Der Verfassungsrechtler und Rechtsphilosoph Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) ist ohne Zweifel ein faszinierender Autor. Die von ihm ausgehende Suggestion basiert auf der Virtuosität seines polemischen Stils, der oft vergessen macht, welch sachliche Kritik von Zeitgenossen an seinen Theorien geübt wurde. Erstmals liegt nun eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit den wichtigsten Aspekten seines Werkes vor, die die Nähe seines konservativen Denkens zum Nationalsozialismus systematisch aufzeigt. Gegenüber der vorherrschenden biografischen Behandlung dieses Verhältnisses lassen sich damit auch aktuelle politische Theoreme und Positionen sehr viel deutlicher (...) verorten. Ziel des Buches ist es, dem Leser sowohl die Komplexität dieses außergewöhnlichen Denkens als auch dessen Konsequenzen vor Augen zu führen. (shrink)

We study classes of ultrafilters on ω defined by a natural property of the Loeb measure in the Nonstandard Universe corresponding to the ultrafilter. This class, the Property M ultrafilters, is shown to contain all ultrafilters built up by taking iterated products over collections of pairwise nonisomorphic selective ultrafilters. Results on Property M ultrafilters are applied to the construction of extensions of probability measures, and to the study of measurable reductions between ultrafilters.

We study relations between measure-theoretic classes of ultrafilters, such as the Property M ultrafilters of [4], with other well-known ultrafilter classes. We define several classes of measure theoretic ultrafilters, of which the Property M ultrafilters are the strongest. We show which containments are provable in ZFC between these measure-theoretic ultrafilters and boolean combinations of well-known ultrafilters such as the selective, semi-selective, and P-point ultrafilters. We also list some of the containment results between measure-theoretic ultrafilters and several other ultrafilter classes, such (...) as the Arrow and Property C ultrafilters. (shrink)

Buildings are meaningful parts of the environment; and when they are architecture, they aspire to greater meaning. Several accounts of architectural semiosis have been offered based on analogies to biology and language. These are critiqued. Critiqued, too, are accounts of semiosis generally that use systems-theoretical concepts and language. The essay goes on to outline what could be a contribution to biosemiotics from the work of perception psychologist, J. J. Gibson, as brought through architecture in the form of isovist field theory. (...) This theory is not treated as an example of systems thinking as it usually is, but, with the help of philosopher Martin Buber as well as Jesper Hoffmeyer, as a way out of it—able to describe the meaning of objects and space phenomenologically and ecologically at once. (shrink)

Does the contemporary built environment—the ensemble of our humanly created surroundings—make us happy? This question prompts a consideration of the psychological dimensions of economic value, and of Tibor Scitovsky's revisions of standard economic theory. With Scitovsky as a starting point, a model of value based on modern complexity theory and a Maslow‐like rendition of human needs can account for some of the more important exceptions to the law of diminished marginal utility, including those that may undermine the built environment in (...) a market economy. (shrink)

We settle a number of questions concerning definability in first order logic with an extra predicate symbol ranging over semi-linear sets. We give new results both on the positive and negative side: we show that in first-order logic one cannot query a semi-linear set as to whether or not it contains a line, or whether or not it contains the line segment between two given points. However, we show that some of these queries become definable if one makes small restrictions (...) on the semi-linear sets considered. (shrink)

This work deals with the expressive power of logics on finite graphs with access to an additional "arbitrary" linear order. The queries that can be expressed this way are the order-invariant queries for the logic. For the standard logics used in computer science, such as first-order logic, it is known that access to an arbitrary linear order increases the expressiveness of the logic. However, when we look at the separating examples, we find that they have satisfying models whose Gaifman Graph (...) is complex -unbounded in valence and in treewidth. We thus explore the expressiveness of order-invariant queries over well-behaved graphs. We prove that first-order order-invariant queries over strings and trees have no additional expressiveness over first-order logic in the original signature. We also prove new upper bounds on order-invariant queries over bounded treewidth and bounded valence graphs. Our results make use of a new technique of independent interest: the application of algebraic characterizations of definability to show collapse results. (shrink)

Review by: Michael Benedikt The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 112-115, March 2013.

The Guarded Negation Fragment (GNFO) is a fragment of first-order logic that contains all positive existential formulas, can express the first-order translations of basic modal logic and of many description logics, along with many sentences that arise in databases. It has been shown that the syntax of GNFO is restrictive enough so that computational problems such as validity and satisfiability are still decidable. This suggests that, in spite of its expressive power, GNFO formulas are amenable to novel optimizations. In this (...) article we study the model theory of GNFO formulas. Our results include effective preservation theorems for GNFO, effective Craig Interpolation and Beth Definability results, and the ability to express the certain answers of queries with respect to a large class of GNFO sentences within very restricted logics. (shrink)

Gupta-Belnap-style circular definitions use all real numbers as possible starting points of revision sequences. In that sense they are boldface definitions. We discuss lightface versions of circular definitions and boldface versions of inductive definitions.

Gupta-Belnap-style circular definitions use all real numbers as possible starting points of revision sequences. In that sense they are boldface definitions. We discuss lightface versions of circular definitions and boldface versions of inductive definitions.

In dem Beitrag wird die These aufgestellt, dass Papst Benedikt XVI. in seiner ersten Enzyklika „Deus Caritas est" die innere Verbindung zwischen der Liebe Gottes, die er biblisch agape nennt, und der Realität der menschlichen Liebe, die er vom Begriff des eros her zu erschließen versucht, gemäß der inneren Verbindung von Natur und Gnade bestimmt, und zwar in einer Weise, die sich an Augustinus und Bonaventura anlehnt. Die an Bonaventura orientierte Bestimmung der Einheit von Natur und Gnade, die durch (...) die Metaphern der Reinigung und Reifung zum Ausdruck gebracht wird, prägt das Denken von Joseph Ratzinger. Sie bestimmt auch die Einheit von Vernunft und Glaube. Es wird gezeigt, dass diese Denkform der phänomenalen Realität der menschlichen Liebe und ebenso der Autonomie der menschlichen Vernunft kaum gerecht zu werden vermag. (shrink)

In Belegradek et al. 85) the collapse result theorem was proved for locally generic queries over ordered domain with pseudo-finite homogeneity property. In a very interesting paper of Baldwin and Benedikt the collapse result theorem was proved for locally generic queries over ordered domains without the independence property. It means that over such a domain, order-generic extended queries fail to express more than restricted queries. It was observed by Baldwin and Benedikt that any theory without the independence property (...) is P-reducible. I prove that, for the P-reducible theories, a version of pseudo-finite homogeneity property holds. (shrink)

One Seit Platon (mit dem Spott von Diogenes) über Kant ist die Fundamentalfrage "Was ist der Mensch?" bis heute nicht nur von der Philosophie (als regina scientiarum), sondern von der Wissenschaft überhaupt nicht beantwortet. Phänomenologisch hat der Mensch a posteriori physische (somatische), psychische(perceptio, emotio, cognitio), mentale (logische), spirituelle (conscientia, volitio, actio) "Sphären". Ontologisch in Kontext von to ti en einai (Aristoteles) sollte der Mensch a priori ein "Programm" (Information) vor der Kosmogonie haben. Der (Neo‐) Positivismus (z.B. Hume bis Carnap, Russel*; (...) * Nobel Laureate) verwirft Fragen der Metaphysik als Scheinprobleme. Damit bleibt das Menschen‐Wesen in Kontext von Postulaten, wie res cogitans (Descartes), Monaden(Leibniz), "Gott, Freiheit, Unsterblichkeit", Seligkeit und (moralischer) Vollkommenheit (Kant), absoluter Geist (Hegel) in der theologischen Dimension. Antwort könnte eine zukünftige (holistisch‐multidimensionale) philosophische theoretische und Experimentaltheologie (kontrollierbare Beobachtung) durch weitere Forschung geben, in Kontext (bzw. Existenz) von A. Physikotheologie bzw. (a) höhere (als drei) geometrische/physikalische Dimensionen (Hilbert, Riemann /Friedmann, Minkowski, Schmutzer), (b) Paralleluniversen (z.B. L. Randall), (c) Quantentheorie/‐philosophie (Planck*, u.a.), (d) Gravitations‐/Relativitätstheorie (Newton/Einstein*), (e) Vakuumenergie (Sato), etc. B. ChemoBiotheologie bzw. "psychischen" (Fechner) und "spezifischen" (Joh. Müller) Energien,"biologischem Feld" (Gurwitsch), künstlicher Biogenese (Oparin, Fox, Urey*, u.a.; 32 Fragen von John Bernal). C. Psychotheologie bzw. parapsychische Phänomene (Carrel*, Richet*/France, Rhinne/USA, Vassilev, Bechterew/Russia, etc.). D. Religionstheologie: (über‐) Bewußtsein, übersinnliche, immaterielle, supraphysikalische Phänomene (Sri Aurobindo, Dalai Lama*, Konfuzius/Laotse, Gopi Krishna, Papst Benedikt, Paramahansa Yogananda, Sri Yogendra, etc.)und ihre physiologische Begründung (Anand/Chinna, Kasamatsu/Hirai, Ornstein, Pauli*, von Weizsäcker, etc.). Damit hängt die ontologische Frage nach dem MenschenWesen mit der Lösung des Problemkomplexes "Gott Geist/Seele Mensch Natur" zusammen. (shrink)

Affective congruency effects in the evaluation task can be explained by either spreading of activation or response competition. Eliminating effects of response compatibility by using other tasks (semantic categorisation, naming task) typically also eliminates affective congruency effects. However, there is no need for processing the affective information of the stimuli in these tasks either, which could be necessary for an affectively mediated spreading of activation (Spruyt et al., 2007, 2009, 2012). We introduced a new task to further test this hypothesis. (...) The valent/neutral-categorisation task does not confound affective congruency with response compatibility, but still requires a processing of the stimuli's valence. No affective congruency effect was obtained with this task in two experiments, disfavouring a conditional spreading activation account. On the other hand, a significant priming effect was found for associated word pairs in Experiment 1, providing evidence for the sensitivity of the task to detect spreading activation processes. (shrink)

C-systems were defined by Cartmell as models of generalized algebraic theories. B-systems were defined by Voevodsky in his quest to formulate and prove an initiality conjecture for type theories. They play a crucial role in Voevodsky’s construction of a syntactic C-system from a term monad. In this work, we construct an equivalence between the category of C-systems and the category of B-systems, thus proving a conjecture by Voevodsky.

In this paper we discuss Brandom's definition of necessity, which is part of the incompatibility sematnics he develops in his fifth John Locke Lecture. By comparing incompatibility semantics to standard Kripkean possible worlds semantics for modality, we motivate an alternative definition of necessity in Brandom's own terms. Our investigation of this alternative necessity will show that - contra to Brandom's own results - incompatibility semantics does not necessarily lead to the notion of necessity of the modal logic S5.

"Foundations of the Formal Sciences" is a series of interdisciplinary conferences in mathematics, philosophy, computer science and linguistics. The main goal is to reestablish the traditionally strong links between these areas of research that have been lost in the past decades. The second conference in the series had the subtitle "Applications of Mathematical Logic in Philosophy and Linguistics" and brought speakers from all parts of the Formal Sciences together to give a holistic view of how mathematical methods can improve our (...) philosophical and technical understanding of language and scientific discourse, ranging from the theoretical level up to applications in language recognition software. Audience: This volume is of interest to all formal philosophers and theoretical linguists. In addition to that, logicians interested in the applications of their field and logic students in mathematics, computer science, philosophy and linguistics can use the volume to broaden their knowledge of applications of logic. (shrink)