Ranking systems such as The Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings and Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Rankings of World Universities simultaneously mark global status and stimulate global academic competition. As international ranking systems have become more prominent, researchers have begun to examine whether global rankings are creating increased inequality within and between universities. Using a panel Tobit regression analysis, this study assesses the extent to which markers of inter-institutional stratification and organizational segmentation predict global status among US research universities (...) as measured by position in ARWU. Findings indicate some support that both inter-institutional stratification and organizational segmentation predict global status. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In a series of important and influential books, Wilfred Cantwell Smith has convincingly argued that religious traditions are misunderstood if one does not grasp the faith which they express, that these traditions are not static but fluid, and that as a result of greater knowledge and increased contact between members of different traditions, we have entered a period in which it is no longer possible for the traditions to develop in relative isolation. This paper is devoted to an important (...) aspect of Smith's thought – his distinction between faith and propositional belief. (shrink)

Do adherents of different religious traditions communicate and, if so, how? What enables them to do so? What is interreligious “communication”? These issues are ad dressed with reference to Wilfred Cantwell Smith's hermeneutical rule, and to inter alia Paul Knitter, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, David Tracy, and John Dunne. Four responses to the question as to what permits interreligious communication are criticised. According to a fifth response, on which the author elaborates, interreligious communication is not – as the objectivist (...) claims – possible because members of different religious traditions speak the very same language, or – as the relativist claims – impossible because they speak radically different languages. Adherents of different religions communicate, if at all, by means of an analogical language. This language is the product of persistent efforts to understand the religion/faith of the other as he or she understands it. Paradoxically, the language that permits inter religious communication is thus the product of such communication. Without thereby reverting to objectivism or an essentialist view of religion, the author identifies five “less unstable” similarities between religions. These and other “less un stable” similarities might assist believers in their efforts to under stand the religious other. (shrink)

This paper provides finitary jointly necessary and sufficient acceptance and rejection conditions for the logical constants of a first order quantificational language. By introducing the notion of making an assignment as a distinct object level practice—something you do with a sentence—(as opposed to a meta-level semantic notion) and combining this with the practice of (hypothetical and categorical) acceptance and rejection and the practice of making suppositions one gains a structure that is sufficiently rich to fully characterize the class of classical (...) first order theories. The analysis thus provides a way of characterizing classical first order quantification by expressivist means. (shrink)

It is argued that the "inner" negation $\mathord{\sim}$ familiar from 3-valued logic can be interpreted as a form of "conditional" negation: $\mathord{\sim}$ is read '$A$ is false if it has a truth value'. It is argued that this reading squares well with a particular 3-valued interpretation of a conditional that in the literature has been seen as a serious candidate for capturing the truth conditions of the natural language indicative conditional (e.g., "If Jim went to the party he had a (...) good time"). It is shown that the logic induced by the semantics shares many familiar properties with classical negation, but is orthogonal to both intuitionistic and classical negation: it differs from both in validating the inference from $A \rightarrow \nega B$ to $\nega(A\rightarrow B)$ to. (shrink)

A globally expressivist analysis of the indicative conditional based on the Ramsey Test is presented. The analysis is a form of ‘global’ expressivism in that it supplies acceptance and rejection conditions for all the sentence forming connectives of propositional logic (negation, disjunction, etc.) and so allows the conditional to embed in arbitrarily complex sentences (thus avoiding the Frege–Geach problem). The expressivist framework is semantically characterized in a restrictor semantics due to Vann McGee, and is completely axiomatized in a logic dubbed (...) ICL (‘Indicative Conditional Logic’). The expressivist framework extends the AGM (after Alchourron, Gärdenfors, Makinson) framework for belief revision and so provides a categorical (‘yes’–‘no’) epistemology for conditionals that complements McGee’s probabilistic framework while drawing on the same semantics. The result is an account of the semantics and acceptability conditions of the indicative conditional that fits well with the linguistic data (as pooled by linguists and from psychological experiments) while integrating both expressivist and semanticist perspectives. (shrink)

It is argued that indicative conditionals are best viewed as having truth conditions (and so they are in part factual) but that these truth conditions are ‘gappy’ which leaves an explanatory gap that can only be filled by epistemic considerations (and so indicative conditionals are in part epistemic). This dual nature of indicative conditionals gives reason to rethink the relationship between logic viewed as a descriptive discipline (focusing on semantics) and logic viewed as a discipline with a normative import (focusing (...) on epistemic notions such as ‘reasoning’, ‘beliefs’ and ‘assumptions’). In particular, it is argued that the development of formal models for epistemic states can serve as a starting point for exploring logic when viewed as a normative discipline. (shrink)

Non-bivalent languages (languages containing sentences that can be true, false or neither) are given a probabilitistic interpretation in terms of betting quotients. Necessary and sufficient conditions for avoiding Dutch books—the laws of non-bivalent probability—in such a setting are provided.

The paper presents a non-monotonic inference relation on a language containing a conditional that satisfies the Ramsey Test. The logic is a weakening of classical logic and preserves many of the ‘paradoxes of implication’ associated with the material implication. It is argued, however, that once one makes the proper distinction between supposing that something is the case and accepting that it is the case, these ‘paradoxes’ cease to be counterintuitive. A representation theorem is provided where conditionals are given a non-bivalent (...) semantics and epistemic states are represented via preferential models. (shrink)

Conditionals that contain a modality in the consequent give rise to a particular semantic phenomenon whereby the antecedent of the conditional blocks possibilities when interpreting the modality in the consequent. This explains the puzzling logical behaviour of constructions like "If you don't buy a lottery ticket, you can't win", "If you eat that poison, it is unlikely that you will survive the day" and "If you kill Harry, you ought to kill him gently". In this paper it is argued that (...) a semantic version of the Ramsey Test provides a key in the analysis of such constructions. The logic for this semantics is axiomatized and some examples are studied, among them a well-known puzzle for contrary-to-duty obligations. (shrink)

An alleged counterexample to causal decision theory, put forward by Andy Egan, is studied in some detail. It is argued that Egan rejects the evaluation of causal decision theory on the basis of a description of the decision situation that is different from—indeed inconsistent with—the description on which causal decision theory makes its evaluation. So the example is not a counterexample to causal decision theory. Nevertheless, the example shows that causal decision theory can recommend unratifiable acts which presents a problem (...) in the dynamics of intentions. It is argued that we can defuse this problem if we hold that decision theory is a theory of rational decision making rather than a theory of rational acts. It is shown how decisions can have epistemic side-effects that are not mediated by the act and that there are cases where one can only bring oneself to perform the best act by updating by imaging rather than by conditioning. This provides a pragmatic argument for updating by imaging rather than by conditioning in these cases. (shrink)

The problems that surround iterated contractions and expansions of beliefs are approached by studying hypertheories, a generalisation of Adam Grove's notion of systems of spheres. By using a language with dynamic and doxastic operators different ideas about the basic nature of belief change are axiomatised. It is shown that by imposing quite natural constraints on how hypertheories may change, the basic logics for belief change can be strengthened considerably to bring one closer to a theory of iterated belief change. It (...) is then argued that the logic of expansion, in particular, cannot without loss of generality be strengthened any further to allow for a full logic of iterated belief change. To remedy this situation a notion of directed expansion is introduced that allows for a full logic of iterated belief change. The new operation is given an axiomatisation that is complete for linear hypertheories. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility that causal decision theory can be formulated in terms of probabilities of conditionals. It is argued that a generalized Stalnaker semantics in combination with an underlying branching time structure not only provides the basis for a plausible account of the semantics of indicative conditionals, but also that the resulting conditionals have properties that make them well-suited as a basis for formulating causal decision theory. Decision theory (at least if we omit the frills) is not an (...) esoteric science, however unfamiliar it may seem to an outsider. Rather it is a systematic exposition of the consequences of certain well-chosen platitudes about belief, desire, preference and choice. It is the very core of our common-sense theory of persons, dissected out and elegantly systematized. (David Lewis, Synthese 23:331–344, 1974, p. 337). A small distortion in the analysis of the conditional may create spurious problems with the analysis of other concepts. So if the facts about usage favor one among a number of subtly different theories, it may be important to determine which one it is. (Robert Stalnaker, A Defense of Conditional Excluded Middle, pp. 87–104, 1980, p. 87). (shrink)

The bulk of the present volume focuses on the reuse of Buddhist texts. The Introduction gives some background to the topic of textual reuse in general and discusses the reasons for undertaking the analysis of textual reuse within Buddhist texts. It then elaborates on the extent of its pervasiveness within Buddhist literature through the example of Tibetan ritual texts. Lastly, it takes stock of the articles on text-reuse and discusses some general lines of interpretation of the phenomenon of textual reuse (...) in Buddhism, highlighting the importance of the genre over that of the time and language of composition. Thus, philosophical or technical texts tend to quote explicitly, whereas ritual texts see the predominance of the conveyed message over the transparency of the transmission so that reuse is mostly silent. Religious texts of various forms come in between these two extremes. (shrink)

Information received from different sources can be inconsistent. Even when the sources of information can be ordered on the basis of their trustworthiness, it turns out that extracting an acceptable notion of support for information is a non-trivial matter, as is the question what information a rational agent should accept. Here it is shown how a support ordering on the information can be generated and how it can be used to decide what information to accept and what not to accept. (...) This ordering, it turns out, is closely related to notions such as Epistemic Entrenchment and Grove spheres studied in belief revision. (shrink)

This paper calls for a re-appraisal of McGee's analysis of the semantics, logic and probabilities of indicative conditionals presented in his 1989 paper Conditional probabilities and compounds of conditionals. The probabilistic measures introduced by McGee are given a new axiomatisation built on the principle that the antecedent of a conditional is probabilistically independent of the conditional and a more transparent method of constructing such measures is provided. McGee's Dutch book argument is restructured to more clearly reveal that it introduces a (...) novel contribution to the epistemology of semantic indeterminacy, and shows that its more controversial implications are unavoidable if we want to maintain the Ramsey Test along with the standard laws of probability. Importantly, it is shown that the counterexamples that have been levelled at McGee's analysis|generating a rather wide consensus that it yields `unintuitive' or `wrong' probabilities for compounds |fail to strike at their intended target; for to honour the intuitions of the counterexamples one must either give up the Ramsey Test or the standard laws of probability. It will be argued that we need to give up neither if we take the counterexamples as further evidence that the indicative conditional sometimes allows for a non-epistemic `causal' interpretation alongside its usual epistemic interpretation. (shrink)

This paper is about the statics and dynamics of belief states that are represented by pairs consisting of an agent's credences (represented by a subjective probability measure) and her categorical beliefs (represented by a set of possible worlds). Regarding the static side, we argue that the latter proposition should be coherent with respect to the probability measure and that its probability should reach a certain threshold value. On the dynamic side, we advocate Jeffrey conditionalisation as the principal mode of changing (...) one's belief state. This updating method fits the idea of the Lockean Thesis better than plain Bayesian conditionalisation, and it affords a flexible method for adding and withdrawing categorical beliefs. We show that it fails to satisfy the traditional principles of Inclusion and Preservation for belief revision and the principle of Recovery for belief withdrawals{, as well as the Levi and Harper identities. We take this to be a problem for the latter principles rather than for the idea of coherent belief change. (shrink)

When a belief set is contracted only some beliefs are eligible for removal. By introducing eligibility for removal as a new semantic primitive for contraction and combining it with epistemic entrenchment we get a contraction operator with a number of interesting properties. By placing some minimal constraint upon eligibility we get an explicit contraction recipe that exactly characterises the so called interpolation thesis, a thesis that states upper and lower bounds for the amount of information to be given up in (...) contraction. As a result we drop the controversial property of recovery. By placing additional constraints on eligibility we get representation theorems for a number of contraction operators of varying strength. In addition it is shown that recovery contraction is a special case that we get if eligibility is explicitly constructed in terms of logical relevance. (shrink)

Five types of constructions are introduced for non-prioritized belief revision, i.e., belief revision in which the input sentence is not always accepted. These constructions include generalizations of entrenchment-based and sphere-based revision. Axiomatic characterizations are provided, and close interconnections are shown to hold between the different constructions.

Recent studies indicate that mammalian chromosomes contain discretecis‐acting loci that control replication timing, mitotic condensation, and stability of entire chromosomes. Disruption of the large non‐coding RNA gene ASAR6 results in late replication, an under‐condensed appearance during mitosis, and structural instability of human chromosome 6. Similarly, disruption of the mouse Xist gene in adult somatic cells results in a late replication and instability phenotype on the X chromosome. ASAR6 shares many characteristics with Xist, including random mono‐allelic expression and asynchronous replication timing. (...) Additional “chromosome engineering” studies indicate that certain chromosome rearrangements affecting many different chromosomes display this abnormal replication and instability phenotype. These observations suggest that all mammalian chromosomes contain “inactivation/stability centers” that control proper replication, condensation, and stability of individual chromosomes. Therefore, mammalian chromosomes contain four types ofcis‐acting elements, origins, telomeres, centromeres, and “inactivation/stability centers”, all functioning to ensure proper replication, condensation, segregation, and stability of individual chromosomes. (shrink)

The logic of dominance arguments is analyzed using two different kinds of conditionals: indicative (epistemic) and subjunctive (counter-factual). It is shown that on the indicative interpretation an assumption of independence is needed for a dominance argument to go through. It is also shown that on the subjunctive interpretation no assumption of independence is needed once the standard premises of the dominance argument are true, but that independence plays an important role in arguing for the truth of the premises of the (...) dominance argument. A key feature of the analysis is the interpretation of the doubly conditional comparative "I will get a better outcome if A than if B" which is taken to have the structure "(the outcome if A) is better than (the outcome if B)". (shrink)

Go to Grazia Ietto-Gillies’ paper here ›.

A semantics is presented for belief-revision in the face of common announcements to a group of agents that have beliefs about each other's beliefs. The semantics is based on the idea that possible worlds can be viewed as having an internal structure, representing the belief independent features of the world, and the respective belief states of the agents in a modular fashion. Modularity guarantees that changing one aspect of the world (a belief independent feature or a belief state) has no (...) effect on any other aspect of the world. This allows us to employ an AGM-style selection function to represent revision. The semantics is given a complete axiomatisation (identical to the axiomatisation found by Gerbrandy and Groeneveld for a semantics based on non-wellfounded set theory) for the special case of expansion. (shrink)

Ever since [4], systems of spheres have been considered to give an intuitive and elegant way to give a semantics for logics of theory- or belief- change. Several authors [5, 11] have considered giving up the rather strong assumption that systems of spheres be linearly ordered by inclusion. These more general structures are called hypertheories after [8]. It is shown that none of the proposed logics induced by these weaker structures are compact and thus cannot be given a strongly complete (...) axiomatization in a finitary logic. Complete infinitary axiomatizations are given for several intuitive logics based on hypertheories that are not linearly ordered by inclusion. (shrink)