propre dans la clause qui figure comme complément d'une telle attribution est son référent. Je soutiens que l'usage que nous faisons de ces attributions dans l'explication du comportement oblige à rejeter la version simple de la sémantique «naïve» au profit de sa cousine plus sophistiquée. Et je soutiens que la théorie «naïve» sophistiquée se compare défavorablement à des versions plausibles de la sémantique non (...) naíve. (shrink)

In Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture, the well-formed expressions of a language are licensed by correspondences between phonology, syntax, and conceptual structure. I show how this architecture can be used to make sense of the existence of parasitic gap constructions. A parasitic gap is one that is rendered acceptable because of the presence of another gap in the same sentence. Compare *a person whoi everyone who talks to ti likes Chris, which shows an illicit extraction from a relative clause, and a person (...) whoi everyone who talks to pgi likes ti, which shows a parasitic gap in the relative clause. Languages differ in terms of the range of configurations in which they allow parasitic gaps; these configurations appear to form a hierarchy. These observations raise some fundamental questions: Why do parasitic gaps exist at all? Why are different syntactic configurations possible for P-gaps and why just these configurations? Why is there a parasitic gap hierarchy? The answers that I propose make crucial use of constructional overgeneralization of across-the-board extraction in coordinate constructions, formulated straightforwardly in the framework of Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture. (shrink)

Partly motivated by description logics, poor man's logics have been proposed as an interesting fragment of modal logics. A poor man's logic is a propositional modal logic where only literals and the connectives ∧, □, and ◊ are allowed. It is known that the complexity of the satisfiability problem may drop dramatically when going from a full modal logic to the corresponding poor man's logic, e.g., in the case of modal logic K one goes from PSPACE-complete to coNP-complete. We prove (...) that it is sometimes possible to extend poor man's logics with restricted disjunctions (i.e., clauses) without increasing the computational complexity. For Horn and Krom clauses, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for when the resulting logic is polynomial-time. Such extensions correspond to allowing a restricted use of the union operator in description logics. (shrink)

Recent trade negotiations such as TTIP include investor protection clauses. Against the background of an analysis of the case for trade, the paper asks whether such clauses can be justified from a normative perspective. More specifically, what is the impact of investor protection on the domestic distribution of the gains from trade between labour and capital, and how should we assess this impact from the perspective of justice? In order to answer this question, the paper develops a series of ideal-type (...) scenarios that reflect the consequences of investor protection on employment on the one hand, and on the distributive conflict between labour and capital on the other. While no claim is made which of these scenarios corresponds to TTIP or other trade agreements, they provide a useful normative framework to analyse such agreements. (shrink)

The corporate meltdowns of this and the previous decade in the US - WorldCom, Enron, Tyco, and in Australia - FAI, HIH and AWB being among the many examples - have resulted in the governments of those two countries introducing legislation and policy guidelines aimed at minimising future corporate misbehaviour. -/- The US has introduced the Sarbanes Oxley Act, with requirements on corporate accountants and auditors, as well as its whistleblowing provisions. It has revised the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations. (...) New rules for the NYSE and NASDAQ have also been introduced. In addition, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Department of Justice have further strengthened the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act 1977, last revised in 1997. -/- Australia has revised the Corporations Act to include whistleblower protection clauses as well as adopted the ASX Corporate Governance guidelines. Standards Australia has issued its handbook on corporate governance. Although not a business issue, the Australian government has also announced that it will introduce whistleblower protection legislation for the public sector by the end of its first term in office. This legislation will likely influence whatever the private sector does in this respect. The inclusion of whistleblower protection in both Sarbanes–Oxley and the Corporations Act reflects a growing body of research that finds that people internal to an organisation are the most effective way to identify corporate wrongs. The Commonwealth Treasury has recently issued an options paper, stating that the Corporations Act has been ineffectual. It has sought submissions on revisions to the legislation that the Australian Government could take. This paper examines the policies advocated by over 20 organisations and academics concerned with whistleblowing issues. It draws the conclusion that on current indications, even after further reform, Australian legislation and policies are still likely to be less effectual than overseas practices. -/- --------------------------------- . (shrink)

In Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture, the well-formed expressions of a language are licensed by correspondences between phonology, syntax, and conceptual structure. I show how this architecture can be used to make sense of the existence of parasitic gap constructions. A parasitic gap is one that is rendered acceptable because of the presence of another gap in the same sentence. Compare *a person who everyone who talks to likes Chris, which shows an illicit extraction from a relative clause, and a person everyone (...) who talks to likes, which shows a parasitic gap in the relative clause. Languages differ in terms of the range of configurations in which they allow parasitic gaps; these configurations appear to form a hierarchy.These observations raise some fundamental questions: Why do parasitic gaps exist at all?Why are different syntactic configurations possible for P-gaps and why just these configurations?Why is there a parasitic gap hierarchy?The answers that I propose make crucial use of constructional overgeneralization of across-the-board extraction in coordinate constructions, formulated straightforwardly in the framework of Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture. (shrink)

Define ‘het’ as a predicate that truly applies to itself if and only if it does not truly apply to itself and which also truly applies to any predicate that does not truly apply to its own name. We know that the attempted definition of ‘hes’ is a failure, and so a fortiori is that of ‘het’. Similarly, there is no Qussell class which contains itself as a member if and only if it does not contain itself as a member, (...) so a fortiori there is no Russell Class which contains itself as a member if and only if it does not contain itself as a member and which also contains all and only non-self-membered classes (such as the class of dogs). The second conjunct in both the definition of ‘het’ and of the Russell class cannot revive a definition doomed to failure. Likewise, the ‘definition’ of n as ‘n > 1 iff n < 1’ fails, and the attempted definition of m as ‘m > 1 iff m < 1 and m is prime’ is hopeless too; its final clause buys it no respectability. (shrink)

Johnston maintains that the notion of a proposition -- ”a language independent (abstract) particular” -- can be dispensed with in philosophical semantics and replaced with that of a propositional act. A propositional act is a component of a speech act that is responsible for the propositional content of the speech act. Traditionally, it is thought that a propositional act yields the propositional content of a speech act by being an act of expressing a proposition. And it is the expressed proposition (...) that serves as the propositional content of the speech act. Johnston points out, however, that a propositional act is a structured event consisting minimally of a referential act, a predicative act, and a time-designative act. And on Johnston's view, the propositional content is the structured propositional act itself. (Strictly speaking, Johnston analyzes sameness of propositional content in terms of sameness of propositional act type, from which I, perhaps rashly, inferred that the propositional content of a speech act should be taken to be the propositional act itself). Johnston argues that a semantic analysis in terms of propositional acts enables us to reconcile the necessity of both, (1) Hesperus is Phosphorus (2) Phosphorus is Phosphorus with their intuitive difference in meaning, while maintaining the direct reference theory of proper names. Moreover, he argues that invoking propositional acts rather than propositions has the advantage of being able to capture the various senses in which distinct statements might be said to "say the same thing", as well as that of ontological parsimony. I will address each of these claims in turn, but first, I want to point out that the propositionalist can easily reconcile the necessity of (1) and (2) with their intuitive difference in meaning, without forsaking direct reference. All one needs to do is invoke the Fregean idea that there is a meaning shift in “thatâ€-clauses of (opaque) indirect discourse (and other) ascriptions.. (shrink)

Some writers have urged that evolutionary theory produces generalizations that hold only ceteris paribus, that is, provided “everything else is equal.” Others have claimed that all laws in the special sciences, or even all laws in science generally, hold only ceteris paribus. However, if we lack a way to determine when everything else really is equal, hedging generalizations with the phrase ceteris paribus renders those generalizations vacuous. I propose a solution to this problem for the case of causal equations from (...) classical population genetics. When coupled with the right proviso, equations in classical population genetics function as strict laws. (shrink)

It is well-known that the domain of case assignment extends beyond the arguments of a predicate to a range of adverbials in some languages, including Korean. In this paper we concentrate on case-marked Duration/Frequency adverbials which are characterized as ‘extensive measures’ by Wechsler and Lee (1996).∗ In some languages, case-marked adverbials are in the accusative and provide a boundedness to an event (cf. Kuryłowicz (1964), Kiparsky (1998), Kratzer (2004)). However, in Korean, the D/F adverbials can show accusative or nominative, with (...) no apparent difference in their temporal or aspectual semantic contribution. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to the relationship between the morphosyntactic properties of sentences and their associated illocutionary forces or force potentials. It draws on insights from linguistics, philosophy, and sociology, and may be used as a textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses in semantics, pragmatics, and morphosyntax.

In the following, I concentrate on the nefarious, harmful and unethical dimensions emerging only slowly as the rather new phenomenon of cryptocurrencies and blockchain at large become visible only gradually. For the positive and pro-social use of cryptocurrencies please refer to the article of Claus Dierksmeier in this issue of HMJ. As there are many different dimensions still unknown, I concentrate on the ethical issues emerging from the secretive nature of cryptocurrencies, less on the environmental carbon footprint or economic (...) implications of volatility also discussed in the literature. Among the most critical issues are black market transactions of weapons used in terrorist attacks, drugs, or childpornography. Additionally, cryptocurrencies are more and more found in blackmailing people and as payment for ransom-ware and other computer viruses. Money laundering also is on the rise via cryptocurrencies. I argue that the nefarious use of cryptocurrencies threatens the prosocial potential of cryptocurrencies and in general makes criminal activity easier for criminals and less likely to track down by legal authorities. In closing, I discuss current debates about emerging regulation presenting an overview of some jurisdictions and the option of regulated central bank issues cryptocurrencies. (shrink)

Negative externalities pervade immigration law. For example, immigration rules can cause negative economic externalities by barring foreign nationals whose participation would make labor markets more efficient. On the other hand, sweeping executive-branch measures to assist immigrants may unduly expand executive power and yield adverse effects on governance. This essay divides immigration's negative externalities into three categories: economic, relational, and rhetorical. It then argues for specific legal and policy measures, including tailored executive discretion over deportation; more robust court review of immigration (...) restrictions that affect foreign nationals outside the United States; and classifying deportation of lawful permanent residents of the United States as punishment requiring advance notice that specific acts can prompt removal, like the notice the Constitution's Ex Post Facto Clause requires for criminal laws. (shrink)

Argues that certain conditional clauses are irreducibly adnominal, so that 'if' cannot be treated purely as a sentential connective. A unified analysis of adnominal if-clauses and ordinary if-clauses is possible, however, if we assume a semantic theory in which sentences denote sets of events rather than truth values.

It has been strongly disputed that Philoponus is the author of the commentary on the third book of De Anima printed in vol. xv of CAG under his name, and Stephanus of Alexandria has been taken to be its real author. The evidence for the authorship of Stephanus is as follows: Codex Parisinus gr. 1914, written in the twelfth century, has an adscript by a later hand saying βιβλ⋯ον τρ⋯τον ⋯π⋯ ϕωνης στεϕ⋯νου, and the same appears in the fifteenth-century Codex (...) Estensis iii F 8. In 543.9 there is a clause saying ὡς ⋯ν τῷ περ⋯ ⋯ρμηνε⋯ας ⋯μ⋯θομεν, which was taken by M. Hayduck to be direct reference to Stephanus' commentary on the De Interpretatione, edited also by Hayduck in vol. xiii/3 of CAG. The third book, says Hayduck, is short and jejune, in contrast to the verbosity of the preceding two books. The commentary on the third book of De Anima is divided into lectures, but the first two books are not. Some locutions are used constantly in the third book and in Stephanus' in De Interpretatione as well. In the Codex Vaticanus gr. 241 fol. 6 we are told that Stephanus also wrote a commentary on the De Anima. (shrink)

If the fundamental law, or constitution, of a nation cannot be changed by legal means, then it cannot adapt to changing circumstances; as the disparity with circumstances widens, the risk of revolution increases. But if it can be changed too easily, then the fundamental principles and institutions it establishes are at risk of being swept away by a majority momentarily enraptured with a new idea. An amendment clause permits fundamental change, courting the latter risk, but it makes that change difficult, (...) courting the former. It aspires to capture the inconsistent virtues of stability and flexibility, protecting what the enacting generation thinks wise, but permitting future generations to think otherwise. (shrink)