Traditional accounts of belief change have been criticized for placing undue emphasis on the new belief provided as input. A recent proposal to address such issues is a framework for non-prioritized belief change based on default theories (Ghose and Goebel, 1998). A novel feature of this approach is the introduction of disbeliefs alongside beliefs which allows for a view of belief contraction as independently useful, instead of just being seen as an intermediate step in the process of belief revision. This (...) approach is, however, restrictive in assuming a linear ordering of reliability on the received inputs. In this paper, we replace the linear ordering with a preference ranking on inputs from which a total preorder on inputs can be induced. This extension brings along with it the problem of dealing with inputs of equal rank. We provide a semantic solution to this problem which contains, as a special case, AGM belief change on closed theories. (shrink)

Several authors have recently suggested that classic psychedelics might be safe and effective agents of moral enhancement. This raises the question: can we learn anything interesting about the nature of moral experience from a close examination of transformative psychedelic experiences? The interdisciplinary enterprise of philosophical psychopathology attempts to learn about the structure and function of the “ordinary” mind by studying the radically altered mind. By analogy, in this chapter we argue that we can gain knowledge about the everyday moral life (...) by studying extraordinary experiences of altered moral cognition and experience. We focus on a specific class of cases: experiences of forgiveness induced by psychedelics. We argue that close attention to such experiences reveals the importance of thought/emotion coherence and dissonance in the moral life and vindicates some heterodox ideas about moral phenomenology and psychology. (shrink)

The axiom of recovery, while capturing a central intuition regarding belief change, has been the source of much controversy. We argue briefly against putative counterexamples to the axiom—while agreeing that some of their insight deserves to be preserved—and present additional recovery-like axioms in a framework that uses epistemic states, which encode preferences, as the object of revisions. This makes iterated revision possible and renders explicit the connection between iterated belief change and the axiom of recovery. We provide a representation theorem (...) that connects the semantic conditions we impose on iterated revision and our additional syntactical properties. We show interesting similarities between our framework and that of Darwiche–Pearl (Artificial Intelligence 89:1–29 1997). In particular, we show that intuitions underlying the controversial (C2) postulate are captured by the recovery axiom and our recovery-like postulates (the latter can be seen as weakenings of (C2)). We present postulates for contraction, in the same spirit as the Darwiche–Pearl postulates for revision, and provide a theorem that connects our syntactic postulates with a set of semantic conditions. Lastly, we show a connection between the contraction postulates and a generalisation of the recovery axiom. (shrink)

We propose a new relevance sensitive model for representing and revising belief structures, which relies on a notion of partial language splitting and tolerates some amount of inconsistency while retaining classical logic. The model preserves an agent's ability to answer queries in a coherent way using Belnap's four-valued logic. Axioms analogous to the AGM axioms hold for this new model. The distinction between implicit and explicit beliefs is represented and psychologically plausible, computationally tractable procedures for query answering and belief..

We present a method for relevance sensitive non-monotonic inference from belief sequences which incorporates insights pertaining to prioritized inference and relevance sensitive, inconsistency tolerant belief revision. Our model uses a finite, logically open sequence of propositional formulas as a representation for beliefs and defines a notion of inference from maxiconsistent subsets of formulas guided by two orderings: a temporal sequencing and an ordering based on relevance relations between the putative conclusion and formulas in the sequence. The relevance relations are ternary (...) (using context as a parameter) as opposed to standard binary axiomatizations. The inference operation thus defined easily handles iterated revision by maintaining a revision history, blocks the derivation of inconsistent answers from a possibly inconsistent sequence and maintains the distinction between explicit and implicit beliefs. In doing so, it provides a finitely presented formalism and a plausible model of reasoning for automated agents. (shrink)

Routledge (New Media and Cyberculture Series), July 2007.

Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn't always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by (...) ancient and modern philosophies-Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life-and how philosophy has helped him cope with it. Chopra shows that many philosophers-including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger-view anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious. Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight. (shrink)

The “free” in “free software” refers to a cluster of four specific freedoms identified by the Free Software Definition. The first freedom, termed “Freedom Zero,” intends to protect the right of the user to deploy software in whatever fashion, towards whatever end, he or she sees fit. But software may be used to achieve ethically questionable ends. This highlights a tension in the provision of software freedoms: while the definition explicitly forbids direct restrictions on users’ freedoms, it does not address (...) other means by which software may indirectly restrict freedoms. In particular, ethically-inflected debate has featured prominently in the discussion of restrictions on digital rights management and privacy-violating code in version 3 of the GPL (GPLv3). The discussion of this proposed language revealed the spectrum of ethical positions and valuations held by members of the free software community. In our analysis, we will provide arguments for upholding Freedom Zero; we embed the problem of possible uses of software in the broader context of the uses of scientific knowledge, and go on to argue that the provision of Freedom Zero mitigates against too great a moral burden—of anticipating possible uses of software—being placed on the programmer and that, most importantly, it facilitates deliberative discourse in the free software community. (shrink)

Thinking about how the law might decide whether to extend legal personhood to artificial agents provides a valuable testbed for philosophical theories of mind. Further, philosophical and legal theorising about personhood for artificial agents can be mutually informing. We investigate two case studies, drawing on legal discussions of the status of artificial agents. The first looks at the doctrinal difficulties presented by the contracts entered into by artificial agents. We conclude that it is not necessary or desirable to postulate artificial (...) agents as legal persons in order to account for such contracts. The second looks at the potential for according sophisticated artificial agents with legal personality with attendant constitutional protections similar to those accorded to humans. We investigate the validity of attributes that have been suggested as pointers of personhood, and conclude that they will take their place within a broader matrix of pragmatic, philosophical and extra-legal concepts. (shrink)

We provide a formal study of belief retraction operators that do not necessarily satisfy the postulate. Our intuition is that a rational description of belief change must do justice to cases in which dropping a belief can lead to the inclusion, or ‘liberation’, of others in an agent's corpus. We provide two models of liberation via retraction operators: ρ-liberation and linear liberation. We show that the class of ρ-liberation operators is included in the class of linear ones and provide axiomatic (...) characterisations for each class. We show how any retraction operator can be ‘converted’ into either a withdrawal operator ) or a revision operator via the Harper Identity and the Levi Identity respectively. (shrink)

Possible-world semantics are provided for Parikh’s relevance-sensitive model for belief revision. Having Grove’s system-of-spheres construction as a base, we consider additional constraints on measuring distance between possible worlds, and we prove that, in the presence of the AGM postulates, these constraints characterize precisely Parikh’s axiom (P). These additional constraints essentially generalize a criterion of similarity that predates axiom (P) and was originally introduced in the context of Reasoning about Action. A by-product of our study is the identification of two possible (...) readings of Parikh’s axiom (P), which we call the strong and the weak versions of the axiom. An interesting feature of the strong version is that, unlike classical AGM belief revision, it makes associations between the revision policies of different theories. (shrink)

The introduction of explicit notions of rejection, or disbelief, into logics for knowledge representation can be justified in a number of ways. Motivations range from the need for versions of negation weaker than classical negation, to the explicit recording of classic belief contraction operations in the area of belief change, and the additional levels of expressivity obtained from an extended version of belief change which includes disbelief contraction. In this paper we present four logics of disbelief which address some or (...) all of these intuitions. Soundness and completeness results are supplied and the logics are compared with respect to applicability and utility. (shrink)

Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn't always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by (...) ancient and modern philosophies-Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life-and how philosophy has helped him cope with it. Chopra shows that many philosophers-including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger-view anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious. Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight. (shrink)

Software is much more than sequences of instructions for a computing machine: it can be an enabler (or disabler) of political imperatives and policies. Hence, it is subject to the same assessment in a normative dimension as other political and social phenomena. The core distinction between free software and its proprietary counterpart is that free software makes available to its user the knowledge and innovation contributed by the creator(s) of the software, in the form of the created source code. From (...) an ethical perspective, one of the most pressing questions raised by this form of collaboration is the question of the rights, and the restrictions on them, that are passed on to users and collaborators by the creators of programs. That is, what freedoms do software users deserve, and how can they best be protected? In this study we analyze free software licensing schemes in order to determine which most effectively protects such freedoms. We conclude that so-called copyleft licensing schemes are the morally superior alternative. (shrink)

This thesis proposes and presents two new models for belief representation and belief revision. The first model is the B-structures model which relies on a notion of partial language splitting and tolerates some amount of inconsistency while retaining classical logic. The model preserves an agent's ability to answer queries in a coherent way using Belnap's four-valued logic. Axioms analogous to the AGM axioms hold for this new model. The distinction between implicit and explicit beliefs is represented and psychologically plausible, computationally (...) tractable procedures for query answering and belief base revision are obtained. ;The second model presents a method for relevance sensitive non-monotonic inference from belief sequences which incorporates insights pertaining to prioritized inference and relevance sensitive, inconsistency tolerant belief revision. Our model uses a finite, logically open sequence of propositional formulas as a representation for beliefs and defines a notion of inference from maxiconsistent subsets of formulas guided by two orderings: a temporal sequencing and an ordering based on relevance relations between the conclusion and formulas in the sequence. The relevance relations are ternary as opposed to standard binary axiomatizations. The inference operation thus defined easily handles iterated revision by maintaining a revision history, blocks the derivation of inconsistent answers from a possibly inconsistent sequence and maintains the distinction between explicit and implicit beliefs. In doing so, it provides a finitely representable formalism and a plausible model of reasoning for automated agents. (shrink)

Dept of Business Administration Dept of Computer and Knowledge Systems Group University of Patras Information Science School of Computer Science 265 00 Patras, Greece Brooklyn College of the and Engineering [email protected] City University of New York University of New South Wales Brooklyn, NY 11210, USA Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia [email protected] [email protected]..

We present a model for first-order belief revision that is characterized by an underlying relevance-like relation and a background proof system. The model is extremely general in order to allow for a wide variety in these characterizing parameters. It allows some weakenings of beliefs which were initially implicit to become explicit and survive the revision process. The effects of revision are localized to the part of the theory that is influenced by the the new information. Iterated revision in this model (...) is handled trivially since the revision operator is constructive by definition. The usage of deductively limited proof systems permits an inconsistency tolerant model. The notion of a part of a theory capable of being influenced by new information (designed to accomodate the specific character of first-order languages) is shown to satisfy some intuitive and desirable properties. We show that for particular parametrizations, standard revision schemes can be embedded into our paradigm. (shrink)

in Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2007.

Edited by David Rondel and Samir Chopra, The Moral Psychology of Anxiety presents new work on the causes, consequences, and value of anxiety. Straddling philosophy, psychology, clinical medicine, history, and other disciplines, the chapters in this volume explore anxiety from an impressively wide range of perspectives. The first part is more historical, exploring the meaning of anxiety in different philosophical traditions and historical periods, including ancient Chinese Confucianism, twentieth-century European existentialism, and the Roman Stoics. The second part focuses (...) on a cluster of questions having to do with anxiety’s nature and significance: Is anxiety something biological or cultural, or perhaps both? What is at the root of anxiety? Why should human beings suffer in this way? What is the experience of anxiety like, and what, if anything, are the benefits associated with it? Does anxiety have the potential to make us more virtuous or improve the quality of our inquiry? Addressing an area where newer work in moral psychology is sorely needed, this collection and the varied perspectives it offers will be of great interest to scholars, professionals, and students across philosophy, psychology, and related fields. (shrink)

We present a framework that provides a logic for science by generalizing the notion of logical (Tarskian) consequence. This framework will introduce hierarchies of logical consequences, the first level of each of which is identified with deduction. We argue for identification of the second level of the hierarchies with inductive inference. The notion of induction presented here has some resonance with Popper's notion of scientific discovery by refutation. Our framework rests on the assumption of a restricted class of structures in (...) contrast to the permissibility of classical first-order logic. We make a distinction between deductive and inductive inference via the notions of compactness and weak compactness. Connections with the arithmetical hierarchy and formal learning theory are explored. For the latter, we argue against the identification of inductive inference with the notion of learnable in the limit. Several results highlighting desirable properties of these hierarchies of generalized logical consequence are also presented. (shrink)

To walk or not to walk: Should a batsman acknowledge his own dismissal by leaving the wicket without even waiting for the umpire's decision? David Coady and Samir Chopra examine this flashpoint ethical debate in cricket.

Does natural selection act primarily on individual organisms, on groups, on genes, or on whole species? The question of levels of selection - on which biologists and philosophers have long disagreed - is central to evolutionary theory and to the philosophy of biology. Samir Okasha's comprehensive analysis gives a clear account of the philosophical issues at stake in the current debate.

What is science? Is there a real difference between science and myth? Is science objective? Can science explain everything? This Very Short Introduction provides a concise overview of the main themes of contemporary philosophy of science. Beginning with a short history of science to set the scene, Samir Okasha goes on to investigate the nature of scientific reasoning, scientific explanation, revolutions in science, and theories such as realism and anti-realism. He also looks at philosophical issues in particular sciences, including (...) the problem of classification in biology, and the nature of space and time in physics. The final chapter touches on the conflicts between science and religion, and explores whether science is ultimately a good thing. (shrink)

When you gaze out at the night sky with its awe-inspiring display of stars and galaxies, do you ever ask yourself if it could be possible that you are actually looking into a mirror? What if we inhabit a universe that perfectly fits our needs here on Earth -- a truly human universe? That's the bold thesis author Deepak Chopra and physicist Menas Kafatos set out to prove: quite literally, "You are the universe." The startling truth is that the (...) everyday world of physical objects "out there" disguises a hidden dimension. By turning our investigation "in here" to the world of consciousness, the real reality emerges. You Are the Universe guides the reader into a realm in which each of us has the power to transform our personal existence, while at the same time fashioning a new story about how time, space, matter, and energy came into existence. Looking to overturn the traditional model of scientific reality, Chopra and Kafatos hold that each of us is a cocreator of reality and we can uncover the hidden dimensions where consciousness is a field of infinite possibilities. This seemingly impossible proposition follows from the cutting-edge modern thinking of the quantum universe and the great mysteries that must be unriddled before human beings actually know who they are. These include but are not limited to questions such as What came before the big bang? Why does the universe fit together so perfectly? Where did time come from? And do we live in a conscious universe? These mysteries are part and parcel of everyone's life. "All of us live in a participatory universe," the authors write. "Once you decide that you want to participate fully with mind, body, and soul, the paradigm shift becomes personal. The reality you inhabit will be yours to either embrace or change. (shrink)

Resilience may be referred to as the capacity for positive adaptation and to quickly recover from difficulties and significant adversity. After examining operational definitions of related concepts, the article discusses resilience building exercises for functional fitness at the individual soldier level, to include among others, self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-reinforcement, emotional regulation exercises, mindfulness training, relaxation and grounding exercises and importance of maintaining discipline and routine in the military. Using an acronym CARRIES, the article examines efforts to enhance resilience building through empirically (...) validated cognitive, behavioural and intrapersonal skills originating from best practices learned in the military. (shrink)

This is a conversation that took place at Dr. Vladimir Safatle’s São Paulo home on 16 February, 2019, during Dr. Samir Gandesha’s time as a Visiting Professor at the Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas -FFLCH-USP. It addresses the South American roots of the authoritarian Neoliberalism that has now become a truly global phenomenon.

Here, for the first time, development studies encounters the set of ideas popularly known as 'Chaos Theory'. Samir Rihani applies to the processes of economic development, ideas from complex adaptive systems like uncertainty, complexity, and unpredictability. Rihani examines various aspects of the development process - including the World Bank, debt, and the struggle against poverty - and demonstrates the limitations of fundamentally linear thinking in an essentially non-linear world.

Hox proteins are part of the conserved superfamily of homeodomain‐containing transcription factors and play fundamental roles in shaping animal body plans in development and evolution. However, molecular mechanisms underlying their diverse and specific biological functions remain largely enigmatic. Here, we have analyzed Hox sequences from the main evolutionary branches of the Bilateria group. We have found that four classes of Hox protein signatures exist, which together provide sufficient support to explain how different Hox proteins differ in their control and function. (...) The homeodomain and its surrounding sequences accumulate nearly all signatures, constituting an extended module where most of the information distinguishing Hox proteins is concentrated. Only a small fraction of these signatures has been investigated at the functional level, but these show that approaches relying on Hox protein alterations still have a large potential for deciphering molecular mechanisms of Hox differential control. (shrink)

Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays ftz Evolution: Findings, hypotheses and speculations (response to DOI 10.1002/bies.201100019) AbstractOn the border of the homeotic function: Re‐evaluating the controversial role of cofactor‐recruiting motifs AbstractControl of DNA replication: A new facet of Hox proteins? AbstractClassification of sequence signatures: a guide to Hox protein function Abstract.

En el presente artículo se pretende comprender el horizonte en el que la sociedad contemporánea construye su sentido de la cotidianidad, a partir de la positividad y negatividad del aburrimiento. El método empleado será la propuesta interpretativa de Heidegger, orientado por el concepto de cotidianidad en dialogo con Han, en lo referente a la manifestación del aburrimiento en la vida cotidiana de los sujetos. En una primera instancia se abordan las determinaciones de la racionalidad instrumental y el neoliberalismo en la (...) construcción de sentido en la de la sociedad contemporánea. Posteriormente, en un segundo lugar, se comprende la imposibilidad dialéctica de la positividad del aburrimiento, para luego entender cómo la negatividad del aburrimiento posibilita desde la dialéctica una negación del discurso neoliberal. Esta comprensión resulta relevante al momento de plantear la negatividad del aburrimiento como una posibilidad de mundo. Se concluye, que el aburrimiento es una apertura a los modos en los que la sociedad contemporánea construye su cotidianidad. (shrink)

Défini comme l’une des parties du discours traditionnelles, l’article, « l’un des instruments odieux de notre grammaire » (Alexis François, La grammaire du purisme et l’académie française au 18ème siècle, Paris, Société Nouvelle de Librairie et d’Édition, p. 70) crée une véritable ligne de démarcation pour le phénomène langagier en tant qu’il divise les langues en deux catégories distinctes : langues avec article et langues sans article. Au-delà de la technicité grammaticale que créent le système d’article et l’absence d’article au (...) sein du groupe nominal, cette étude permet de repenser la nécessité noologique et phénoménologique de cette classe de mot bien particulière. Il convient donc de s’interroger sur l’absence d’article dans des langues avec article (français, allemand, anglais, italien, macédonien, etc.) et sur l’« absence de tout » dans des langues sans article (croate, serbe, russe, turc, etc.). Au sein des langues dépourvues de tout système d’articles, un déterminant d'origine numérale s'apparente à l'article et, ce faisant, s'approprie une valeur d'adjectif indéfini : « (un) certain ». Les deux cas de figure ou, mieux encore, les deux voies qu'empruntent les langues concernées permettent d'enrichir le tenseur binaire en psychomécanique du langage, notamment en y ajoutant des extensités médianes, non réductibles à la traditionnelle échelle « article défini » - « article indéfini » – « article zéro ». (shrink)

Contrairement à l’ironie polémique et insidieuse des Sophistes, celle de Socrate est plutôt interrogeante, désirante et ex-centrique, toujours en quête de connaissance vraie. Le fameux «je sais que je ne sais rien» devient chez lui un outil de défigement de la pensée prisonnière des «systèmes compacts», mais, aussi le meilleur remède contre les pseudo-vérités religieuses et idéologiques.

In a paper entitled ‘Saints and Heroes’ 1 Professor J. O. Urmson has criticised ‘the trichotomy of duties, indifferent actions, and wrongdoing’ , commonly found in moral philosophy, on the ground that it fails to cover an important class of actions, of which saintly and heroic actions are ‘conspicuous” but by no means the only examples. I am inclined to think that this trichotomy is defensible, and that at least it deserves a much longer run for its money than Urmson (...) gives it. The form in which he presents it, however, makes it more implausible than it need be and this is perhaps the main reason why he finds it so indefensible. (shrink)

Waldenfelsovo fenomenološko razumijevanje moderne zasnovano je na razumijevanju stranog kao bitnog određenja moderne. Strano je ovdje odrednica mišljenja koja se eksplicira u kulturnim i društvenim odnosima te ga stoga treba interpretirati upravo u njegovom fenomenalnom realitetu. Kultura i politika u tom značenju više su od pukog imena za skupni naziv značenja i opravdanja djelovanja. One postaju izraz smisaonog konteksta u kojem se iščitava odnos spram stranog kao referentnog mjesta za razumijevanje samog značenja moderne, njene unutarnje diferenciranosti, tokova koji je određuju (...) i karakteristika koje se uspostavljaju u individualnim odrednicama što obilježavaju njenu povijest. Strano se, u cjelini svojega određenja, zasniva iz tjelesnosti kao realiteta njegovog postojanja. U cjelini uzevši, moderna se, smatra Waldenfels, razumijeva u njenoj postranjenosti , u njenom odnošenju spram stranog koje na koncu rezultira i postranjenjem moderne u cijelosti. Ona kao takva nije zastranila, nego po-stranila, i sama se priklonila stranosti kao vlastitom identitetu, u kojem je čvrsto uspostavljen i filozofijski diskurs na kojem se taj identitet brani. Odnos spram tjelesnosti, koji se postulira u modernoj teoriji, u tom smislu je konzekvenca odnosa spram stranog. Zato se problem transformacije filozofije ne nalazi u novom razumijevanju umstvenosti, nego u diskursu nove racionalnosti, fenomenološkom mišljenju partikulariteta okrenutom kritici obuhvatnosti metafizike subjektiviteta i bilo kojeg oblika umstvenih pretpostavki realiteta. Waldenfelsova interpretacija moderne proistječe iz cjelovitog uvida u kontinuitet mišljenja koje je određuje i iskazuje se kroz njegovo sažimanje u ključnim problemima koji određuju njene tokove. U tom smislu fenomenološki diskurs njegove filozofije dobiva svojevrsno značenje ishodišta filozofijskog mišljenja na prijelazu stoljeća.Waldenfels’ phenomenological understanding of modernity is based on the understanding of “the foreign” as an essential definition of modernity. “The foreign” here is the characteristic of thinking explicated in cultural and social relationships, which should therefore be interpreted precisely in its phenomenal reality. Culture and politics in this context are more then a mere names for a collection of meanings and justifications of action. They become the expression of a meaningful context from which one can read-off the relation to “the foreign” as the reference point forunderstanding the very meaning of modernity, its inner differentiation, the streams that determine it and the characteristics that are established in the individual determinants that denote its history. “The foreign” as a whole is grounded in corporality as the reality of its existence. Waldenfels maintains that modernity, taken as a whole, is understood in its orientation towards the foreign, in its relationship with the foreign that, eventually, results in the entire modernity being oriented towards the foreign. Modernity as such did not go astray, but it became oriented towards the foreign, it decided itself to accept some sort of “the foreign” as its identity, in which the philosophical discourse is established for its defence. The relationship towards corporality, postulated in this sense in modern theory, is a consequence of the relationship towards “the foreign”. That is why the problem of transformation of philosophy is not found in the new understanding of the mind, but in the discourse of new rationality, of phenomenological thinking of the particularity oriented towards the critique of the encompassing metaphysics of subjectivity and towards all sorts of rational assumptions bout the reality. Waldenfels’ interpretation of the modernity follows from the integrative insight into continuity of the thinking that determines it, and it is expressed by his summarisation of the crucial problems that determine its paths. It is in this sense that the phenomenological discourse is established, signifying the starting point of philosophical thinking at the turn of the century. (shrink)

Waldenfels’ phenomenological understanding of modernity is based on the understanding of “the foreign” as an essential definition of modernity. “The foreign” here is the characteristic of thinking explicated in cultural and social relationships, which should therefore be interpreted precisely in its phenomenal reality. Culture and politics in this context are more then a mere names for a collection of meanings and justifications of action. They become the expression of a meaningful context from which one can read-off the relation to “the (...) foreign” as the reference point for understanding the very meaning of modernity, its inner differentiation, the streams that determine it and the characteristics that are established in the individual determinants that denote its history. “The foreign” as a whole is grounded in corporality as the reality of its existence. Waldenfels maintains that modernity, taken as a whole, is understood in its orientation towards the foreign, in its relationship with the foreign that, eventually, results in the entire modernity being oriented towards the foreign. Modernity as such did not go astray, but it became oriented towards the foreign, it decided itself to accept some sort of “the foreign” as its identity, in which the philosophical discourse is established for its defence. The relationship towards corporality, postulated in this sense in modern theory, is a consequence of the relationship towards “the foreign”. That is why the problem of transformation of philosophy is not found in the new understanding of the mind, but in the discourse of new rationality, of phenomenological thinking of the particularity oriented towards the critique of the encompassing metaphysics of subjectivity and towards all sorts of rational assumptions bout the reality. Waldenfels’ interpretation of the modernity follows from the integrative insight into continuity of the thinking that determines it, and it is expressed by his summarisation of the crucial problems that determine its paths. It is in this sense that the phenomenological discourse is established, signifying the starting point of philosophical thinking at the turn of the century. (shrink)

In this paper, we extend the system AF2 in order to have the subject reduction for the $betaeta$-reduction. We prove that the types with positive quantifiers are complete for models that are stable by weak-head expansion.

Several logical puzzles, riddles and problems are defined based on the notion of games in informative contexts. Hintikka argues that epistemology or the theory of knowledge must be considered from the notion of information. So, knowledge cannot just be based on the notions of belief and justification. The present proposal will focus on the logical structure of information, and not only on the quantification of information as suggested by Claude A. Shannon. In many cases, the information bits, although seemingly or (...) factually contradictory, are quite relevant. The paraconsistent systems of logic offer a formalization of reasoning that can support certain contradictions. The well-known “Bar-Hillel–Carnap Paradox” causes embarrassment when it concludes that the informational content of a contradiction would be maximum, opposing the traditional notion that the semantic information must be true, and that contradictions are necessarily false. (shrink)