This paper proposes interpretations of the vexed notions of intensionality and intentionality and then investigates their resulting interrelations.The notion of intentionality comes from Brentano, in connection with his view that it can help us understand the mental. Setting aside Husserl’s basic definition of intentionality as not quite in line with Brentano’s explanatory purpose, this paper proposes that intentionality be defined in terms of inexistence and indeterminacy.It results that Brentano’s thesis (that all and only mental phenomena are intentional) will not be (...) strictly true. However, intentional descriptions will always be intensional, though not all intensional descriptions will be intentional. (shrink)

This paper proposes interpretations of the vexed notions of intensionality and intentionality and then investigates their resulting interrelations.The notion of intentionality comes from Brentano, in connection with his view that it can help us understand the mental. Setting aside Husserl’s basic definition of intentionality as not quite in line with Brentano’s explanatory purpose, this paper proposes that intentionality be defined in terms of inexistence and indeterminacy.It results that Brentano’s thesis (that all and only mental phenomena are intentional) will not be (...) strictly true. However, intentional descriptions will always be intensional, though not all intensional descriptions will be intentional. (shrink)

In “The Will to Believe,” William James affirms that we have some control over what we believe and asks how this control should be exercised. He rejects the evidentialists’ view that we ought to believe only when intellectual grounds make it quite sure that the belief is true. For him, “options” are choices among contrary beliefs. Some options are “living,” “forced,” and “momentous.” James’ thesis concerns belief-options that have these three features and where proof as to the truth is unavailable. (...) He holds that in such cases we have a right to believe, provided believing has better consequences than not believing would. James is correct that sometimes it is permissible to believe without adequate grounds. His view is misleading, though, when he leaves the impression that this is so only where the option is living, forced, momentous, and not settleable by evidence. The right to believe has broader scope than this. Moreover, James’ right to believe presupposes a view of truth at odds with his later pragmatism. (shrink)

I argue that indefinite descriptions are referring terms. This is not the ambiguity thesis: that sometimes they are referring terms and sometimes something else, such as quantifiers . No. On my view they are always referring terms; and never quantifiers. I defend this thesis by modifying the standard conception of what a referring term is: a modification that needs to be made anyway, irrespective of the treatment of indefinites. I derive this approach from my speech-act theoretic semantics . The basic (...) thought is that referring terms have as their meanings speech-acts of a certain kind called proto-referring acts. These are acts in which speakers advertise or present intentions to denote, where denotation is a word-world relation, and advertising an intention is acting as if one has intentions, where it is open whether one has them or not, or whether the referring term used denotes or not. I show how this works for proper names. The meaning of a proper name is the speech-act proto-referring act type defined by a certain referential tree. This gives us the basis for an account of proper name meaning irrespective of denotation: a uniform treatment of full and empty names. Applied to indefinites, we can capture cases where speakers perform proto-acts—in which they advertise an intention to denote something—where they intend to denote, but others where they do not, but they still perform the proto-act: advertising an intention to denote. Two cases are ‘Fred saw a hippo’ and ‘Jane did not see a hippo’. In both cases U performs the same proto-act, represent it as Rpro, but possesses the advertised intention in the first case, but not in the second. In the first case, Rpro gains referential content—its descriptive content is expanded to include seen by Fred, whereas in its second token use it has no content augmentation or sentential determination of reference. In the second case ‘a hippo’ is an empty referring term, just as ‘Pegasus’ is empty in ‘Fred did not see Pegasus; he does not exist’. But in both sentences ‘a hippo’ functions in the same basic way: in both cases the basic proto-referring act Rpro is performed. Using this approach, I show how definite descriptions can be construed as indefinites with added meaning. (shrink)

IEEE Vision for Smart Grid Communications: 2030 and Beyond Reference Model, directly overlays events in the power grid with communication performance on the same spacetime model, it ensures a perspective that verifies that any of the myriad of communication technologies chosen will provide the required support for the Smart Grid. For Corporate or Institutional Access, request a custom quote for your organization at www.ieee.org/smartgridresearch.

This IEEE Vision for Smart Grid Communications: 2030 and Beyond Roadmap is a high-levelsupplement of the full vision document IEEE Vision for Smart Grid Communications: 2030 andBeyond. Communication is a major enabling technology for the Smart Grid. We believe that the powergrid will tend to utilize advances in communications since the data exchange requirements willscale up for the Smart Grid. Smart Grid communication will help to improve demand forecasting,enable self-healing from power disturbance events, facilitate active participation by consumers in demand-response (...) mechanisms, and provide resilience against physical and cyber attacks. Smart Grid communication will also help to improve quality of power, allow easy integration of renewable energy sources into the grid, foster innovation to enable new products, services, and markets, assist in optimization of assets, and improve operating efficiency. (shrink)

There is a trend toward the use of predictive systems in communications networks. At the systems and network management level predictive capabilities are focused on anticipating network faults and performance degradation. Simultaneously, mobile communication networks are being developed with predictive location and tracking mechanisms. The interactions and synergies between these systems present a new set of problems. A new predictive network management framework is developed and examined. The interaction between a predictive mobile network and the proposed network management system is (...) discussed. The Rapidly Deployable Radio Network is used as a specific example to illustrate these interactions. (shrink)

We present a simple distributed concept that appears to insinuate SWARM behavior in a collection of mobile platforms. The control is based on the inter-mobile platform communication links’ signal-to-noise ratio. This double use of communications is a natural linkage for SWARM behavior.

Value and reasons for action are often cited by rationalists and moral realists as providing a desire-independent foundation for normativity. Those maintaining instead that normativity is dependent upon motivation often deny that anything called "value" or "reasons" exists. According to the interest-relational theory, something has value relative to some perspective of desire just in case it satisfies those desires, and a consideration is a reason for some action just in case it indicates that something of value will be accomplished by (...) that action. Value judgements therefore describe real properties of objects and actions, but have no normative significance independent of desires. ;It is argued that only the interest-relational theory accounts for the practical significance of value and reasons. Against the Kantian hypothesis of prescriptive rational norms, I attack the alleged instrumental norm or hypothetical imperative, showing that the normative force for taking the means to our ends is explicable in terms of our desire for the end, and not as a command of reason. This analysis also provides a solution to the puzzle concerning the connection between value judgement and motivation. While it is possible to hold value judgements without motivation, the connection is more than accidental. This is because value judgements are usually but not always made from the perspective of desires that actually motivate the speaker. In the normal case judgement entails motivation. But often we conversationally borrow external perspectives of desire, and subsequent judgements do not entail motivation. ;This analysis drives a critique of a common practice as a misuse of normative language. The "absolutist" attempts to use and, as philosopher, analyze normative language in such a way as to justify the imposition of certain interests over others. But these uses and analyses are incoherent---in denying relativity to particular desires they conflict with the actual meaning of these utterances, which is always indexed to some particular set of desires. (shrink)

Meeting of the Minds records the proceedings of the S.I.E.P.M. conference held in Boston from June 14-16, 1996. The conference participants centred their attention on the relationships between medieval and classical modern philosophy. These relationships have been painted in dramatically different ways by those who have presented overviews of the two eras. Hans Blumenberg, in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age and his subsequent works, discovers the seeds of modernity in the medieval authors themselves. Leo Strauss and his followers see (...) a radical difference between the classical world views of the ancients and medievals and the successive layers of modern thought. These general portraits demand specifics, and the strength of the conference, whose results are contained in this volume, was that it provided many specific examinations of concrete relations between the philosophical positions of celebrated medieval and modern thinkers. Our hope is that this collection of papers will suggest the direction for further cooperative efforts on the interplay of the philosophical views represented by these two eras, and that the issues commonly debated by the medieval and early modern thinkers represented in this volume will give renewed consideration to important philosophical points that have been ignored in more recent debates. The volume contains contributions from E. Jennifer Ashworth (Waterloo, Ontario), Allan Back (Kutztown, Pennsylvania), Jos Decorte (Leuven), Thomas Dewender (Bochum), Idit Dobbs-Weinstein (Nashville), John P.Doyle (St.Louis), Jeremiah Hackett (Columbia, South Carolina), Simo Knuuttila (Helsinki), James McEvoy (Maynooth), A.Stephen McGrade (Storrs), Edward P.Mahoney (Durham, North Carolina), James D.Maliszewski (Toronto), Emily Michael (New York), Woosuk Park (Taejon, Korea), Horacio Santiago-Otero(+) (Madrid), Alison Simmons (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Jean-Luc Solere (Paris), Jose MariSoto Rabanos (Madrid), and Eileen C. Swe. (shrink)

The Tractatus de suppositionibus, which is cited by Gerald Odonis in his commentary on the Sentences, probably dates from ca. 1315-25. In the Sentences commentary he refers to his treatment of 'suppositio communicabilis' and its species, indicating a type of supposition whose language seems new. This article attempts to find a source for it in contemporary authors and arrives at the conclusion that 'communicabilis' is simply a synonym for 'personalis', the most common form of supposition according to Odonis.

:The most basic question one can ask of a model is ‘What is the effect on variable y2 of variable y1?’ Causation is ‘implementation neutral’ when all interventions on external variables that lead to a given change in y1 have the same effect on y2, so that the effect of y1 on y2 is defined unambiguously. Familiar ideas of causal analysis do not apply when causation is implementation neutral. For example, a cause variable cannot be linked to an effect variable (...) by both a direct path and a distinct indirect path. Discussion of empirical aspects of implementation neutrality leads to further unexpected results, such as that if one variable causes another the coefficient representing that causal link is always identified. (shrink)

This document provides a vision of the communications-related aspects of the Smart Grid in the year 2030, and lays out the technology roadmap that will lead us to the vision. This document starts with some basic knowledge of the power grid and follows up with fundamental building blocks for the communication infrastructure that will accompany the Smart Grid. Subsequently, network architectures, including overlays, are discussed at length. Also discussed, are important issues such as standards, regulations, security, and disruptive technologies. The (...) last part of this document discusses emerging technologies such as the solid state transformer, wireless beamed power, and quantum key distribution. Throughout the document, a careful distinction is made between communications capabilities and the specific technologies that are required to support those capabilities. (shrink)

I support the application of the “evolution as tinkering” idea to vocalization and emphasize that some of the subcortical parts of the brain circuits used for speech organs retain features common to nonprimate mammals, and in some cases to lower vertebrates, pointing up the importance of cortical evolution as suggested by MacNeilage.

Wilkins & Wakefield are clearly right to separate linguistic capacity from communicative ability, if only because other animal species have one without the other. But I question the abruptness of the demarcation they make between a period when hominids evolved enriched conceptual representation for other reasons entirely, and a subsequent later stage when language use became an adaptation.

One can disagree with Müller that it is neurobiologically questionable to suppose that human language is innate, specialized, and species-specific, yet agree that the precise brain mechanisms controlling language in any individual will be influenced by epigenesis and genetic variability, and that the interplay between inherited and acquired aspects of linguistic capacity deserves to be investigated.

I do not disagree with the argument that human-population right-handedness may in some way be a consequence of the population-level left-lateralization of language. But I suggest that the human functional lateralization is not dependent on the structural left-right brain asymmetries to which Corballis refers.

Heyes is right that behavioural tests able to distinguish mentalistic from nonmentalistic alternatives should be sought, but the theoretical issue is less about the passing of behavioural tests than it is about the internal mechanisms which allow the passing of the tests. It may be helpful to try to assess the internal mechanisms directly by measuring brain activities.

:Statisticians have proposed formal techniques for evaluation of treatments, often in the context of models that do not explicitly specify how treatments are generated. Under such procedures they run the risk of attributing causation in settings where the implementation neutrality condition required for causal interpretation of parameter estimates is not satisfied. When treatment assignments are explicitly modelled, as economists recommend, these issues can be formally analysed, and the existence of implementation neutrality, and therefore quantifiable causation, can be determined. Examples are (...) given. (shrink)

Financial economics, and the calculations of time and uncertainty derived from it, are playing an increasingly important role in non-finance areas, such as monetary and environmental economics. In this 2001 book, Professors Le Roy and Werner supply a rigorous yet accessible graduate-level introduction to this subfield of microeconomic theory and general equilibrium theory. Since students often find the link between financial economics and equilibrium theory hard to grasp, they devote less attention to purely financial topics such as calculation of derivatives, (...) while aiming to make the connection explicit and clear in each stage of the exposition. Emphasis is placed on detailed study of two-date models, because almost all of the key ideas in financial economics can be developed in the two-date setting. In addition to rigorous analysis, substantial sections of discussion and examples are included to make the ideas readily understandable. (shrink)