1. 1. PROGRAM It will be our aim to reconstruct, with precision, certain views which have been traditionally associated with nominalism and to investigate problems arising from these views in the construction of interpreted formal systems. Several such systems are developed in accordance with the demand that the sentences of a system which is acceptable to a nominalist must not imply the existence of any entities other than individuals. Emphasis will be placed on the constructionist method of philosophical analysis. To (...) follow this method is to introduce the central notions of the subject-matter to be investigated into a system governed by exact rules. For example, the constructionist method of investigating the properties of geometric figures may consist in formulating a system of postulates and definitions which, together with the apparatus of formal logic, generates all necessary truths concerning geometric figures. Similarly, a constructionist analysis of the notion of an individual may take the form of an axiomatic theory whose provable assertions are just those which seem essential to the role played by the concept of an individual in system atic contexts. Such axiomatic theories gain in interest if they are supple mented by precise semantical rules specifying the denotation of all terms and the truth conditions of all sentences of the theory. (shrink)

The conditions are examined under which one theory is said to be replaceable by another, while preserving those features of the original theory which made it serviceable for a given purpose. Among such replacements, special attention is given to ones which qualify as so-called reductions of a theory, and some theorems are proved concerning the notion of a reduction.

A tongue-in-cheek send-up of certain aspects of existentialism written by a well-known logician and philosopher who had a serious affair with existentialism in his youth. It was never submitted for publication and is finally being made available here posthumously with the permission of Helen Eberle. To the best of my recollection it was written some time in the mid/late 1980s. -- Gary H. Merrill.

According to the customary view, logic is a mere subdiscipline or ad junct of philosophy in so far as it is relevant to philosophy at all, and a sub discipline of mathematics to the extent that it is not. Thus, philosophy is taken to have traditional proprietary rights on "its" logic. I would like to examine here the reverse proprietary attitude, according to which philosophy is a branch of logic.

Alonzo Church has repeatedly argued that the semantic analysis of certain contexts requires reference to abstract entities of various kinds. The problem, arising from this argument for nominalists, will be examined first. Then we shall attempt to meet Church’s challenge by constructing and informally describing a semantics which was inspired by Nelson Goodman’s distinction between primary and secondary extensions. According to that semantics, no expression of the object language will make reference to any abstract or non-actual entity while the system (...) is strong enough to lend itself to semantic analysis in Church’s sense. (shrink)

Perceptual symbol systems form a theoretically plausible alternative to amodal symbol systems. At this point it is unclear whether there is any truly diagnostic empirical evidence to decide between these systems. We outline some possible avenues of research in the domain of language comprehension that might yield such evidence. Language comprehension will be an important arena for tests of the two types of symbol systems.

Population counts and longitude and latitude coordinates were estimated for the 50 largest cities in the United States by computational linguistic techniques and by human participants. The mathematical technique Latent Semantic Analysis applied to newspaper texts produced similarity ratings between the 50 cities that allowed for a multidimensional scaling (MDS) of these cities. MDS coordinates correlated with the actual longitude and latitude of these cities, showing that cities that are located together share similar semantic contexts. This finding was replicated using (...) a first‐order co‐occurrence algorithm. The computational estimates of geographical location as well as population were akin to human estimates. These findings show that language encodes geographical information that language users in turn may use in their understanding of language and the world. (shrink)

_“Brains before bullets” – ancient and modern wisdom for “mechanics and motorcycle enthusiasts”_ Essential reading for fans of the show, this book takes readers deeper into the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, the Teller-Morrow family, and the ethics that surround their lives and activities. Provides fascinating moral insights into _Sons of Anarchy_, its key characters, plot lines and ideas Investigates compelling philosophical issues centering on loyalty, duty, the ethics of war, authority, religion and whether the ends justify the means Teaches (...) complex philosophical ideas in a way that’s accessible to the general interest reader in order to inspire them to further reading of the great philosophers Authors use their deep knowledge of the show to illuminate themes that are not always apparent even to die-hard fans. (shrink)

Hempel and Oppenheim, in their paper 'The Logic of Explanation', have offered an analysis of the notion of scientific explanation. The present paper advances considerations in the light of which their analysis seems inadequate. In particular, several theorems are proved with roughly the following content: between almost any theory and almost any singular sentence, certain relations of explainability hold.

This chapter contains section titled: “A Rational Universe Explained Through Rational Means” “That Is Sin. That Is Evil. And You Are Evil” “You Have a Gift, Kara… And I'm Not Gonna Let You Piss That Away” “The Gods Shall Lift Those Who Lift Each Other” “You Have to Believe in Something” Notes.

Discussions concerning whether there is a natural right to health care may occur in various forms, resulting in policy recommendations for how to implement any such right in a given society. But health care policies may be judged by international standards including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The rights enumerated in the UDHR are grounded in traditions of moral theory, a philosophical analysis of which is necessary in order to adjudicate the value of specific policies designed to enshrine (...) rights such as a right to health care. We begin with an overview of the drafting of the UDHR and highlight the primary influence of natural law theory in validating the rights contained therein. We then provide an explication of natural law theory by reference to the writings of Thomas Aquinas, as well as elucidate the complementary “capabilities approach” of Martha Nussbaum. We conclude that a right to health care ought to be guaranteed by the state. (shrink)