The study of hyperidentities is a growing field of research. While hyperidentities hark back to before 1965, they have found a rebirth in the late seventies and early eighties. It is being expanded in several directions, from connections with clone theory, to finite basis problems, to semigroup theory, to classification of M-solid varieties. Applications to digital logic, formal languages, and hypertext systems have been suggested. The concept of a P-compatible equation, where P is a partition on the set of operation (...) symbols, is a good tool to study the structure of identities. In [4] we asked for P-compatible hyperidentities. In this paper we will consider hypersubstitutions which are compatible with the partition P and will develop a generalized equational theory for certain P-compatible hyperidentities. (shrink)

Introduction: Chinese philosophy and the translation of disciplines -- The faces of masters literature until the Eastern Han -- Scenes of instruction and master bodies in the Analects -- From scenes of instruction to scenes of construction: Mozi -- Interiority, human nature, and exegesis in Mencius -- Authorship, human nature, and persuasion in Xunzi -- The race for precedence: polemics and the vacuum of traditions in Laozi -- Zhuangzi and the art of negation -- The self-regulating state, paranoia, and rhetoric (...) in Han Feizi -- Epilogue: a future for masters literature and Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

Biographical note: Mathias Denecke is a PhD student at the University of Konstanz, Germany.Anne Ganzert is a PhD student at the University of Konstanz, Germany.Isabell Otto (PhD) is junior professor for Media Studies at the University of Konstanz, Germany.Robert Stock (MA) coordinates the research initiative ”Media and Participation“ at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Defining a composition operation on sets of formulas one obtains a many-sorted algebra which satisfies the superassociative law and one more identity. This algebra is called the clone of formulas of the given type. The interpretations of formulas on an algebraic system of the same type form a many-sorted algebra with similar properties. The satisfaction of a formula by an algebraic system defines a Galois connection between classes of algebraic systems of the same type and collections of formulas. Hypersubstitutions are (...) mappings sending pairs of operation symbols to pairs of terms of the corresponding arities and relation symbols to formulas of the same arities. Using hypersubstitutions we define hyperformulas. Satisfaction of a hyperformula by an algebraic system defines a second Galois connection between classes of algebraic systems of the same type and collections of formulas. A class of algebraic systems is said to be solid if every formula which is satisfied is also satisfied as a hyperformula. On the basis of these two Galois connections we construct a conjugate pair of additive closure operators and are able to characterize solid classes of algebraic systems. (shrink)

P-compatible identities are built up from terms with a special structure. We investigate a variety defined by a set ofP-compatible hybrid identities and answer the question whether a variety defined by a set ofP-compatible hyperidentities can be solid.

Hybrid identities are sentences in a special second order language with identity. The model classes of sets of hybrid identities are called hybrid solid varieties. We give a Birkhoff-type-characterization of hybrid solid varieties and develop a hybrid equational logic.

Jerome, the vir trilinguis, frequently makes pertinent observations on linguistic features of Hebrew. The present note offers a discussion of his comments specifically relating to Hebrew interjections. In doing so, it illustrates how in approaching the ‘foreign’, Semitic language material, Jerome relies on the Latin artigraphical tradition, i. e. the tradition of Latin grammars and literary commentaries.

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

Practical deliberation often involves conditional judgements about what will (likely) happen if certain alternatives are pursued. It is widely assumed that the conditionals useful in deliberation are counterfactual or subjunctive conditionals. Against this, I argue that the conditionals of deliberation are indicatives. Key to the argument is an account of the relation between 'straightforward' future-directed conditionals like ' If the house is not painted, it will soon look quite shabby' and * "w e r e ' ' e d F (...) D C s like ' If the house were not to be painted, it would soon look quite shabby': an account on which both of these types of FDCs are grouped with the indicatives for semantic treatment and on which, while conditionals of both types are properly used in means/ends deliberations, those of the ' were'ed-up variety are especially well suited for that purpose. (shrink)

'Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science is a survey that attempts to describe a hypothetic philosophy--the avant-garde pseudo-science imagined by Alfred Jarry. 'Pataphysics is a supplement to metaphysics, accenting it, then replacing it, in order to create a philosophic alternative, whose discipline can study cases, not of conception, but of exception: variance , alliance , and deviance . 'Pataphysics synthesizes the romantic schism between a literal, scientized discourse and a figural, poeticized discourse, and my thesis suggests that this revision (...) of the signifier "science" by 'pataphysics is symptomatic of a postmodern transition in science from a paradigm of absolutism to a paralogy of relativism. Structured as a descriptive explication, which emphasizes a theoretical perspective, this survey is divided into five chapters: the first chapter recounts the history of the conflict between science and poetry ; the second chapter examines the avant-garde pseudo-science of 'pataphysics itself ; and finally, the last three chapters discuss the influence of 'pataphysics upon the poetics of its subsequent successors . While my thesis focuses upon theories of textual poetics rather than poetry itself , my thesis does nevertheless strive to be as conceptually encyclopedic as 'pataphysics itself: instead of normalizing 'pataphysics within one theoretical perspective, this survey alludes intermittently to 'pataphysical enterprises that constitute exceptions to such a genealogy of Jarryites. What is at stake is the status of poetry in a world of science. How might poetry reclaim its own viable truth? How might science benefit from its own poetic irony? For the postmodern condition, such questions have already opened up a novel space for speculative imagination; hence, this survey presents itself as a kind of primer for a future of possible research. (shrink)

In this short but meaty book, Peter Unger questions the objective answers that have been given to central problems in philosophy. As Unger hypothesizes, many of these problems are unanswerable, including the problems of knowledge and scepticism, the problems of free will, and problems of causation and explanation. In each case, he argues, we arrive at one answer only relative to an assumption about the meaning of key terms, terms like "know" and like "cause," even while we arrive at an (...) opposite answer relative to quite different assumptions, but equally arbitrary assumptions, about what the key terms mean. (shrink)